LeaderTalk

School Finances and Transparency

My family and I left Long Island (NY) last summer.  One reason I'm glad we did that is because local control of schools has run amok there.  There are over 120 school districts just on Long Island.  Over the last couple of years, there have been a series of school finance scandals, leading the state attorney general to conduct special audits of all of those school districts.  Now, another scandal is unfolding as the state is investigating the possibility that attorneys were "double dipping" and receiving pensions that they did not earn.  Residents there are furious and I have little doubt that school budgets will be voted down this year, likely in record numbers.

Given that context, I was amazed when I read this article about transparency and financial data at Oregon State University.  Anyone who has access to the OSU network can login to a financial database and see a record of every single transaction that involves university budgets.  That sort of transparency seems extraordinary to me and I wonder what would happen if a K-12 system were to implement something similar.  I'm guessing it wouldn't be pretty.

Educational leadership in 847 easy steps

[Cross-posted at Educational Insanity]

I remember walking into the bookstore at Teachers College, Columbia U. as a new doc. student and thinking, "what value am I going to add to the ed. research enterprise? A book has been written on everything; all the answers to all of the problems in education are right here in these books." I still have those feelings when attending major research conferences. Today, I was looking through one of the many catalogues I receive from publishers of educational texts. This one is from Corwin Press, one of the biggies. There are over 130 pages in the catalogue with 5 or 6 books described on each page. The range of topics and title is incredible, and this is only one of the many publishers of educational texts. I was amused when browsing through just the sections on Leadership and Principals I found the following titles:

• Twelve Roles for Facilitators for School Change
• Eight Habits of the Heart for Educators
• More than 50 ways to Build Team Consensus
• 36 Tools for Building Spirit in Learning Communities
• Leading Every Day: 124 Actions for Effective Leadership

Can you imagine the permutations? If as a school leader, I could/should take on 12 roles, develop 8 habits, use 36 tools and take 124 actions, that should do it, right? No problem.

Educational Leadership Policy Standards

Originally uploaded by seduction by snapshots

[Cross-posted at Educational Insanity]

Those of us in the business of preparing school leaders through universities and those of us who work in institutions accredited by NCATE are held accountable to a set of standards developed collaboratively by a bunch of different organizations. Those standards, formerly known as the ISLLC standards, have been revised and re-named the Educational Leadership Policy Standards. They were approved in December and released within the last 6 weeks. You can see the new standards here (go to the links at the bottom of the page), along with the "research base" behind the standards. These are very important standards since, much like in the K-12 realm, the curricula of school leadership preparation programs will (for better or worse) be guided by them. That being said, before soliciting your opinions, here are a few of my own thoughts:

Of course, the first thing I did was a search for any form of the term "technology." And, surprisingly, there are two such references (Standards 2H and 3B). That's progress, but there's still a significant part of me that feels like the NETS-A (National Education Technology Standards for Administrators) were not considered enough (if they were considered at all).

On one hand, I've come to believe that leadership for 21st Century schooling is not about the technology per se as much as it is about having a forward-thinking vision, the capacity to take risks, and the willingness to think about learning in accordance with 21st Century skills and dispositions. And, so on the first and last points, Standard 1 allows for facilitating the development of such a leader. That is, the standards don't commit to any particular vision or conception or definition of teaching or learning.

On the other hand, that Part I of the NETS-A did not explicitly make its way into Standard 1 of the ELPS is disconcerting. Imagine if this statement, directly from the NETS-A had made its way into the ELPS: "Educational leaders inspire a shared vision for comprehensive integration of technology and foster an environment and culture conducive to the realization of that vision." Can you imagine what the inclusion of such a statement in Standard 1 would have meant to/for leadership preparation programs around the country? Furthermore, synthesizing Standards 2H and 3B, if educational leaders obtain technological resources and promote their use to support teaching and learning, shouldn't there be a vision/plan for that?

Maybe I shouldn't complain because I did have opportunities to comment on earlier drafts of the ELPS, but I know that other colleagues did make the case for greater integration of the NETS-A. And, while I'm not a huge fan of the whole standards and accountability movement, as long as we're playing that game, I'd like for the rules to be appropriate.

What do you think of the new standards? Do they resonate with your understandings/beliefs about effective school leadership?

Cheating

In a Freakonomics blog post today, Stephen Dubner asks if cheating is actually good for sports. I'd been thinking about the state of the sports world and all of the stories about steroids, video spying, tennis match fixes, etc.  I wondered if this was all new or just the logical result of the information age.

Then, of course, my thoughts turned to education.  On Long Island (NY), where I lived before moving to Virginia, there's a new "scandal" about attorneys who were allegedly collecting big salaries from law firms and who were simultaneously listed and paid as full-time employees of multiple school districts.  The main target of the investigation allegedly logged over 1,200 DAYS in the state pension system last year.  Then, in my ASCD Smartbrief comes this story, about a Birmingham, AL superintendent who is being investigated for altering a report critical of the school system before distributing it to the public.  These are just two of the most recent instances of these sorts in education; there's no need to hash them all out here.

