Looking beyond the Schoolhouse Door

Abstract

While Mr. Hess does not advocate the universal adoption of any single philosophy of management, he feels quite strongly that preparation programs for school leaders are doing their students a disservice by not exposing them to the ideas of the most influential thinkers in management and business. What should be done about leadership preparation in America's colleges of education? I am skeptical that schools of education are equipped to produce the leaders that we need and am on record as advocating the elimination of most licensure requirements for educational leaders, endorsing the proliferation of nontraditional providers, and welcoming the advent of nontraditional candidates. (1) Nonetheless, for this forum, I was asked to discuss what schools of education might do. I want to focus on one critical component of preparation: what candidates are actually taught. Whatever the architecture of their preparation, the content of instruction and the texts candidates read will help determine whether as graduates they will be equipped to be creative, effective, and accountable leaders in a new world of educational leadership. Today, school and district leadership is increasingly characterized by accountability, responsibility for teacher quality, utilization of data and research, and the ability to compete in an environment of public school choice. These new roles require a keen sense of how to use accountability as a management tool; a willingness to challenge conventions; the ability to lead a team and motivate, mentor, and manage personnel; and a familiarity with the small business skills demanded by site-based budgeting and public school choice. Unfortunately, educational background, prior classroom experiences, and long-term immersion in schooling do little to prepare teachers for these duties. Moreover, the evidence suggests that preparation programs for school leaders are themselves dropping the ball. In 2005, I co-authored two studies that examined the content of principal preparation and found limited attention paid to the challenges of 21st-century educational leadership. (2) Syllabi and readings collected from 210 courses in a national sample of principal preparation programs showed that just 2% of instructional weeks addressed accountability as a lever for management or school improvement and just 11% made any mention of data or empirical evidence. Teacher hiring and recruitment were addressed in less than 2% of course weeks, and termination and compensation together were not even mentioned in most programs. There was much instruction on rote personnel management but little on the use of data to evaluate or develop faculty members. (3) An analysis of the content of the assigned reading yielded similar results. Work by the 50 most influential living management thinkers (as identified in the 2003 Thinkers Fifty survey of management professionals) accounted for just 1.6% of the 1,851 assigned readings. Influential management thinkers such as Clay Christensen, Jim Collins, Warren Bennis, and Peter Drucker (all named in the Thinkers Fifty) were almost entirely absent. (4) Educational leadership preparation places a premium on culture and coaching, while failing to prepare graduates to confront mediocrity or make hard choices about faculty, budgets, and programs. Take the case of personnel management. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch--one of the Thinkers Fifty--has called for routinely purging low performers. At GE, Welch made it a point to eliminate the least productive 10% of the work force every year, explaining, Making these judgments is not easy . . . but . . . this is how great organizations are built. Year after year, differentiation raises the bar higher and higher. (5) This perspective was absent in the course units and texts we examined. The point is not to endorse Welch's advice but to recognize that his philosophy of personnel management is worthy of serious consideration. …