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Kaplan, GeorgeWho Runs Our Schools? The Changing race ofEducational Leadership.Institute for !:lucational Leadership, Washington,D.C.

ISBN-0-937846-86-689

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MFO1 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS.Administrator Education; *Administrators;*Educational Change; *Educational Quality; ElementarySecondary Education; *Instructional Leadership;Management Development; Minority Groups; SchoolAdministracion

A changing mix of forces and actors occupy theeducational leadership stage. The fragmentation and curicalsdistribution of decision-making power frustrate the workings of theeducation system. Twelve articles discuss the nature of theleadership problem: (1) "Education's Unknown Leaders", (2) "Tribunesfor the Schools"; (3) "Few Perks, Little Respect"; (4) "The WorkingEnvironment"; (5) "Gurus and Gatekeepers"; (6) "Leadership byCommission"; (7) "The Training Jumble"; (8) "The TeachingImperative"; (9) "The Inadequate Incubators of Leadership"; (10)"Changing the Mix"; (11) "Three Ticking Time Bombs"; and (12) "ADozen Propositions." Interspersed throughout the corection are sevenprofiles of a cross-section of the nation's top educators: BillClinton, Ronald A. Wolk, Richard R. Green, Marc S. Tucker, MaryHatwood Futrell, Terrel H. Bell, and Joe Clark. (66 references)(SI)

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EDU TIONAL

LEADERSHIP

GEORGEKAPLAN

[Iczi2 =m]

.11111NAIL.

L A

WHO RUNS OUR SCHOOLS?The Changing Face of Educational Leadership

George R. Kaplan

BEST COPY AVAILABLE

3

The Institute for Educational Leadership wishes to acknowledge thefinancial support of the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation of NewYork which made this publication possible.

© 1989 by the Institute for Educational Leadership. All rightsreserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN 0-937846-68-6

Copies of Who Runs Our Schools? may be ordered from

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4

To William L. Smithand

Samuel HalperinLeaders who make good things happen

iJiii

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

xi Foreword

1 Education's Unknown Leaders

Q Tribunes for the Schools

19 il Few Perks, Little Respect

25 4 The Working Environment

33 El Gurus an.I Gatekeepers

37 6 Leadership by Commission

47 i The Training Jumble

51 8 The Teaching Imperative

67 9 The Inadequate Incubators ofLeadership

71 10 Changing the Mix

73 Up Three Ticking Time Bombs

83 ija A Dozen Propositions

91 References

v

PROFILES

4 Bill Clinton: Education Governorin High Gear

14 Ronald A. Wolk: Telling It Like ItIs

26 Richard R. Green: FromMinneapple to Big Apple

40 Marc S. Tucker: "Perestroika" inthe Schools

52 Mary Hatwood Futrell: Movingthe Pushmi-Pullyu Machine

62 Terrel H. Bell: The Educationistas Top Fed

74 Joe Clark: Rambo at theRamparts

ri

vii

FOREWORD

As the nationwide push to improve our schools nears itssc.:ond decade, hie agenda of still-unanswered questionsshows few signs of diminishing. High on that list is the largelyunexamined issue of how and by whom education's policiesare to be shaped and carried out. What kinds of people decidewhat and how our children are to be taught? Where do theycome from? Even more to the point, are they up to their jobs?And if they aren't, what can be done about it?

To explore these matters is to face up to the paradoxes andinconsistencies that brand our political system. In education,in particular, the fragmentation and curious distribution ofdecision-making power often frustrate a simple explanation ofhow the system works. Moreover, the mix is changing asdifferent forces and actors occupy center stage. There are farmore well-placed experts dispensing their wise but oftencontradictory counsel. Reform commissions have exertedenormous influence in the 1980s at a time when our governorsand state legislators have vigorously reasserted their authorityover the schools. Far from least, the nation's business leadersare rapidly becoming a key ingredient in the recipe forcontemporary educational leadership.

But, some things are largely unchanged. The vast majority ofeducation's chiefs are appointed, not elected, and the value oftheir preparation is open to debate. As a nation, we tend tojudge our schools and the quality of their leaders by thecriteria of an earlier, less complicated time when we andtoday's policy-makers were students in the classroom. Sad torelate, too, women and members of minority groups remainwoefully underrepresented in education's executive suites andcorridors of power.

In keeping with the Institute for Educational Leadership's25-year commitment to promoting excellence in schoolleadership, we are pleased to publish Who Runs Oar Schools?The Changing Face of Educational Leadership, a provocativeand unconventional contribution to a long-overdue look atthese topics. Some of the main theses of this glimpse of thepeople who run and influence public education may workagainst the grain of accepted wisdom, while others may neversee the light of day beyond the pages of this insightful littlebook. But we feel safe in saying that Who Runs Our Schools?offers illuminating, sometimes even unwelcome, perspectivesfor everyoneparticularly politicians, corporate executives,

0 ix

and the caring publicto chew on. For those already ineducation, it may provide a useful and broadened redefinitionof what being an authority figure in education is coming tomean.

Interspersed throughout Who Runs Our Schuols? are livelyprofiles of a cross-section of the nation's top educators. Theseare intended as illustrative and not as a Who's Who of the hestand the brightest. Such a definitive listing could surely haveincluded at least five members of the Board of Directors of theInstitute for Educational LeadershipGregory R. Anrig,Harold Howe II, James A. Kelly, Floretta D. McKenzie, andAlbert Shankeras well as several dozen other distinguishededucators. The purpose of this publication is not to describethose already in the winner's circle; its central thesis is that weneed to take a larger, perhaps quite different, look at theurgent matter of attracting, preparing, and retaining the bestpossible people to govern the nation's schools. Our childrendeserve no less.

William S. WoodsideFormer Chairman andChief Executive OfficerPrimerica Corporation

andChairman, IEL Board of Directors

x

Michael D. UsdanPreside. 'Institute for

Educational Leadership

1,1 EDUCATION'S UNKNOWNLEADERS

When it comes to public education, we are a nation ofzealous moderates. We say we will do almost anything

to have top-flight schools, but we back only cosmeticadjustments in a system that everyone says is al working wellenough. We rarely agree on why and how the generation-longdecline in the quality of our schools placed "a nation at risk."Many of us fix the blame on misplaced national priorities orthe changing global economy or history-making shifts infamily living patterns. Others are convinced that a near-diabolical convergence of lousy teachers, rotten kids, and thelegacy of the valueless 1960s almost did the schools in.Curiously and inexplicably for a society that routinelyidentifies culprits by name and rank, almost no one points anaccusing finger at the people who run the schools.

The shapers of educational policies and decisions havestayed out of the spotlight for a variety of reasons:

They present a fuzzy image because there are so many ofthem, and we aren't entirely certain who's in charge.Counting the politicians, school board members, andbureaucrats (including school prim ipals), the total tops200,000. But the buck doesn't stop at one desk; it keepsmovingin a variety of directions.The copies reports on educational reform, including ANation at Risk' which granted them only superficialrecognition, failed to single policy-makers out as a forcein the schools. Except for a few mild worries aboutschool principals and administrators, we have heardalmost nothingpositive, negative, or simply analyticalabout how the key decision-makers are doing their job.Most of the most visible spokespersons for and about theschoolsoutstanding people like Mary Hatwood Futrell,Theodore Sizer, &nest Boyer, Albert Fhanker, and JohnGoodlad, among several dozen othersare not on thefiring line making command decisions. They areinordinately useful commentators and interest grouprepresentatives, but they bear no measurableresponsibility for how the schools are doing.The brunt of national concern about school people in the

10

Curiously andinexplicably . . .

almost no onepoints anaccusing finger atthe people whorun the schools.

1

WHO RUNS OUR SCHOOLS

. . . themanagement andconduct ofeducation inAmerica areneither linear norhierarchical.

2

1980s has landed on teachers. This has deflected seriousattention from the officials who hire and supervise them,pay and promote them, and tell them what and how toteach.To analyze the real leaders is to analyze ourselves, for weelected the governors, the legislators, and most of theschool board memoers who control the enterprise.Besides, many of the loudest critics of the schools areeducatorswitness the composition of the reformcommissionsand educators are notoriously reluctant totangle with politicians, let alone bite the feeding hand.

When Secretary of Defense Caspar M. Weinberger left thePentagon in late 1987 he could reflect on a nearly seven-yearstewardship as the U.S. military's civilian boss. In title andfact, he had been chairman of the board, chief executiveofficer, and cheerleader-in-chief of what his backers lauded asa superb fighting machine and his detractor:, ridiculed as abloated and obscenely expensive bureaucratic 'obtmare.However they judged him, Mr. Weinberger had 3me apowerful, if intractable, personality on the policy stage, and alegitimate celebrity to boot. From above and below, from thePresident and the armed services, he received nearlyuncritical support throughout his duty tour. The protests of hiscritics were ignored as the Weinberger agenda garnered thelargest military budget in history. Queen Elizabeth knightedhim after he left office.

Can any leader of consequence look back on an evenremotely similar presence on the educational scene? In ourthird century as a free nation, with mandatory schooling forall, do we even have an educational leader of consequence?

The comparisons and questions are not entirely fair, butneither are they unreasonable. Although only half as costly asnational defense, education nevertheless is, along with healthservices, one of the nation's two top employers. Its reach islimitless and all-embracing. Its main component, publiceducation, may be the most powerful of our institutions.Principal George McKenna, recently of George WashingtonPreparatory School in Los Angeles, observes, "... it is the onlyinstitution that requires by law that citizens participate in itsprograms, at a time when those citizens are in their mostvulnerable conditionchildhood ... "2

Unlike Secretary Weinberger's former domain, themanagement and conduct of education in America are neitherlinear nor hierarchical. Cause does not automatically yieldplanned effect as it usually does in the peacetime militaryservices. Lines of authority and responsibility are confusing,

EDUCATION'S UNKNOWN LEADERS

out of focus, or both. Lately, it has become fashionable todismiss education's jumble of administrative layers, specialties,and responsibilitiesand the people who represent themasa hopeless, unmanageable blob. How can it be otherwise,commentators ask, when real authority is so haphazardlyscattered and so little consensus exists on education's verypurposes and goals?

Like politics, sports, and television, education sparks instantpopular expertise and critical analysis. We know the score. Weknow precisely what we want and expect for our children. Orwe think we do, whether or not we honestly understand howeducation and the world have changed since our school days.Even while professing support for the schools, we accord butglancing recognition to their leaders, especially the higher-upsin the boardrooms and legislative chambers. Subconsciously,we may believe that the feats of American education haveoccurred in spite of them. Small wonder that they are trappedin the hell of a cleft stickoften unsure of theirconstituencies, and universally under-appreciated. And theadministrative juggernaut that policy-makers must deal with inthe schools keeps expanding. In the 1980s, to take one ofmany cases, there was some kind of administrator, supervisor,or coordinator for every five classroom teachers.' It is hard toexplain away such numbers. The only semi-plausiblejustifications turn inward. More bureaucracy becomes theproper response to education's calls for help.

The bibliography on leadership is growing fast. Fewsubjects have become more voguish in the 1980s, notably inthe corporate world. Scholarship in the field is experiencingan unanticipated mini-boom. More than 600 post-secondaryinstitutions uffer course work in leadership while defying theskeptics, some of them prodigiously informed on the subject,who proclaim it an unlearnable, personal gift possessed by afavored few. Even some respected practitioners grosslyoversimplify this vital dimension of public policy. PresidentJohn Brademas of New York University, a respected U.S.Representative in Congress for 22 years, contends that"Leadership can be summed up in two wordsintelligenceand integrity, or to use two synonyms, competence andcharacter." Another distinguished expert who has examinedleadership as thoroughly as anyone in the nation for over 30years reports that he and his colleagues now define it simplyas "the exercise of influence."' Others depict it as a precisescience or noble art that lends itself admirably to classroominstruction and laboratory experimentation.

Whether art, science, or rare personal attribute (it is

1 ...).411. /V

Even whenprofessingsupport for theschools, weaccord butglancingrecognition totheir leaders,especially thehigher-ups in theboardrooms andlegislativechambers.

3

WHO RUNS ih k SCI111001,S,=a-Bill Clinton: Education Governor in High Gear

The political hills are aIR e with the sounds of education govel :torsEthical ion has come to center stage in the state capitals, and the

leading actors there, the nation's go% ernors, are more profoundly concernedabout it than at any ;line in our history The lineup of recent and sittingeducation gin e! nors is formidable Alexander of Tennessee, hunt of NorthCarolina, Kiley of So ith Carolina, Branstad of Iowa, Winter of Mississippi,Orr of Indiana, Rob.;) of Virginia, Kean of New Jersey 'nd standing tallamong these and others, young Bill Clinton of Arkon ....".

'Arkansa.s,- a faculty membe/ at its state university has written, "is amousetrap for go% crnors Thy chief executive never has enough power orresources to truly go% ern That the state raaks near the national statisticalbottom in education, income, quality of,iolm, and reservoi,s of capital doeslittle to enhance an AI kansas governors profile. Even on its best days, thestate scum.; to exude a relaxed acceptance of its hillbilly backwardness. ForBill Clinton's legislatne program, "Making Arkansas Work: Good Beginngs,Gotal Sclititils, Good Jobs," to succeed will demand "not only leadership butalso boldness, shrewdness, imagination, and old-fashioned horsetrading."

No area of his gubernatorial mandate has occupied more of Bill Clinton'spnaligns intellectm1 energies than education. It is debatable whether anyother sitting governor in the m ion, with the possible exception of Thc_nasKean of New Jersey, is in his league as, a knowledgeable apostle of theschools. By both persona: inclination and the imperatives of Arkansa ,

politaT. he is the embodiment of the new breed of education goveritors.Simuli.:neously Chairnmn of the education oriented Na:hmal Governors'Associat if a ( N( ;A) and the Education Commissik al of the States (ECS) in11186-87, (ninon calls in hieving and maintaining higher school standards"the main mission i ita.. in public life Tlas is not demagogic sloganeering;a four-term governor at 41, Nil Chntor pet souffles commitment to theschools

Een for a Rhodes scholar and graduate of Yale limversity's School ofLaw the charge to Improve the schools of A_ikansas has often appearedmtractabli Prop ess until 1(18.; was sub incremental, and when Clintonappointed in Education Standards Committee that year public enthusiasmwas easily ( 'twinned But ('baton and the Committee's surprise appointee aschairperson, his gifted lawyer wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, sparked long-latent concern by pointing out in convincing 1a.shym that improving

-1

EDI 'CATION'S UNKNON N LEAIWRS

education was imperative if the state was to keep pace with the rest of thenation. Spurred to action by this central fact of Arkansas life and by a statesupreme court decision requiring a new formula for distributing money toschool districts, the legislatur, held a special, education-only session thatautumn. Out of it came a narrow victory for Bill and Hillary Clinton.increased teacher pay, more equitable distribution of state education funds,smaller class sizes, longer school days and school year, stiffer curricularrequirements, periodic tests of ,tudent mastery of basic skills, and, in by farthe most controversial action, a require ent that all teachers, beginners andveterans alike, submit to competency tests. Thi: ,srovision put Arkansas onthe national education map but infuriated teachers and their unions. Clintonnever displayed a speck of doubt that teacher testing was a sound idea.

The economy of Arkansas has been shaky and the path to educationalreform bumpy. The Clintons have had to take to the road regularly -,411 thereminder that "even Missi-Isipp: 's ahead of us now" Never strong, thestate's tax system requires top-to-bottom restructuring, but this may nothappen in the near future. Meanwhile, the state's teachers ranked a dismal49th in the nation in annual salary, some $6,000 less than the nationalaverage, and many school districts were in pathetic financial shape. Againstthis backdrop, the progress rate of the education governor of Arkansasseems to be two steps forward, three back, and another one or one and one-half forwardafter a decent interval.

Bill Clinton is not a one-dimensional politician, nor does he pose as arevolutionary reformer. Intellectually and operationally comfortable with allof the issues of state government, he simply recognizesand givessubstance tothe bedrock position of the schools in furthering economicand personal well-being. Alone among high-level political figures, h-, haszeroed in on the urgent matter of school leadership, first as chair of theTask Force on School Leadership and Management for the NGA and later, inhis role as Chairman of ECS, as author of Speaking of Leadership, a strongplea for improved direction of the schools. Although this report blazes nonew trails in educational leadership, the close familiarity of the younggovernor with such national developments as Theodore Sizer's Coalition ofEssential Schools, the state of Washington's Schools for the 21st Century,and the tryout of "Carnegie schools" in Massachusetts. for example, isalmost unprecedented among political leaders. Already mentioned as apotential candidate for national office, Clinton was rated in a 1986Newsweek poll of his fellow governors as one of the five most effectivegovernors in the nation. He is a priceless as,,,,t to public education

45


"MI

The leadershipof Americaneducation is amass ofcontradictionsandincompatibilities.

6

doubtless all three), leadership as an issue is all over theplace, no less so in education, where it seems to meanbuilding principals and district superintendents, than ingovernment, busi:.,ss, communications, or science, where itembraces straw bosses as well as chief executive officers. Itmay supplant excellence, literacy, and reformor any of tenothersas the educational catchword of a decade in which nosignificant endeavor escaped a bruising, often embarrassinglypersonal, examination of its leadership. At one extreme, thenature of Presidential leadership was under constant scrutinyas the nation endured the Iran-Contra affair and wonderedaloud about the evident lack of direction in our economicpolicy. At the other end, sponsors of routine professional ortechnical meetings in any field could bill them as future-oriented leadership seminars and automatically increaseattendance. Curricular supervisors and resource specialists ineducation's trenches no longer were the teacher's expertoutside helpers; they had become "instructional leaders" intheir own right, even when leadership, by the most liberaldefinition, simply is not tneir function. But the legislator orstate board member who may have designed and drafted astate's educational blueprint and budget, arid shepherded themthrough the political maze, is only fleetingly regarded as aneducational leader. Definitional consistency, to paraphrase Mr.Emerson, may be the hobgoblin of the inelastic mind.

The leadership of American education is a mass ofcontradictions and incompatibilities. Sometimes it is thepersonification of participatory democracy in action. Then itmay revert quickly to arbitrary authoritarianism. Like a smartteenager, it can display prodigious insight and ignorancealmost simultaneously. It can be flexible, rigid, compassionate,and unthinkingly mean-spiritedall in the same transaction. Itis, in other words, an unkempt bureaucracy in which the sumis less than the parts, which number some 97,000 policy-making local school board members, 7,461 omnipotent statelegislators, 15,000-odd district superintendents, 50 chief stateschool officers, 670 members of standards-setting stateeducation hoards, 95,000-odd on-the-scene building principals,and, hovering low over this shape!css heap, 50 ar..bitious stategovernors who care about the schools in 1989 as they did notin 1969. In its heart of hearth, each of these groups would liketo believe that it, and not the others, is the truly indispensablelink in the leadership chain.

If the literature of the school 'reform wave of 0- 1980s is tobe believed, all 1-re wrong. Along with the teachers unions, themedia, and the U.S. Government, they are depicted as lesser or

15


non-existent actors in the guest for better public schools forthe 40 million-plus children who attend and the 2.8 millionadults who teach them. Report after report or. schoolimprovement ignores or overlooks the peopl; whose directionand guidance will inevitably be decisive for-P, in determiningwhether the schools will improve or not. governors,in their blunt Time for Results,'' have actu. v defined theirleadership role and offered some cogent ided.s about managingour schools. They make by far the best case for who is reallyin charge: themselves.

But the issue of who is up or down stirs little Interest in thelate 1980s. Though state and local school boards may have feltneglected in the early days of the decade's school reformmovement, and state legislatures are often regarded as havingcompleted their contributions to it before 1986, all of theauthority groups are snaking more policy than ever. Accordingto Alan Rosenthal and Susan Fuhrman of the EagletonInstitute of Politics at Rutgers University, who monitor powershifts in education, there is more than enough leadership-typework to go around. Everyone is on the school reformbandwagon.' This point is essential. Rivalries among authoritygroups may have had bitter overtones in the early days of the1980s' reform thrust, but they played a far less significant roleas the movement matured.

That tile governors nevertheless have the most clout andare always ready to flaunt It should come as no surprise.Across the board, they are among the most potent figures inAmerican life. They have been business leaders, war heroes,career politicians, Rhodes Scholars, Members of Congress,and high fecletol officialswith an occasional professor orautomobile clf aler to season the mix. Some of them becomePresidents. They live daily with mega-problems of vastcomplexity an,/ impact The least known and leas', effectiveamong them are magnetic enough to attract the votes ofhundreds of thousands, even millions, of their fellow citizens.Whatever their other preferences as to issues, all are finger -tipsensitive to the crucial place education occupies, as a social-economic force and a top-priority budget item, in the lives oftheir states. The governor foolish enough to downplayeducation in the late 1980s courts political and careeroblivion, for every governor in the nation fervently proclaimseducation's primary role in enhancing the long-rangeprosperity of the state. It is this widely-held conviction, morethan any legal or statutory responsibility, that defines the trueplac e of governors in education. The historic reversion ofpolitical power to the states which began a generation ago and

i6

The governorfoolish enough todownplayeducation courtspolitical . . .

oblivion . . .

7

WHO RUNS Otrit SCHOOLS

onniThe prototypicaleducationalleader does notexist in thehundred-flowers-blooming cultureof America'sschools.

8

acclerated in the 1980s has powerfully reinforced it.At other points along the decision-making spectrum,

legislators, board members, activists and publicists, andeducational executives with designs on power present lessdistinct images. The only publicly elected officials in Americawho devote full time to education are a handful of chief stateschool officers and school district superintendents (more than95 percent of the 15,000-odd are appointed)fewer than onepercent of the 100,000-plus legislators and school boardmembers who regularly face the voters. Leaving out schoolprincipals, the part-timers far outnumber the professionals,whether elected or appointed. Some even do double duty:educators 3S legislators or union officials, bureaucrats andstudents as board members and vice versa, and other unlikelycombinations and cross-overs. Education tops some personalpriority lists but ranks low on others. For some policy-makers,a visible post in education is a short step on a career path topolitics or other sectors of public service. The route from PTAactivist to school board member to county council member orstate legislator is well-traveled.

The prototypical educational leader does not exist inthe hundred-flowers-blooming culture of America's schools.The span from young female principal to good old boylegislator discourages stereotyping. Precise asJessments, oreven descriptions, of the members of the six or seven key tolegroups that make policy on education are no longer possible.What they were 25 years ago is not what they are today. Onlytwo facts about them have validity: They have improved, andthey are busier than ever.

