Articles in the Leadership category

Bonus online article answers the question: What do superintendents want?

Holiday bonus, bonus coupons, bonus items –a bonus is a gift, a little extra something that doesn’t cost you anything.

American School Board Journal offers a bonus, too – online articles on topics that help school board members and other school leaders do their jobs.

You can read these articles on our website even if you are not a subscriber to ASBJ.

You’ll find a treasure trove of information on school governance available online only. We’ve just posted “Educational Ecosystems: Identifying the Next Generation of Superintendents,” by Brian A. Sheehan, an instructional leader with Massachusetts’ Malden Public Schools.

In candid interviews, five Massachusetts superintendents talk to Sheehan about how well they were prepared – or not prepared – for their current jobs as school leaders. Their remarks will give you insight into how to hire and manage your superintendent, as well as some of the challenges facing the profession.

Kathleen Vail|May 8th, 2013|Categories: American School Board Journal, Leadership, NSBA Publications, Professional Development|

More lawmakers sign on to NSBA bill

The National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) legislative proposal which would establish a framework for improved recognition of local school board authority when the U.S. Department of Education acts on issues that impact local school districts unless specifically authorized in federal legislation, the Local School Board Governance and Flexibility Act (H.R. 1386), has now garnered 16 co-sponsors.

Introduced by Rep. Aaron Schock (R-lll.) on March 21, the bill had as original co-sponsors Reps. Schock, Rodney Davis of Illinois, Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Patrick Meehan of Pennsylvania, and David Valadao of California. Since then, 11 more members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed on: Reps. Lou Barletta (PA), Jo Bonner (AL), Kevin Cramer (ND), Jim Gerlach (PA), Bob Gibbs (OH), Adam Kinzinger (IL), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Kenny Marchant (TX), Mick Mulvaney (SC), Stevan Pearce (NM.), Ted Poe (TX), and Marlin Stutzman (IN).

School board members are encouraged to contact their House members to become co-sponsors. Increased focus is now being directed to urge senators to introduce a companion bill in the U.S. Senate, and school board members also are encouraged to contact their senators and urge them to sponsor similar legislation.

 

Joetta Sack-Min|May 3rd, 2013|Categories: Board governance, Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Governance, Leadership, Legislative advocacy, Policy Formation, School Boards, School Reform|Tags: , |

Not much data available on school turnaround models, new CPE report finds

Turnaround strategies for low-performing schools are getting a lot of attention from states and the federal government—which are spending billions of dollars on those efforts. But do these strategies work?

The National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) Center for Public Education (CPE)  finds that while there have been some successes there’s not much evidence yet that many of these strategies will work on a larger scale.

The report, “Which Way Up?  What research says about school turnaround strategies,” reviews numerous methods of school improvement to determine which, if any, hold the most promise, but finds that in most cases it’s too early to tell.

“With the significant federal investment and mandated models to ‘turnaround’ low-performing schools, we have limited research to date on the effectiveness of these strategies and little guidance on what actually works,” said NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel.  “We know that school improvement funding is extremely important, but it should encourage innovation, instead of mandating unnecessary federal restrictions.”

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law has placed a larger focus on turnaround strategies by identifying schools with low performance and sizable achievement gaps. The main federal turnaround program, the School Improvement Grant (SIG), targets schools in the bottom 5 percent nationwide with four models of reform ranging from replacing staff to shutting down a school. These strategies are echoed in the federal Race to the Top grants and so-called Parent Trigger laws being introduced in a handful of states.

One federal study showed that two-thirds of SIG grant recipients posted gains with the infusion of federal funds, but because the report was based on only one year’s data, it was too early to draw conclusions.

“The focus on the nation’s lowest performing schools is vitally important so we can make sure all students have the benefit of a solid public education,” said Patte Barth, CPE’s Director. “In these efforts, education policymakers need to balance the need for evidence-based strategies while tapping the potential for local innovation, especially in cases like turnaround strategies where the data is limited.”

In examining research on the impact of school closure, restart, transformation, and turnaround models, the report concludes:

  • Research is limited. There is some evidence of success, primarily for schools undertaking more dramatic turnaround reforms, but data collected over a longer period of time is needed.
  • The vast majority of SIG schools — about three-quarters are choosing the “transformation model” which provides the most flexibility for local planners.
  • Replacing a majority of teachers—required in the turnaround model—presents challenges for some schools. Rural schools are particularly challenged to find enough teachers to meet the replacement requirements.
  • Rural schools also face difficulties with the restart model since they have limited access to private management organizations. The closure model also may not be feasible if they have no other schools in which to send students. Even in urban areas, a closure model seems to be promising only when students can transfer to schools with higher achievement rates.
  • Replacing a principal may show promise, as some studies indicate principals are second only to teachers in their impact on student learning.  But the strategy is new and again, the data is limited.