So, my question is, what is going on here?  Is there more cheating, deception, fraud, etc. in the world or is this old, common stuff that is just coming to light in the information age? 

Cruel and Unusual Punishment?

[NOTE: Cross-posted at Educational Insanity]

I met with an advisee today who works as a teacher for the Department of Correctional Education.

ljjailOriginally uploaded by foaquin

He teaches 11-16 year olds. They have computers; plenty of them. BUT, no Internet. I don't know much at all about correctional education. But, NO INTERNET? I'm willing to accept that I may be too much of a softy, but...

What do you think?

Within-School Segregation: Reflections on MLK Day

On my own NEW blog Educational Insanity (plug, plug!!!), I wrote about digital equity issues.  Here, I'm using MLK day to write about another set of issues that present serious leadership challenges.

We're now more than 50 years removed from the Brown v. Bd. of Ed. decision.  Progress on between-school segregation was made in the 1980's and 1990's, but we're now deep into a period of rapid re-segregation (see e.g. the work done by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles).  School segregation by race continues to be, IMHO, problematic.

However, what troubles me more is the mounting evidence that even where we have managed to create diverse/integrated schools, there is extensive within-school segregation by race.  For example, students of color are disproportionately:

• overrepresented in special education;
• underrepresented in gifted and talented programs;
• underrepresented in the highest level academic tracks (including AP courses);
• overrepresented in the population of students subject to serious discipline (suspension, expulsion, etc.);
• under-served by highly qualified and/or highly experienced teachers.

Collectively, at the very least, I believe that these empirical facts amount to a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  I'm not sure the federal judiciary would agree with me.  Yet, I do hope that school leaders take some time (today or in the near future) to disaggregate some data and reflect upon any differences in educational opportunities by race that exist within local education agencies.  "I have a dream..."

Leadership without followers

[cross posted at edinsanity.com]

Not too long ago, I was asked the following question by a doctoral student: "What would a doctoral program in ed. tech. leadership look like?" I'm certainly well aware of the NETS-A-based curriculum components developed by Scott McLeod and Joan Hughes at CASTLE, but my mind went to a dissertation that one of my advisees just defended about leaders of technologically innovative schools. The major findings of that dissertation confirmed some of my own thinking in that the leaders under study were not focused on technology, nor were they so concerned with innovation. Rather, they were leaders and learners first and foremost. Furthermore, leadership for them was about building relationships and facilitating learning. If learning was best facilitated by utilizing some form of technology, it was their job to marry that technology to the teaching/learning process. The findings also brought me back to a book chapter written in 1993 (almost 15 years ago!) by Chris Dede, a Harvard professor and one of the preeminent thinkers in the ed. tech. field. Dede wrote that true leadership requires four attributes:

• Envisioning Opportunities

  • “One of the most important attributes that distinguishes leaders from managers is ‘vision’: the ability to communicate desirable, achievable futures quite different from where the present is drifting.”

• Displacing Cherished Misconceptions

  • “An important attribute of leaders is their ability to displace deeply held, cherished misconceptions with alternative visions that more accurately depict reality. Mistaken beliefs most people hold about teaching and learning form a barrier that blocks improving American education.”

• Inspiring Others to Act on Faith

  • “Inspiring a group to work toward a shared vision necessitates building trust: faith that this team of people can overcome all the obstacles that block creating a future quite different from the present.”

• Discouraging Followers

  • “A destructive myth about leadership is that a visionary person gives directions to followers who execute this plan. Real leaders discourage followers, instead encouraging use of their visions as a foundation for other, better insights.”

This means two things for me. First, as a professor of educational leadership, I now see clearly that this is the sort of educational leaders I MUST develop and work with. Second, I aspire to write as eloquently and presciently as Chris Dede.

Because that's what we always do!

Inspired largely by Miguel Guhlin's post about penguins and melting icebergs, I take this opportunity to once again combine my interests in ed. policy/leadership issues and sports.  A few months ago, I was reading a nearly annual story by Gregg Easterbrook on ESPN.com's Page 2 about punting in football.  As background, Easterbrook has been inspired by a study conducted by a UC-Berkeley economist named David Romer that demonstrates that football teams would actually win more games if they mostly eschewed punting on 4th down (for the 17 or so non-football fans out there, if a team fails to advance the ball 10 yards in 4 plays, they turn the ball over to the other team.  So, if after 3 plays they think they are unlikely to gain the 10th yard or more on a 4th play, they punt the ball to the other team on the assumption that doing so will give the other team the ball, but in significantly worse position on the field).  Just looking at situations where teams face a 4th down with 1 yard to go ("4th and 1" in football lingo), teams succeed 75% of the time.  So, Easterbrook claims, "[i]f you face fourth-and-1 four times and punt all four times, your opponent will score once more than it otherwise would have. If you go for it all four times, you will score once more than you otherwise would have."  Yet, teams consistently punt the ball away on 4th and 1.

