the for the policy schools we need

Leadershipfor theSchools We NeedA handbook for business people who wantto make a difference on school boards

By Todd Feigenbaum

ThePublicPolicyInstitute

Leadershipfor the Schools We NeedA handbook for business people who wantto make a difference on school boards

By Todd Feigenbaum

The Public Policy Institute of New York State, Inc.

July 2003

Leadershipfor theSchools

We NeedA handbook for business people who want to make a difference

on school boards

By Todd Feigenbaum

Published by The Public Policy Institute Albany, New York

July 2003

The Public Policy Institute is a research and educational organizationaffiliated with The Business Council of New York State, Inc., the state’slargest broad-based business group. The Institute’s mission is to analyzethe public-policy choices facing New York State from a private-sectorperspective, and to make a constructive contribution to the public dia-logue in the state. The Institute is supported by contributions fromemployers and individuals across New York. It is classified as a Section501(c)(3) organization under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.

Note: Nothing written herein is to be construed as an attempt to aid, or hin-der, the passage of any specific bill before Congress or the New York StateLegislature. The opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not nec-essarily reflect those of the publisher.

Additional copies of this book are available for $10 each,directly from the Institute:

The Public Policy Institute of New York State, Inc.152 Washington Avenue

Albany, New York 12210-2289518/465-7511

http://www.ppinys.org

The Public Policy Institute

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Daniel B. WalshChief Executive Officer

President, The Business Council

Matthew MaguireDirector of Development

David F. ShafferPresident

Robert B. WardDirector of Research

James W. KinnearChairman

Retired President and CEO, Texaco

Roger G. AckermanRetired Chairman and CEO

Corning Incorporated

R. Quintus AndersonCEO

Aarque Capital

Honorable Hugh L. CareyFifty-first Governor

New York State

John A. GeorgesRetired Chairman & CEOInternational Paper Co.

Roger A. HannayPresident and CEO

Hannay Reels

David E. HardenChairman

Harden Furniture Company

Karen HitchcockPresident

University at Albany

James R. HoughtonChairman

Corning Incorporated

Bernard J. KennedyRetired Chairman

National Fuel Gas Company

Michael MarvinFormer Chairman

MapInfo

Gerhard J. NeumaierPresident

Ecology and Environment, Inc.

Chris PulleynChairman and CEO

Buck & Pulleyn, Inc.

Albert J. SimonePresident

Rochester Institute of Technology

STAFF

Beth RymanowskiAdministration & Support

Missy MillettAdministration & Support

Table of Contents

Introduction: The need for new directions . . . . . . . . . . .1

Chapter 1: A Reality Check on our Schools . . . . . . . . . .7

Chapter 2: Taking on the Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Chapter 3: Going to Work —Without Going Native . . . .29

Chapter 4: The People Factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41

Chapter 5: Issues Beyond the District . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53

1

Introduction

The need for newdirections

Imagine a public education system in which fewer thana third of the students master the material they are taught inhigh school. In which more than half of middle-school stu-dents fail to meet state standards. And in which over a thirdof the students fail to complete high school with their class.

You might be surprised to learn that these facts describethe performance of the school system in New York State.And not just of our poor, urban systems, either. Those factsdescribe the average school in New York, spending an aver-age of over $11,000 a year per pupil. And the money beingspent is almost the least of our worries. Far more importantis the fact that our whole future, as individuals and as asociety, is tied up in the quality of our educational system.The performance we’re getting from the system todaymeans that tens of thousands of young people are beingsent out into a world in which they are not prepared tocompete effectively—and it means that our economy, too,will fall short of its potential.

Today the leaders of the business community, in globalFortune 50 corporations and in small businesses alike, rec-ognize that educational performance is the most importantlong-term public policy issue facing them. Business hasworked actively in the public policy debate, and with feder-al and state governments, to press for higher standards andbetter outcomes in our schools.

That involvement in policy setting is important, andmust continue. But individual business people also can—and should—take a hands-on role in actually implementingchange at the level of their local schools. National educa-tion policy is important. But as the late House Speaker TipO’Neill once said, “all politics is local.” And the same is trueof schools. The place where policy is translated into actionis right down the street, at your local school.

There are many constructive waysin which business people can involvethemselves in local schools, from one-on-one mentoring, to collaboration inschool-to-work programs. But in NewYork and many other states, they’llfind they have the most leverage in the

place where the local decisions get made, and that’s on thelocal school board.

