Educational Leadership

Great Debates
1

In this thread, Drum God makes the point that teachers should be better paid. (Since that would mean more money for me, I ain’t about to say no… :wink: I do think that the pay to work ratio could be considered lower than in other fields, but I am not convinced that (at least in my state) that’s the primary problem with education. As brazil84 pointed out, throwing money at the situation doesn’t necessarily work.

What I am troubled by is the distinct lack of good educational leadership. Now, lest you think this is merely a “teacher-bashing-his-administrators-argument” I would like to say that I have seen (and worked for) both good and bad admins, and I want more of the former. The problem is, they don’t exist in enough numbers.

I am a seventh-year teacher. I have two degrees (both in science). I have very little “educational” background. I’ve avoided education classes like the plague. It’s commonly held that education classes are taught by people who aren’t very good teachers. It’s also commonly held that the people who teach administrative classes were the ones who couldn’t handle the education classes. What it really is is that the people who teach such classes are the ones who decide to make it a priority for themselves. It’s pretty much the same thing for admins. Admins weren’t necessarily the best teachers. They’re the teachers who decided to become admins. IOW, it doesn’t take skill to become a “teacher-teacher” or an admin; it takes ambition.

I also don’t want you to think that this is an “administration-must-be-easy” thread, either. I have a very good relationship with both my assistant principal and my principal. (The one was a teacher for my first 4 years, the other started as a.p. at my school the year I started teaching.) I have often asked them just how they could do what they do. I know it’s a tough job. That student that I have a tough time with and have to resort to kicking out of my classroom? S/He winds up in the office, and the admins have to deal with her/him and her/his parents. The colleague I avoid because they’re a pita? Guess who deals with them? I don’t for a second think that the admins get to sit in their office and eat bon-bons. The best admins out there work just as hard as the best teachers out there. The problem is that there’s really no one checking in on admins. And it’s the admins who evaluate the teachers. (As Zoe mentioned in his/her post, personality clashes can be a larger part of evaluations than actual evaluations.)

In Massachusetts, to get fully certified as a teacher, you have to have worked at the job for a number of years, gone through a training program (either a college-level program or an evaluative one through the state), then, you have to work some more years and get evaluated further. You must also continue your education with more classes, etc. When you’re done, it doesn’t mean you’re a great teacher, but it does ensure that you’re at least smart enough to get through all the levels of checks and that you’re further developing as a professional. And that’s only for your license; for your job, you get evaluated 2x a year for your first three years and at least once per after that. To become a principal or assistant principal, you first have to be a fully licensed teacher, go through a program and take a test. There is no, let me rephrase that NO more retraining once you’re certified. To become a superintendent, you must hold the principal’s certification for three years. (Not, mind you working as a principal, just holding the certification, assuming you’re still teaching.) How about certification for the school committees? Nothing whatsoever. Again, it’s ambition that drives people into these administrative roles, not necessarily skill.

What about the Kansas City lesson in the linked article? Well, as far as I read the report by CATO, it’s a clear and damning case of mismanagement. All the money in the world can’t fix broken leadership. In the district where I work, we have the high school, which has seen improvements to its test scores. Our admins are being railroaded out of town by our super. In the middle school, though, where we are actually seeing decreasing test scores, the principal is held up as the example of what good principals should be. I am convinced that he is being groomed to become a superintendent. Our school committee, which is by-and-large decent people, don’t know how to hold the super accountable, because they often don’t know the right questions to ask. The super has a fantastic ability to gloss over details and get people to buy it. (The middle school is in fact on the warning list as it has failed to make AYP two years running, and the super amazingly brushed off the question by the school committee.)

So, have you made through this far? (TLDR?)