Easterbrook has revised Romer's strategy in favor of a fairly complicated "rarely punt" orientation which he outlines in the article.  When his approach was tested/simulated, the results were astounding.

"Bottom line: avoiding punts added an average of one point to a team's per-game scoring, without adding any points to its opponents' average scoring. Teams avoiding punting became 5 percent more likely to win -- statistically significant owing to the thousands of tries...A 5 percent improvement in victory likelihood translates into one additional victory per 20 games, or just shy of one extra win per NFL season."

One win per season can make the difference between making the playoffs or not; it can mean millions of dollars in extra revenue.  So, why do teams continue to punt the way they do?  Easterbrook offers two reasons: "First, 'because that's what we always do.' Second, because if coaches order fourth-down tries that fail, they will be blamed, whereas if coaches order punts, the players will be blamed for the loss."

What does this all have to do with penguins and melting icebergs?  Well, I won't touch the idea of coaches pushing the blame onto the players (there's a politically tricky analogy to education I don't want to deal with, at least not now).  But, as Miguel writes, "Unfortunately, one of the challenges [in education] is overcoming the 'NoNo' penguins who want to keep doing things the way they have always done things."

So, the (eternal) question is how to lead "NoNo" people out of the status quo.  More on that in a subsequent post.  For now, though, what "punting" examples can you think of in your schools/districts?  Perhaps by collectively reflecting on these, we can all think about the changes we can make that will improve the outcomes for our teams.

The Future of Educational Leadership

This link was passed around the Second Life Educators Discussion (SLED) listserv (not so incidentally by Stan Trevena who organizes a fascinating "virtual worlds" project for his school district in California: see http://pacificrimx.wordpress.com).  The link brings you to a page that summarizes a report by a team of researchers who set out "1.) to better understand how successful leaders behave in online games and 2.) to learn what aspects of game environments leaders leverage to be more effective."  The idea was that by studying leadership development and behaviors in online games, they could potentially discover the new skills and competencies (dispositions?) that leaders will need to succeed in work environments that are increasingly virtual and distributed.

I'm not a huge fan of trying to fit education into business models, but I couldn't help reading this report without substituting the term "education" for "business" and other such substitutions where relevant.  Doing so really had me thinking.  For example, the authors write about how virtual worlds (unlike businesses?) are replete with opportunities for leadership which often require different individuals to step forward and assume a leadership role (which, in my humble opinion, should be the case in schools/districts, too).  The authors then wrote, "Spreading around the leadership wealth in this way provides the opportunity for many players to try on leadership roles, decide if leadership agrees with them, and pursue it further if so inclined. Also, there is no expectation of permanence in these leadership roles, an important factor that encourages experimentation."

A zillion questions came to my mind as I read this report.  First and foremost was the question of whether schools were going to become increasingly virtual and distributed at all (as the authors suggest of businesses)?  If so (or even if not?!?!), should school leaders be spreading around the leadership wealth so as to encourage experimentation?  Etc., etc., etc.   Thoughts?

SES-independent Indicators of School Quality

In the process of moving from one state (NY) to another (VA), I'm learning more than I ever wanted to know about real estate and the current market.  But, I'm also learning more than I already knew about the relationship(s) between the real estate market and the public schools.  There are probably a dozen or so blog posts I could write about this (most of which would be horribly depressing), but for now, I'm interested in how school leaders would/should (or do) market their schools. 

For prospective home buyers, in this information age, there are plenty of ways to learn about residential communities and the schools that serve them.  To learn about schools, for example, GreatSchools.net provides data about the schools (e.g. students per FTE teacher, test scores, attendance, % eligible for free-reduced price lunch, etc.), the teachers (% teachers with advanced degrees, % highly qualified teachers, etc.), and the students (race only).  Those data paint a fairly illuminating picture of a school and allow for comparison across schools.

However, as a professor of educational leadership, I've come to know that those data that are publicly available are (sadly, unfortunately, etc.) either direct indicators of the socio-economic status (SES) of the community or largely dependent on/correlated with the SES of the community.  We know, for example, that schools in more affluent areas are more able to recruit and maintain higher percentages of highly qualified teachers.  Relatedly (perhaps), we know that test scores correlate highly with race and SES.

So, I'm wondering what sort of data or indicators schools should be able to produce that are SES-independent that would help us compare (and shop for?) schools.  For example, I know I'd want to know the degree of technology integration (not easily measured, though) across the school.  I'd want to know the school's mission statement and the degree to which the school "practices what they preach" (or, in academic terms, whether their "espoused theories" match their "theories in use").  I'd want information about the school facility (e.g. age, square footage per student, amenities, etc.).

What else should I want to know that is independent of the SES of the school community?  Or, asked differently, if a prospective parent came to your school and wanted to know about the good SES-independent qualities of your school, what would you tell them?