Taken at face value, a crcs.s-sectional look at the individualpower groups in public education yields a picture of peoplewho do not vary pronouncedly from their approximate peerselsewhere in the society in age, gender, educationalattainment, attitudes, and earnings. School executives fromprincipal to superintendent, to take the most or, moreaccurately, the only closely examined groups, are mostlymarried white Protestant males in the 45-55 year age bracketwith two col:ege degrees and change, moderate politicalviews, and extroverted personalities, who earn slightly lessthan $1,000 for each year of age. This simplified composite,which appeared in the Executive Educator in September1988," could also have been drawn from the far moreambitious federally-funded Profile of School Administratorsin the United States by the private National Center forEducation Information (NCEI), which in January 1988 had


called public school superintendents and principals "an oldboys' club."

Both of these sources are doubtless factually valid. But hardstatistical data and the yields from government-approvedquestionnaires fail, as these do, to spotlight the vital humandifferences between leaders in Alliance, Nebraska, and thosein the Robert Taylor Homes housing project in Chicago,Illinois. They do not convey the crucial messages aboutthemselves that chool leaders must transmit. It is difficultand unwise to embrace judgments about thinkingprofession that are backed mainly by the cold tabulationsof the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. To do so is to acceptbaseball records that show Zeke Bonura of the Chicago WhiteSox and Washington Senators of the pre-World War II era tohave been the best fielder of the American League 6 firstbasemen of his time. Unfortunately, the estimable Bonura hadnether grace nor mobility; he simply caught or fielded everyball that came s...-aight to hint and passed up the more difficulterror-inducing plays that more agile fielders would try tomake. Thus his statistics, thus theirs. Or, as a politicalcommentator observed of President Ronald Reagan and hiscritics, "He has his facts; the scholars and experts havetheirs."

It is . . . unwiseto embracejudgments aboutthinkingprofessionalsthat are backed. . , by the coldtabulations ofthe . . . Bureau ofLabor Statistics.

EI TRIBUNES FOR THESCHOOLS

No single person, whether President or U.S. Secretary o;Education or classroom teacher, can speak for American

education. We have no national policy, no binding nationalstandards, and, with the possible exception of commercialnetwork television, no national curriculum. No "educationSenator" or U.S. Representative stands out from the rest inpromoting education's case in the U.S. Congress. The averagecoli'...i,e graduate who can readily identify 300 athletes andentertainers by name probably could not name fiveeducational leaders, after a decade of sustained publicity onthe schools and Presidential primary and election campaignsbursting with future "education Presidents."

Yet education has occupied front-burner status in publicpolicy since 1983. Statements reiterating its non-negotiableprimacy in national life echo throughout public life inAmerica. The dozen or so Presidential aspirants who debatedacross the land in 1987 and early 1988 unfailingly voiced theirdevotion to education though few had given it sustainedlegislative or policy-making attention. But their almostpredictable mair message was that the main purpose ofeducation must be to help the country to recoup itspresumably lost international economic superiority, and onlysecondarily to develop an educated, self-respecting citizenry.

To the despair of right-thinking supporters of the schools,education as a topic of public concern on the national stageoften materializes as a shapeless and boring time-killer.Leadership in this setting has little clarity or definition. TheDemocratic Presidential aspirants who debated educationalissues in September 1987 in North Carolina were ill at easewith the subject matter and distinctly unsure of their facts. Ahistoric first, the debate did little to reassure either theprofession or the voters that the next generation of politicalleaders was better informed than its predecessors. In an oft-reported observation, the Reverend Jesse Jackson told theaudience, "Whoever can keep your attention tonight duringthis debate on education deserves to be your next President."'As the campaign wore along, and the candidates kept issuingwell-worn banalities about the schoolsand how they had let

W e have nonational policy,no bindingnationalstandards, and. . . nonationalcurriculum.

11


iIImsI. .. the wisdomof those who canspeak withauthority about,if not for,education, goeslargely unnoticeda

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business downquips of this type were too close to the bonefor comfort.

Keeping popular attention fastened on the schools can be adaunting task. Adults whose children have finished theirformal schooling rapidly lose interest in the subject. Statisticsand research on ediumtion are of such uneven quality, andoften have so little connection to gut issues, that responsibletribunes for education do not fully trust them. The size,variety, and contradictions of the enterprise simply overwhelmanalysts and commentators, while its lack of newsworthydrama underwhe. ;.ts them. Some of the wisest publicists ofeducation are those who stick to their specialties, refusing tobelieve that preeminence in one quarter automatically confersomniscience in all. The practical matter of affiliation with arole or interest group, or an institution, inhibits some whomay be inclined to break out. Only a foolhardy superintendent,for example, would pontificate publicly and repeatedly on thediminishing role of the school board in curricular matters. Andthe ambitious education school dean at a state university whoinsisted on challenging the merits of the legislativeappropriations process might find sticky going in futurebudgetary battles.

If few can speak FOR education, who can speak wiselyABOUT it in its larger dimensionsabout its economics,governance, staff, content, culture, and future? Such peopiexist, but they comprise a surprisingly short list. The names ofsome, largely unknown outside of education, are: Denis Doyle,Hudson Institute; Edward Meade, Ford Foundation; MaHilliard, Georgia State University; Terry Hartle, U.S. Senatestaff; John Gook-Had, University of Washington; Arthur Wiseand Linda Darling-Hammond, Rand Corporation; MilbreyMcLaughlin, David Tyack, Marshall Smith, Henry Levin, LeeShulman, Larry Cuban, and Michael Kirst, Stanford University;Willis Hawley and Chester Finn, Vanderbilt University; MarkTucker, National Center on Education and the Economy;Albert Shanker, American Federation of Teachers (AFT);Lawrence Cremin, Dale Mann, and P. Michael Timpane,Columbia University; Michael Cohen, National Governors'Association; Ernest Boyer, Carnegie Foundation for theAdvancement of Teaching; Harold Hodgkinson, Institute forEducational Leadership; Robert Spillane, Fairfax County (VA.)Public Schools; Lauren Resnick, University of Pittsburgh;David Hornbeck, formerly of the Maryland Department ofEducation; Gregory Anrig, Educational Testing Service; HaroldHowe, Harvard University; James Kelly, National Board forProfessional Teaching Standards; David Cohen, Richard

2u

TRIBUNES FOR THE SCHOOLS

Elmore, Judith Lanier, and Gary Sykes, Michigan StateUniversity; Gordon Ambach, Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers; Theodore Sizer, Brown University; John Jennings,U.S. House of Representatives staff; Herbert Walberg,University of Chicago; Thomas Payzant, San Diego (CA.)Public Schools; Bill Honig, California Department ofEducation; Susan Fuhrman, Rutgers University; Linda McNeil,Rice University; Terrel Bell, University of Utah, and perhaps35-40 additional thoughtful observers and leaders, for a totalof approximately 75. This is a tiny number for such a massivechunk of our collective experience as Americans.

Most of this small cadre of large-picture experts are case-hardened veterans who have been at or near ed.ication's nervecenters since long before the school reform movement of the1980s began. Their commentary is informed and responsible,only occasionally negative or headline-creating. All work froman institutional or well-endowed organizational home base butcan speak independently without looking over their shouldersat an irate pursuing constituency. They are wondrouslyarticulate and self-confidentnot a shrinking violet orwallflower in the bunch. Many have had duty tours inWashington, service which has provided them with anappreciation of the strengths and limitations of the federalpresence in education, and, perhaps even more valuable in thelong run, an often-elusive national perspective, not just oneducation but on its relevance to and connections with thehuman services and other quarters of national concern. Mostare accomplished fund-raisers who know their way around theworld of philanthropy and grants. By and large, their studentday 3 came well before the 1960s. They are reformers, notrevolutionaries; their forte is policy analysis, not barricade-storming. And, although some manage large organizations,they are educational leaders because of their brainpower, notthe managerial competence that many of them also possess.

Regrettably, the wisdom of those who can speak withauthority about, if not for, education goes largely unnoticedbecause of the character of media treatment of education andour response to it. We have become a media-addicted societywith a ravenous appetite for information, entertainment, smalltalk, and inspiration. Our addiction has been an often-underestimated verity of American life since the arrival oftelevision in our homes 40 years, or two generations, ago. A1980s child can truthfully say that his or her grandparentswere also television babies whose out-of-school knowledgecame in large measure in the short bites, "headline news," andstylized, commercially driven output of network television.

o

Education hasbeen largelyunable tocapitalize on ourobsession withthe media.

13


Ronald A. Wolk: Telling It Like It Is

The trade press in education numbers in the thousands (yes, thousands)of journals, magazines, and newsletters. Some are free, while others run

up to $500 for an annual subscription. All but a small fraction mirror theconcerns and attitudes of their sponsors: professional associations,institutions, and a limitless assortment of groups with points to prove andpromote. Many are obscure, and deservedly 30; they find their market in thecommunity of dues-paying scholars who use them to swap scholarlyesoterica with their peers. In a week of non-stop reading, the most giftedgraduate of a course in reading dynamics would scarcely dent a month'saccumulation. Staying abreast of education's story, demands exceptionalselectivityor a subscription to Education Week, `American education'snewspaper of record."

The good news about Education Week is that it saw its first drop of fiscalblack ink in mid-1987. The bad news is that EW didn't come along a decadeearlier. Since it burst from the journalistic starting gate in September 1981with but 12,000 subscriptions in hand, Education Week has been exactlywhat its founder and only editor Ronald A. Wolk planned that it would be:an attractive, comprehensive, and unbiased weekly account of Americaneducation that treats its readers as the professional people they are. As itspaid circulation climbed to the 60,000 range in 1988, educational leaderswere calling it "required reading," "a sterling publication," and "a newssource of extraordinary value." TIME said it merited an A.

Education Week is the product of exhaustive pre-publication analysis, aneight-month feasibility study, and the salutary experience of its role model,The Chronicle of Higher Education, the other major class act in educationaljournalism. But without the persistence and vision of Wolk, a journalist-turned-university administrator who left a vice-presidency at BrownUniversity to start it. Education Week would not have happened. The idea ofa weekly Chronicle-style tabloid for elementary and secondary schooleducation had captured his imagination even before the first tremors ofschool reform in the late 1970s. By late 1980, with $500,000 available fromfoundations and the sale of the Chron id(' by Editorial Projects inEducation, EW's nonprofit parent body, the package was ready forassembling. It took an additional $1.75 million in foundation backing tosurvive the first four years. The wolf was forever gnawing at the door.

14

TRIRFNES FOR THE SCHOOLS

A typical EW issue 01 :32 or .36 pages blends topical national cox erage, tn-depth feature shales, trends analysis, regional summaries, commentaryirom resoected tun-staff experts. photos, and short takesbut no hint of apr,rusan editorial policy. The paper takes no sides on the issues and puts nospin on its stones Yet it captures what Wolk calls the relevance andfeistiness of precolleglate schooling.** A particular strength Is its uncannyability to spot trends and Inrddog them to maturity of extinction Specialpull-out reports on such topics :is schooling in .Japan, demographics,bilingual education, and effective schools have been timely andauthoritative. No less important in the EW design has been coverage ofnatty-gritty teaching and learning developments in the classroom.

Though it houses a working professional newspaper, Education Week'sWashington headquarter-, evokes memories of a graduate school studentlounge. Wolk and Executive Editor Martha K. Matzke originally intended tohire experienced education heat reporters from metropolitan dallies butquickly learned that these journalists were not for Education 1,4i,ek. Mostwanted more money than the new eekl:. could afford. and they hadalready made up their minds about educational issues Instead, Wolk wentfor brainy young graduates of hheral arts colleges who could write and hadless than two years 01 journalistic experience The decision has paid off.The newspaper gets excellent, often inspired. educational reporting.

The Impact 4F:threat/on Weeh resists quantification. but unamtingevidence suggests that its discriminating coverage ol sc hood reform hasbecome a strong, it und(Tvalued, force in defining and even shaping itThousands of political and educational leaders get thee: basic informationon educational change from EW Stories on important new reforms inRochester. New lark, and I iade County, Florida, for e\ample, spurredenormous inter(-it throughout publi«.(Itication

Ron Wolk is eainpaigning for foundation support to help put copies ofEducation Wiwi,- in ex ery school library and tea( hers' room in the country Ifhe encounters tinahl ate success and paid (11( uition Ivies appreciabb,,, hewill PX11:111(1 teattire,,, cleat(' new sections, (lex (qv mole space tobook review s. venture into inx, estigal e (Turting, and otherwise upgradean already t (ua, kable join nalistn product Ile is also (lex eloping a newnational inonthl magazine tot Arnev n .is teachers fin lama lung in the tallof 1989 How ex CI it de\ CII)1),,,, Edilt ahrm ttrrl, will ( an1inie II) treatcducatot,. at .111 lex VI'S as pained professionals xx ho need an lartlx vb.presented inform:01ot, than is both balanced ,rid iicurat

0%,


As attention-grabbing theatrein any medium,schooling hasalways playedpoorly . . .

16

And education has not been one of the tube's favorite subjects.Education has been largely unable to capitalize on our

obsession with the media. As attention-grabbing theater in anymedium, schooling has always played poorly even during itsinfrequent spurts to the top of the news. The media find littledrama in daily school life or educational politics, and notmuch more in once-outrageous but now routine reporting onteenage sex and pregnancy, the school drug culture, violencein the schools, and teachers' strikes. Stories about theinadequacies of urban schools have become old hat at a timewhen the subject demands hard thinking and careful action.Documentary TV programs on education traditionally scorelow in the ratings wars that determine what will appear on ourscreens, while even the best of a limited selection ofeducation-related drama or comedy series usually struggle forsurvival from the moment they appear. Motion pictures thatcentEr on education themes are box-office poison, whilecommercial radio's coverage of education is negligible unlessthe interested listener happens to be awake at 6:30 A.M. everyother Sunday to benefit from a local station's obligatory publicservice broadcasts.

Inconsistency and unevenness characterize educationcoverage by both the print and electronic media. The onlynationally syndicated newspaper columns on education arethose of the leaders of the national teachers' unions. Theweekly offering of the AFT's Albert Shanker is a paidadvertisement that has appeared since the mid-1970s in theSunday New York Times and is picked up gratis, more or lessregularly, by 80-100 additional newspapers. Mary HatwoodFutrell of the National Education Association produces anNEA-underwritten biweekly column which began to appear inthe Washington Post in 1984 and runs intermittently in 85newspapers, also gratis, around the country Although theyhave on-air specialists for sports, business, science, andpolitics, the three TV networks employ no educationcorrespondents, and their treatment of the reform movementhas been streaky and superficial. Not until 1986 did theMacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, which appears on the morecerebral but far less popular Public Broadcasting Service, getaround to hiring John Merrow, a prize-winning commentatorof National Public Radio, to cover education.

The failure of print journalism's major players to convey asteady and balanced reckoning of the successes, problems,and prospects of education is reprehensible. Althougheducational "news" is scattered through most newspapers andnews magazines it is rarely found in journals of opinion from

TRIBUNES FOR THE SCHOOLS

left to rightThe Nation on the left through the hybrid NewRepublic somewhere near the middle to The National Reviewon the rightand usually focuses on the political, thespectacular, the negative, or the aberrational. As a generalrule, big-city education reporters are among their newspapers'least experienced journalists, and most have no intention ofremaining stuck on the low-prestige school beat. Such topnewspapers as the New York Times (which has greatlyexpanded its coverage since mid-1987), the Boston Globe, andthe Los Angeles Times often have managed to retain excellentpeople in education, which is reflected directly in the steadyvolume and high quality of their coverage, but most ambitiousreporters consider it to be a pedestrian assignment.Recognition is lacking and criticism is heavy. Amongnationally syndicated columnists, the prospects for informedcommentary on schools and schooling are even mole dismal.To Evans and Novak, Anderson, Kilpatrick, Wicker, Will and allbut one or two others (William Raspberry is a signalexception), there simply is no continuing story in the tion'sschools. Education, to most national columnists, is what theyexperienced a generation or two ago, and they see little needto change that. Only in TIME, NEWSWEEK, USA 7bday, and inthe newspapers of middle America's cities and towns doeseducation receive a reasonably fair shake. But the small citypress understandably concentrates on critical local issues, auseful and necessary function but one that inhibits discussionof longer-range issues.

. . . the treatmentIby the threecommercial TVnetworks] of thereform movementhas been streakyand superficial.

17

El FEW PERKS, LITTLERESPECT

The culture of public school education does not normallyreward leaders who take risks or challenge established

practice or dogma. It prizes competence and integrity morehighly, but these are considered givens, even when they are inshort supply. In the organizational settings where publiceducation functions, orderliness and anonymity are theguiding principles. Unless the scent of scandal is in the air,most citizens would be unable to name either the schoolsuperintendent or the school board chairperson of their localdistrict.

In education as elsewhere, public service is neither a havenfor rejects from C. coporate society nor an insulated perch fromwhich to observe decaying institutions. It is presumably whatinvolvement and responsibility are about. But few measurablebenefits compensate for the frustrations and humiliations thatdot the educational policy-maker's professional existence. Tobe a leader in education is to submerge one's distinctiveidentity. "In a complex operation," comments biographerGarry Wills, "individualism is irregularity, a nuisance andobstruction.' And education is an indisputably complex affair.Its leaders are ultimately responsible, in varying degrees andcircumstances, to students, parents, teachers, administrators,elected or appointed school boards, the media, state politicaland administrative authority, the courts, even the U.S.Congress, and, of course, the public at large. These days, welearn that they are additionally accountable to the businessinterests of their communities. Their peers in the privateeconomy may make analogous claims, but when stackedagainst the bedrock realities of the life of a key decision-maker in education, these claims are a catalogue of shallowpieties. The "service to others" concept, says former U.S.Naval Chief of Operations James D. Watkins, is central to "theethos of a 'caring society' " and "fundamental to continuationof the American dream."' This is the salient that education'stop guns occupy. And it confers on them a level and scope ofprofessional and ultimately personal responsibility shared byfew other Americans.

Whatever their place in the governing hierarchy, or their

26

In theorganizationalsettings wherepublic educationfunctions,orderliness andanonymity arethe guidingprinciples.

19

Wso Rum Ova Saious

. . . the peoplewho run ourschools arebullish aboutpublic service,children, and the. . . potential ofgood schools.

political or philosophical differences, the people who run ourschools are bullish about public service, children, and thehigher potential of good schools. Beyond this commonground, though, there are only hints of a shared ideologicalmystique and few signs of the inspirational drive that mightlink them to other authority figures in the country. Moreperhaps than most others, they must be alert to whatpsychologist Michael Maccoby calls "the anti-leadership spiritof democratic society, the rejection of the domineering andpaternalistic models of the past."3 For each authoritarian ordemagogic figure who may materialize with a neatly wrappedfad of he year to cure education's alleged woes, dozens moreprefer to furnish the drumbeat in its rhythm section. Withoutdrummers, bands lack precision and definition. Likethoughtful educational leaders, good drummers are rarelyhearda virtue, perhaps, in musical circles but a dubiousquality in the messy arena of educational politics, wherecontrol is sometimes up for grabs and some of the grabbersdon't comprehend how big the stakes really are.

Lacking the clout to control or pull the strings of real power,education's authority figures must adjust to serving othermasters and ends. In this they are nearly unique amongleviers. Unlike their approximate opposite numbers in themilitary, business, and most other sectors, they are neverreally sure where they stand. Popular and legislative supportoften hinges on the extent to which education is judged tohelp other parts of the economy and society as well as localgoals. Much of Lyndot B. Johnson's success ir. forging astrong federal role in the mid-1960s stemmed from hispersuasive argument to the U.S. CongiPss that education wasthe best route to economic and social equality. A few yearsearlier, the Soviet penetration of space had precipitated asudden national awareness of our deficiencies in teachingscience and foreign languages. Today we assume that the keyattribute of a better-educated future workforce is that it helpsto keep it.inerica on top. Only infrequently these days do wehear that a good education is a social or per,onal good untoitself. None of this is calculated to bolster the egos ofeducation's leading lights, who believe in what they do for aliving.

One customary feature of a system of inferior psychicrewards is an equally inferior system of financial benefits. Noeducational leaders are starving in America. Up and down thesystem salariP. nd benefits are rising. According to theprivate Natic , Center for Education Information, more thanhalf of the nation's school superintendents were earning more

2`-`e

FEW PERKS, LITTLE RESPECT

than $50,000 in 1987! That is the good news, and no one ineducation is protesting it by backing up to the pay windowFor many, though, it is far too little much too late. In 1986 onlysix salaried employees in public school educationfivesuperintendents and one chief state school officerreceivedsix-figure salaries. In the same year, UK; average annualincome of all of the .aation's doctorsnot just the leaders ofthe medical professionwas $119,500, and nearly all of thefull partners in urban law firms received at least that much.The $100,000-plus level was rapidly becoming the norm, notthe outer limit as in education, for experts and managersthroughout the senior and upper-middle levels of business,ccmmunications, science, and most of the professions. Andfinancial sacrifice was no longer fashionable in the not-forprofit world, where the earnings of hospital managers,executive directors of trade associations, and heads offoundations, among many others, soared well into the six-digitbracket in the mid- and late 1980s.

The gap between the treatmei.,, of education's best andbrightest and their peers elsewhere in the workplace widensfurther under closer scrutiny. Bonuses for outstandingleadership, a staple in the corporate work', are an almost lienconcept in education. There are no stock deals, no tax write-offs, no golden parachutes upon departure or retirement, andfew of the perquisites that leaders outside of educationaccept, even demand, routinely. In most settings, there is thepsychologically discomfiting knowledge that the spreadbetween the earnings of policy-makers and their staff deputiesis often smalla situation that almost never exists inprivatized America, where the boss earns multiples more thansupport staffers. Equally disheartening is the stinginess of themedia and the larger public in their rare dispensations ofpraise. Sniping and harassment are th norm. History of a sortwas made in 1981 when the Boston Globe editorialized thatdeparting Massachusetts Commissioner of Education GregoryAnrig may have done more for the commonwealth's teachersand students than any predecessor since Horace Mann, andagain, in 1987, when the school board of Prince George'sCounty, Maryland, awarded its superintendent a renewalcontract with a hefty raise a year before his existing pact wasto expire. Similar instances are scarce.

The coin is two-sided, though. Confident and secure onhome ground, some educational leaders wilt under criticismfrom outside. Many resort to a seemingly permanent defensivestance. They resent what they consider to be the excessiveinterference of underqualified gadflies, even when the

Confident andsecure on homeground, someeducationalleaders wiltunder criticismfrom outside.

21


The current ageof school reformhas spawned anotably virulentform of leader-bashing.