Here’s my solution:
[ol][li]We need regional teacher evaluators. Someone certified in that specific field. They should be hired by the state and paid simply to evaluate the content and classroom skills of teachers. (Maybe, they can actually work with teachers on their curricula, too.) Make sure that two people say a teacher is as good or as bad as they think they are. Don’t let personalities determine who can stay. These evaluators should keep their own certifications valid and can only act as evaluator for, say, 3 years.[/li][li]Department chairs need to be more administrator than they are. (This is happening, in some places.) Chairs need to be a ‘junior’ admin position. This opens up career paths for people who think they want to move up. They can also be evaluated on their management skills.[/li][li]Principals need better management training. If teachers are going to be judged on how well their students score on tests, principals need to be judged on how well their teachers perform on their evaluations by the evaluators. [/li][li]All superintendents must have worked as a building principal, preferably high school. In order to become superintendent, you must have the equivalent of minors in business management, finance, and law.[/li][li]School committees should have a special position of “Chair” that must be filled by someone who is a retired principal or superintendent. This position should be paid (but, not much, as the person will be getting retirement moneys). The person in this position will be responsible for running the meetings, but, much like the president of the senate (V.P.), only votes to break ties.[/ol][/li]
I will be the first to admit that my solution will cost money. However, I think it’s money spent in the right places. This will not solve all of the ills in education. It does not (and I don’t see a way to) address students or parents who don’t place value on education. The only thing it does (and I think the only thing we really can do) is to promote better leaders to promote better teachers.

2

These statements are contradictory.
Surely your science training taught you to avoid saying ‘it’s commonly held’ as if it meant anything.
Why not study a subject before you make pronouncements on it?

3

What contradictions do you see? The ‘little “educational” background’ meant that I have taken mostly science courses, and not a lot of classes in pedagogy. Perhaps I should have clarified: the pedagogical classes that I have had to take weren’t worth the time I wasted to take them. The class on classroom management was taught by someone who couldn’t manage her classroom. The class on differentiated instructions was taught be someone who didn’t differentiate her lessons.

I’m sorry if you teach pedagogy and are insulted, but I’ve seen far worse teachers-teaching-teachers than I’ve seen teachers.

And, as far as its worth, I am very much aware of the value of ‘it’s commonly held’. I will humbly retract my statement if you can show me any hard data supporting the notion that teachers with higher levels of pedagogy training are more effective teachers.

4

I know lots of district superintendents, from all across the country. Most came from the ranks of principals. Some come from other disciplines, such as law enforcement and the military, but not many. They have varied undergraduate and graduate degrees, and most have a doctorate in education or admin (some PhDs but most are EdDs).

Good administrators are leaving the superintendency in droves, often well before retirement. Women and minorities are slowly filling the ranks, but it is still the domain of older white guys (not a bad thing in and of itself, but hardly diverse, given the district populations). The primary reason I hear about is poor supt/board relations. The tendency is to get single-issue board members with an ax to grind, which can throw an entire district into chaos. Uninformed, inexperienced and under-educated board members are also a problem. Proper, professional board training can work wonders in a school district.

School districts are often the largest employer in their county, or even state, with budgets int he double-digit millions. It is the job of the superintendent to run the district in accordance with board policy, but he/she must also make decisions in the best interest of the district, which can conflict with the board’s wishes. It’s a very difficult thing if the supt and board are not on the same page.

It’s ironic, really- the board selects what they think is the best possible candidate for the superintendency (doctorate, tons of experience, successful record in similar districts, etc) and then doesn’t allow him/her to use that expertise to effect needed change because of petty, childish “don’t step on my issue” fights.

5

Full disclosure: I am a school board member.

Yep, yep and yep. I’m fortunate insofar as my district has a requirement that you go through a certain amount of training to better understand what a board member is and does. Doesn’t get rid of everyone who’s “Just there to raise hell and make 'em sweat,” an actual quote from a gentleman who was in training when I was, but it helps.

And those petty issues have hamstrung any number of school boards and even more tragically, districts.

6

Sigh.