Business people can make a signal contribution toschool boards simply by bringing business skills to the table:

• The ability to identify, articulate and focus on impor-tant, clearly defined goals.

• A willingness to be guided by data, by facts—not emo-tions or fads.

• A preference for specific and documented results, notgeneralized assertions.

• An awareness of the need to listen to, respond to, andmeet the needs of, customers.

• An ability to develop a plan for change, for improve-ment. And then to follow up on its implementation—tofigure out if it’s working, and to fix it if it’s not.

• An ability to find good people for the job, and to get thebest performance from these people.

• And a predisposition to try to get the most value for thedollar.

Hands-on, personal involvement in the actual running ofa local school system can be very demanding, both emotion-ally and in terms of time. And the only rewards are spiritual,

2 Leadership for the Schools We Need

‘All politics is local.’The same is true ofschools.

because the job of school-board member is an unpaid one.But done right, it can work wonders for the schoolsinvolved. And it will also give business leaders new insightsinto, and a new sense of urgency about, the broader policyissues involved in education reform—from curriculum, toteacher training, to the way school staffs are hired andmotivated.

I know a little bit about this, because I’ve been there. Attimes serving on a school board can seem like one of themost thankless jobs in the world. Yet in our system of pub-lic education, it’s really up to individuals at the local level toprovide the leadership required to create excellent schools.

Having served on a school board for seven years, I cantell you that yes, it’s hard work. However, it’s also veryrewarding to see the impact you can have. Even somethingas simple as asking one question at a board meeting canshed light on a problem that few people knew existed. Hereis an example:

Many school boards conduct the real work of the boardin various committee meetings—a curriculum committee,an audit and finance committee, a policy or personnel com-mittee. It’s in these committees that many important issuescan and should be tackled, information gathered, andthoughtful recommendations created for forwarding to thewhole board. Some boards choose to have few committeesand attempt to tackle most issues with the full board; myimpression is that this approach tends not to be as effectiveas a well-organized committee structure.

The school board that I serve on has chosen to have itscurriculum committee review a couple of academic areaseach year. For instance, in one year we might review themath curriculum along with art and music. Another yearwe might spend our monthly meetings reviewing the for-eign language program and social studies. In these meetingswe invite faculty members and administrators to make pre-sentations about the programs, curriculum, and instructionthey provide.

Some years ago I developed a question I like to ask ofeach group that makes a presentation at our curriculumcommittee meetings. The question is simple: In a perfect

Introduction 3

world, what else could we do for you—what resourceswould you like that you currently don’t have? I make itclear that we can’t necessarily provide every item theymight request, but we want to know the kinds of thingsteachers need so we can prioritize resources.

At first, teachers and some administrators weren’t surewhat to make of this. The question was too novel. That initself was quite interesting to me, because many of us whomanage organizations in the private sector realize howimportant it is to support our people—to make sure theyhave the resources they need to get the job done and get itdone well. We realize that our success depends on how wellour people succeed in doing their jobs.

Well, an interesting thing happened a couple of yearsago when the science teachers in our high school met withour curriculum committee. After they concluded animpressive presentation, I asked my question. Their replyfloored me. The teachers told us that what they reallyneeded were classrooms! They carefully explained thatsome of them didn’t have classrooms and had to roam

around the building all day with alltheir materials on a cart. They mightteach one period in one room, anotherperiod in another room, and so on. Tenminutes before the start of a biologyclass, a teacher would be racing downthe hall with 25 microscopes on a cartto get to his next room and get set upfor class. I immediately wondered what

effect all that jostling had on the microscopes and otherdelicate scientific equipment. I remember turning to ourschool board president—someone I had gone to highschool with in that very same building—and seeing her inas much shock as was I. We hadn’t had a clue that this wasa problem. Their prepared presentation had made no men-tion of it.

And the problem turned out to be much greater than wehad realized. A year later when we were reviewing our for-eign language program, I again asked my question aboutwhat we could do for the foreign language teachers, and


We affectionatelyrefer to some ofour art teachersas ‘cart people.’

guess what they said they needed: That’s right—CLASS-ROOMS! We had French teachers in our middle school andhigh school teaching in rooms they couldn’t decorate withposters and information about France and French, becausethey were only guests in those rooms for a period or two.Again, shock and exasperation were what we felt on theboard. How could we not have known about this?