NSBA has repeatedly voiced concerns about the U.S. Department of Education’s mandates and overreach, which hinder school officials’ abilities to address their unique local needs. In response to NSBA concerns, the Local School Board Governance and Flexibility Act (HR 1386) has been introduced and now has 15 cosponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would ensure that the agency engages local school boards much more to preclude federal requirements that are ineffective and beyond local school district capacity.

Joetta Sack-Min|May 1st, 2013|Categories: Board governance, Center for Public Education, Charter Schools, Educational Research, Federal Advocacy, Federal Programs, Governance, Leadership, Legislative advocacy, Mayoral Control, School Reform, Student Achievement|Tags: , , , , , |

New NSBA President David Pickler takes office in midst of change

David A. Pickler

David A. Pickler knows about change.

His career has evolved from business to law to financial planning and accounting.  As a member of the Shelby County, Tenn. school board, Pickler is in the midst of a massive merger with Memphis City Schools that will drastically change the demographics and operations of the school district.

So as Pickler becomes NSBA’s 2013-14 President at the Third General Session this afternoon, he has plans to help NSBA become a “change agent,” and a stronger, more responsive organization. Working with NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel, he wants NSBA to become a reform leader and an even greater proponent for public education.

“Our responsibility is to lead the conversation, forge the alliances with core stakeholders, and bring forward a powerful message,” Pickler says.

As a member of the organization’s board of directors, he has been lending his expertise as a financial planner and attorney to NSBA in recent years. C. Ed Massey, NSBA’s 2012-13 President, said he and Pickler have worked together very closely over the past year and he expects a seamless transition.

“David has the requisite communication skills and certainly the knowledge to make sure we keep NSBA on track as we continue to promote our advocacy about public education in multiple ways,” Massey says. Further, “at a time where finances are a consistent and constant challenge, his particular skill set will assist NSBA.”

After graduating from Arkansas State University and working for International Paper in Dallas for one year, Pickler joined the Xerox Corp. and began attending law school at night. He intended to specialize in corporate law, but two and a half years in was offered a promotion by Xerox that would have forced him to give up a legal career. Instead, he decided to look for a job in finance—and after a series of cold calls to brokerage firms, he took a job with PaineWebber.

By the time he graduated law school in December 1985, Pickler had already built a successful financial planning business. The next year, he passed the bar exam and began practicing law on the side.

The two careers finally merged in 2005, when Pickler opened his own wealth management firm, Pickler Wealth Advisors. Two years later, he opened The Pickler Law Firm, and in January, 2012, founded Pickler Accounting Advisors.

“Our motto is, we bring it all together,” Pickler says. “It’s a very holistic model of services for our clients, one of very few organizations in country.”

Pickler has been named to Barron’s Magazine’s list of the country’s top financial planners, and the trade magazine Registered Rep awarded Pickler its highest honor, the “Altruism Award,” in 2011 for his work with children, calling him “the children’s advocate.”

With his wife Beth, he became involved with the Shelby County district through the PTAs at his two children’s schools. He ran for the county’s first elected school board in 1998, and served as board chairman from 1999 to 2011.

“Our board has really strongly advocated for traditional values,” Pickler says. For instance, when he realized many classrooms did not have an American flag, he convinced FedEx Corp. and its founder Fred Smith to donate a flag for each of the district’s 50 schools and 1000 classrooms. The board also passed a policy to ensure each day begins with a moment of silence and the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 2001, Shelby County became the first large district to mandate every school have an active and empowered PTA.

“Districts like ours were significantly underfunded,” Pickler said. “We wanted to send a message to principals that parent engagement is an essential ingredient to student achievement.”

In 2011, the Shelby County board found itself in the midst of an unprecedented merger when the Memphis City board voted 5-4 to give up the city’s charter for a special school district. The move meant the suburban 47,000-student Shelby County district would be responsible for educating 103,000 new students, a population that was 85 percent African-American and with many living in poverty.

Logistically, the challenges have been enormous, and many more challenges remain, Pickler says. A merged school board now has 23 members to manage two systems. Both the Memphis and Shelby County superintendents have resigned in recent months and hundreds of teachers and staff have chosen to retire or leave. The merger will be completed at the start of the 2013-14 school year.

Most recently, the Tennessee legislature is expected to approve a measure that would allow all the incorporated towns in Shelby County to create their own school districts, and as many as six are expected to apply.