22

outsiders are elected legislators, school board members, ordeeply concerned parents. Although few publicly admit it,many bristle when reminded of the supposedly inferior qualm.;of their graduate training in education. Worse still, those withacademic specialties in educational administration, theprofession they practice, confront a widespread belief thattheir professional preparation, whether obtained at Harvard orat Hartley Normal, gets no respect, that they have wasted theirtime in education's Disneyland. Valid or not, the impression ofthird-rate training persists, and many senior functionariesremain sensitive about it throughout their careers. Thespinoffs from such portraits of inadequacy may be timidperformance and a tendency to clam up in public. It is hardlycomplimentary to hear that the shaping of one's backgroundand personality leaves much to be desired. Paradoxically,much of the criticism comes from persons who arethemselves products of the same graduate departments ofeducational administration.

Even on their best days, many educatio al leaders are ill atease with the communications media, some.times for excellentreasons. They believe that the transient young reporters theyface are either bored or looking for an exposé. They knowthat nothing in education, including the messages that testscores convey, is cut and dried, and that simple advocacy orpartisanship on an issue can rapidly stimulate counter-productive counter-arguments. Moreover, a misquoted ormisunderstood .ducator is unlikely to attract backing frommedia-sensitized school boards or publicity- hungry legisiators.Except for the authors of letters to the editor, the public isdisinclined to offer more than casual support for leaders whoattract media attention by doing something stimulating ororiginal. Untutored in public relations, educators are oftenunable to exploit the press or electronic media to promote aworthwhile story.

The current age of school reform has spawned a notablyvirulent form of leader-bashing. While identifying themselvesas true reform's true believers, or at leas, a, its most accurateinterpreters, education's right wing came to center stage in the1980s after decades of impotence and frustration. Itsspokespersons view school improvement as a death strugglebetween the malevolent agenda of the Radical Left (equityover ' (cellence, uncontrolled innovation, Godlessness,emp.iasis on individual development, and federal programs)and the sturdy educational truths of Real Americans (a returnto the classics, memorization, prayer in the schools, equal timefor the tee -hing of "creation science," and the banishment of

2'9

FEW PERKS, LITTLE RESPECT

six education and other dangerous fads that threaten tocorrupt the children and the larger society). The confrontationmay have had limited validity a decade or more earlier, but bythe 1980s education had long since left itself without a Left.The reactionary mood that swept over segments of Americanst ciety in this decade may not have taken deep root, but itsurely tilted much public discourse to the right of center eventhe ugh, as poll alter poll demonstrated, the issues of the RealAm .!ricans were of little interest to mainstream America.School people who had fought k-r change and equal access inthe 1ViOs and 1970s were labeled misguided educationists oreducatiGnaloids, terms that conveyed a picture of nuttyprofessors acting out their self-centered fantasies. In the viewof the Real Americans, much of the nation's leadership ineducation had succumbed to badly flawed visions ofschooling.

23

THE WORKINGENVIRONMENT

In commitment and involvement, another hazy pictureemerges. Some decision-makers, notably state legislators,

release only a few hours of their monthly schedules toeducational concerns, while others, unpaid and unrecognizedin the main, ardently devote nearly all of their waking hours tothem. Such apparent imbalances should be destabilizing, butnot necessarily. Why, for example, should the opinion or voteof an overextended corporation executive or researchscientist who does little homework and misses most -rhoolboard or legislative committee meetings carry the sameweight as that of an industrious, true - believing pro-schoolzealot? In the best of ideal systems, it shouldn't. In the toughworld of the public schools, though, that executive or scientistmay be able to look fluoroscopically at a thorny issue, blow itscobwebs away in 15 minutes, and place it in usableperspective. The naive vitality of the untutored (and perhapsless intelligent) true believer, on the other hand, may yieldonly the technobabble and platitudes that have long plaguedthe schools.

In an information age in which, as Harlan Cleveland hasobserved, leaders supervise employees who may know morethan they do,' we tend to assume that education's policy-shapers are, if nothing else, informed. We are awash inauthoritative and attractively packaged information. Plutarchand Galileo might have been tempted to kill for access to theonce-unimaginable range and sophisticated content of thematerial that most typical office functionaries or high schoolstudents routinely disdain or take for granted. But ourselection of what we choose to call up is sometimes quixotic.We ;Ire basically awed by the intimidating volume of availabledata. The dictates of fixed, preformed ideologies also restrictbalanced access, while many supposedly educated peoplechoose to remain fastened to misconceptions that haveperennially served them. There is too little time to wadethrough the geometrically expanding masses of availaP.einformation. In far more cases than we care to acknowledge,too, laziness and technical ineptitude keep us from selectingthe right stuff. Without access to it, knowledge and wisdom

The naivevitality of theuntutored .true believer . . .may yield onlythe technobabbleand platitudesthat have longplagued theschools.

25

WHO RUNS Ol'H S( 11001 S

Richard R. GrePn:From Minneapple to Big Apple

`Then 1)r Richard I? Green, Chance Hot of New link City's sr hook sinceMarch I, 1988, met the press at hr-, baptismal new s r onference ,it nty

Hall, he turned to Mayor Edward Koch. the most powerful figui 0 inAmerican urban gm eminent nu! quietly said "Why don't you be seatedThe flamboyant mayor sat A new et a in the polities of education may ha\ ebegun.

The search for a new boss for the nation's hugest and messiest st haulsystem MIS a harrowing ordeal It was host -page news in the( ay 'snewspapers, the lead item in television and radio newsunl the principalsubject of pubhe discom se m the Big Apple tot se eral weeks Thedimensions and stai,t , of the job ate stagger ing

An operating budget of Si 2 billion, tat gel than that of (lb per «mt of all1' S. corporationsA total enrollment of apptoximatel "10,000 students mot e than thepopulations of all but a half-dozen Vaiern an r alesThe most politicized and least wolkable school Inrrod in the nationA payi oil of nearly 175,000 persons -62,000 solidly unionized teachersan(; , er 110,000 bureaucrats.A decent! afized system of :(2 sr.paratc, mostl nom ly administer ed,fiefdoms.A decaying, 1,000-buddmg plant «mtrolled by t h, ughtl unionizedt ustodians and hugely ignored fit a halt r enturyA racwaly J.ewed, outdated, and inefficient personnel -AsternA student population \vial 10 percent of the t hildren II\ mg below thepoverty line and an a et age annual di opout trite afro\ e '10 poi «,ntAn extraordinary, tundern rri I I

anaiehy in the high schoo'isft

I

of vi()Iel" disruPtion, andperhaps the highest ,, °him, of tree ad,. lee ,t.ad,thh, tosupenntendent m the (Rath)

New link City Is new, to Richaid i ;leen and he to it But he is tough,street smart. and a tenacmus edit( atom Prused without a father in a publit1101.1Mlig plOrti 011 the pout 111)11111de of Thimealmlis, he spent lime in areform school attended a or Minna] high sr tool- and Calm, d a I Lin al d

2t)

WORhIN(. EN% IRONMENT

doctorate while working as an assistant pun pal With a wile and fontchildren, he had no loose (hang( about for a siege at one of the costliestuniversities in the country. Brimming with an impatient self-confidence thatsometimes borders on arrogance, he persuaded several Minneapolisbusiness leaders to help pay Its way Eight years after completing hisstudies, Dr Richard R. Green was ,uponntendent o, his city's sc hookGaining quick respect from his peers around the country, he wassubsequently elected President of the Conncil of the Great City Schools

The Green blueprint Nil the Minneapolis sdiools was an uncomplicatedblend of consolidated authority, precise "benchmark" standards for testingstudents, and close tics with the city's corporate, media, and cultural circles.An accomplished salesman and political negotiator, Green solicited advicean(1 gnancial support from business and community leaders as well as fromresident and outside experts on schooling Within IS months assuperintendent, he had g(uned approval lcu a In e-vcar plan that centralizedhis power in what had been a three-thstr lc( system with local autonomycomparable to that of Nei, lbrk ('its'', '32 self-gm (Tiling school districts Athoroughly pelitical person, according to his associates, Green was equallyat home in the front offices of the col poi alums of Min h he IA as a hoardmember and in the city's streets, where he challenged school-skippers to tellhim what they were doing %sith their Ines

When Richard Given took office in Ness link, he went straight to the topin several ways Ills SF)ti,000 annual s,ilar\, augmented by $'3-).000 inallowatu was not only the highest of any hoot person in the country,but it topped that of (Wet) official in the nation's largest city, including amayor known for his piopensay for seizing center stage The New Yorkchancellorship epitonnzw, public life in the fastest lane ,n America It has allbut (lest l oyed more than one of Green's richly qualified pi edecessotsEveryone gets deeply into the ( hancellor's business the tiover nor (also noshrinking nnet ), the Mayor, an often hostile state legislature, a badlyfractured Board of Education, the powei fill Munn 'pal AssistanceCorporation, a husiness communit of sin passing intim nee, and high-circulat ion newsp(pers that coves ,ill the news that is and isn't lit to printThe Iii:sitengom Pn.1,%sitli no axe hi gi Ind, labeled Ness k's schoolsystem "an intim table mess ThP Mandate 10 IZR.hald (;teen WO, e tohe the most diffic nit in us ent edit( ational lustor

L 27


We are awash inauthoritative andattractivelypackagedinformation.

28

are bound to lose to demagoguery or narrow interests.In their defense, nothing comes easy for the people who

make and influence educational policy. That many, possiblymost, are derelict in tapping the vast caches of material thatwould help improve their performance may appearunforgivable. But it is also understandable. Much informationis assembled and presented in a style that inducesstupefaction. Laced with jargon, poorly organized, anduncompromisingly dry, it may be all but impenetrable and thusunusable. Moreover, literature on learning and schooling has adialectical quality: For every strong proposition, there is apowerful counter-argument of seemingly equal 1... eight. Thecurious or needy user is thus at loose ends, with little choicebut to return to ground zero. Unlike research in medicine, thelaw, and most fields of science, educational researchreinforces this image of a non-discipline without intellectualanchor and thus undeserving of respect. When the U.S.Department of Education distilled the supposed best ofeducational research and practice into a compilation forpopular consumption in 1986, the resulting booklet, WhatWorks,2 received decidedly mixed reviews. Some analystscalled it a useful, if simplistic, compilation, but most of thefield's top brass regarded it as a hodge-podge of proverbs andplatitudes without insight or distinction. (Some of its"findings": "Children improve their reading ability by reading alot," "... home efforts can greatly improve studentachievement," "... hard work and discipline ... yield positiveresults.") The chief of the Department's research arm in thesecond Reagan term freely conceded, indeed used everyavailable opportunity to complain, that educational researchwas examining the wrong issues. One of his predecessors hadurged the abolition of the federal office in charge ofeducational research.

Faced with mountains of data of uncertain value about thepresent and future, most leaders would naturally gravitate tothe valid past, a useful practice that should be mandatory inany endeavor. Unless he owned the business, a chief executiveofficer of a major business firm who insisted on repeatingcostly mistakes would be sent packing (albeit with a year'slead time in which to wrap attractive personal benefits in agolden parachute.) No such prospect faces the failededucational leader. Blame and even its causes are too hard tofix. Yet a rich body of literature illuminates every possibleachievement and shortfall of the first three and one-halfcenturies of schooling in America. By and large, today'seducational leaders have not mastered it. With embarrassing

0 z...) .i

THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT

frequency, freshly minted educational findings and fads turnout to be tired variations of earlier flops. The overwhelmingbulk of the literature on the school improvement movement ofthe 1980s leapfrogs centuries of reform efforts as though theynever existed. It suffices to wave at Sputnik, salute equalaccess, and let the first 350 years sink into oblivion.

This lack of respect for the pitfalls of history is pandemic inthe policy-making leadership. Frequently unwilling to viewschooling in larger perspective, even its most adventurouschiefs and gurus hold an essentially cramped view of it. Forevery Governor Bill Clinton (Arkansas) or Thomas Kean (NewJersey) who reads books on educationor on anything elseten others get by on staff memoranda or hasty briefings onsubjects crucial importance to their states. HistorianBarbara Tuchman's The March of Folly and Richard Neustadt'sand Ernest May Thinking in Time: The Uses of History ofDecision Making document our national reluctance to respecthistory, even the very recent past, and our penchant forrepeating, with alarming consistency, the mistakes of ourpredecessors.3

With a few notable exceptions, today's policy-makers arenon- or sometimes even anti-intellectual, some quite vocallyso. All but a very few speak only Englishno concessions tonewer Americans--although Spanish is not a difficultlanguage to learn. Most are innocent of technical or scientificknowledge, even at the levels taught in their schools, and theirinti;nate familiarity with professional sports dwarfs theirunderstanding of the great ideas that presumably swirl aboutin their classrooms. Most of those who do harbor profoundthoughts are careful not to let them escape. In this respect, atleast, school people are like politicians. A former Chairman ofthe national Democratic Party John Bailey of Connecticut,was a person of profound knowledge and culture, but only hisfamily and a few friends knew about these qualities while heheld his post. In the culture of politics, in the 1950s and 1960sas now, he might have been hooted out of office. Decision-making is not for pointy-heads.

The decided majority of today's school leaders are, anddoubtless perceive that they must remain, results-orientedpragmatists who deal with here-and-now crises. Smart ratherthan cerebral, doers rather than thinkers, they meet deadlinesand extinguish brush fires. When they look ahead, it is to nextyear's budget and student population. Rarely do they enjoy theluxury of examining overarching concepts of what constitutesthe educated person. Understandably, they worry aboutteachers' salaries, decaying school buildings, student behavior,

Withembarrassingfrequency, freshlymintededucationalfindings and fadsturn out to betired variationsof earlier flops.

29

WHO RUNS OUR Si moms

With a fewnotableexceptions,today's policy-makers are non-or sometimeseven anti-intellectual, somequite vocally so.

30

and money. When their attention turns to academicachievement, they fret about performances on tests that maybe irrelevant to their students and may, in any case, haveoutlived their questionable usefulness, but which, they may bepowerless to scrap. Although factual supporting e 'idence islacking, it is not unreasonable to suspect that inL ny iegislatoisand board members would not score appreciably higher onthe Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) than do the young peoplewhose educational destinies are in their hands.

The real brains, the serious minds, in education are for themost part in the colleges and universities. Unfortunately, themost persistent biographer of higher education's mostrespected leaders would fail to find examples of theirsustaired participation in debates on elementary andsecondary schooling. Ernest Boyer and John Good lad, two ofeducation's most respected public figures, have repeatedlycalled for closer ties between schools and universities, andsmall numbers of concerned higher education leaders haveformed ad hoc groups to back school improvement. But ofpost-secondary education's major figures, only a handful,exemplified by Chancellor Donna Shalala of the University ofWisconsin, have committed themselves to helping the schools.Althoagh heavy verbiage issues from the schools and collegesof education, they simply lack credibility in public policycircles, and their exhortations carry little weight.

As if they were not already under siege for theirunderstandable shortcomings as visionary intellectualvirtuosos, today's educational leaders are under indictment foryet another, even graver, dereliction. They stand accused ofundervaluing the fundamental content of good schoolingtheclassics, humanities, and foreign languages that were thestaples of a proper 19th century education. Worse still, theyhave willingly turned the asylum over to its inmates by givingparents, educators, and even children a voice in determiningwhat students learn. They have even begun I o look at theeconomy that must absorb education's products. This matterof "cultural literacy," an ambiguous term with only tenuousties to present social realities and a growing reputation as aform of adult trivial pursuit, may carry reactionary potentialthe ultimate capacity to bend schools at least part way back toearlier times. Or it may prove to be a fad that education'sgoverning elites can shed like last year's snakeskin.

The quarterback in professional football may senseinstinctively what leadership and authority in education areabout. On the field, he is the undisputed boss (principal orsuperin'endent) who leads the team in direct pursuit of a

THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT

single objective: to gain enough points to win. But hisdirection is operational and far less likely to be strategic. Anunusually gifted veteran quarterback may get into the tacticaldecision flow, but this is increasingly rare. The options duringthe game are few. A legion of coaches (school board) on thesidelines decides on the strategy and the plays thequarterback-leader will try to execute, while their bosses, theclub owners (legislators, governors, some publicists), controlthe landscape of the larger enterprise. It does not matterwhether these ultimate chiefs are virtuosos or connivingbamboozlers. They are in charge. They make the decisionsthat count.

Having made their decisions, most policy-level leadersfollow through with diligence, integrity, and, customarily, witha strong professional investment. Customarily rather thaninvariably, though, because it is not always easy to gauge theextent and depth of this commitment or of their personalinvestment. Based on countless conversations, extensiveobservation, and the public record, the inescapable conclusionis that educational leaders dedicate themselves to their workas single-mindedly as any group in American public life. Stablepersonal lives and the 40-hour week are casualties of thisdevotion; chief state school officers and schoolsuperintendents, in particular, often give 80-90 hours weekly,while the lives of state and local school board members,nearly all of them unsalaried, can become nightmares ofclashing priorities and physical and emotional strain. Job-related depression, stomach ulcers, and lower back problemsare on the rise among the occupants of education's boardrooms. The excessive demands of work probably led to thesuicide of the superintendent of a major urban school systemin Ohio.

School leaders usually stand up well to the severe andunsettling pressures that arise from their work. It is no smallachievement to juggle budgetary priorities, competing agendasof interest groups, hit-and-run attacks by print and electronicmedia, and demands for quick-fix action on drugs, teenagepregnancy, school dropouts, alcoholism, and unresponsive ormisdirected curricula. By the time most leaders have attainedpolicy-level rank, they are thick-skinned, tenured, or contract-holding senior functionaries capable of responding withequanimity to mystical twists and turns of political oreducational fortune. Nothing is new to them, including thegrotesque messages a fringe or extremist groups that 'Are benton forcing outrageous programs and principles on the schools.For their part, elected officials may pay more heed to public

7^"Ui

[today'seducationalleaders) standaccused ofundervaluing thefundamentalcontext of goodschoolingtheclassics,humanities, andforeignlanguages.

31


Fortified bysecure jobs . . .decision-makerscan approachchange in ameasured,sometimes evenconfident manner.

32

opinion, but they, too, enjoy job security for finite periods oftime. It is almost unthinkable for legislators, board members,or governors to leave office before their terms expire.Contrast this with the uncertainties of life in corporateAmerica.

This stability is a positive force in educational policy-making. Fortified by secure jobs or the confidence of thevoters who chose them, decision-makers can approach changein a measured, sometimes even confident manner. Theregenerally is time to create coalitions, to negotiate, to consideralternatives. But there is also time, and some inclination, tolapse into complacent self-satisfaction.

Herein stands a potential barrier to the kind of motivated,risk-taking leadership that today's schools need. It would takean extraordinarily diligent researcher to locate a dozenverifiable cases of top public school educators who havevoluntarily left their jobs over matters of conscience orprinciple. Even in the late 1960s, when many urban schoolsystems appeared to have taken leave of their educationalsenses on issues of curriculum and governance, few educatorsuttered the latter-day version ofJames Joyce's classic, "I willnot serve that in which I no longer believe." Today's sturdyback-to-basics advocates were yesterday's adventurers. Butrecent memory yields a respectable number of issue-triggereddepartures in other fields. In foreign policy alone, for example,Secretary of State Cyrus Vance left his post in 1980 over theissue of rescuing hostages from Iran, Assistant SecretaryBernard Kalb resigned in 1986 when he felt deceived by hissuperiors, and a corps of younger diplomats resigned in 1971over the U.S. actions in Cambodia. Nor have education's rankscontained many whistle-blowers. The principal responses toinefficiency, inadequacy and corruptionfor reform, in otherwordshave come from beyond the schoolyard fence, notfrom conscience-stricken insiders. When under attack, schoolpeople seldom fight back. They accommodate.

la GURUS ANDGATEKEEPERS

The sources and forms of educational leadership are wildlyinconsistent. In a citizen-driven enterprise like the public

schools, no statutory assignment of responsibility candetermine exactly who will do the real leading and how. Theendeavor is too complex at the same time that it is too widelydispersed. It is unevenly layered, and it is viewed through toomany prisms. At times it seems almost too human. But in onecrucially important detail at least, it is thoroughly predictable:Nearly all decision-makers lean heavily on the wisdom andskills of experts and advisors who are largely unknown evento the most witting publics. These are education's "significantothers," and they cut a surprisingly wick,. swath. Theirapproximate opposite numbers in politics often constitute ashadow government, not of outsiders as in Britain's shadowcabinets but as powerful, in-place wielders of real power. Aslife becomes more complicated, there are signs that this isalso happening in large salients of American public education.

Whether guru, gatekeeper, or well-positioned staff member,these unacknowledged behind-the-scenes figures meritattention. They are patently not servile flatterers or spear-carriers. They are the ones who demystify complexity anddefine issues. They write the speeches and position papers,often with vague or no instructions. They conduct and usuallyprevail in the internecine battles that precede approval by thetitular boss. They have the chief's ear and often decide whoelse will have it. Their spin on an issue frequently decides howit will play as policy. The more gifted and trustedoraudaciousamong them set their leaders' agendas. (OldWashington aphorism: "He who drafts the agenda controls theprogram.")

A few of these unclassifiable power bearers actually cometo believe that they are the bosses, and they consciouslymimic their employers. A key U.S. Senate committee staffmember of the 1970s who frequently demanded the deferencedue his elected boss was sacked for going too far. He hadpersuaded himself of his indispensability and infallibility.Beset by excessive demands on his attention, his chairman, aveteran powerhouse in the Senate, had allowed much of his

. . . no statutoryassignment ofresponsibilitycan determinewho will do thereal leading andhow.

33

WHO RUNS Ouse SCHOOLS

Old Washingtonaphorism: "Hewho drafts theagenda controlsthe program."

34

nominal authority to pass to this non-elected staffsubordinate. That the staffer did his job responsibly andrespectfully was immaterial; he was caught crossing the linebetween advisor and leader in acting on a relatively minormatter without the Senator's express authorization. Hebecame history.

The subject is delicate and has remained largelyunexplored. Only the most secure, self-confident Presidentialcandidate, governor, or legislative committee chairperson islikely to discourse publicly on the pivotal contribution of astaff member or influential friend in creating a policy positionor stacking the odds on a major decision. Nor are these seniornumbers-crunchers and boiler-room operators themselvesdisposed to seek public credit. (Second old Washington orstate capital adage: "Budget is policy. ") When former topWhite House officials from a half-dozen presidencies met in1986 to share experiences and wisdom, they voiced scarcely ahint that their bosses had been anything less than omniscientleaders with an instinctive capacity to make all of the correct,patriotic decisions. If these senior aides are to be believed, ourpost-World War II Presidents have been driven by powerfulconviction, enormous self-confidence, and a doubt-free faith inAmerican pluralism. Contrary evidence laces the biographiesof all of these pillars of our national verities, but little of itcomes from the mouths and word processors of those whohave been closest to them. Even former Secretary ofEducation Terrel H. Bell, who endured almost dailyhumiliation from the Reagan White House for three of his fouryears in office, carefully avoids criticism of a President who(a) was intent destroying Bell's Department, (13) waspossibly the least informed chief executive in modern history(c) greeted A Nation at Risk, Bell's magnum opus, withirrele:ant Rightist homilies about school prayer and tuitiontax credits, and (d) ignored education after the 1984 electiAnd when John F Kennedy's top aides convened M 1987 toreminisce about foreign policy, their Issue of choice was theCuban missile crisis, in which their boss performed superbly,and not the Bay of Pigs disaster, in which he did not Leadersare human, too. And they have vulnerable egos.