The problem of classroom shortages (some Englishteachers also didn’t have rooms) had been incremental inits development. As the fads of public education hadchanged during the 1980s and 90s, many of our specialeducation programs, which previously had been contractedout to the area BOCES, had been brought back into ourown school buildings. Yet no new classrooms had beenconstructed to accommodate those programs. Instead,other teachers had been displaced and forced to work offcarts as they migrated around our buildings looking for aplace to teach. We affectionately began referring to theseteachers as our “cart people,” with rather vivid images inour minds of teachers wandering the halls looking for aplace to spend an hour with students—kind of like home-less people looking for a place to spend the night.

Why didn’t our school board know about this? We hadgone through a building expansion program in our schooldistrict just a few years before, and yet the building princi-pals in the high school and middle school had never broughtthis issue to our attention. Why didn’t they? Maybe they hadnever asked the teachers, themselves. Maybe they felt thisreally wasn’t important. Maybe they didn’t want to be both-ered with all the work that goes into expanding a building.Maybe they were told the district had other priorities.

We don’t know, exactly. But there is one thing we doknow: the careers and the compensation of these adminis-trators were almost totally insulated from the success orfailure of the teachers whom they supervised.

This flows, in a sense, from the fact there is no bottomline in public education. For people in business, poor man-agement can and does have disastrous consequences. Butnobody inside public education pays the penalty for failure— only the students, their parents, and their future employers.

Introduction 5

That different sensitivity is why business people are oftenattuned to getting results in a way that many public schoolofficials cannot be. And it means that business people canbring something valuable to the oversight of our profes-sional managers in public schools. Business people canhelp demand more accountability from schools and thosewho run them.

My experience has left me even more convinced than Iwas when I went into the job that our schools need change.But it has also left me convinced that change is possible.


7

Chapter 1

A Reality Checkon our Schools

You know what they say about Congress. Poll the voters,and they’re inclined to say only bad things about the Con-gress as a whole. But poll them about their own districts’representative in Congress and, well, you’re likely to hearonly nice things. That’s why almost every member is almostalways re-elected to the institution that almost everybodysays is up to no good.

It’s the same with our local schools in America. There’sa broad, national consensus that our school system as awhole is falling short of what’s needed. But ask us aboutour own, local schools, and we tend to say they’re prettygood. A Gallup Poll found that 51 percent of Americans ratetheir own school systems with an “A” or “B.”1

Well, maybe your own local schools are indeed doingwell. But maybe they’re not doing as well as you think. It isvery unlikely that there is any school, anywhere, that is asgood as it can be.

And even those kids coming out of exemplary systems—of which New York undoubtedly has many—will find theirown future undermined by the quality of education beinggiven to less fortunate young people. We cannot expect toenjoy forever a world-class standard of living in the United

1 2001 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup survey, “The Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.”

States, if we persistently fail to educate so many of ouryoung people to world-class levels. An economy with pros-perity for all cannot be built on the learning and skills ofonly a few.

The reality is that today, fartoo many of our young peopleare emerging from school with-out the quality of education theyneed for the quality of life wewant them to have, in the com-petitive world in which they willhave to make their way.

Data from international com-parisons routinely demonstrate

that America’s K-12 public schools often do not measure upto those in many other countries. Here are a couple ofexamples:

• The 1999 International Math & Science Survey2 docu-mented that 8th-grade students from the United Statesperform at a statistically significant lower level ingeometry than students from numerous countriesincluding: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong,Belgium, Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, Russia, Nether-lands, Czech Republic, Canada, Slovenia, Australia andMalaysia.

• In science, U.S. 8th graders scored poorly in theirknowledge of physics in relation to their counterparts inthese countries: Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, SouthKorea, Hungary, Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Rus-sia, England, Czech Republic, Solvenia, Hong Kong andCanada.

More broadly, social critic E. D. Hirsch, Jr., has offeredthis observation:


2 Ina V.S. Mullis, Michael O. Martin, Eugenio J. Gonzalez, Kelvin D. Gregory, Robert A. Gar-den, Kathleen M. O’Connor, Steven J. Chrostowski, Teresa A. Smith, TIMSS 1999 Interna-tional Mathematics Report: Findings from IEA’s Repeat of the Third InternationalMathematics and Science Study at the Eighth Grade. (The International Study Center, LynchSchool of Education: Boston College, 2000).

An economy withprosperity for allcannot be built onthe learning andskills of only a few.