Throughout the difficult process, Pickler said he has tried to focus on student achievement and issues that will unite the many “wonderful, passionate people who really care about public education in our communities.” A lesson learned, he says, is that “monumental decisions should not be made by small majorities.”

Outside his school board work and professional career, Pickler loves sports. An avid racquetball player and huge St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan, he has been a Dallas Cowboys season ticket holder for over a quarter century. He also describes himself as a voracious reader, with a particular interest in American history.

He also chairs the board of directors for the Memphis Oral School for the Deaf, a school that teaches deaf children from birth to age 5 to “listen, learn and talk.”

“This miraculous place gives deaf and profound hearing loss children the gift of sound and speech, and empowers them to enter school as a non-special needs student and look forward to a life of limitless possibilities,” Pickler noted. His wife, Beth, is a longtime volunteer at the school.

 

Joetta Sack-Min|April 15th, 2013|Categories: Board governance, Conferences and Events, Crisis Management, Governance, Leadership, Legislative advocacy, NSBA Annual Conference 2013, School Boards|Tags: , |

Want to turn around your schools? First find, fix educator incivility

Leaders who want to improve struggling schools are missing the boat if they start focusing on issues such as instruction, technology and textbooks, according to a Kentucky superintendent who is researching the impact of “workplace incivility” on public education.

In his third stint leading a district, Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua E. Powell told a Sunday afternoon clinic that if he gets a shot at a fourth superintendency, “I think I’d try to turnaround culture before I’d try to work on instruction and other issues.”

Powell and his wife, Anna, are involved in ongoing research on the impact of how school staff work together – or don’t – and the effect those realities have on teaching and learning.

“We need to look at relationships between workplace behavior and other variables, like student attendance. We changed the leadership in one school at midyear and student attendance rose because the new leader is a culture person,” Powell said.

“Incivility has the most negatively profound impact on public schools,” he said. “We say, ‘Oh, gosh, we’ve got to make everybody feel good, and that will fix culture.’ That’s not culture. Culture is about high expectations. It’s about how everybody interacts and is directed to a common goal of mutual respect.”

In Montgomery County, Powell said district employees are expected to operate under two “nonnegotiables” – not being mean to children and not being mean to each other.

“I’ve been talking to teachers about what things bother them about their coworkers. In one school, 30 percent of our incivility is over things like not sharing educational resources,” he said.

Powell said Scandinavian countries have researched issues of coworker bullying and incivility for two decades. That isn’t the case in America. “We don’t want to explore this in public education because too many superintendents and school boards won’t have the courage to do something about it,” he said.

Another aspect to fixing incivility in schools, according to Powell, is just to get teachers aware of and report problems.

“Really awesome teachers don’t know what’s going on. They think everyone is civil, loves kids and have high expectations. We take 30-40 people in our district to do walkthroughs, and the thing that most disturbs our teachers are behaviors going on in classrooms that they weren’t aware of,” Powell said.

“Educators can be very mean to each other, but they very rarely report those behaviors to administrators. The logical question is, ‘If leadership is aware of these employee issues, why don’t they do anything about it? Why don’t we clean those things up?’”

But Powell fervently believes that “the most significant variable in changing a district is to change the culture of civility in the district. The cost of failing to do so is measured in turnover, absenteeism … and in learning.”

— Brad Hughes

Andrew Paulson|April 14th, 2013|Categories: Leadership, NSBA Annual Conference 2013, School Reform|

Massey reflects on “adaptive” year as NSBA President

Adaptive leadership was the theme of C. Ed Massey’s presidency this year, and in his final address as president of the National School Boards Association (NSBA), he reflected on the changes this leadership has brought about.

“We have adapted by selecting our new executive director and by creating the New NSBA,” he said at the Sunday session of NSBA’s annual conference.

Massey, who is a member of Kentucky’s Boone County school board, will become NSBA Past President Monday as NSBA President-elect David Pickler of Tennessee’s Shelby County school board takes the leadership role.

Massey reflected on his travels during his presidency; he made it to 26 states and two countries – Finland and Estonia. In those places, he said, he met many people “with a passion for public education and the interest of children.” And while Finland may top the U.S. education system in some ways, “they can’t match us in creativity,” he said.

He talked about his efforts to advocate for local control and mentioned the Local School Board Governance and Flexibility Act, a measure proposed by NSBA. The bill, H.R. 1386, is designed to protect local school district governance from unnecessary and counter-productive federal intrusion from the U.S. Department of Education.

He stressed the importance of advocating for school boards and public education at the state and federal level, suggesting that we tell our members of Congress, “we put you in office and if you don’t support public education, we’ll take you out.”