All of the stuff listed in this thread, and others, were part of why I left teaching. I too worked with some excellent administrators, but there just aren’t enough around.

I like the suggestion of teacher evaluators who have expertise in the subject area. Rarely was I ever evaluated by someone who really knew my subject.

What really bothers me is that some of the better administrators left the field for the same reasons I did. Education often does not reward those who are actually good at their jobs. Rather, those people sometimes realize that they’ll never achieve their potential in a dysfunctional school / district / profession and leave. Especially true with younger teachers. In this manner, education eats its young.

7

Where I see a crisis in educational leadership is not at the superintendent level or even the principal level, but at the counselor and assistant principal/vice-principal level, in very different ways:

The assistant principal problem is simply the Peter Principle in action: the skills that make someone a good teacher are really unrelated to the ones that make a good administrator, and so the AP position is kind of a Darwinistic way to discover which potential administrators have the chops–the good ones pass through the job after a very few years, and the rest . . . linger. People with absolutely no skills in management or administration who think that an administrator is to a teacher as a teacher is to a student (which works real well, let me tell you) and who have trouble understanding anything complex. I have met some truly stupid APs in my time. They are impossible to fire and principals basically have to use them as glorified security guards. This comes at a terrible opportunity cost–so much more could be accomplished at a school with more capable bodies in administration–people that could manage and administer. But it’s a rare thing.

Counseling, on the other hand, seems to suffer from being a job where the things that attract people to the job are not the things that make them good at the job: good counselors get into the business to advise kids, to council. But there is a huge information management component to their job that they are often terrible at–I’m not sure I’ve ever met a counselor that started out as a math teacher, but that’s the sort of background they need. I joke at my school that innovation stops at the counseling door, because anytime we come up with any idea that could help improve our school, anything non-traditional, either we get told it’s impossible from the beginning, or, worse and more common, whatever part the counseling office needs to do to help with implementation falls apart and the whole thing collapses.

8

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=teacher&l1=Detroit%2C+MI The average Detroit teacher makes 49 K. Is that so bad? The supervisors do very well. Good health care ,good retirements, a couple months off a year. whats not to like?

9

Good retirements? Hee hee hee… that’s a good one. A couple of months off? That’s even funnier.

I assume you were being sarcastic.

10

We don’t need professional evaluators to tell if teachers are good, we just need good tests for students. If we have well designed curriculums and good tests we will know which teachers are good and bad just by looking at improvements in test scores from year to year.
The departmental chairmen should definetly have more administrative responsibilities and higher pay.
Principals need better training, more pay, more responsibilities and more accountability.
Educators are rewarded for degrees and longevity. No one gets paid more for a good job and no one is paid less for a bad job. The whole system seems to be designed so no one has to take responsibilty and be held accountable.

11

And the teachers’ unions could teach the Teamsters a thing or two, at least in CA. They are scary.

12

Let’s get specific. I teach courses that don’t always have a direct precursor and direct successor. Chemistry can be, and in too many districts is, a stand alone course. How one does on a Biology-based science test doesn’t have as much to do with how well someone will do in a Chemistry-based science test. Bio is memorization, Chem is application (of equations). If someone takes Bio in 10th grade, Chem in 11th, and Anatomy & Physiology in 12th grade, how does the year-to-year test comparison tell you how well that student learned Chemistry? Even having three test data sets won’t give you the answer you’re looking for. What do we do for seniors?

The best way to truly test someone’s progress through a course is a pre-test and a post-test and compare improvement over the course of the year. Shall we have two tests per year per subject? How long must these tests be to get a valid sample of a student’s improvement? (Our finals are 90 minutes long. Should we use that as an idea? Spend three hours of testing - 4 class periods - just to test the teachers?

What might be counter intuitive is that the teachers giving summer work (e.g. for honors or AP courses) would be shooting themselves in the foot - their students would likely score better on the pre-test and have a comparatively lower difference when you compare pre and post test data.