Take a young boy or girl from a typical Americanfamily who goes to a typical American school, andimagine that child growing up in France or Ger-many, Japan or Taiwan. Few would choose tomake the experiment. Most Americans believe, asdo I, that this country, with its traditions of politicalfreedom and its generous optimism, is the greatestcountry in the world. But the evidence is strong thatthat very same young child would grow up morecompetent in those other countries than in the Unit-ed States—through having learned much, muchmore at school in the early grades. Although ourpolitical traditions and even our universities may bewithout peer, our K-12 education is among the leasteffective in the developed world. Its controlling the-ories, curricular incoherencies, and what I call its“naturalistic fallacies” are positive barriers to agood education. Scholars from abroad who studyAmerican schools are astonished that our children,who score very low in international comparisons,are actually as competent as they manage to be.Considering their very American vitality and inde-pendent-mindedness, one thinks ruefully of whatthese children could become under a good,demanding, and fair educational system!3

How do schools in New York fit into this picture? There isa wealth of data now available to the public (and, of course,to school-board members) in New York State. This informa-tion can be very helpful to those who want to improve theschools, if they will use it—while at the same time providingample evidence as to why improvement is needed.

With the development of the New York State SchoolReport Card, New Yorkers have an important tool forexamining the performance of their schools. Published bythe New York State Education Department, this annualproject creates a school report card for every school district

Chapter 1 9

3 E.D. Hirsch, Jr., The Schools We Need: Why We Don’t Have Them (New York: Doubleday,1996), p. 1.

in the state. During the first few years of this publication, itwas refined and enhanced. Today it contains a wealth ofinformation (available in print or at the State EducationDepartment website: www.nysed.gov) that can be used toassess the performance of any school district and the indi-vidual schools within that district. It also can be used tocompare districts against one another.

While the report cards contain large amounts of informa-tion, some sections are much more important than others.One key number to focus on is the percentage of studentsreaching mastery on state exams (85 or better on a Regentsexam and a “4” on the 4th- and 8th-grade assessments).With the decision by the New York State Board of Regentsto require all students to participate in a Regents programduring high school, school districts can no longer offer theoption to students of choosing a less challenging non-Regents program. However, in order to soften the transi-tion to an all-Regents program, the State EducationDepartment gave local school districts permission to lowerthe passing grade from 65 to 55 on Regents exams duringthe first five years of this transition.

Data from the school report cards show that whilemany districts can get a large percentage of their studentsto pass some of the Regents exams (at least at the 55 per-cent passing level), the number of students who score at orabove mastery is usually very limited. It’s great that a dis-trict can report that 90 percent or more of its students havepassed a Regents exam. But the real measure of the acade-mic quality in a school’s program is the percentage of thestudents who learned the material well enough to master itand receive an 85 or better on the Regents exam.

When you ask a typical group of teachers if they wanttheir students to master a particular unit in the curriculumbefore they move on to the next unit, they will routinely sayyes. If mastery is important for a particular unit, should notthe goal for all the units—or the entire course—be mastery?

Public schools have rarely looked at academic achieve-ment in this light. Minimum competency to meet the stan-dards has generally been the goal—not mastery. Now,


however, the Commissioner of Education and the Regentsare raising the mastery issue by reporting that data in theschool report card. Unfortunately, the data on mastery arenot comforting. An analysis of Regents exam resultsreported for the year 2002 reveals the following numbers:

Students Achieving Masteryon Regents Examinations (2002)

English 32%

Math A 18%

Living Environment (formerly Biology) 25%

Chemistry 11%

Global History 22%

Physics 13%

Math Sequence 2 25%

U.S. History & Government 27%

Source: NYS Education Department data.

On each of the Regents examinations less than a thirdof the students were able to offer evidence of mastering thematerial in the course. If less than a third of students mas-ter the material they are taught, can we really call ourschools successful?

The results of student achievement in middle school,like the mastery percentages in high school, show littleprogress. Test results for 1999-2001 show that in bothmathematics and English fewer than half of the students inthe state reached the state standards on the 8th gradeassessments.

Dropouts—Another Key Performance Indicator

Another key piece of data in the school report card isthe percentage of students who complete high school withtheir class. Assuming school systems are operating to meetthe needs of their customers (students), one would reason-ably expect high completion rates and low dropout rates.

Chapter 1 11

That is just what most school districts in New York Statereport. However, this particular piece of data in the schoolreport card does not agree with calculations done about theactual numbers of students who stay in school.