The status and quality of the key counselors vary widely.Most governors, for example, employ full-time salariededucation aides who function independently of the stateeducation agency, although some prefer direct contact with astrong chief state school officer. The near-miracle of schoolimprovement in once-backward South Carolina in the mid-1980s was manifestly the crowning achievement of former

GURUS AND GATEKEEPERS

Governor Richard Riley, but observers familiar with eventsthere, including Riley, credit education aide Terry Petersonwith mobilizing and targeting the brain power and politicalsavvy that made it happen. Richard Mills filled a roughlysimilar staff role in New Jersey for Thomas Kean, a stridentlypro-education governor, before becoming chief state schoolofficer in Vermont in 1988.

The education committees of state legislatures, which wereone of the most powerful behind-the-scenes forces in theearlier phases of school reform, now routinely assign heavyresponsibility to staffs that, in many states, did not exist orwere insignificant a decade ago. The Pennsylvania legislat ire,for example, employed a permanent education staff of 14persons in 1988, while the staffs in states such as New Yorkand California, where the legislature is in session for much ofthe year, have become strong entities in their own right. Nosuch staff resources ease the work biirden of state boards ofeducation. Most get by with whatever professional supportand information they can obtaiii from state agencies withagcndas that are not always in phase with theirs. Althoughstate boards are a creditable force in creating and legitimatingmany policy actions, the reform caravan of the 1983-1985period bypassed them, as well as most local school boards,and the majority of them remain secondary players. Thissidelining was probably unconnected to the qua,,tity andquality of their staff work, but it is worth conjecturing howstate boards might have fared had small cadres of professionalanalysts been available to help spotlight the concerns of thisoften overlooked arm of state educational policy-m:.' ing.

At the federal level, where the Executive Branch wasmarkedly ideological in the 1980s, a battalion of conservativegurus and gatekeepers, iitsiders and consultants alike,provided enough intellectual ammunition to sate the appetiteof the hungriest educational fundamentalist. In those years,however, the Department of Education made little policy andfew decisions. Its abdication was intentional. The broad linesof the aggressively colicei vative federal stance on alleducational issues had been fixed in the 1980 Presidentialcampaign, and the Department became a well-advertisedpodium from which to amplify and flesh them out. At theWhite House, where one staff functionary traditionallymonitors educationrecommending what the Presidentshould read and say, whom he should see, and how he shouldreact when education reaches the docketthe powerfuldomestic affairs advisor in the Reagan Administration's homestretch, Gary Bauer, was a former Unucr Secretary of

di

Second oldWashington chstate capitaladage: "Budget ispolicy."

35


... in the 19865

. . . the (U.S.IDepartment ofEducation madelittle policy andfew decisions.

36

Education and a staunch advocate of traditional educationaland family values. Such less visible White House aides asDouglass Cater in the Lyndon Johnson years and BertramCarp in the Carter Administration helped set the course ofeducational policy for Presidents who were stronglycommitted to a federal presence in the schools.

With an activist Congress poMting the way, Washing..on'sfinancial support of the schools has h Ai a largely non-negotiable item, a five to ten percent factor, in Americaneducational life for a quarter - century. Backing for mostlegislative initiatives has been bipartisan, with relatively fewlegislators of either chamber willingly opposing spendingmeasures to implement them. But these are among the world'smost thinly spread lawmakers. Flitting from issue to issue,constantly alert to shifting political moods back home, theyrarely have time to develop expertise in more than one or twofields. For many understandable reasonsit is a state task,the schools get few exploitable headlines, the issues are notnormally vote-getterseducation usually is not one of them.The inevitable result is a heavy dependence on professionalstaff to obtain data, suggest positions, and help set overallagendas. In the House of Representatives, which attends toeducational interests more diligently than does the Senate,senior aide John Jennings has unobtrusively helped theMembers to coordinate their education interests since the late1960s. A walking encyclopedia on federal legislation, Jenningshas gained universal admiration for his effective performance.

/12

6 LEADERSHIP BY

COMMISSION

Educational reform has conferred new prestige on blue-ribbon advisory commissions. Our national predilection

for them is understandable. Identifying prominent people in acelebrity-conscious society with a tough problem impartscredibility and gravity to it. The more effective commissionsclarify issues that may have become mired in partisansquabbling. For elected policy-makers, whether rural countycouncil member or President of the United StatesRona36Reagan found them -!specially useful in the early and mid-1980sthey can serve several additional functions, notablythe expedient one of delaying unpopular action on thornymatters. Potentially unwinnable battles can be side-steppedgracefully while the leader gains time to shift his/her or thepublic's stance. For a leader sensing a difficult passage for acontroversial policy, they may provide exactly the prestigiousendorsement needed to push it over the top. Commissionsalso provide a vehicle for assigning blame for unpopularpolicies or, as former U.S. Commissioner of Education FrancisKeppel notes, "for the moving of hot potatoes to otherhands."' In the best of worlds, they may conceivably servetheir ostensible purpose of mobilizing large and respectedminds to suggest sensible actions for the greater good. At theirworst, these ad hoc bodies are unlikely to harm a tacticallysensitive leader. Findings and recommendations that runagainst the grain are easily buried or argued to death, rarely toreappear to anyone's embarrassment.

Commissions don't just happen. Usually, they constitute atemporary assignment or sharing of leadership, not simply adevice for cadging expert wisdom at minimum cost.Recruiting for them can be a sophisticated art form. Shouldthey represent the interests and issues the commission is todebate, or is it preferable to solicit the uncluttered intelligenceof disinterested people of stature from other fields? Or does amixture of the two make better sense and policy? And whatabout philosophical orientation in a time of shifting priorities?

There are no ready answers, 'nly cases. To take an obviousone, the National Commission on Social Security provides asuperb example of a body that blended eminent specialists,

i'3

Commissions. . . provide avehicle . . . for themoving of hotpotatoes to otherhands.

37


ImmismimSince `He mid1980scommissionreports l.ave lr ena nearlysovereign powerin educationalpolicy.

38

legislative leaders, and nationally recognized giants ofbusiness, labor, and public life into one of the most effectiveteams of its type in recent memory. Its findings had heft andcredibili4i, and they were adoptedto the relief of a nationthat had come to doubt the soundness of its bedrock socialinsurance system. Very shortly thereafter, though, the sorryperformance of a national commission on pornography whosemembers had clearly prejudged the issues cast doubt on theleadership role of such groups in potentially delicate matters.And it was not until a no-nonsense former Chief of NavalOperations assumed the chair that another Presidentialcommission, appointed to examine federal responses to a farmore ominous threat, shook down, shaped up, and proposedgoals and policies for a coordinated national campaign to getat the plague of AIDS. The record is thus mixed. It is as easyto muff the opportunities a commission presents as it is to putthem to good use.

Education's commissions on reform have been many,prolific, and indisputably vital to political decision-makers atall levels of hierarchy and jurisdiction. A distinguishedColumbia University professor and expert on educationalpolicy was presumably sure of his ground when he wrote inmid-1984, "The publication last March of 'Horace'sCompromise: T he Decline of the American High School'marked the end If a spate of reports urging educationalreform that began in November 1982 with The PaideiaProposal: An Educational Manifesto.' "2 He missed by at leastour years; the reports kept coming, and most have demanded

close scrutiny. Since the min-1980s commission reports have-^ sovereign power in educational policy. Some

have demanded executive or legislative action--or else, whilethe legacy of others has been confusion and unrealisticexpectations. Their tens of thousands of pages add up to anunparalleled inventory of the supposed ills of the schoolspossibly ten parts analysis and diagnosis to one partprescription.

Out of this nationwide welter of reform commission reports,four, three of them issued since 1985, stand out as paradigmsof the genre, although a dozen moresome the products ofcommissions and others, such as John Goodlad's A PlaceCalled School and Ernest Boyer's High School, the work ofgifted individuals supported by research teamshave alsosignificantly influenced decision-makers. Each of the four hascontributed a unique dimension to the job of schoolleadership in the 1990s because of the constituency itrepresents and the currency of the topics in which it trades.

4.1

LEADERSHIP BY COMMISSION

Revolutionary educational doctrine is noticeably absent; thereis no pedagogy of the oppressed, no deschooling of America,no hint of the ecstasy of education. Even the most pointedappeals in the reports for "restructuring" the schools fallwithin the safe perimeters of existing modes of politicalleadership and widely-accepted pieties about curricu!arcontent. And they posed no threat to the moral belief ...ystemsof the leaders and legislative bodies that spawned them.

M dozens of prestigious commissions dropped their reportsin the in-boxes of education's authority figures, Ernest Boyermimicked the vivid language of A Nation at Risk to note that"a rising tide of reports on educational reform is threateningto engulf us." This semi-jesting observation fell slightly wide ofthe mark, for most of these documents also enlightened andshocked us, none more devastatingly than A Nation at Risk.The timing in 1983 was just right for this federally-sponsoredcall for excellence, and its unflattering portrayal of Americaneducation's deficiencies elicited an instantaneous nationalreaction. That it overstated the shortcomings of the schoolswhile slighting equity and the nation's growing underclass wasunfortunate but probably not crucial at the moment Itsdoomsday message, conveyed in 36 pages of abundantlyreadable if somewhat apocalyptic language that reachedmillions of Americans, reinforced growing suspicions that theschools were in deep trcubleand that was its purpose. Morecatalyst than blueprint, A Nation at Risk was the galvanizingforce in the school improvement movement of the 1980s. Eventhough test scores had stopped declining several years earlier,and state legislatures were already at their drafting tables, thislandmark appeal for action stands as the symbol of the reformmovement, indeed, as its primary source of leadership.

A Nation at Risk unleashed a profusion of nationalmanifestos and state legislative debates. No educationalinterest group was safe as the reform movement went intoorbit in nearly every state in the union. Whether by design orcoincidence, A A 'ion at Risk appeared at almost the precisehistorical moment al' which the federal government hadabandoned most of its directly targeted commitments to localschool districts. Although the report had urged a continuingrole for Washington, the U.S. Government was no longer aserious player. Influence and authority rested firmly in thehands of the education professions, elected state and localpoliticians, sub-federal bureaucracies, and, as the decadewound down, the perceived interests of American business.The commission reports from these groups round out the gangof four.

A Nation AtRisk was thegalvanizing forcein the schoolimprovementmovement of the1980s.

39

WHO RUNS 0( It tic 11001,S

Marc S. Tucker: "Perestroika" in the Schools

The Magna (.(111(i of school reform in America may prove to ti, A NotionPremixed Thachers for Mr 21st l'entary. Described as historic,

unprecedented. and con p(iling %%hen it racketed onto the national scene inMay 6, this blunt but persuasive I eport of the Carnegie Task Force onTeaching as a Profession calls for a fundamental and revolutionaryrestructuring of leaching and schooling Its goal, according to principalauthor Marc S. Tucker, was not to produce a pretentious :atalogue ofprograms and recommendations to repair a faltering system but rather tohelp prepare the nation to cope effectively with a swiftly changing globaleconomy The thoughtful analysis of A Nation Prepaied, buttressed by themoral authority and public position of the members of the Task Force,virtually guarantees that it will decisively affect American education wellinto the 21st century Like Mikhail Gorbachev's restructuring ("perestroika")of the Soviet economy, A Nation Pi (pared could change the way a nationlooks at its schools. Ii is a classic o' its genre.

As Executive Director of the Carru gle Forum on Education and theEconomy, a program of the respected Carnegie Corporation of New York,Marc Tucker was the guiding flute behind what he has termed a "staff-driven enterprise." finlike the of cm:bylining bulk of reform-orientedcommissions and task forces, which are charged by an agency withperforming precisely defined tasks, the Carnegie Task Force began with itsown overarching premise: that 'he structure of schools and schoolingneeded far-reaching changes The question then became: Did this premise.01stify creating a national body'

In P184 Tucker took to the friendly skies to find out. He listened to 30leaders of business, communications, and education. From them he learnedthat business execut a es viewed education's problems solely in terms of theeconomy's fin-midable challeng,'s, while educators. still smarting from thecriticism leveled in the commission reports of the previous two years,mould not cons le that the 5( hook were collapsing, especially whencurrent performance was me;isured aganist that of earlier eras BI:t allagreed that hasu shifts wet e overdue. especially in the teaching profession.Out of this broad censnsus, supported by Tucker's strong personalconvict um that it w as accurate, came a task huce that would produce thewhim moy em(nt .5 toughest prescriptions ff)r achievable change.

An active, prodigioitsly inhumed former head of policy research at theNational Institute of E(hu at um, Marc Turkel was no wallflower at the year-long ball of the Carnegie Task Foley on 'fearing as a Profession Ills was

1.1 to remit' 111 CONINI1SSI0N

the ntwor voice in I noosing the III III\ (111.11111(41 I I member grump t hatincluded both a sitting anti a lormer go% Ii not, till' hem!, of tilts nationalteacher olganizat ions (Albert Shanket 01 the .11."1. %%as a pm% el house of theTask Force., work), a former I abinet member, state le% 1.1 officials, andcorporate executives Senn e on the Task For«, . as to hr no mere item fortheir already bulging testi:up-. Tuck( anti his deput %%or ked one-on-onewith Task Force members to leal n Ill % the saw the main issues The groupmet six times to review :111(1 comment On %%hat Tut het had producedbetween sessions ( till' menthe! told F:(//uution tied, , -There w as 1101 11111(11

forgiveness for not-well-thought tin (nigh comments But Tuckerconsistently dt.inanded NV1 111(.11 reactions on tight deadlint.s and declined topet sr:cultic issues to %On-, an almost uttheaid-of illation of not oralcourussion practict. This mode of (pet at all could not haNe been easy forsuch ot.rwoiked individuals as the cluel scientist Of the InternationalBusirit'ss Machine,. Col-nor:num, the Cm ('I nor of New. Jet sey, thel'resdent of the National Education Assot lotion It %%piked, and the (41

with it

l'retlictions that i()), 1)01)(11C(1 null be( o111e 01111Vall'IltOf the Flexnei report of Ulf() that it.% ulationized niedit al education may nothe far 01I the mark. The Task Forte's findings were an thing but hot air,Tucker extracted guarantees of !Man( nil support to l ar r:k out its keyrecommendations, and the process began almost miniediatel atterpublication. The National Board foi Professional Teaching Standards itproposed is in place "Carnegie st hook" 01 then reasonable facsimiles havestarted to appear. Throughout the count, goNernors, state legislators, andstate education agencies wet using :1 ,V(110)0 Preputcd as the basis of afundamental it.exanunation of policies on schooling

In concept and performance, 'Male Tut ker destioNed the seennngINunbreakable mold in which l ununl,sunl, (oi task tutees) thenexcctitt%( directors ha% e Itattitionall t ,14.4 theile,ehe,, lie N\ as no faceless,nameless furl tionarN The «m«.ptual strateg %%as bast( ally ius Ile draftedthe report and readily shales both the ionise and (rinl isni it has te«.nedAnd he has no in'ento)'i of abandoning the themes it nuiswl lu tosti he1.2.,s(i1ricti ill \, hill I b Nei; I Ailed ev011,d1)111( it-, as Pt( .1(10111 of the

I?0( !Lester, New )iak-based National Centel Ull .11 1111 ,11111 the El'011(411y,

1 fucker-l'011(.1 i)0(i 1111111,th I (.4,11111 1 policyle\e!llpinent at both the national le% el and on beds((( tit New York State-and :issists the liohester I 'It \ S, I1o(.1 I t to I air out Ili tile 1111St111111 /Val I \ program, 10 I Clil",1'.411 .1/1 l'1111I4' l(u)au `...1 pool ',I, ',tell' that hasevt.r been attempted

II


The group thatprepared ANation Prepared... is a near-exemplar of themodern blue-ribboncommission . . .

as a leadershipforce ineducation.

42

For reasons that require no elaboration, the centerpiece ofschool improvement must be the teaching profession.According to Fred M. Hechinger of The New Ycrk Times, "Pastefforts have failed largely because they ignored the crucialrole of the teachers." He could have added that teacher-bashing had been one of the central features of the earlyliterature and media coverage of reform. In varying degreesmuch of America's classroom teaching forceeducation'sfuture managerscame across, mostly unjustly, asacademically deficient, technically incompetent, anddominated by selfish union interests. By contrast, not a wordof direct criticism of the nation's teaching force finds its wayinto A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, theMay 1986 report of the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as aProfession:' The message is nevertheless clear: Sweepingchangesin patterns of school governance, in the calibre andpreparation of recruits to teaching, and in the sensitiveprocesses of certificationmust occur if the schools are torespond to the demands of a changing world economy. (Thisfocus on economic forces riles some distinguished educators,among them Harold Howe II, a former U.S. Commissioner ofEducation, who concurred with most of A Nation Preparedbut asserted that "there are as many threats to democraticgovernment and good citizenship as there are to our capacityto compete economically.")4

The group that produced A Nation Prepared, the second ofthe high-impact commission reports, is a near-exemplar of themodern blue-ribbon commissionor, to use its term, taskforceas a leadership force in education. It representscollective leadership at its most practical and intellectual,even though some of its findings and assumptions initiallyalienated important sectors of the professional educationcommunity, notably principals and some state officials.Exploiting a national consensus that the teaching professionrequired a systematic revamping, a representative group of 14concerned leaders simply made a tough case brilliantly andcompellingly. Unlike A Nation at Risk, which was its almostnecessary precursor, the Carnegie report provided both aspecific commitment to further action and the promise ofresources sufficient to give sut stance to its main agenda item,the creation of the National Board for Professional TeachingStandards. Astonishingly in the exhortatory but oftenimpractical world of commissions and task forces, apreliminary version of the Board was in place within a year ofthe issuance of A Nation Prepared. Even more surprisingly,the action-oriented Board planned to defer doing serious

4:6


business until a Carnegie-funded research group could provideauthoritative research backing for its work. This is matureleadership.

By the mid-eighties, the dominant role of the states in policy,governance, and finance was an accepted fact in educationallife. Visible, well-trumpeted examples were beginning to dotthe continental map, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line.For the first time, individual political leadersHunt of NorthCarolina, Winter of Mississippi, Alexander of Tennessee, Keanof New Jersey, Riley of South Carolina, Clinton of Arkansas,Robb of Virginia, White of Texaswere gaining renown aseducation governors. It was time to go national, and in August1985 they did exactly that under the aegis of their umbrellaorganization, the National Governors' Association. WithAlexander then heading the NGA, and Clinton and Kean as"Initiative Co-Chairmen," the governors organized themselvesinto seven task forces, combed the country for data andexpertise, and issued a profoundly important seven-partreport, Time for Results: The Governors' 1991 Report onEducation, in August 1986.5 It left not a whit of doubt that thegovernors had legitimated their primacy in educational policy.All 50 participated, most with visible enthusiasm. AsAlexander wrote, "No one else can set the agenda in a statethe way the governor can. The governor's agenda becomes thestate's agenda and the state's agenda is the nation's agenda,especially in education, which is the responsibility of thestates."

Media coverage of Time for Results understandablyspotlighted the governors' readiness to "establish amechanism for state intervention into school districts whereno progress is being made with lower-achieving students"astunning statement of ultimate state authority. But on topicafter topic throughout the report, the governors avoided thegeneralities and alarmism of A Nation at Risk. Instead, Timefor Results flowed from Alexander's proposition that "betterschools mean better jobs" and pursued such here-and-nowissues as the needs of the teaching profession, parentalinvolvement, early education, technology, school leadership(inexplicably neglected almost everywhere else in the ever-rising tide of reform reports), and school facilities (also absentfrom other literature on school improvement.) And unlikecommission reports that fire a single blast and fail to surveythe impact, Time for Results established procedures formonitoring results for five yearsor long after most of thegovernors of the 1985-86 era would have left office.

The fourth of the key commission reports is the most

/15

Time for Results. .. left not awhit of doubtthat thegovernors hadlegitimated theirprimacy ineducationalpolicy.

43


Children inNeed placesimportant,traditionallyskepticalbusiness leaderson record foronce-unthinkable[school and childcare] services.

44

unlikely and unexpected: a reasoned plea by a prestigiouspanel in September 1987 that, whatever the cost, the reformmovement reach the nation's children at risk. Wasting fewwords, Children in Need: Investment Strategies for theEducationally Disadvantaged' implicitly dismissed the coveyof high school-oriented commission reports that preceded itwith imposing evidence that, as Albert Shanker put it, 'Achild's education success or failure has a lot to do with whathappens to him in his crucial earliest years before he evensets foot in a classroom."

The finding may not be revolutionary, but the authorship ofChildren in Need surely is, at the least, unconventional. It isfrom this authorship, a subcommittee of the powerfulbusiness-led Committee for Economic Development (CED),that the impact and credibility of the report flow. Described asa think tank in which executives at the top of the nation'smost influential corporations do the thinking, CED historicallyhas studied matters affecting the economic health of thenation and therefore of major business interests. Its entry intoThe Great School Debate was a linear extension of theseconcerns.

The path to Children in Need began with a 1983 CED studyon U.S. productivity and our worldwide competitive positionthat showed that the real key to productivity was people, nottools. It was a short step to a full-blown examination of U.S.public education as a factor in economic success. The productof this inquiry, a 1985 report called Investing in Our Children:Business and the Schools,' was a fairly conventional all-purpose addition to the burgeoning bibliography on reform,but it sparked special interest in the early childhood years,especially in economically depressed areas. Research forInvesting in Our Children had led CED business leaders tourge support for at least a year of high-quality, expensivepreschool for disadvantaged children beginning at the age ofthree. Early schooling, they became convinced, so improvedchildren's self-confidence and sense of control that theysimply performed better on every front in their adolescentyears. In the cold language of cost effectiveness, (7E1)calculated that a dollar's investment in preschool education"returns $4.75 because of lower costs of special education,public assistance, and crime."

Children in Need refined and fleshed out this centralfinding. An extraordinarily honest and courageous document,it places important, traditionally skeptical business leaders onrecord for such once-unthinkable services as pre- andpostnatal care for pregnant teenagers and other high-risk


mothers, parenting education, high-quality child carearrangements for poor working parents "that stress socialdevelopment and school readiness," and, crucial to the entireCED package, "quality preschool programs f-ir alldisadvantaged three- and four-year-olds."

