Leadership in Education

Abstract

Mr. Goldberg looks back on the 43 interviews he has conducted since 1989 with eminent individuals who merit the label leaders, and he discovers that there is no algorithm for success in educational leadership - though there are a handful of large-minded that leaders tend to share. SINCE September 1989, I have interviewed 43 educational leaders for the Phi Delta Kappan and Educational Leadership. Strictly speaking, not all the people I interviewed and wrote about were professional educators, but all the interviews were exclusively about education, and all the interviewees were seriously concerned about significant educational issues. Theodore Sizer, John Goodlad, and the late Ernest Boyer were important national educational leaders; Deborah Meier and Dennis Littky were school principals; and Audre Allison and Florence Mondry were teachers. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Dorothy Rich, and Carol Gilligan were somewhat more distant from schools but had a great deal to say about education as well as considerable indirect influence on school matters. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor Kurt Schmoke, and Gov. Lowell Weicker were politicians with extremely strong feelings about education and the political leverage to affect what happened in schools. Each of these people - and all the others I interviewed - were, through position or influence, educational leaders. Leadership can take more than one form and has many characteristics, but throughout the 43 interviews, five qualities stood out. These leaders held a bedrock belief in what they were doing; they had the courage to swim upstream in behalf of their beliefs; they possessed a social conscience, particularly on issues of racism and poverty; they maintained a seriousness of purpose, holding high standards and devoting years of service to their causes; and they exemplified situational mastery, the happy marriage of personal skills and accomplishment. I make no claim that these five characteristics or indicators of leadership complete the domain for the topic or that I might not have found another quality or two had I interviewed a different cast of characters. However, the people I interviewed represent a good sample of the leaders of education in America. They are women and men of different ages. They work in Boston, Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas; New York City and Berkeley, California; Charlottesville, Virginia, and Seattle, Washington; Providence, Rhode Island, and Honolulu, Hawaii. They come from the majority white community and from minority African American and Hispanic backgrounds; six of the interviewees did not speak English as their first language, and five of them were born in countries other than the United States. Clearly, there are educational conservatives, moderates, and liberals in this group. I made no special effort to interview women or men, Northerners or Southerners, or members of any other category. The only criteria for eligibility were substantial achievement in education, considerable ability to influence education, or a combination of the two. While I am convinced of the firmness of the ground beneath me when I talk about the five characteristics below, I do not mean to represent any particular educational philosophy as the one I most favor. Don Hirsch and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani might be characterized as educational conservatives, Ernest Boyer and John Goodlad are probably closer to the liberal camp, while Shirley Strum Kenny and Kurt Schmoke are somewhere in between. Those people might not agree with my labels, and many of them cautioned me during the interviews not to confuse their educational alignments with their political beliefs. I could easily place myself along the conservative to liberal continuum, but that is not the point. I could easily tilt my description to represent a particular camp as best, but that is not the point. The theme of this article is that the five common characteristics themselves are indicators of leadership. …