Based upon the definition of a dropout and the methodsused to track dropouts, the typical school district in NewYork State has been reporting an annual dropout rate in the4-5 percent range. Yet when a cohort survival analysis is

conducted tracking 9th gradersthrough high school, it shows that lessthan two-thirds of the students in thestate finish high school with theirclass. Over the period from 9th to 12thgrades, there is a loss in the size of thecohort of more than 38 percent (thecohort decline between grades 1through 8 is only 2 percent). In other

words, more than one in three 9th graders fails to make it tograduation in the normal four-year period with their class.In many urban areas the figure is well over 50 percent.Some students, approximately 25,000 in the 2000-2001school year, do transfer into GED programs, but this num-ber does not account for the massive decline in the studentcohort between 9th and 12th grades. We also do not knowhow many of those GED transfer students actually completethe GED program.

In 2001 the 12th grade contained 151,043 studentsstatewide, but when this same group of students was in 9thgrade just three years earlier, there were 245,320 studentsin the class. The big question is: why did the class shrink byover 94,000 students?

The explanation of the disparity between the reportednumbers of dropouts and the real numbers involves thereporting practices used by school districts. It turns outthat districts have not had to account for those studentswho did not return to school in the fall if they had alreadyturned age 16 (17 for New York City), because that age isthe end of mandatory public education. If a student whoreaches 16 decides not to return to school, the school dis-trict has not had a responsibility to track his or her where-


Less than two-thirdsof students finishhigh school withtheir class.

abouts. (That practice has now been changed by the Com-missioner of Education under a new definition and a newreporting system for dropouts.)

The numbers reported by school districts also representonly the number of students who, by very limited defini-tions, drop out in a one-year period. Yet the annual dropoutrate is not the important number. The number that is mostindicative of the success or failure of the state’s schools isthe 38 percent, the percentage of students who fail to com-plete school with their class. This number reflects the truenumber of students leaving school compounded over thethree-year high school period of 9th-12th grades and thencombined with those students who leave high school topurse a GED program.

So more than a third of students fail to finish highschool with their class. Fewer than half of students reachthe state standards in middle school. Fewer than a third ofstudents master the material they are taught in most sub-jects during high school. Maybe our public schools needmore improvement than we thought. And maybe there issomething we can do about it.

Chapter 1 13

15

Chapter 2

Taking on the Job

So the schools need help, and business wants to help. Thequestion is: how?

Business organizations like The Business Council in NewYork State, and the Business Roundtable at the national level,have taken a pre-eminent role in pressing for educationreform policies that focus on high standards—on definingstandards, on measuring where schools fall short, on holdingthem accountable for their results. That’s an important andconstructive role.

At the same time, and by the thousands upon thousands,businesses and individual business people across the countryare involved in myriad efforts to be helpful to their localschools. These efforts run the gamut from donating equip-ment, to tutoring and mentoring, to summer jobs for teach-ers. And they, too, are important and constructive.

But there’s also a tremendous need for the business skillsand real-world perspective that individual business men andwomen could bring to the governance of the education sys-tem, through serving as members of local schools boards.

Those who are charged with overseeing the large andcomplex organization that makes up a school district often donot have the expertise or knowledge needed to properly carryout their duties. Unlike many other states, New York requiresno mandatory training for school board members. In theabsence of significant knowledge about education or leadershipskills, too often school boards tend to over-rely on school admin-istrators. Administrators, in turn, often have an “inside the box”outlook that could benefit from a different perspective.

I first ran for my local board of education as a repre-sentative of a parent group that had organized in the early1990s. Parents, grandparents, and other taxpayers in ourcommunity had been developing increasing levels of frus-tration with the public schools—schools that had been con-sidered high quality in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s,the period in which I had attended these same schools.There was a feeling that academics had taken a back seat to

other concerns, that the district hadtaken its eyes off the primary missionof fostering strong student achieve-ment. There was also a feeling thatparents had come to be viewed byschool district officials as “the friendlyenemy” whenever we questioned thedirection of the schools.

Many of us who were involved in organizing the Com-munity Education Forum believed that school officials didnot want to admit there were serious problems confrontingour city’s schools. It was almost as if they were hoping thatthe problems would simply go away. Our group, on theother hand, believed that by hosting public forums aboutcritical issues facing our schools, we could begin to shedsome light on these problems and focus public attention.Although we were successful in attracting numerous citi-zens to a variety of forums in the mid-90s, we still felt thatthe policy makers—the board of education and the admin-istrators—were resistant to the fundamental change webelieved was needed.

A Run for the Board

In the spring of 1996, I volunteered to run for the boardof education as a representative of this citizens’ group.That year’s election featured seven candidates competingfor two open seats on the board. I chose to highlight mycandidacy by focusing on the importance of raising stu-dent achievement and on making our schools more effec-tive and efficient.