This used to be alien terrain for big business. But CED'sinvolvement is a commitment, not a passing fancy. Thesubcommittee chair, former Proctor and Gamble chief OwenButler, has testified before Congress on the case for earlyintervention, and some of his colleagues, notably WilliamWoodside, former CEO of the Primerica Corporation, haveactively sought increased federal funding for remedialeducation. They are not alone. The leadership of many of thenation's largest firms is unshakeably convinced of thecorrectness of the main messages of reform. David Kearns ofXerox has prepared a detailed blueprint for it. In thisimportant sense, Children in Need and its predecessor,Investing in Our Children, symbolize an evolving shift in theconcern of business over education. No longer will it suffice tosponsor "adopt a school" programs or to equip a few schoolcomputer centers; for better or worse, big American businessintends to speak out on educational issues.

r-u.1_

45

7 THE TRAINING JUMBLE

The people atop education's policy ladder are assertive,confident public figures. They can live with large

concepts, large numbers, and large institutions. Their rarelyexpressed uncertainties stem from correctable gaps inknowledge or from unanticipated political pressures, seldomfrom self-doubt about their legitimacy as leaders. The fact thatthe voters chose them, or that senior elected officialsappointed them after tough-minded search committees hadscreened them, or thai, they survived a difficult hierarchicalpassage doubtless enhances their already healthy self-esteem.They are emphatically not the 97-pound weaklings ofeducation.

For such people who have arrived, the matter of continuingtraining to improve performance would appear to beamarginal concern. They occupy their top-level posts becauseof the quality of their judgment and professional tools. Yetmost of today's leaders concede that they are not alwaysomniscient and proficient. No one, they admit, can sort out, letalone master, all of the new data, techniques, and societalforces, some of enorrnouf complexity and potential, that arealtering public education. The swift expansion of knowledgein the 1980s has rendered long-held principles vulnerable,even obsoleteand the end is nowhere in view. Political andjurisdictional shifts, the changing contours of the economy,and continuing upheavals in demography and family livingpatterns all impose once-unimaginable levies on the schools.

It used to suffice for a board member or legislator to keepcurrent through institutes for newcomers, orientationsessions, and workshops at regional or national conventions.Or they depended on updates from experts back home andperiodic reports from national associations. Conversationswith colleagues on the firing line in the schools often helped.For full-time policy-oriented professionals, mainly district orurban superintendents and senior state officials, there wasusually more; they are the targeted market for much of thenew information, and, whether absorbed or not, it is theirs forthe asking. Too, they are at the front where new weaponry ar.z.'tactics are baptized. But there is some doubt that many havethe time or inclination to understand their true worth andimplications.

. . . schoolsystems remainnotoriouslystingy with timeand support fortraining thosealready in theclassroom and infront offices.

52 47

A.


. . . conside;ableevidencedemonstratesthat [theEducationProfessionsDevelopmentAct! produced orspurred thecareers of somefirst-class leadersof today.

48

It is axiomatic throughout education that its purpose isto prepare and orient the students, not the teachers and theirbosses. They are supposed to know what they are about andthus require little more than fine tuning. While reformers talkbravely about overhauling the teaching profession, schoolsystems remain notoriously stingy with time and support fortraining those already in the classroom and in front offices. Inan era when the non-public sector busily and expensivelyretrains both its white- and blue-collar workers, the schoolsbegrudgingly dole out less than one percent of their annualbudgets for enhancing the professional repertoires of theirtwo million-plus front-line classroom and managerial staffmembers. And the situation for their nominal chiefs, thedecision- and policy-makers, is far worse. Even in the late1960s and 19 /Os, when federal education dollars for the mostesoteric, some would say useless, purposes gushed fromWashington's spigot, the section of the Higher Education Actof 1965 that authorized funding to improve the skills ofteachers, specialists, and supervisors had few politicalbackers. In the world of federal grants programs, which werealmost never permitted to run out in those days, theEducation Professions Development Act (EPDA) of 1967actually expirednot just the money as a consequence ofunderstandable budget squeezes. but the authority to considergranting funds!years before the ^ost-cutting ReaganAdministration arrived in Washington. The EPDA didn't evengo out with a whimper; except for a small coterie of self-interested project managers, no one in America, including theeducation lobbies, seemed to care. Two U.S. Senate committeestaffers simply decided that the EPDA programs were non-productive boondoggles that deserved extinction. So much forfederal involvement in helping those at the top or middlelevels of education's totem pole.

But the evidence of fat-catting was too thin. EPDA deservedbetter. In 1988, a dozen years after the demise of the EPDAtraining programs anG nearly a decade since the end of the 17-year run of the feisty Teacher Corps, which tried to traineveryone in sight from classroom aides and low-incomeparents to chief state school officers and state legislators,considerable evidence demonstrates that they produced orspurred the careers of some first-class leaders of today. Theprofessional odysseys of some of our best legislators, stateeducation officials, college presidents and deans, schooldistrict superintendents, and an ever-growing cadre ofenergetic and ambitious principals might never have begun, letalone prospered, without these imaginatively designed

%r ..i ..i

THE TRAINING JUMBLE

programs. Reliable statistics are scarce, and the subiect hasquestionable appeal for scholars or journalists. But 7 )of isabundant, especially where black and Hispanic leaders arefinally attaining positions of influence in the late 1980s.Priming them with financial support was a central theme ofEPDA and of other federally-backed efforts of the 1960s andmost of the 1970s, and it has been paying dividendsthroughout the 1980s. Without the thousands of products ofthese admittedly imperfect programs, the majority-minoritygap in educational leadership that persists in the late 1980swould be appreciably wider than it is. An informal survey in1987 disclosed that the norm for Teacher Corps interns of themid- and late 1970s, most of them black or Hispanic, hadbecome an urban principalship and that a significantpercentage of those of the previous decade had moved intopolicy-level status in state agencies and urban school systems.They had paid their dues as teachers for from six to ten years,although a few, like California's gifted Superintendent ofPublic Instruction, Bill Honig, an intern of the early 1970s inSan Francisco, only spent a year or two in the classroom.

Leadership has become a catchword, but it is not yet a fad.Lamentably, catchwords seldom stimulate financial support;fads get dollars, if only for a short time. And dollars forpreparing education's future high brass are in short supply,particularly in state and local budgets. When support doesmaterialize, often as in-kind in-service days, it invariablyrepresents a low pilority in the spending package and isamong the first items to be shed in negotiations. Sometimes thisitem is inserted into budgets for exactly that purposeas apotential early cull. It lacks glamour, and only the best-paidemployees in the system bother to fight, usually desultorily, forit. Foundations have helped, but their support leveled off inthe 1970s, and corporations have only occasionallyunderwritten leadership development for education.

If state and local monies are not available and externalsources are undependable, then where is the iiikily I backingfor systematic, reasonably comprehensive leadership trainingfor education's leaders? For advocates of an infoi flieddecision-making corps, the answer is grim: nowhere, at leastnot in respectable amounts from any easily identifiable source.In nearly all other fields, the question would ha% c little reality.The profit-making business sector automatically takes care ofthe staff development needs of its own at all levels of theorganization, while self-employed professionals routinelywrite training off as a legitimate business outlay (after 40years in the profession, the writer' dentist still devotes two

r0

. . . dollars forpreparingeducation's futurehigh brass ie inshort supply,particularly instate and localbudgets.

49

days monthly to advanced trairing.) For reasons that demandrespect, relatively few educational policy-makers would go farout of pocket for this purpose. As salaried governmentworkers or elected officials, they are comfortable in the b --efthat their interests are the community's. If the community theyserve fails to provide or underwrite a service, then thatservice, however , 'tal it ma appear to be, must go by theboard. It should suffice t' At these offirials and seniorfunctionaries give countless unpaid night and weekend hoursto their work, that many neglect their families and personallives, and that, as primary providers of one of society's basicneeds, they are expected to work for fewer and smallerrewards than other comparable members of that society

8 THE TEACHINGIMPERATIVE

Where ar the people who can make good things happenin the schools? How can they be spotted, recruited, and

nurtured? Will public service in general and education inparticular ever be able to compete for the nation's top talent?And once in the loop, will the best remain and grow?

If the nearly complete record of the 1980s yields us ableclues, and the observations of some of education's leadingpunoits and publicists merit any respect, then the largerprospect t orders on dismal. According to the well-publicized22nd annual survey of incoming college freshmen conductedby the American Council on Education (ACE) and the HigherEducation Research Institute of the University of California atLos Angeles (UCLA), over 70 percent of 1987's entering first-year -tudents believed that "a key reason to attend collegewa J make money,' " and only 39 percent professed seriousint....!sted in developing "a meaningful philosophy of life."'These assertions by an extraordinarily large and broadly-based sample (209,627 students at 390 two- and four-yearinstitutions) contrasted vividly with the returns from identicalquestions from earlier years. In 1966, for example, 83 percentdeemed it an "essential or very important" goal to have wife'sphilosophy, while in 1970 "being well off financially" was a keygoal of only 39 percent. In other words, a nearly total flip-flop.Whatever other trends or characteristics these datademonstrate, they do not herald the guaranteed arrival in thejob markets of the ear!!! 1990s of a sizeable cadre of high-caliber, human service-oriented young people.

Bluntly stated, public service went out of fash )11 in the1980s as a serious career option for most of the nation's bestand brightest. In one recruiting season in the mid-1980s, torecycle a well-known example, half of the graduaang class atYale University applied for employment as investment bankerswith one New York firm reputed to offer its new professionalssuperb opportunities to strike it rich while still very young.Mulling over the ACE-UCLA findings, syndicated columnistHaynes Johnson asked, "Who is going to tend to the nation'sbusiness, and how will that business be done?" if "whatmatters most to the great majority is not public business but

Bluntly stated,public servicewent out offashion in the1980s as a seriouscareer option formost of thenation's best andbrightest.

51

W110 RrNS 01 R tit 11001S

Mary Hatu'ood Futrell:Moving the Pushmi-Pullyu Machine

The ,...,,,, i.:,,..a,, ,,,,,..,,.0....,..k, ,11(' ,,taggel mg I St;million membeis, of \ limn I .") million ale teacher, and S5.000 :Ile

elected Inuldnig I epresentatn, es The Assot Litton ha:, 10,000 ( 011111111114,

and goveriung botiols, 8,(1110 olii,, delegates at its national I onvention, motethan 1,00(1 members (also knoA II ii, \ f)teN V11111,1111111(',,) pct LS

Coin,fressional district, tied an annual national budget ot ',I IS million It isthe largest and st ronge.,1 lahiq mum, III the eutititt. along , it II its ,-)2affiliates, the NEA spends mime titan i,100 niillion at :,,earl and emplos 3,500people. Founded before the CR il kVai. it is a lundamental force in Americanlife.

'he NEA constituency thin' s libetally and at ts «Hewn ittivel Sometimesit nioves like a herd of (Ali:lusted elephants lint hen its polideimis,thickly ittered demo( tail( tear, (math- ittyslt to alkalll'(' all l',11(' 1110result,, can be awe,onie, tot the iitune of the N.1 game is pincerrywr Never wasthis more cleat ly illustrated than in Ut7(i \ hen the Cartel Administiat ioncalled ever political chit it until nuoster 10 pet ',Had(' the t'ongre,,,, to-.wale the I'S DePallIl)elll 01 Education th it candidate ('alter hadpromised the NEA in the 19717 election :\ dozen year, later, the stakes aleeven lughei 110v, Nit N EA elect., to oltuy the flans( endent 1-0,1ue,, 01 schoolImprovement and the plot -0,1011,1h/tut Ion of teaching 1, ill linpoitiunit :diet tthe nallon's Niue:Ilion:11 Intuit,

At the helm of the \ EA ,titre fos'; st a 11(1., I/1100 tetra 1)1(',1(11111 11,111

1111\100(1 C111 cell, by till odd-, the liu ...4 1.11m, ii. inuNt e \ lieu ieneed, and mostfuture-ot tented leader 111114 rill \ l':\ 111%,101 \ ,\ \ e11,111 ,I( 11\ 1.,1 01 111(' NEAvars in Virginia, Fun ell ha, been a Ironic oft the national NE,1 scene ,,,InceLew. lug her po,st as a 1111',Illes-, 1(',1( 11(1 111 \lc\111(111,1 III 1'178 to oecoune thefull -time (.1(41(41 NU:A ,..(I ict,10, Itc,i,quei It thew be no doubt about NI,,Futrell Like the ot gaol, it ion .,lic head-, ,he oil ,,oaitte..., i lout andcommitment and doe., 1.01 he,attute 10 11,,o (11(.111 &Hi\ alai 0'111110, 0111W111111 01 11('I organization-, 111enibei ,.., and poll( ie., She I epeatedly lashedout at the lietugan .,1(liniiiiTh dhoti lot neglecting the ,,u pool, anti ti mg tosolve edocation.,, pi oblenv, v It h .1 gm( k quip ()I Ii It' adage Not to heoutdone, 1)re,,ident Neagaii al ('Heil the \E.1 of li ightening andbram,ashing sell( ioit hildi en and :-.' . ei al \ of E11111 at It III 1 len I lel I ( hat gedit \,1, 7th tesisinig e\ el 11()fili,,IfIl!, and ,agnal, ant 111)/ Iii Iii the ,,t;i1(.,,

THE Tr;ACIIING IMPERATIVE

Yet in 1980 Reagan received 45 percent of the votes of NEA's members and,even after eviscerating the federal presence in education in his fii.-4 term, hegarnered 41 percent in 1984. Among its many other prominent features, theNEA is pluralistic.

As a high-level NEA insider for more than a decade, President Futrellunderstands the limitations of the cumbersome but quintessentiallydemocratic body she heads. Her principal tasks in her third term are notmerely organizational or managerial. She must translate the will of nearlytwo million educators into an acceptable platform that will respond to boththe intertwined bread-and-butter concerns of the country's organizedteachers and the national consensus for sweeping school reform. The NEApolicy ledger is not yet balanced. Teacher salaries doubled to a $26,704national average in a decade, but Futrell points out that the leal increaseafter inflation was but 6.5 percent. Although NEA locals in such key statesas California and Florida are deeply involved in teacher-centered reformssuch as career ladders, merit pay, and master-teacher programs, NEA policyhas been to oppose most measures that differentiate among teachers. As amember of the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession (alongwith Albert Shanker, her brilliant opposite number in the smaller but morerisk-prone American Federation of Teachers), Futrell appended a list ofreservations to its landmark final report that reinforced the NEAs blandlyconservative image. At the 1987 convention, however, she persuaded thedelegates to back the National Board for Professional Teaching Standardswhich the Carnegie group established the following year, even though theNEA has long preferred state standards boards. Earlier, she had nudged theunion to accept testing of new teachersa dramatic reversal of atenaciously-held NEA policy.

The National Education Association takes few risks. Its reputation in the1980s is as a reactive rather than a venturesome presence. It values themeasured response based on sound research. As her union confronts thetwin demands of effective representation and rapid professionalization,Mary Hatwood Futrell grapples with some of the stickiest choices anyAmerican educational leader faces Parts of the organization are charginginto the 21st century, promoting top-to-bottom changes in him s( hools arerun, while others are living contentedly in a 1950s world of all-white DaisyAcres schools in the Wistful Vista suburbs of Middle America. Bennett saidthat the NEA represents tne "status quo mcaraate Futrell-knows that hewas wrong, but proving it icinams one of the toughest tasks in Americaneducation.

rl L 5:i


. . . rapideconomicgratification,access to theheavy action, and. . . life in the fastlane will remainthe dominantpersonal themesof . . . youthfulhigh achievers.

54

private gain?" Even while salaries and benefits in most publicjurisdictions mount to respectable levels, the attractions ofcompeting fields outstrip them in a glaringly uneven race.Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul A. Volcker, whobecame the unsalaried Chairnian of the National Commissionon the Public Service upon leaving government, noted in aspeech, "The idea that we can settle for mediocrity in ourpublic services would, in time, become an invitation tomediocrity as a nation ... Somewhere it is written: The bestshall serve the state.' I don't care whether that sentiment evergets chiseled in stone. But I do think we all should care that itbe part of the American ethic and that we make it possible forthe sentiment to be a reality."

public service exerts a pull in any di:ection, it is towardstate and local government where, according to Volcker andcountless others, the immediacy of live. here-and-now issuesstill attracts well-motivated recent college graduates. Thetrend was especially pronounced during a decade malaiseand retrenchment throughout federal Washington, wheregovernment was the problem, not the solution, according tothe departed Reagan Administration. Slowly but possibly notsin eiy, a scattered group of professional and graduate schoolsbegan in the mid-1980s to help alumni(ae) who chose thepublic career route. By mid-1987 approximately 20 loan-deferment and forgiveness programs had taken root at someof the nation's best-known universities.' Buttressing thisdeveloping consciousness were other signs of encouragementfor public service: the creation in 1986 of Campus Compact, acoalition of 120 college and university presidents committedto creating public service opportunities for their students, anddata from the ACE-UCLA survey of 1986's freshmen (thequestion was omitted for 1987) that nearly 70 percent claimedto have performed volunteer service during the previous year.

But these programs offer only scattered and unjustifiableindications that youthful blue-chip talent may choose publicinterest careers. The quest for rapid economic gratification,access to the heavy action, particularly in the newer, fast-growing fields, and the seductions of life in the fast lane willremain the dominant personal themes of many, possibly most,youthful high-achievers. For every young careerist who hadbecome disillusioned with the rat race and had exchanged ahigh-paying, high-powered job for the uncertainties andintangible rewards of good works or social reform,' countlessothers were jostling for position as a potential successor.

Education at its various levelselementary-secondary,higher, adult, job-oriented training and retraininghas

r

TPE TEACHING IMPERATIVE

become the largest employer in the United States. It costsmore than any other human services field and employs themost people. Moreover, it affects the largest proportion of thepopulation (for all practical purposes, close to 100 percent, forperiods ranging up to 20 years) and, unlike any other, is bothfree and compulsory until the mid- or upper teens, adevastating combination. Its pervasiveness in national life istoo obvious to explain or analyze; its distinctive impact andcharacteristics are embedded in our collective nationalcharacter. Of the public services, only health and the militarycan compete in cost and numbers, but, except in times ofcrisis, the military influence on the attitudes and behavior ofAmericans is slight and usually of short duration. Yet wetraditionally have known and understood who our militaryleaders are and how they are likely to think about any matterwithin their domain. We know where they come from. Theenlisted troops they command are the products of a broadlyrepresentative American cross-section with diversemotivations: job security and advancement, training andeconomic benefits for later life, desire for travel andadventure, patriotism. The best of their future leaders havesurmounted steep competitive barriers, although very fewhave come through the enlisted ranks, to advance through theservice academies or post-secondary institutions and onto theleadership track. At the summit, flag-level officers havecustomarily combined senior command experience (a spot ofcombat action helps a military career), ability, and highly-focused executive-level training in proportions that usuallymatch up well with their heavy responsibilities. The process isusually called card-punching.

In education, the path to the front office, if not to large-scalepolicy responsibility, is simple and even more clearly marked,especially in one particular. It is virtually obligatory that thefuture principal, supervisor, or superintendent pass through aprofessional apprenticeship as a classroom teacher. Only amicroscopic portion of those in such poststhe stray coach,librarian, counselor, or specialist, for e_amplecan sidestepthis requirement. Sea changes in educational leadership mayhave occurred in the past century, but that single fact of life,which is simultaneously a spur and a bur, remains largelyunchallenged, indeed, readily accepted, throughout theappointive or meritocratic strata of public schooling. It is lollyto contest the healthy proposition that schooling takes placein the classroom and that experience there is matchlesspreparation for those who would lead. But it is equallyludicrous to assume that training and performance as a

CO

It is virtuallyobligatory thatthe futureprincipal,supervisor, orsuperintendentpass through fan]apprenticeship asa classroomteacher.

55


Implicit in all[incentiveprograms] wasan undisguisedpitch t, luresmarter, higher-achievingstudents into theteaching fold . . .IMM=MO

classroom teacher automatically provide the background,tools, and insights a future leader may require. Side-trackingambitious and otherwise capable young professionals withlittle aptitude for teaching into a line of work in which theymay be foredoomed to do poorlyto the detriment of theirstudents and the institutionmay also not be soundpersonnel practice. Despite the manifold attractions andimproving status of teaching as a profession, a minimum ofthree and possibly as many as ten years at it could turn apotentially brilliant future manager/leader away from a fieldbadly in need of that inferior or unwilling teacher's other gifts.

Providentially, the nationwide movement for schoolimprovement may help to ease the choice. Although onlyscattered voices have called for flexible or alternativecredentialling for either teachers or administratorsthe stateof New Jersey in particular and non-public education ingeneral are the best-known exceptionsthe single largestitem in the in-boxes of nearly every reformer, the universallyacknowledged key to unlocking the door to better schoolingin America, is a dramatic upgrading of the profession ofteaching. One after another, the reports on the state ofAmerican education opened with "a chapter of frenziedmetaphors describing the desperate plight" of the schools."With few exceptions, they ultimately discoursed lengthily ontransforming teaching into a truly well-respected profession.Historians of education will record that nearly every state inthe union did or promised to do something concrete to rectifyold wrongs and turn a vastly underappreciated line of workaround to place it on a plane comparable to that of other,more respected professions.

The means to these laudable ends varied from state to stateand from organization to organization, with the reportsoffering a melange of prescriptions including better startingsalaries (they rose, on a national average, roughly six percentin a year to an average of $19,000 for beginning teachers in1987), merit pay, career ladders, flexible career options, stifferrequirements for state certification, pre-service fellowshipsand in-service training, internships and residencies, paidsabbaticals, and countless other incentives and remedies.Implicit in all was an undisguised pitch to lure smarter, higher-achieving students into the teaching fold by offering them amarkedly better deal than their predecessors had received.But those already in the Classroom would also receive the newpackages, usually autoit.atically but in a few states only afterproving their qualifications in standard tests. Typical of thegenre was the thoughtful report of the California Commission

56 C _L.'

THE TEACHING IMPERATIVE

on the Teaching Profession, Who Will Teach our Children?: AStrategy for Improving California's Schools,' which appearedin November 1985 (and may be dead in the water in 1989). Thereport takes a serious lock at the Californians who were thenen route to the classrooms and, ultimately for some, the frontoffices and executive suites of the state's local school systems.One of a small minority of reports on reform that mentionedthe preparation of administrators, Who Will Teach . . .?covered the waterfront. In a noteworthy chapter, "The Story ofa Career," it traced an ideal (or idyllic) odyssey in Leachingfrom the decision of high school student Helen Armstrong tobecome a California teacher through a thoroughly enlighteneduniversity training phase to advancement in a distinguishedcareer, the coveted rank of mentor teacher, and, finally, at age60, active retirement that included a .art -time consultancywith the school system and emeritus status at the localuniversity. In her peak earning years, Ms. Armstrorg's annualsalary would be $68250 in 1985 dollars.