Now that his presidency is coming to an end, Massey said he will “continue to fight the fight for public education.” He is dedicated to continue to be “a lifelong learner to be an advocate for public education.”

Massey illustrated his adaptive leadership philosophy with a quote from John F. Kennedy: “Change is the law of life. Those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

He closed by telling the audience, “I hope I have made a difference in your life.”

Kathleen Vail|April 14th, 2013|Categories: Leadership, Legislative advocacy, NSBA Annual Conference 2013|Tags: , |

Making it work: The first 100 days of superintendent/board relationship

To start off on the right foot, school boards and a newly hired superintendent need to work both across the table and across the community, conference attendees learned in Saturday’s session at the National School Boards Association’s Annual Conference on The First 100 Days of the Superintendent/Board Relationship.

“A community will not invest in dysfunction,” said Shawn Joseph, superintendent of Delaware’s Seaford school district. “You have to be unified.”

It’s essential that board and the superintendent have a clear, mutual understanding of their respective roles and responsibilities, said co-presenter Sharon Cox, a search consultant who helped Seaford. State school boards associations typically have services to help boards and superintendents reach a common understanding, she noted.

In Seaford’s hiring process, the initial sentiment about thee superintendent finalists among five school board members was a 2-2-1 split, said board president Mike Smith. But that vote became 5-0 after the board sat down to consider the results of a public outreach process. That’s why it’s important to be deliberate about soliciting stakeholder input about the qualities desired in a superintendent, he said.

If your district lacks a strategic plan or it needs updating, that should be the first task assigned to a new superintendent, as was the case in Seaford, Cox said.

She said it’s critical to listen to people’s hopes and dreams for the district. Consider a parent survey that asks questions like:
• As you think about your school, please list the expectations you have for us.
• In your opinion, what should our school emphasize to improve students’ academic performance.
• What should our school emphasize to improve school culture?

The board and superintendent can use such information to craft a revised vision statement to guide the district. Following standard strategic planning protocols, the vision can help generate priorities and measurable goals.

— Eric Randall

Andrew Paulson|April 13th, 2013|Categories: Board governance, Leadership, NSBA Annual Conference 2013, School Boards|Tags: |

‘ATTACK’ing the leadership gap draws a packed crowd

School board members who want to be courageous leaders must know their greatest “friend” and “enemy.” And then attendees who packed a hall, filled extra chairs and sat on the floor of Mike Staver’s “Leadership Isn’t for Cowards” session were challenged to go on the attack.

“The enemy of courageous leadership is comfort,” said Staver, a Fernadindo Beach, Fla.-based author, speaker and coach. “People want to feel good about what they do (but) the quest to be comfortable depletes outstanding leadership. If you want to be a courageous leader, the first place to go is that presence of comfort in your leadership; that’s the greatest area you can improve.”

Conversely, Staver sees the greatest friend to creative leadership as energy.

“Burnout never comes from working too much. It comes from investing your energy in the wrong direction,” he said. “There is a direct connection between where you invest your energy and where you get a positive return.”

Mixing motivation with mirth – “Would the people you influence follow you into hell because of your leadership or just to be sure you got there?” – Staver offered two checklists for courageous leadership: one to avoid and one to adhere to.

Three impediments and cures to courageous leadership
• The need to be right – Cure: “You’re not curious enough. If you’re going to be successful, you have to go where you are uncomfortable and assume there is information outside your sphere that is useful.”
• The heed to be in control – Cure: “Let it go. I’m not suggesting you surrender and not care. Be open to change.”
• Need to be all things to all people – Cure: “Just say ‘No.’ People get into trouble because they say ‘Yes’ to the wrong things and ‘No’ to the right things. People follow people; they don’t follow a mission statement.”

Six steps to courageous leadership – ATTACK
A – “Accept your current circumstances as they actually are. Have the courage to face reality. Don’t judge it as good or bad, right or wright. The minute you do that, it dilutes your power as a leader.”
T – “Take responsibility and ownership for your behavior and the results. Create in your district an attitude of responsibility, not of blame. An organization fixated on blame seeks to punish. An organization focused on responsibility is focused on getting there.”
T – “Take action. Do something. Decide ‘I’m going to take action first so I can build positive momentum in my leadership.’”
A – “Acknowledge progress. Create a culture of celebration. Say, ‘We need to learn what’s working well’ and replicate that everywhere in your area of influence.”
C – “Commit to lifelong learning. If you’re effective, you are learning. If you aren’t learning, you aren’t effective.”
K – “Kindle new relationships. Kindle means to give new life to. Give new life to new passions.”