I wanted to bring acustomer focus toour school district.

I ran not only as a concerned parent—but also as abusiness person who would try to make sure that tax dol-lars were spent wisely and effectively. Too often those whorun our public schools have not experienced the financialdiscipline and the accountability for results that private-sector management can provide. Business people bringthat experience to school boards. They can help boardsunderstand the importance of clearly defined objectivesand the importance of deploying resources in the mosteffective ways to accomplish those objectives. Businesspeople are also keenly aware of the effects of increasingproperty taxes. My community is one, like many in upstateNew York, which has seen an erosion of its tax base accom-panied by a less than booming economy. Increases inschool taxes are just one more burden on businesses andcitizens, especially those with fixed incomes.

I wasn’t running as an anti-tax or anti-education candi-date. Quite the contrary—I was running as a big supporterof public education, quality public education. I simply want-ed to ensure we were getting the best possible bang for thebuck, that we were creating a culture of excellence in ourschools, and that we were challenging our students, teach-ers, administrators, and our community to do the best pos-sible job. I wanted to bring a customer focus to our schooldistrict. How could we better serve the needs of students,parents, and the businesses that employ our graduates?

By raising those issues I was upsetting the status quo.There were factions in the community that didn’t care tohave the schools criticized in any way. There were someteachers who were afraid of the push for excellence. Yetmany other teachers were very supportive of my candidacy.They knew it was time to shake things up. They knew ourdistrict needed some new leadership.

How do you run a successful school board campaign?In my case I relied upon the constituency that I represent-ed, the Community Education Forum. We had a core groupof 15-20 very active members of this group to which weadded many more friends and concerned citizens.

Chapter 2 17

The Mechanics of Local Politics

So, you’ve decided to run for your local board of educa-tion. Hopefully, you have at least a few people who can helpyou with the effort. Where do you begin? The first thing is

to find out what you have to do andwhen. Contact your school district’scentral office to get the calendar ofdates for filing petitions and otherforms. This office can also supply youwith the petitions you’ll need to col-lect the signatures required to appearon the ballot. Although the number of

required signatures is not high, it does take some time tocollect them. As with all official petitions, you should col-lect at least 25 to 50 percent more signatures than arerequired to cover yourself for signatures that may beinvalid. If you think the race could be highly contested,someone could challenge your petitions to keep you off theballot. Make sure you understand how to petition and whatthe requirements for valid signatures are.

The petitioning exercise can be a great campaign tool.Get a few of your friends and supporters to go out and col-lect signatures for you at school functions, PTA meetings, atsupermarkets, and door-to-door. Give your volunteers ahandout about who you are and why you are running, sothey can leave something behind with each voter they askfor a signature.

Targeting Your Efforts

In most communities, it’s sad to say, very few peoplevote in school board races. You are often lucky if you canget 10 percent of the eligible voters to turn out. Yet whenyou are the candidate, this can be a helpful situation.Instead of spending a lot of time, effort, and money tryingto appeal to all the voters, you first need to find out whovotes in school board elections. (This all assumes, ofcourse, that you have opposition. In many communities thedifficulty of attracting candidates for the board is so great


You first need tofind out who votesin school boardelections.

that you might have an uncontested race. If that’s the case,you can stop reading this passage; just make sure that atleast one person votes for you on Election Day!)

If you have opponents, you’ll want to focus your effortson the voters who tend to participate in school elections—the people who have come out in the past to vote for boardmembers and for or against school budgets. They are theones most likely to turn out again. You can obtain the listsof people who have voted in previous elections from yourschool district. This is public information—not who peoplevoted for, but whether or not they participated in a schoolboard election in any given year. Some districts mightcharge a small photocopying fee to provide you with thelists, while others might not. The information may also beavailable in electronic form in some districts.

Reaching the Voters with Direct Mail

Once you have the lists, unless they are already in anelectronic database, you or your volunteers will need to putthese voters in a computer database that you can use togenerate mailing labels—because direct mail is probablythe single most cost-effective means by which to reach thefew voters who will actually turn out. It’s important toremember that when getting lists from your district, youwant the lists of people who turned out in a year whenthere was a contested election. In some years when schoolboard elections are uncontested and the budget is not con-troversial, the turnout may be exceedingly low. Instead, youwant the larger list of people who turn out when they knowtheir vote is important.