For what it set out to say, the California report cannot befaulted. Nevertheless, the title and the assumptions thatunderlie it are misleading, for the only references to theprocesses of finding and signing up the people whopresumably will carry out thz "strategy for improvingCalifornia's schools" are fleeting and inconclusive. Like manyof the other manifestoes on reformand the Sacramentoreport is one of the top fewWho Will Teach . . .? carefullyavoids comment on the current crop of teachers who aredestined to remain in the schools for another decade or more.Instead, it analyzes numbers and the generic problem ofrecruitment, and issues a bland call for a better class ofteacher:

"Thousands of people who never before consideredbecoming a teacher must now be persuaded to enterteaching as a career.""The challenge is not simply to find the needed number ofteachers. The challenge is to place highly qualified,trained, and motivated teachers in all Californiaclassrooms."

"During teacher shortages in the pastmost recently inthe 1960sstandards were lowered. Many unqualifiedpeople got teaching jobs and gained tenure. This time,California must halt that reflex response.""Education in the 1980s and 1990s must bid for new talentin an increasingly competitive labor market. DespiteCalifornia's best efforts to make teaching a more

62 57


in none of theappeals totomorrow'steaching force didthe 'restructurers'hint that recruitscould aspire to alife beyond theclassroom.

attractive profession, this competition will makerecruiting new teachers more and more difficult."

By the late 1980s, this 1985 appeal had become a nearlynational norm. Less than a year later, it was to acquire addedlegitimacy when the Carnegie Forum on Education and theEconomy's landmark A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21stCentury powerfully reiterated the overpowering need to raisethe standards of our teachers through a comprehensiverestructuring (a favorite word in reform jargon) of schoolsand the teaching profession.' Throughout the Carnegie andCalifornia reports as well as 7bmorrow's Teachers: A Report ofthe Holmes Group of deans of high-status schools ofeducation and others,' one of several key purposes isubiquitous: to persuade bright and caring young people toenter a grossly underrated field that was supposedly toundergo a thoroughgoing rebuilding and that would offer itstalented newcomers greatly elihanced substantive and psychicrewards. These would embrace such once unimaginablepossibilities as concrete involvement in running the schoolsand designing curricula.

So went the prevailing policy wisdom of the morethoughtful reformers. But their consensus does notautomatically extend beyond the classroom and the teacher'slounge. Elevating the status of teaching and teachers wasbecoming a self-contained goal. Laudable and long-overdue, itwas also a central force in the first flush of school reform butnot necessarily in the far less orderly universe of educationalgovernance. In none of the appeals to tomorrow's potentialteaching force did the "restructurers" hint that recruits couldaspire to a life in education beyond the classroom. Once acarpenter always a carpenter, albeit a more privileged onewith better tools, a heftier pay check, and a voice in thebuilding contractor's decisions at the site. Working conditionscould improve, and teacher power could become atranscendent force, but something was still missing. No onewas publicly viewing the presumably improved aspirants asfuture principals, supervisors, or superintendents with big-ticket executive authority in their new field. It seemed tosuffice that teacher-focused incentives would keep themcontent and creatively effective as their teaching careersunfolded. The satisfactions Helen Armstrong found in a richlyvaried 35-year professional teaching career were to becomeavailable to a new generation of American teachers. And thatwould be plenty good enough for them.

Education's pitch to revitalize its instructional corps will

58 Cti


doubtless bear early fruit. It comes during an advantageousconvergence of the demographic currents in the field. Itresponds to unspoken but barely hidden impulses of manyyoung people to look beyond saturation-level materialsuccess. It enables capable and caring young people to escapewith dignity what many consider to be the unholyentrapments of technology. And it serves to remind job-seekers that the recently expanded perquisites of the field arenot all that is good about it. Among the attractions of teachingin the vast majority of school districts in America areimproving salaries and professional advancementopportunities, excellent health and retirement benefits, strongsupport from unions or professional organizations,exceptionally liberal vacation policies including eight- to ten-week summer hiatuses, no weekend and only occasionalcompulsory evening work (beyond the paper-correcting,lesson-preparing, and other duties that have traditionallyinterfered with the "free" time of teachers but which may beno more onerous than those of many other professions), and astimulating, people-oriented ambiance that few specialties incorporate America can match. And in some sections of thecountry, as well as in such authoritative pronouncements as ANation Prepared, the first signs of serious control of schoolbuildings by teachers, and not full-time administrators, werebeginning to appear. Small wonder that larger numbers ofhigher-quality applicants, including a growing coterie ofcareer-switchers and retirees, were beginning to chooseteaching even though most knew that the 35-hour work weekand the 38-week work year were becoming relics of anidealized past, and that the teaching force of 1988 was "notonly 'dispirited' but less empowered than it was five yearsago"I 1

What kinds of future teachers were beginning to enter apipeline that would also channel humanpower into education'spolicy levels? Do they wear the gloss of the best and thebrightest? Or were they merely the best and brightest whohappened to be available after the more lucrative fields hadcompleted their recruiting and weeding?

To put it bluntly, the teaching rookies of the late 1980snumbered few who might have rejected Rhodes scholanthipsor chosen schoolteaching over neurology or internationalfinance. To quote a 1987 report of the American Association ofColleges for Teacher Education (AACTE):

"Education students can be described accurately as 'asolid B.' Upon graduation they have cumulative grade

C

... in somesections of thecountry . . . thefirst signs ofserious controlby teachers, andnot full-timeadministrators,were beginning toappear.

59


INlim... the teachingrookies of thelate 1980snumbered fewwho might haverejected Rhodesscholarships orchosenschoolteachingover neurology orinternationalfinance.

point averages in the 3.0 range, and similar averages intheir academic major as well. They achieve slightly highergrades in their Education courses. Education studentsalso have nearly a 3.0 average in their general liberal artscourses,which are prerequisite to entry into teacherpreparation programs.The data that are available support the conclusion that

prospective teachers are college students of averageverbal and math abilities, as indicated by the average SATmath scores of 475 to 509 and SAT verbal scores of 451 to476... The typical teacher education student is in the topthird of his or her high school graduating class."12

Unfortunately, these unimpressive statistics are sittingducks. They portray neither leaders in the making nor the rawmaterial of the high-grade teachers America's schools musthave. Rather, they describe a group of college students whowould have been marginal academic achievers 30 years earlierwhen far fewer high school graduates attended college,admission standards and grading were tougher, and corecurriculum requirements sometimes defeated even the beststudents. Undeniably well-motivated (90 percent cited"helping children grow and learn" as a reason for becomingteachers), tomorrow's teachers nevertheless showed "littleinterest in teaching handicapped children, low-incomechildren, and the child of low ability" Three-fourths of themwaned "a traditional classroom" in "a traditional school" in "amiddle-income neighborhood" with "children of averageability"in other words, a repetition of their own schoolexperience, with one posskhle exception: The new teachersprobably would not be as good as their predecessors. "Fromthe data," the AACTE report continued, "it would appear thatinner-city schools will have trouble finding teachers. Eighty-two percent ... indicated that they prefer to teach in rural orsuburban environments. Only 18 percent, given the choice,would opt for urban areas, and most of those would prefercities under 500,000. Less than four percent of the studentsindicated that they would prefer a major urban area for theirfirst teaching position. "'''

If their reactions are similar to those of their immediatepredecessors, those in the classroom today, these futureteachers will probably like their work. According to a surveybased on field work with a sample of over 1,000 teachers inMay and June 1987, "The proportion of teachers saying theyare satisfied with their job has risen by a significant fourpercentage points from 81 percent (1986) to 85 percent (1987).

60 6 5


And the proportion of teachers saying they are likely to leavethe profession during the next five years has dropped by aboutfive percent, from 27 to 22 percent." Moreover, The AmericanThacker 1987 points out, teachers with fewer than five years'experience showed the largest jump in morale over theprevious year, and "are now considerably less likely thanformerly to think they will leave the profession within thenext five years."" And in the fall of 1987, only a few monthsafter these data were collected, the ACE-UCLA surveyrevealed that even in a "me-me" decade that made the 1970sseem like an era of unbridled altruism, over eight percent ofincoming college freshmen leaned toward careers in teachingas compared to 4.7 percent in 1982.1'

These are mixed signs. More people want to teach, or saythey do, but they may not be anything like the best that ouruniversities have to offer. The implications for producing atop-flight crop of in-house leadersprincipals, supervisorsand front-office professional staffers, superintendents, andsenior state officialsare unclear. But they cannot befavorable. Today's 18- to 24-year-old age group is smaller andarguably less well educated than its predecessors. Within thisgroup lurks a powerful time bomb: the pronounced absence offuture male teachers. If cw rent trends continue, fewer thanone in ten of the teachers of the 1990s, possibly as few as fivepercent, will be men. And in a world of greatly expandedbusiness and professional opportunities for women, the poolof first-class female teachers of the future threatens to be bothshallow and of uncertain quality. Even the direct language ofthe California report on tomorrow's teachers"As moreprofessional career opportunities become available to women,education can no longer count on recruiting the best andbrightest women as teachers " "' underestimated what mayprove to be the steepest barrier to getting qualified womeninto high-level posts in the schools. Nearly the same caveatapplies to members of minority groups, who once flocked tothe schoolroom but now gravitate to business and non-teaching careers where doors to the highes, levels ofexecutive responsibility may still be shut to them but whereopportunities for handsome incomes, professionaldevelopment, and career mobility are gererally nearby. Fewwould want to be reminded that their understandablereluctance to take on a teaching career and an eventualposition of leadership in the schools may be deprivingtomorrow's minority group students of the role models somany desperately need.

Virtually identical obstacles deter the schools from finding

cc

More peoplewant to teach, orsay they do, butthey may not beanything like thebest that ouruniversities haveto offer.

61


Terrel H. Bell: The Educationist as Top Fed

Few trained educators have touched more bases than has Terrel H. "Ted"Bell. Teacher, principal, superintendent, university professor, chief state

school officer, U.S. Commissioner of Education, and U.S. Secretary ofEducation (1981-85), he is the successful product of e ystem he has vowedto change, an Ed.D-holding educationist to the core. 1.1s resume ineducation is roughly comparable to that of George Bush, a Bell icon, inpolitics. It groans under the weight of conventional Jobs, books, andassociations. His card has been punched in all the right places.

Personable and grandfatherly, Ted Bell blends smoothly into a crowd anddefers easily to more glamorous counterparts In separate incarnations inWashington in the Nixon and Ford years, he got along by piing along. Amoderate Republican who understood where Congressional Democratswere coming from, he irritated only the far right fringe elements of his partywhile displaying a sure stroke in the tricky tides of politics along thePotomac. The national associations representing the bulk of education'sspecial interests knew Bell would give them a fair hearing.

By the time Ted Bell came to Washington in 1981 as Ronald Reagan'sSecretary of Education, the signals had switched Democrats and moderateRepublicans were the enemy The bipartisan education coalition in Congresswas about to collapse. The new Administration's agenda for education wasan anti-public education amalgam of such controversial issues as tuition taxcredits, prayer in the schools, and, at the top of the list, the earliest possibleelimination of the hated federal Department of Education. These were notTed Bell's highest priorities. A test of wills between the potent New Rightand a diminutive educationist was inevitable. How Bell managed to remainloyal while leaving much of the Administration's program to the zealots isone of the more fascinating sagas of the Reagan years.

Long before his duty tour as a mid-level Nixon appointee in the early1970s, Bell believed that the federal government had a vital place in nationaleducational policy, not the pivotal role that some of his more liberalcounterparts might have urged, but a unique position from which to developaccurate data for the states and local jurisdictions, help special andunderserved populations, and furnish a forum for airing ethic at ion'snationwide problems. Though he had publicly supported the creation of afederal Department in testimony before Congress in 1979, Bell was preparedto compromise, at least on the surface. At first, he proposed replacing the

C.

1i2


Department with a founlation vaguely akin to the National ScienceFoundation, which would preserve some of the historically importantfederal functions while assigning others to the states and other federalagencies. He did not press his case with enthusiasm. Bell probably knewfrom the start that the Congress would not consent to dismantling anddowngrading education's hard-won cabinet-level status. First Bell and thenthe Administration backed off, and the issue passed into limbo beforedisappearing altogether. Although the Administration consistently treatedthe Department as a dumping ground for ideologues and political hacks,Bell's successor, William J. Bennett, later used the agency as a platform fromwhich to fire criticism at nearly every segment of education (except forprivate schools) and to showcase his political ambitions.

The survival of the Department of Education spurred another key Bellobjective: maintaining the federal education budget at a respectable level.Year after year, the Administration proposed huge slashes, Be1i lo ally butlukewarmly defended them, and the Congress almost autoinatically restoredthe cuts, even adding a billion or two for good measure. If Bell'sperformance appeared to be less than a profile in courage it nonethelesswas effective, for he had achieved permanent, institutional recognition of afederal role in education in the face of powerful odposing forces. This wasmeasurable in hard cash and symbolic presence. As a former statecommissioner for both elementary-secondary and higher education, heknew the true capabilities of the states and understood more clearly thanhis superiors the need for a pipeline of federal dollars to help out.

When education's historians chronicle the 1980s, many will credit Ted Bellwith triggering the school reform movement of that decade. He didn'titwas already under waybut his participation was crucially important Withhis bureaucratic and budgetary battles generally under coffin)l after twostormy, often humiliating, years, the Secretary created the 18-memberNational Commission on Excellence in Education which produced theblockbusting A Nation at Risk of 15183 complete with its "rising tide ofmediocrity" and unabashed assertion that "If an unfriendly foreign powerhad attempted to impose on America the mediocre educationalperformance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act ofwar." Whatever its substantive merits, this document, more than any otherin a 50-foot shelf of reports in the 1980s On school reform, awakened thenation, especially its politicians and editorialists, to the problems of itsschools. It is Ted Bell's legacy

L.,

WRO RUNS OUR S'311001.8

Few [women andminority groupmembers) wantto be remindedthat theirreluctance to takeon . . . aneventual positionof leadership . . .

may be deprivingtomorrow'sminority groupstudents o) therole models somany desperatelyneed.

64

an hiring first-class teachers of mathematics and science, andthose with bilingual skills. J Ace retirees or potential secondcareerists who may be richly qualified to teach tt ese subjects,many who might otherwise want to teach have nee er bothered%, Ai the pedagogical courses that are still the obligatorystaples of teacher training and state certification But,according to a survey of surveys released in 1988, "thepercentage of future teachers majoring in education hasdoubled: from 40 percent in 1966 to 80 percent in 1987... thepercentages ... majoring in the biological sciences, English,history or political science, humanities, fine arts, mathematics,physical sciences, and social science have all declinedsignificantly."17

Long-awaited legislative and administrative actions arefina.4 making a profession of teaching. At the other end of thepipeline, however, the organizational culture of the schoolsremains largely unaffected. Exceptions abound throughout thecountry, but the national norm is probably not appreciablydifferent in 1986 from what it was in 1968. Some futureleaders consider their exposure to the ethos of life in theschools to be an indispensable part of their preparation formanagement and decision-making. Others acquire and neverrelinquish the belief system they find there. Still others comeaway from their four to six years as teachers baffled andunsure e Ictly how schools should run.

The future leader passing through a teaching .-Ai ' %us abusiness that still gets little serious respect and is underconstant scrutiny. The recognition that it is beginning toreceive connotes neither respect or status, only a grudgingacknowledgment from politicians that teachers probablydeserve a better break. In all but a few settings, dailyperformance requirements are stipulated by impersonaloutside authority. Virtually every facet of a teacher's work liferemains closely regulated, in an absolute and literal sense, bythe state. Sometimes beneficent but just as often insensitive oreven cruel, bureaucracy is ubiquitous. Seniority is all butinviolable; rapid advancement based on proven merit is mostlyunknown and is a red flag to teachers' organizations and unionlocals. Many classroom veterans are inspiring mentors whoare also territorial and wedded to the tried and tested.Unsurprisingly, original or creative approaches are officiallydiscouraged when they threaten established practice. Forevery Dade C lunty, Florida, or Rochester, New York, where theschool systems are pioneering some of the most exciting pro-student, pro-teacher developments in American education, 500other school systems are still practicing unthinking


conformity while professing a desire for change. The ofteninsuperable obstacles that still make teaching a dicey andfrustrating occupation, especially in urban America where theneed is the greatest, are richly documented in the Institute forEducational Leadership's Working in Urban .ichools.1'

No less discouraging for young professionals are other allbut immutable facts of life. Books, supplies, and technicalequipment are unevenly available, in poor repair, inferiororall three. Opportunities for pertinent, paid in-service trainingare irregular or non-existent. The idea of private or sharedoffices, or even assigned work places outside of theclassroom, is nearly unthinkable, while the teacher requestingsecretarial assistance or the regular use of a telephone orpersonal computer would be laughed out of the building. InThe Empowerment of Thaciters, Gene Maeroff points out thatteachers are nardly likely to feel that they have much poweror credibility as prof( ',sionals if, as is the case in nearly allurban schools, they are isolated from one another, MU! t punchtime clocks or sign in in log books in the main office, work indrab and dingy surroundings, and suffer other indignities thatare all but unkrur for prcfessional workers outside ofeducation.'

seThe recognitionthat (teaching] isbeginning toreceive connotes

. only agrudgingacknowledgementfrom politiciansthat teachersprobably deservea better break.

65

9 THE INADEQUATEINCUBATORS OFLEADERSHIP

These limitations and deterrents are patently not thefavorite subjects of education's overly criticized schools

(colleges, departments, faculties) of education. Open seasonfor pulverizing these backwaters of the American universitylasts 365 days a year. They get little admiration from anyone,even as they claim to be willing to change. Scarcely mentionedin the decade's accumulation of reports on school refori.., theynevertheless still occupy a vital position in education's questfor self-improvement. If teaching and school administrationare professions, as devotees of reform proclaim they must he,then schools of education must gain the esteem theircounterparts for law, architecture, or medicine take forgranted. Yet Harvard University President Derek Bok echoes astrongly held sentiment in labeling them "faculties relegated tothe margins of the university, fighting for their existence at atime when they should occupy center stage in the nationaleffort to improve our public schools."' Moreover, says Bok,"they are inadequate incubators of leadership for the nation'sschools." Bok's observations are especially dishearteningbecause he pointedly included the Harvard Graduate Schoolof Education, one of the nation's most respected, in hisindictment.

Whether couched in these terms or in the more damagir,.,tones of an observer who labeled them "education's smokinggun,' education schools ai-e widely held to be a frail link inthe chain of educational decision-making. Yet, even aspoliticians and publicists are loath to identity them as acritical force in the profession of education, they remain partof fliat chain. They are still the major point of entry foreducation's future line executives, the principal dispenser ofthe formal learning and legitimation that stamp their laterstatus in the system. To a debatable extent, too, they areorshould bethe producers of much of the knowledge that willequip tomorrow's leaders to assume positions of leadership.Despite doubts as to their competence, even their credibility,education schools remain indispensable.

71

Scarcelymentioned in the. . . reports onschool reform,!schools ofeducation] stilloccupy a vitalposition ineducation's questfor self-improvement.

67

1WHO RUNS OUR SCHOOLSris... educationschools arewidely held to bea frail link in thechain ofeducationaldecision-making.

68

Much of the carping about schools of education asreputable trainers of tomorrow's policy-makers comes fromsome of their most distinguished graduates. In 1987 afoundation-supported National Commission on Excellence inEducational Administration, heavily populated by eminentprofessors in or connected to schools of education, enteredthe fray with a blistering assault on its profession. A classicexample of its genre, Leaders for America's Schools-) fairlyexploded with proposalsliterally dozens of "shoulds" clutterits 38 pagesto establish tougher standards, drum over 60percent of the 500 -plus institutions that train administratorsout of the corps, tighten certification, and involve nearly everysegment of education in training the top people. In otherwords, keep the "best" of what already exists, and, above all,see to it that the self-selected "best" departments ofeducational administration in schools of education remain incharge of the field.

Leads for America's Schools had little quarrel with thecurrent content of leadership training, although, as oneacademic commentator pointed out in Education Week,4presenting leadership as management (and presumably viceversa) had failed for 60 years. "Leadership in education," henoted, "must be rooted in the fundamental enlig itenment ofthought." Regrettably, he detected "more than an echo of antiintellectualism" in the National Commission's report and ageneral preoccupation in the field with "skills" rather thanideas. Some 85 percent of all professors of educationaladministration, he observed, were the "blind he'cs" of theearliest promoters of "scientific management."

The report appeared at a relatively quiet moment in theschool reform movement of the 1980s, an ideal time for publicdiscussion of what the reform literature had inexcusablyoverlooked: how education can set about training the leadersit needs. It failed to spur informed debate, however, as alreadynegative positions hardened, and broad suppor for the reportfailed La develop. Indeed, the critique in Education Week wasmild. More typical was a comment by Willis Hawley,education school dean of Vanderbilt University, that "mostprograms for training scl.00l administrators range in qualityfrom embarrassing to disastrous." Reinforcing this image of afield holding little respect for itself and its graduates was asurvey finding by two scholarly observers that only fourpercent of education's school principals and central officeofficials (including superintendents) bothered to readEducational Administration Quarterly, the professionaljournal of their field.'

THE INADEQUATE INCUBATORS OF LEADERSHIP

When the slippage in the quality of teachers captured publicand political attention in the early 1980s, the body politic ofAmerican education underwent major rumbles andconvulsiolis. Literally hundreds of reports 1 / prestigiouscommissions and thousands of pieces of legislation at thestate level triggered sweeping reconceptualizations about howto prepare and reward classroom teachers. Within four yearsof the publication of the U.S. Government's A Nation at Riskin 1983, education schools were reporting a rejection rate ofroughly 40 percent of the aspirants. Nationally, the report andstrong fol,,w-up actions of the Carnegie Forum on Educationand the Economy, as well PI the involvement of most of thebetter schools of education in the standards-raising work oft.:,e Holmes Group, promised a sharp refocusing and anac ross-the-board upgrading of teacher training.