— Brad Hughes

Andrew Paulson|April 13th, 2013|Categories: Leadership, NSBA Annual Conference 2013|

District inequities and school safety post-Newtown in the April issue of ASBJ

Uneven funding among affluent and poor school districts is well-documented, but you may not realize that it often occurs among schools in the same district, as well. Senior Editor Del Stover looks at how school leaders are uncovering these funding inequities and how they are fighting the often-difficult political battle to remedy the situation in his April American School Board Journal article, online now.

Also in April, national school safety expert Ronald Stephens weighs in on sensible and commonsense ways that school boards can and should react in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings last December.

Our school board success story series, Agents of Change, continues with a Massachusetts school board and superintendent who made a controversial decision to bring its special education program in-house.

Make sure to post your opinion to this month’s Adviser poll, also online at ASBJ’s website.

 

Kathleen Vail|April 2nd, 2013|Categories: American School Board Journal, Board governance, Budgeting, Diversity, Leadership, School Security, Special Education|Tags: |

Interview with NSBA Conference speaker Diane Ravitch: ‘Schools belong to the people and not to corporations’

From 1991 to 1993, Diane Ravitch served as Assistant Secretary of Education in President George H.W. Bush’s administration. Today, the author and education historian says the institution she served at the federal level is under an unprecedented threat from powerful interests intent on privatizing public schools.

In 2010, Ravitch published The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education. A keynote speaker at the 2013 NSBA Annual Conference in San Diego, she recently talked with ASBJ Senior Editor Lawrence Hardy.

Why is this a dangerous time for the public schools?

I see the trends intensifying, and there is now a full-blown privatization movement. At the time I wrote my last book, I thought there was some kind of an accidental convergence between, on the one hand, the testing movement associated with No Child Left Behind, and a growing, nascent privatization movement. I now have concluded that these are not an accidental convergence, and that one feeds into the other: The testing is being used as part of a larger narrative about the alleged failure of American education.

Charter schools — especially for-profit ones — are a challenge to public schools, but they still serve only a small fraction of students. Why are they such a big threat?

We’re going to cross a threshold. The charter movement began with the idea that educators were so incompetent that if you could just turn over the schools to private managers, whether they were educators or not, they would do a better job, and that they would perform miracles. It began with this rhetoric of saving minority kids from failing schools — that’s sort of standard lingo. And so there are many cities now where charters are not an inconsequential part of the education spectrum.

Proponents of vouchers and privately run charter schools say they want to give parents more choice. Isn’t that a positive message?

They use all the progressive language to do things that, distinctly, are not progressive. When you close down public education, that’s not progressive. If the American public understood what was really happening, there would be this huge outcry, but it’s always bathed in the rhetoric of, “We want to help minority kids, save them from failing schools.”

And public education’s response?

We don’t have all that wonderful messaging. Instead, we’re constantly playing a game of saying, “Stop saying these things. You’re wrong.” It makes you sound very defensive. And they say, if you don’t agree with them — this is one of their favorite lines — you’re a defender of the status quo.

So if you believe in public education, if you believe in democratic control of local schools, if you believe in local school boards and state school boards, if you believe the people who are members of the community should have some say in what happens to the schools their children attend, you’re a defender of the status quo. If you believe that teachers should have a professional preparation and that they should be committed to the classroom, you’re a defender of the status quo. If you believe teachers should have some academic freedom and some protection for their freedom of speech and their right to teach, then you’re a defender of the status quo.

How should supporters of public education respond?

First of all to call it what it is, to recognize that what’s going on is a conscious effort to privatize American public education — and the public doesn’t want that. I think it helps to show that, even by the “reformers’” own measures, privatization does not produce better education. It leads to terrible consequences.

You say charters are already weeding out disabled children, who cost more to educate and tend to bring test scores down. What are some other consequences?

We now have many studies showing that charter schools are more segregated than public schools, even in districts that already have a high degree of segregation. This is something that under Brown v. Board of Education shouldn’t be permitted. And yet it’s going on. The UCLA Civil Rights Project has done studies showing that charters are more segregated, both for black and Hispanic kids. We’re rolling back some of the most important gains in our history.

What’s the role of school board members in confronting all this?

We have to reclaim the democratic aspect of public education: Schools belong to the people and not to corporations.

Lawrence Hardy|March 14th, 2013|Categories: American School Board Journal, Board governance, Charter Schools, Leadership, No Child Left Behind, NSBA Annual Conference 2013, Privatization, School Boards, School Reform, School Vouchers|Tags: |
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