You can now plan one or more mailings to the targetedvoters to explain why you are running and why they shouldsupport you. Postcards are often the simplest, most effec-tive, and least expensive way to communicate with the vot-ers. A standard postcard can be mailed with first-classpostage, or an oversized jumbo card (8.5” x 5.5”) can bemailed inexpensively if you can get a bulk mail permit. Youmay decide to use a letter format, so you can include more

Chapter 2 19

information. I started with a letter for my first mailing andthen switched to the large postcards. A letter in an envelopecan also be bulk-mailed at reduced rates (but the permitwill cost you $150).

As with all good print communi-cation, you don’t want to overload thecard or letter with too much informa-tion. Just give some basic backgroundabout who you are and why you arerunning. Remember you are trying topersuade the voter to support you.

Whenever possible you want to make some kind of person-al connection with the voter. Since even those people whovote in school elections don’t get too excited about the elec-tion until it draws fairly close, you need to consider the tim-ing of your mailings carefully. If your race is hotlycontested, you may need to get out early with an introduc-tory piece—maybe as early as when you file your petitionsin April. Otherwise, you may only need to send out onepiece of mail a couple weeks before the election in mid-May.

In my case, with seven candidates in the race, I sent outtwo mailings to the targeted voters and another mailing toneighborhoods in which I thought I might be able to gen-erate some additional new voters.

Other Voter Contact Tools

I knew my race for the school board would be difficult.In fact, my own mother didn’t believe I could win. “They’llnever let you win,” she said, referring to the status quo thathad so often been maintained in our community. So inaddition to mailing letters and postcards to voters andpotential voters, I asked friends and supporters to hostsmall gatherings in their homes where I could meet theirfriends and neighbors. This gave people an opportunity tomeet me and ask questions about why I was running, andit gave me a chance to connect with people and line uptheir support.


A postcard can bethe simplest way tocommunicate.

In addition, I also ran some broad-based efforts,because I knew this was a hotly contested race and I need-ed every vote I could possibly get. I ran newspaper ads. Iorganized a door-to-door leafletting campaign on the week-end before the election and again on the night before theelection. And when one of my opponents starting runningradio commercials the week before the election, I jumpedright in and had a commercial on the air within a day.

Printing, postage, newspaper ads, radio commercials!Most school board campaigns do not require so manyefforts that all require money, but some may. So, in addi-tion to funding a significant part of the campaign myself, Iactually raised funds from friends and community mem-bers. People were surprisingly willing to contribute,because we had a clearly defined purpose—improving ourschools by changing the makeup of the board of education.People were angry about the decline of our schools, andthey were frustrated with the school board’s lack of effec-tive response to the situation.

On election night I outpolled all the other six candidatesin the race and won one of the two open seats on the board.

Okay: You’ve Won the Election. Now What DoYou Do?

The role of a school board member is often misunder-stood. Too often, board members focus on what they knowas former students or as parents:

• Do the buses run on time?

• Does the building look clean?

• How did the football team do?

Too often board members tend to micro-manage theschool district:

• I don’t think we should hire that teacher.

• No, the day should start ten minutes later.

• My son should be the starting center for the basketballteam.

Chapter 2 21

The first three things represent items school boardmembers could be concerned about, but are topics uponwhich they should not place their prime focus. The secondthree statements represent issues with which boardsshould rarely, if ever, be involved. These kinds of issues fallinto the province of administrators and coaches.

What boards should be focusing on are things like set-ting the broad direction and the policies of the district. Theboard also should be responsible for overseeing the man-agement of the district—not conducting the day-to-daymanagement, but ensuring that the administrators aredoing their jobs properly. The board should provide leader-

ship in dealing with major education-al issues and in helping create aculture of excellence in the district.Ultimately, the board should demandaccountability for results—improve-ment in student achievement.

Some people who have consideredrunning for a school board feel thatthey don’t know enough about educa-tion to do so. But as a school board

member, you do not need to be an expert about the detailsof public education. The skills you need are in the areas ofstrategic direction and management oversight—not in buy-ing books or planning curriculum. That’s why you hireadministrators and teachers. It helps to have some under-standing of the broad issues and challenges facing publiceducation, but that you can learn from school board con-ferences, from magazines and newspapers, and from inter-acting with your new colleagues on the board.