It is far too early to determine how the reform-orientedsubstance of Carnegie, Holmes, and state-level laws anddirectives will ultimately alter schools of education. Althoughthey have barely grazed the issues of leadership training, somepositive, if indirect, spinoffs appear possible. Raising thequality of the teacher trainees, their curriculum, and theteaching profession itself should in time create a pool oftalented potential leaders with classroom experience who areprepared to deal with the new dimensions of schooling. Butgetting at the tightly controlled departments of educationaladministration in many of the colleges will tax even the mos'enterprising reformers. Staffed by firmly entrenched andtenured faculty, these departments have long been redoubts ofmanagerial theorists, planners, and ex-sup _!rintendents whodeeply r_sent the charges of inadequacy and lack of relevancethat swirl about them. But the charges have substance. Arepresentative cross-section of their productsprincipals,superintendents, and central office professionalsasserted in1987 that their graduate studies had left much to be desired.Only 23 percent found these studies "essential" while even the57 percent who judged them to have been "useful" noted thatthey valued the professional contacts they made duringtraining more highly than they i;:d their course work."

. . . getting at thetightly controlleddepartments ofeducationaladministratial. . . will tux eventhe moatenterprisingreformers.MI

69

10 CHANGING THE MIX

Career-switching is as American as college football. Noother society practices it as diligently or with such gusto

as we do. Some of the least likely, most credential-happyprofessionsarchitecture, medicine, law, engineeringarefair game for people who may have guessed wrong the firsttime around and are prepared for the deprivations andindignities of retraining. In many fields, gifted and matureindividuals simply cross over without breaking stride or losingstatus. Military officers become corporate executives,government officials find new lives as newspaper columnists,athletes are transformed into broadcasters, scientists becomeambassadors. The range of possibilities is almost endless.

School systems are not interested. They practice a peculiarbrand of snobbery within their own family. Professedlydemocratic in most respects, they are slow to acknowledgethat the manifold talents of leadership may be transferable.The persuasive regional sales manager may be an ideal headof a local arts council. And there is no reason to doubt theprospects of the president of a profitable auto partsmanufacturing firm in a new r6le as chief of procurement for alarge metropolitan hospital. But these things do not happen inelementary and secondary education, where school boardsand senior careerists stoutly resist placing outside's in seniorpositions. The democratic process dictates that, whatevertheir qualifications and views regarding education may be.elected representatives call the shots. This political authorityis unchallengeable, and properly so. Equally unchallengeable,though, is the professional belief system of the people'schoices and the salaried executives who carry, out theirmandates. And the:7 are not about to open their doors to non-members of their club.

The issue of second careers in education is far from new, asthe instructive tale of the National Program for EducationalLeadership (NPEL) of the early and mid-1970s reveals. At thecore of this Imaginative effort to inject fresh talent andperspectives into educational leadership was the notion thateffective people from other fields had much to offer theschools. Liberally funded by the then-U.S. Office of Education,NPEL was designed to retool 100 carefully screenedindividuals (62 finally participated during the program's live-

°V 4d 4

. . . school boardsand seniorcareerists stoutlyresist placingoutsiders insenior positions.

71


momm... schoolsystems . . . areunwilling toventure intounknown terrainin scouting fornew talent.

72

year duration) through 18-month reorientation programsbased at seven universities around the nation with Ohio StateUniversity as the flagship sponsor. Participants were notdegree candidates, although they could take courses they andtheir professor-mentors considered appropriate. They spentthe bulk of their time in short, school based assignments,independent and directed research, travel, meetings withpractitioners and experts, and professional conferences. Itwas a total immersion in the schoolhouses, think tanks, andfront offices of educationa nearly seamless transition fromone field to another. The 62 future leaders acquired superbinsights that, by all objective criteria, should have proveduseful to school systems throughout the country.

The schools were not buying. They displayed almost iiiinterest in these dedicated, education-oriented stockbrokers,business managers, ministers, military officers, and journalists.They wanted their own insiders, not retreads from otherendeavors, even though the retreads were successfulprofessionals who had sacrificed nearly certain advancementand financial gain and, more important, were anextraordinarily gifted, combat-ready group of true believers.Too, they came along at a time when education's leadershipwas Al mbling and when service in the public interest stillenjoyed some prestige. A few managed to obtain short-livedposts in school systems, but only one, a former U.S. Armylieutenant colonel (a born winner who could as easily havebecome a corporation president or U.S. Senator) ever becamesuperintendent of a major urban school district. The NPELexperiment attracted almost no public attention and neverbecame even a blip on the educational horizon. But if itproved nothing else, it demonstrated that school systems wereand probably still are unwilling to venture into unknownterrain in scouting for new talent. They feel no need toventure anywhere. For them, tomorrow's executive talent is inthe classroom, teaching the children, or in the front office onthe lower rungs of the managerial ladder.

11 THREE TICKING TIMEBOMBS

The numbers for women, blacks, and Hispanics ineducational leadership are deeply disturbing. However

they are interpreted, the best available projections show aprofile of emerging educational leadership for the 1990s thatwill most emphaticall., not mirror the growing diversity andpluralism of the nation's public school students. Regrettably, itis as predictable as tomorrow's dawn that the upper echelonswill remain heavily white, male, and middle-aged ever as theschool population becomes more than one-third minoritywithin a decade or less. To add to an already unpromisingprospect, some of the few signs of progress, as revealed in theexamples that follow, may be illusory or short-lived.

The status of women in positions of political andeducational clout is typical. They represent 53 percent of ourpopulation, but only three states have women governors, andonly 25 of the 535 Members of the 100th Congress (twoSenators and 23 Representatives) were women. In the statecapitols in 1988, 1,157 of 7,461 legislators (15.5 percent--asharp rise from the 301, or four percent, of 1969), and six ofthe 50 chief state school officers a.e women, while in the 832cities with populations exceeding30,000, the total of femalemayors is 92 (11 percent.)' Some of these totals representimpressive gains, and the statistics for education proper, withwomen holding over 30,000 (31%) of the 97,000-plus schoolboard seats, are encouraging on the surface. But in theschool systems themselves, women hold a bare four percentof the district superintendencies and only slightly more than30 percent of the school principalships. Overall, womenoccupied 26 percent of all school administrative posts iA 1984-85, a rise of but one percent in three years.' Across theeducational street, in higher education, they occupy roughly300 (or 10 percent) of the presidencies of two- and four-yearcollegesbut one-third of the 300 are members of religiousorders, and 29 percent of the total head women's colleges.'

Except in the classroom, where the female teachingpopulation may escalate to well over 90 percent within a fewyears, the influence of women in the schools is neitherpronounced nor equitably distributed. Further diminishing it is

P.)64

. . . educationalleadership for the1990s . . . willemphatically notmirror thegrowing diversityand pluralism ofthe . . . students.

73

WHO RUNS ollt SCHOOLS

Joe Clark: Rambo at the RampartsFor a few months in 1988, the most ( ontroversial educator in Anwricawas a 48-year-old principal of a downtrodden school in one of Nev,

Jersey's pc,orest cities. He was a TIME cm er story, a featured giWst onnational television and radio, and the ruble( t of a forthcoming film. As hefaced possible dismissal for arbitrarily suspending liti students whom hecalled "hoodlums, thugs, and pathological deviants." .Ioe ('lark of EastsideHigh School in Paterson was utterly certain that he had found the goldensecrets to educating inner city children tough, no-appeal discipline:unchallengeable control by an all-powerful, omnipresent administrator, andstrong hands-on encouragement for students who are disposed to learn andbehave. The (laws in Clark's design violate sonic of the most sacred canonsof contemporary pedagoq. He couldn't care less

Joe Clark's confrontational, name-calling style of leadership and humanrelations is badly out of phase in an age of therapy and sensitivity training.Civil libertarians and most educators decry his strong-arm methods. Someassert that he could never get away with them if 1w were not the blackprincipal of a school with a low-achieving, overwhelmingly black and Latinostudent population. But both Ronald Reagan and former Secretary ofEducation William .1. Bennett have sung his praises, and a senior WhiteHouse official offered ('lark a Job it the Paterson Board of Education tiredhim. Nor is membership in Clark's fan club limited to office-holding politic alC011tien at ives lie receives cash contributions from citizens from all walksof hie in all sections of the country. the head of a New Jerscy computersoftware company offered a ten year $1 million package of scholarships forEastside students to pursue computer-related studies in collegeoncondition that ('lark remain at his post. And Ernest L. Boyer, the IA idelyrespected head of the Carnegie Foundation fit the Advancement ofTea( ping and the author of High .School. caul, %1(, Clark is sending out asignal about the need to clean up th- climate Who c an quaricl vith thatMost school critic s couldn't stuff tie a %%eck in those institutions. So I say.tw,o cheer for Joe Clark ( in the other nand Um troubled

With a bullhorn in ono band and sometimes ;i :;h -iii c h W'illy Mass RigStick baseball bat in the other, Clink storms through the halk%ays of hiss-hool at a pace of 15 miles per dui Ile \ WI ks I he comd of :1.200 studentslike a %oteran ,%aill boss, pausing to otlei help tit one siudent, droppinghomespun maxim', 1(1 ()the! s ("It on ( an «mi end it, ou dll beht` l' it and

71

TintE Bonuts

you can achieve it. "), and proclaiming, according to a TIME cover story, thateverything emanates and ultimates from me." Nothing eQcapes his eye.

Everyoneteacher, student, parent, custodian, front-office workeris fairgame for an intemperate ('lark scolding or burst of affection He has noapparent qualms about insulting a teacher in front of students or using theschool's public address system to invite all virgins to the front office. Hisstudents love "Crazy Joe." His staff isn't always so sure.

Modesty and restraint are absent from the ('lark persona "I'm the star,"he remarks. "There can only be one star." He compares his style to that ofGeneral Patton, who once slapped a hospitalized soldier, and, reports theNew York Times, he denounces "affirmative action, welfare, and lingu.stichocus-pocus' liberals." Ti hundreds of students he has expelled orotherwise managed to drop from Eastsule-300 in one day in 1982, his firstyear as principalwere "leeches and parasites." while some of his teachersare "gutless, spineless, racist bastards." Even his friends get derogatorylabels. The only Board member who voted against disciplining ('lark inJanuary 1988 was "a mere Puerto Rican

Quotable Joe ('lark is in education's front-line trenches or, more precisely,on its field of battle. The full array of urban school and social problemsbesets him every day that he steps into Eastside High School. All are acuteand chronic: drugs. alcohol, lethal weapons. gratuitous violence, dropouts,sexual promiscuity, unhealthy and poorly fed students. pregnancy, truancy,indifference, low staff morale, and, far from last in impact, the dispiritingambiance of academic failure. His statistics are mixed. Although stoles onSAT tests for the minority who take them and on statewide proficiency testsfor ninth-graders at Eastside are rising slowly, they lag far behind those atmost of New Jersey's other schools. Clark has restored sonic ordeischool, and his dominating presence is reassuring to caring parents andstudents But the dropout rate has risen. and the reading scores ofEastsule's seniors art' in the lower thud for the nation

The long-run contribution by Joe 'lark to the national debate ineducation may prole to he lunch weightier than his «dorful performance uiPaterson. lie has spotlighted core issues in urban schools that thepredominantly middle class school reform im,vement Imo shortchangedAnd he has caused us to wonder aloud whether the pie%ailing enlightenedwisdom on democratic or imrticipatory leadership styles is worth five cents

th dangerous classroom and corridors of the Eastside IIighs of thenation


.. the influenceof women in theschools is neitherpronounced norequitablydistributed

the large floating population of education's "significantothers"the overwhelmingly male analysts, commentators,writers, aides, professional reformers, and national associationexecutives whose work often significantly affects educationaldirections.

For black Americans, leadership in American educationremains a distant dream. In 1988 there were no black U.S.Senators, 23 black Representatives, a single cabinet member,no governors, no black chief state school officers (the mostrecent, Wilson Riles of California, was defeated by Bill Honigin a non-partisan election in 1982), 125 out of 15,000 schoolsuperintendents, fewer than 4,000 of 96,000-odd school boardmembers, and roughly five percent of the nation's schoolprincipals. Although some categories are rising, the numbersare unpromising almost across the board. In only one-third ofthe largest 50 cities, where black mayors and superintendentshold office (not always simultaneously), is there anysubstantial degree of black control of the schools, and onlyone of these superintendents, Matthew Prophet of Portland,Oregon, occupied a post in 1988 in a system with apredominantly white school population

Regrettably, these figures for black school leadership mayactually represent a high-water mark, not a launching pad forfurther progress. Many of the trends are wrong, or the rates ofadvancement and accession are far too slow. More blacksuperintendents are taking over city systems, but this ishappening at a time when middle class white studentsconstitute a dwindling minority in urban schools. While moreblack students are graduating from high school, fewer areentering college (although a very small increase occurred inthe 1987-88 school year), and commencement time in 1986saw a 27 percent drop from 1,116 to 820 in the number ofblack scholars receiving doctoratesmore than half of those,(421) in education but only 14 in engineering, 28 in thephysical sciences, and 70 in the humanities. At the same time,professional schoolsmostly in medicine, law, business, anddentistrywere reporting lower black enrollment" Eventhough teaching long ago "became and remained an honorableand revered profession among black Americans," according tothe distinguished historian John Hope Franklin,' wideropportuni.ies in other once-restricted career, professional, andentrepreneurial fields have siphoned off much of the cream ofthe black employment pool. For many, advanced degrees andprofessional training only slow the path to deserved personalsuccess. The relatively large number of successful blackcandidates for doctorates in education may be gratifying, but

THREE TICKING TIME BOMBS

the majority of the 421 were already occupying senior posts mthe schools and were pursuing their doctorates on a part-timebasis. In other words, only a few represented new blood. Andthe entering black teacher is "an increasingly rare commodity,"according to an Education Week account of the extraordinaryefforts of school systems to lure the few who were availablefor the 1988-89 school year into their employ.'

The statistical differences among Latino national origingroups are substantial, and data for the Hispanic population asa whole are c. den misleading, especially since many states donot collect any information on them. But the samediscouraging image of under-representation and crampedpotential for access to the fast track is neverthel2ss obvious.Hispanics occupy fewer than two percent of all elected schoolboard seats (1,116 of 96,000-plus) and only 200-odd ofapproximately 15,000 superintendencies (five of iose in thenation's 44 largest school systems). Their caucus in the 100thCongress numbered 11 voting participants, their 123-memberpresence in state legislatures is nearly microscopic, and onlyone governor, Martinez of Florida, is of Latino stock. Likeblack Americans, and for most of the same reasons, Hispanicsare not flocking to the teaching ranks, and those in educationwho display leadership traits often view education as astepping stone to something else.' At the other end of thescale, moreover, is the unwelcome spectacle of current orfuture Americans who may be well on their way to becomingthe next underclass. Of the three main groups, Cuban-Americans, who number six percent of our Hispanic-originpopulation, achieve at about the same rate as the rest of theAmerican population, but the indicators for the Puerto Rican-(15 percent)-44 percent of families headed by women, 51percent of births outside of marriage, unemployment ratesdouble the national averageconvey a distinctly discouragingpicture. The real question, according to one analyst, revolvesaround the direction that Mexican-Americans, who numbertwo-thirds of all Americans of Latino origin, will take, and thesigns there are inconclusive'

Behind these numbers are equally disheartening socialforces, myths, and institutional and cultural biases, notablyincluding a casual, even negative, federal government stancein the 1980s on equal opportunity and affirmative action.Questions still abound about how long-delayed fairrepresentation can be made achievable across the board ineducation, which is supposed to be the most representative ofour public institutions. Nearly all of the data for women andminority group members show impressive hikes over a 20-year

80

For blackAmericans,leadership inAmericaneducationremains a distantdream.

77


(forHispanics) thesamediscouragingimage of under-representationand crampedpotential foraccess to the fastt r a c k is . . .

obvious.

78

period, but many of the gains are illusory or susceptible tomisinterpretation, and the data do not properly reflect unmetsocial and political needs. The women and minorities whoreport on education, analyze policy, advise governors, runprofessional associations, head reform commissions, or stafflegislative committees (except in the U.S. Congress, normallyno shining example of equal employment opportunity, wherethe level of female staff representation in "soft" areas likeeducation is surprisingly high) constitute an almostinfinitesimal minority. White males rule the roost and are likelyto remain in command for decades to come. At current rates,the climate for a genuinely integrated, or even desegregated,leadership corps in public education is chilly.

This highly charged subject evokes little outrage, publicly orin the corridors of power in education. The communicationsmedia usually applaud the appointment or election of qualifiedfemale or minority group board members, superintendents,and others, but they rarely editorialize on equality ofrepresentation at the top. Nor do politicians make anything ofthe issue. They are preponderantly on record as in favor ofdesegregation at the school level but are relativelyunconcerned about who directs it and other school affairsfrom the front office. It normally suffices to present anattractive education plank in the platform; beyond hoping thatimproving financial rewards will lure better teachers into thefold, the matter of running the enterprise gets little attentionand few prescriptions.

If the quality and composition of the leadership corps wereto become a hot issue (a few financial scandals couldaccomplish that), we would doubtless witness much publichand-wringing, an atmosphere of crisis, and predictablepolitical demagoguery But even the revelation of 1983 that ourdisk tegrating schools had turned us into "a nation at risk"failed to trigger calls to oust the scoundrels who had allowedit to happen We chose instead to blame the teachers. Againstthat background, we are most unlikely to hear clear calls for amore pluralistic or represi.o:dive body of educational policy-framers and managers. Even a federally-funded report of amedia-sax y private educational research firm revealing thatschool administrators were an "insular group" that was out ofstep with the general public drew only a quick flurry of mediaattention before passing into history."

Each of the three underrepresented groups has its own wishlist for expanding its influence. Except where theyaccidentally intersect or overlap, as in the ease of black andLatino women aspirants to leadership, they are largely

THREE TICKING TIME L3MBS

independent of one another and show little inclination tocollaborate. Yet certain propositions and premises suggest aneed for shared understandings on matters of power andleadership:

The fact of gender or minority status may still command(and deserve) special proactive legislative status, but theAni,..can public in the late 1980s does not aggressivelyback compulsory affirmative action, a policy that has notelicited large outpourings of popular support in any era.Whatever the political ambiance in the 1990s. there willbe fewer bargain-rate rides to the top. Women andminority group members will have to earn theiradvancement the old-fashioned wayby working for it,often against odds that will be stacked against themwithout the actively enforced protection of governmentaland judicial policy. Once on the ladder, though, theirprogress could be rapid because those in command aresharply attentive to the need for the diversity, specialabilities, and political pluses that the newcomers u illbring to their leadership positions.The electoral system is the ultimate, unrivaled source ofreal power, but women and minority group members useit far less adroitly than do middle-aged white males. Withmonuknental exceptions, of course, they have displayedinadequate mastery of fund-raising, campaign tactics,issue-framing, coalition-forming, and the use of thecommunications media. The Presidential primarycampaign ci the Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1487 and 1988demo..strated, for the first time in this century, thatminority group members (and many other nominal stay-at-homes) will vote in very large numbers when they haveissues and candidates that matter to them. This lessoncan be applied across all political levels, including that oflocal school hoard elections, but the politicians ofeducation, including women. blacks, and Latinos, appeardisinclined to act on it. A major shame of Americanpolitics is the incredibly low turnout sometimes insingle digitsfor elections to school offices in odd ornon-Presidential election years.The largely dormant public service ethic is slowlyreemerging in America. With it may come a less intensenational preoccupation with high material reward andessentially selfish concerns. It may be far too soon todivert talented women, blacks, and Hispanics intoeducation from the high-paying careers in investmentbanking and computer design that understandably attract

C.U 4,,

. . . the climatefor a genuinelyintegrated, orevendesegregated,leadership corpsin publiceducation ischilly.

79


Targeted effortsto help mid-careerprofessionals tocompensate for. . . social oracademicdeficiencies mayhave lost 5othlustre andsrgency.

80

them at a time of still-expanding opportunity, but it is nottco ea rly to plant the right seeds in the minds of thosewho ftdow. Unless the teaching requiremeat fo.. futurecareer leaders is :-Iiminaied or relaxed, though, prospectsfor recruiting top-flight young wc nen and minorrles intothe field will remain chancy. It is time for decision-makersto remove this millstone 2nd to capitalize on the possiblereadiness ..f some excellent young people to enter themanagerial and leadership ranks of education. At aminimum, each new recruit will bring 16 years of directclassroom experience to the job. That should suffice.Single-shot leadership development programs forIninorities and/or women warrant consideration, but notas most are now constituted. Those supported by theFord, Danforth, Kellogg, and Rockefeller Foundaticins,among others, from the 1950s to the 1980s have proved tobe useful, even career-enhancing, regimens for mostparticipants. But the signals and climate have changed.Targeted efforts to help mid-career professionals tocompensate for earlier social or academic deficienciesmay have lost both lustre and urgency. These programshave tended to select preordained winners who wouldprobably advance very nicely on their own, while theyoverlook late bloomers and talented individuals, oftenspecialists who are not on the leadership track, withstrong but less obvious leadership gifts. Too, the widelypraised networks that emerge from such associations caneasily evolve into exclusionary employment central,based on shared experience or personal friendsh'.' herthan on demonstrated professional ability or promise.Such programs would have relevance in the 1990s werethey to provide primarily skill- and issa-orientedinservice curricula for worthy mid-careerists am: did notimplicitly preselect tomorrow's leaders from within theirranks.

once past these and other propositions about readyingwomen and minority group members for the top slots ineducation, it is incumbent upon those now in power to platethe issue on their high-priority watch list. The danger is nk,:,that these groups will create a ruckusschool people seldomrock boatsbut that girls and boys, particularly those withdark skin and/or Hispanic names, may pass into adolescenceand beyond believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that .)

most of the prevailing wisdom about education (and life)comes from the white women who teach them and the whitemen who boss the teachers, (b) Zhe smartest people they

THREE TICKING TIME BOMBS

know or have heard about do not work in the schools, and (c)there must be somettl'Aig wrong in a system that proclaimsdemocratic beliefs but does not give Mrs. Herrera or Mr.Washington a shot at running it.

81

A DOZENPROPOSITIONS

We live in an untidy world in which almost nothing is aswe think it should be. Even our supposedly common

beliefs about schooling and the changes it must undergo aresuspiciously vulnerable. If we can't agree on the purposes andfunctional modes of the schools in our many-sideddemocracythe curious combination of beating out whileemulating Japan seemed to dominate in the second ReaganAdministrationhow can we reach consensus on preparingpeople of promise to run them? Short answer: We can't andprobably shouldn't.

No single correct rite of passage for tomorrow's leadersexists. Nor should it. To fashion a master set of attitudes andqualifications as the primary basis for certifying the leadershipcadres of education in 50 states and more than 13,500 schooldistricts is to engage in fanciful, possibly mischievous,thinking.

History and some of the current realities described earliernonetheless suggest a usable context for thinking aboutfinding and preparing leaders for the 1990s and beyond. Someof the premises and propositions in this backdrop have beenaround, if under-used, for a long time, while others stem fromgradually accumulating evidence from outside of education. Afew are distillations of state-of-the-art wisdom, which, in thecase of leadership preparation in education, is a widelydiffused collection of maxims, field experience, and researchfindings.

1. Leadership Can Be Learned. John Gardner Jays soor at least that much of it can be developed in and byindividuals) With its array of war college.; and senior trainingregimens, the military services emphatically agree. The mostsuccessful 1orge corporations spot and prepare theirleadership eiiies through intensive in-hous? indoctrination andrarely hesitate to send them out for expensive but profitablefine-tuning at places like the Center for Creative Leadership(which every ..-irigadier general in the U.S. Army also attends).The list of believers is endless. The proposition that leadershipis not simply a natural gift, that its totality includes countlessother qui.lities and circumstances, has gained acceptance

83

WHO R1UNS OlUR SCHOOLS

nearly everywhere. Some of the unlikeliest, least "natural"leaders function brilliantly at the helms of huge organizations.They have somehow learned what leadership is and how to doit.

2. It Can Also Be Experienced and Observed. We learnby imitatiohof bosses and mentors (sometimes, but notalways, the same person). peers, opponents, literature,dramaand by reading htory and biography. Thomas Cronin,a noted authority on leadership and the Presidency,emphasizes learning from those who make things happen andfrom reading biographies of negative leaders as well as ofthose a future leader would wit to emulate? "Plutarch'sLives," says Cronin, "would be a good place to start." One ofthe most brilliant military leaders in our history "the GI'sgeneral," Omar Bradley, urgcd senior army officers not todiscount experience because "judgment comes fromexperience and experience comes from bad judgment." Noamount of evening courses in educational administration canreplace the insights gained from a difficult encounter with ahostile school board or parent group.

3. Leadership Training Needs a Higher Priority. Thelower the ranking of leadership training on the public agenda,the worse it will be for our schools. The case is overwhelming.No enterprise can prosper, or even function adequately,withe informed, ever-improving leaders. In the face of theharshest Department of State budget slashes since World WarH, Secretary George Shultz simply refused in 1987 to acceptcuts in the Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy, the year-long pre-Ambassadorial experience a small group of the ForeignService's best diplomats undergo' Every Secretary of Defenseand military service chief since World War II has held firmwhen economy-minded legislators waved a threatening fingerat the defense and war colleges where their soon-to-be flag-rank officers prepare for flag-level responsibility. Good trainingsaves lives and money. Only a simple-minded corporationpresident would keep a fast-track executive from obtainingadvanced trainingor retraning intended to enhance thecompany's competence and profits. Again, education comes upwoefully short. Leadership training not only has no priorityand appears in almost no budgets; except for two-or three-daysingle-issue institutes or seminars (school budgets customarilypermit one per year per school executive, often in conjunctionwith national professional conventions), it does not exist Theidea of a year-long, nationwide executive training program onthe military or diplomatic model would doubtless go nowherein today's political climate. Yet it clearly warrants high-level

84

A DOZEN PROPOSITIONS

backing and early action by governments, foundations, andprivate donors.

4. Credentials Do Not Automatically ConferCompetence. In its 1987 manifesto on preparing schoolleaders, the National Commission on Excellence ,nEducational Administration urged policy-makers to createadministrative licensure boards with tough standards andrecommended the establishment of a National Policy Boardon Educational Administration` measures that couldstraightjacket a sector of education that desperately needsintellectual breathing space, fresh blood, and the existentialexperience of day-to-day practitioners rather than the often-irrelevant bromides of theoreticians and professionalstandards-setters. According to Richard Boyatzis, experienceacross a spectrum of professions demonstrates that when agroup institutes a credentialling process, whether throughlicensing or requirements for advanced degrees, to enforcep:ofessional standards, there are two usual consequences: theexclusion of certain groups, and the establishment ofmediocre standards. Credentialed people, Boyatzis found, areoften those who are good at studying.' This enviable skill ism.. necessarily transferable to excellence, or even adequacy,in leadership. The subject of credentialling is explosive. Theguardians of the faith are strong, but they need shaking up.

5. Teaching Experience Is Useful But Not Necessary.This proposition cannot be overemphasized. Of the 275-oddowners, presidents and general managers of ma Jr leaguefrP.nchises in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey i , 1988,rz,.wer than 20 percent had ever been professional, let alonemajor league, athletes before assuming top leadershippositions. It is probably an equally safe bet th't similar oreven more lopsided odds would prevail in determining thepercentage of Army generals who had been infantry footsoldiers or corporation presidents with experience asassembly line workers or foremen. And the same ratio of!eaders as former troopers would doubtless hold for mostother fields. A growing number of policy analysts are askingwhether school administrators need to have had extendedexperience as teachers. They see few compelling reasons whyana believe that eliminating or a:, least greatly reducing thisvirtually obligatory resume item would probably spur therecruitment of a broader variety of higher-quality candidatesinto school administration. They may well be right.

6. Colleges and Universities Can't Train Leaders. Theycan inform potential leaders. They can train managers,administrators, and technical chiefs. They can provide a

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'36

superior respite for beleaguered leaders and matchlessresources for them to take a relaxed and reasoned look atthemselves and the issueswitness Michael Dukakis atHarvard, 1979-83. And they are chock-a-block full of gurus,brain-trusters, and beneficent mentors. But except for ahandful of outstanding thinkers and a scattering of formercorporation or government officials turned academics,professors know little about practical leadership, and theemphasis of most of them on reading, writing, and listening tolectures or holding forth in clubby seminars as thecenterpieces of leadership development may be badlymisplaced. Leaders should always have books at the ready ontheir desks and night tables, but training in leadership is notfundamentally an academic exercise. Moreover, therequirement for a scholarly doctoral dissertation tends tolegitimate the institution, not the student. Skills in lucidwriting (and speaking) are necessary viols for the aspiringleaner; mastery of the techniques of arcane scholarly researchis not necessarily the most accurate predictor of a futureleader's success. Too often, the otherwise promising prospectgets bogged down in academic trivial pursuit.

7. Strongly Encourage Career Internships,Apprentlz.eships, and Residencies. Whatever they arecalled, these off-site clinical exposure.; are vital elements of afuture leader's developmental portfolio. They should h^obligatory early career experiences and not be confi.A1 toeducational settings. The ambitious 32-year-old principal whoappears destined for bigger things will already have bee.. inand around schools for 27 of those 32 years. A residency in anassistant superintendent's office might he helpful, at least inconsolidating a professional contact network if not in hardlearning, but its long-range benefits are debatable. Closer tothe mark for a future decision-maker would be a stint with astate legislative committee, a work-study tour in the mayor'soffice, or a short particir at-observer assignment in the stateor local budget and plait:ling agency. John Gardner calls suchassignments "cross-boundary experience." However they arelabeled, they loom as an indispensable feature of the resumesof tomorrow's educational policy-makers. Future leaders willrequire across-the-board familiarity with a limitless arra; ofsocial, cultural, human services, economic, and technicalforces that affect our lives. The earlier they set aboutacquiring it, the better prepared they will be. The 25-year-oldEducation Policy Fellowship Program of the Institute forEducational Leadership has provided such in-service exposuresfor several thousand current and futurk Policy-makers.

4.

L(..)


8. Promote Mid-Career Sabbaticals and ExchangeArrangements. The average superintendent's peers in highereducation can count on a semester or full school year awayfrom the academy every few years. The subject never arise.; inprecollegiate education. Why aren't school leaders entitled toa school person's version of the same refreshening pause? Thepossibilities for using the time beneficially are endless: docommunity volunteer service; visit other, different schoolsystems and agencies (something school leaders almost neverdo); learn Spanish or whatever the other local language mightbe; swap jobs with a colleague (suburban- urban, public-private, black-white, north-south); perform rotational dutytours in banks, think tanks, newspapers, high-tech industrialplants, day care and preschool centers, or governmentagencies; write a book; ride the circuit of professionalassociations and leadership development centersor all ofthese and more. The enterprising superintendent or seniorstate education official would return from this kind ofexperience wiser and far more open to the diversity, ambiguity,and growing dependence on technology that characterize lifein the America students will encounter. The President ofHaverford College was a better leader after a job as a garbagecollector. Participants in the Senior Seminar in Foreign Policydo volunteer work in social agencies. Everyone benefits.

9. Raise and Vary the Standards for LeadershipTraining. The movement of much inservice training forleaders away from colleges of education and their rigidcurricula is promising. Such institutions as the short-durationsingle-issue programs of the National Academy for SchoolExecutives (an activity of the Association of American SchoolAdministratorsAASA), the Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers (CCSSO), and the National Association of SecondarySchool Principals (NASSP), among others, offer participants awelcome change of pace, new information, and opportunitiesto connect with peersan aspect of training that manyparticipants consider to be their best feature. On f h.e whole,though, they do not do enough to make them more effectiveleaders. Neither they nor the traditional doctoral programsscratch the surface of pertinent social science research onleadership. The armed services, business, and publicadministration, to take three of many relevant examples thatScott Thomson of NASSP cites, have long adapted theirleadership development efforts to the real needs of leaders.Their training features in-depth personnel assessment (amajor NASSP emphasis), case study approaches, collaborativeanalysis and problem-solving, and flexibilitynot the outdated

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WHO Rum OUR SCHOOLS

88

and fixed lecturer-student, assigned-reading, scientific-management models that have been the mainstays of trainingin educational administration at most universities for most ofthe twentieth century. Only a handfu' of the 500-plus graduateprograms in the field are breaking the mold.

10. Decentralize and Individualiz, Training. The lackof national criteria, or even of a common body of knowledge,for training educational leaders is not all bad. On the oontrary,it may prove to he a boon to the field. By the time they haveachieved mid-career status, administrators and leaders ratherthan the licensing boards may be the best judges of what theydo or don't need in the settings in which they operate. Withoutthe pressures of a fixed curriculum to fret about, they can setabout filling gaps in their knowledge and pursue leads to dataand experiences that may fall beyond the scope ofconventional training. The prospect of individualizing theirdevelopment, instead of exposing it to the homogenization orleveling out that is inevitable in a large group-learningambiance, would motivate many reluctant trainees to expandtheir professional view. In some respects, personalizingdevelopment in this way would be an extension of the modelof the Individualized Education Program (IEP) that guides theeducation of millions of children with disabling conditions.With technology and self-guided instruction coming to the forethrougl ,,ut education, the era of the IEP for all learners,including education's professicnal best and brightest, may notbe far off.

11. Let Jership Train!^e is Not Card-Punching. Themilitary officer, corporate manager, or civil servant whocompletes leader3hip development training courses alpha,beta, and gamma receives an appropriately punchedmetaphorical career progress card and moves on, almost as ifon automatic pilot, to conquer new worlds. This practice iswrong and should be reexamined. Leadership training shouldnot be an obstacle course of experiences and exposures thatlead to guaranteed advancement on a set schedule. Careeradvancement should not be the central purpose of seniortraining but rather a natural outcome of it. The othn side ofthe coin is the tendency of some executives to avoid suchtraining precisely because it does not absolutely gum anteeincreased responsibility and more prestigious titles. Too, someexecutives sense the risk of being sidetracked or leapfroggedWide in a lengthy training program. These cautions are noty.4 applicable to education's top people. They will be when,erious senior training catches on.

t2. Learn from the Past, This proposition is almost too

JO


banal to mention. It is customarily introduced as a throw-ay.-ayplatitude instead c,f the clue to productive insight that it oughtto be. The good leader is attuned not only to successfulprecedent but to failure that ean instruct. In Thinking inTime, Richard Neustadt and Ernest May demonstratepersuasively how present policies and actions flow from thepast. Although history's lessons are malleable, it is possible tcuse them to positive effect if, as Ronald Steel puts it, theleader will "separate the known from the unclear and thepresumed, avoid facile analogies, examine presumptionsbehind pros and cons, analyze (one's own) stereotypes, knowthe issue's history." Unfortunately, many educational leaderspay little heed to the record, especially that of the lessrecent past. Institutional memory exists in most educationaldecision-malung circumstances, but it seldom materializes asa usable presence, particularly when elected policy-makersare involved. The ten-foot shelf of notable literature oneducational reform in the 1980s is nearly innc cent of informedreferences to earlier, vastly illuminating bouts with nearly thesame issues. All too often, history begins on the day the newleader takes office.

It belabors the obvious to reiterate education's permanentneed for leaders of integrity and quality, both in schoolsystems and in the larger public world of policies, decisions,and futures. This year's leaders are better qualified than lastyear's, but we cannot be certain that next year's will be betterthan those we now have. But they must be. Unless the schoolsand their political masters can find ways to attract into theirfront offices the kinds of informed, broad-gauged, open-minded talent that fills the top ranks of the most successfulorganizations in industry, communications, and science, high-level service in public education will soon exceed thecapabilities of many of those who perform it. Of theapproaches that cry out for consideration, the most insistentis that the field look beyond traditional pipelines andprofessional loyalties. School leadership is not just a no'Jlecalling for the chosen few who entered classroom teaching intheir early twenties and pushed doggedly through thebureaucracy. It is an incredibly demanding job that calls forthextraordinary skills and insightsthose of the nation's verybest leaders.

With such recognition could come the beginnings ofwisdom, or the practical realization that: the interests ofschools, students, and communities demand concrete steps to

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assure that tomorrow's leadership will be capable not just ofmanaging in the old boy style but of infusing purpose andvision into public education; we get only the elected officialswe deserve, especially when voter education is haphazard andturnout is in single- or low double-digit percentages of theeligible ?lectorate; the people who run the schools need notcome only from "the inadequate incubators of leadership'the education schoolsbut are available in sufficient quantityarl quality, throughout the professions, business, and science;a salary of $300,000 in 1989 dollars, double that of today'shighest-paid public education officials, is not a penny toomuch for persons ultimately responsible for educatinghundreds of thousands of children; and, to paraphrase vonClausewitz, the wars of education are too important to befought solely by armies led by white, middle-aged maleprofessionals. We must all get into the fray.

CI ,....' 4.,

REFERENCES

Education's Unknown Leaders1. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A

Nation at Risk. Washington: U.S. Department of Education,1983.

2. Education Week, December 3, 1986, p.18.3. National Center for Information on Education, NCIE

Reports. February 9, 1987.4. TIME, November 9, 1987, p21.5. Luvern L Cunningh ., "Leaders and Leadership: 1985 and

Beyond," Phi Delta Kappan. Sept mber 1985, p.17.6. National Governors' Association, Time for Results: The

Governors' 1991 Report on Education. Washington, August1986.

7. Interview. March 2, 1988.8. Robert W Heller, James A. Conway, and Stephen L.

Jacobson, "Who and What You Are Make You a Pillar of theCommunity" The Executive Educator. September 1988,pp.19-21.

9. National Center for Education Information, Profile of SchoolAdministrators in the U.S. Washington: 1988.

Tribunes for the Schools1. Etilabeth Drew, "Letter from Washington," New Yorker.

December 14, 1987, p.138.

Few Perks, Little Respect1. Garry Wills, Reagan's America: Innocents at Home. New

York: Doubleday, 1987, p.380.2. Remarks of Admiral (Ret.) James D. Watkins before the

Subcommittee on Education and Health of the JointEconomic Committee, U.S. Congress, September 23, 1987.

3. Michael Maccohy, The Leader. New York: Ballantine, 1981,p.xiii.

4. National Center for Education Information, op cit., p.23.

The Working Environment1. Harlan Cleveland, The Knowledge Executive. New York:

Dutton, 1985, pp.19-35.

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2. U.S. Department of Education, What Works. Washington:1986.

3. Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly. New York:Ballantine, 1984; Richard Neustadt and Ernest May,Thinking in Time: The Use' of History for Decision-Making. New York. Free Press, 1986.

Gurus and Gatekeepers1. Terrel H. Bell, The Thirteenth Man: A Reagan Cabi?

Memoir. New York: Free Press, MacMillan, 1987.

Leadership By Commission1. Francis i(eppel, "The Role of Blue Ribbon Commissions in

Changing Educational Goals and Structure." Speech tonational convention of the American Educational ResearchAssociation, Washington, D.C., April 22, 1987.

2. Harry Passow, "Ta.::kling the Reform Reports of the 1980s,"Phi Delta Kappan, June 1984, p.674.

3. The Task Force on Teaching as a Profession. A NationPrepared: Teachers for the 21st Century. Carnegie Forumon Education and the Economy, May 1986.

4. Quoted in Fred M. Hec'ninger, "To Unlock School Reform,Teachers Are the Key." New York Times, July 1, 1986, p.87.

5. National Governors' Association, op. cit.6. Committee for Economic Development, Children in Need:

Investment Strategies for the EducationallyDisadvantaged, 1987,

7. CED, Investing in Our Children: Business and the Schools,1985.

The Teaching Imperative1. Deirdre Carmody, "Freshmen Found Stressing Wealth,"

New York Times, January 14, 1988, p.14.2. Haynes Johnson, "Save Public Service," Washington Post,

January 15, 1988: p.2.3. Ibid.4. Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 1987, p.37.5. Crystal Nix, "The New Social Reformers," New York Times

Magazine, October 26, 1986, pp.106-113.6. "Teachers Go Pro," Editorial, New Republic, June 23, 1986,

pp7-8.7. American Federation of Teachers, Press Release, January

2.1, 1988.

92

8. California Commission on the Teaching Profession, WhoWill 7bach Our Children?: A Strategy for ImprovingCalifornia's Schools. Sacramento: November 1985.

9. Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy,op. cit.10. 7bmorrow's 7bachers: A Report of the Holmes Group. East

Lansing: 1986.11. Lisa Jennings, "Survey Finds Teachers 'Dispirited':

Uninvolved in Reform," Education Week, May 25, 1988, p.7.12. American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education,

7baching 7bachers: Facts and Ares. Washington: 1987,ppAl, 43.

13. Ibid. pp.44-45.14. Lou Harris and Associates, 7'he Metropolitan Life Survey

of the American 7bacher 1987. New York: 1987 (unpaged).15. Chronicle of Higher Education, May 6, 1 87, op cit.16. Who Will 7bach Our Children?, p.37.17. "Teachers," Education Week, April 13, 1988, p.8.18. Thomas B. Corcoran, Lisa J. Walker, and J. Lynne White,

Working in Urban Schools. Washington: Institute forEducational Leadership, 1988.

19. Gene Maeroff, The Empowerment of 7bachers. Princeton:Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,1988.

The Inadequate Incubators of Leadership1. Derek Bok, "The Challenge to Schools of Education,"

Harvard Magazine, May-June 1987, p.47.2. Reginald G. Damerell, Education's Smoking Gun. New

York: Freundlich, 1985.3. University Council for Educational Administration, Leaders

for America's Schools, UCEA, 1987.4. Richard A. Gibboney, "Education of Administrators,"

Education Week, April 15, 1987, p.28.5. Robert W. Hells.; and James A. Conway, "Exclusive Survey:

Here's Your Profile." The Executive Educator, December1987, pp.25-27.

6. Ibid.

Three Ticking Time Bombs1. Interview with professional staff member, National Women's

Political Caucus, June 15, 1987.2. Sakre Kennington Edson, Pushing the Limits: The Female

Administrative Aspirant. Albany: SUNY, 1988, p278.

REFERENCES

93


3. Gene Maeroff, "Making Room at the Top foT Women," NewYork Times, May 4, 1986, Section 4, p. 9.

4. Barbara Vobejda, "Fewer Blacks Earning DoctoralDegrees," Washington Post, February 16, 1988, pA17.

5. John Hope Franklin, "The Desperate Need for BlackTeachers," Change, May/June 1967, p.44

6. Blake Rodman, "The Fiercest Competition," EducationWeek, Febru _try 3, 198'3, pp.1,13.

7. Interview ., ith Raphael Valdivieso, Hispanic PolicyDevelopment Project, May 22, 1987.

8. Linda Chavez, "The Next Underc' ss?" New Republic,August 3, 1987, pp.12-13.

9. Blake Rodman, "Administrators Seen to Be Out of Step withGeneral Public," Education Week, January 20, 1988, p.23.

k Dozen Propositions1. John W. Gardner, Leadership Development (Leadership

Papers/7). Washington: Independent Sector, 1987.2. Thomas E. Cronin, "Thinking and Learning About

Leadership," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Winter 1984,p.34.

3. Conversation with Ambassador James Buffington, Dean,Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy, December 18, 1987.

4. UCEA, op cit.5. Quoted in James Fallows, "The Case Against

Credentialism," 77w Atlantic Monthly, December 1985, p.64.6. Ronald Steel, "Looking Backward," New York Review of

Books, November 6, 1986, p.42.

About the Author

George R. Kaplan is a veteran analyst of the politics ofeducation. A former career diplomat and official of the U.S.Office of Education, he directed the Washington PolicySeminar for the Institute for Educational Leadership in the1970s and has written, lectured, and consulted extensively oneducational leadership and related topics His PHI DELTAKAPPAN article, "Hail to a Chief or Two: The IndifferentPresidential Record in Education," received a DistinguishedService Award in 1985 from the Education Press Associationof America

6

About the Institute

The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) is a 25-year-oldWashington-based nonprofit organization tha, brings resourcesand people together to enrich the leadership of Americaneducation. Unique among organizations that seek to improveour schools, IEL has long emphasLed collaborative problem-solving, information-sharing, and state-of-the-art leadershiptraining at all jurisdictional levelsnational, state, and local.Its programs are expressly tailored to the current and futureeducational reeds of the 40 states in which IEL's programs arelocated.

1)697

BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE INSTITUTEFOR EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Gregory R. Anrig Lourdes MirandaPresident PresidentEducational Testing Sera ice Miranda Assoc tales, Inc

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James B. CampbellPresidentMLSSCO Corporation

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Neal R. PeirceContributing Editor77w Mauna,' .1(01171a1

Thomas E. Cronin Carlos RamirezMcHugh Distinguished Professor of Publisher & Chief Execume Kfl«r

American Institutions and El Drama

LeadershipColorado College Albert Shanket

PresidentBadi Foster Amen( an Federation of TeachersPresidentAetna Institute for Comorate Michael D. Usdan

Education PresidentThe Institute for Educational

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WSY Consulting Group, Inc

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Executive OfficerPrimerica Corporal ion

FROM "Who Runs Our Schools?"

lillimimo single person, whether

President or U.S. Secretary of

Education, can speak for

American education. We have

no national policy, no binding

national standards and, with

the possible exception of

commercial network television,

no national curriculum.

or black Americans,

leadership in American

education remains a distant

dream . . . .the climate for a

genuinely integrated, or even

desegregated, leadership corps

in education is

--1

he prototypical educational

leader does not exist, not in

the hundred-flowers-blooming

culture of America's schools.

The span from young female

principal to good old boy

legislator discourages

stereotyping.

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