A variety of specific resources is available to help newboard members. Most school districts in this state belongto the New York State School Boards Association, whichruns training and orientation programs for new boardmembers. Its School Board Institute, an eight-course lead-ership development series, is based on a text titled The KeyWork of School Boards, highlighting the board’s responsibil-ity to be an independent voice. It is loaded with questionsthat boards should ask superintendents, and questions that


The board shouldprovide directionand leadership—and stay out of day-to-day management.

the board itself should be able answer. There are alsonumerous publications available from this state organiza-tion as well as the National School Boards Association.Many school boards provide their own orientation sessionsfor new members. And more and more school boards areengaging in regular board development efforts to givethemselves the kind of professional training they need to besuccessful.

Sticking to Your IssuesWhile Learning to Work Together

In school districts that need to change the way theyhave been doing business, for board members who run andget elected on a platform of bringing about that change, lifecan be a bit tough at first. After all, you’re the new kid onthe board. You’re the one who wants to upset the apple cart.“You don’t understand the way we do things around here.”

My first year or two on our board of education was justshort of miserable at times. Some board members werequite skeptical and wary of me, to say the least—especiallywhen I spoke out, because I don’t think new members weresupposed to say much. Then, a few months into my term ofoffice, I was invited to write two guest essays about prob-lems in public education by the local newspaper. The editorinsisted on including in the biographical information thataccompanied the article the fact that I was a member of thecity’s board of education. Well, the reaction of some of mycolleagues on the school board was less than favorable. Howdare I write an article and say that I represented the schoolboard? “But, I didn’t say that,” I replied. I simply wrote twoinformative essays and it was mentioned in the articles thatin addition to owning a business in the community, I servedon the school board. To keep peace in the family, I agreed tolet my colleagues know in advance if I was going to writeany more articles.

The following year another member of our communitygroup won a five-way contest for one of two open seats onour board. Two years later another member of our groupwould be elected, but in the meantime many of the concerns

Chapter 2 23

of our community group began to receive attention as theboard began a process that would truly change the dynam-ics and effectiveness of our organization.

Focusing On Goals:The Necessity of Learning to Work Together

At the end of my first year on the board, a retiring boardmember and I agreed on the need for the board to do somelong-range planning and goal setting. Like most schoolboards ours had tended to react to situations at hand—often crises—rather than proactively leading the district.We had never done any long-range planning. Some super-intendents may prefer things that way; if the board doesn’thave any long-term goals, then the superintendent doesn’thave to worry about achieving those goals. However, with-out a focus on broad issues and goals, school boards tendto micro-manage, simply because they need something to

do. If boards would work on thebroad policy issues and the goal-set-ting that are their real areas ofresponsibility, they would be far lesslikely to meddle in the day-to-daymanagement of the district, a respon-sibility that properly rests withadministrators.

Our board was lucky enough toacquire the services of a highly talented facilitator, RichardCastallo, who was brought in by our superintendent to helpus with long-range planning. The superintendent hadworked with this consultant while employed in another dis-trict, so there was a level of trust between the two individ-uals. Following good organizational consulting practice,our consultant quickly diagnosed that there were someserious interpersonal conflicts on our board. At the sametime he began a process of focusing our energies on devel-oping medium- and long-term goals that would help useventually overcome many of our differences.


Like most schoolboards, ours hadtended to react tosituations at hand.

A pivotal event occurred when we decided to leave townfor a weekend board retreat with our facilitator/consultantjoining us. A number of hot-button issues happened to popup just days before our scheduled retreat. And, of course, Iwas the one to fan the flames via e-mail to all board mem-bers just in time for us to go away together for the weekend.To make a long story short, many board members had theiropportunity during this weekend to express their frustra-tion, anger, and just plain annoyance with me. I had been aroyal pain for some of these people. I had raised issues thatthe board had preferred not to address. I had pushed andprodded. After hours of discussion at the retreat, most, ifnot all the members finally agreed that I had been right toraise these hot-button issues, but they objected to theinflammatory way in which I had raised them. Finally, mycolleague from our community group suggested that if I hadraised the issues in any less inflammatory a manner, theboard would have ignored them. Ultimately, my colleaguesagreed that this is very well what might have happened.

While the weekend was a rough one for me (the consul-tant suggested the group thank me for letting them beat upon me for four hours one evening), it was possibly the bestthing that could have happened to our board. Once my col-leagues were able to dump out all that anger and frustra-tion that had built up, then we were finally able to startfocusing on what was best for the children. Then we werefinally willing to admit, for example, that it was a mistaketo have an unofficial board policy that we would never tryto dismiss an incompetent, but tenured, teacher. We founda way to put the personal stuff aside and put our energiesinto our goals, which included developing a world-classschool system. We opened up our internal communicationssystem among board members—a system that had previ-ously hampered board members from bringing up contro-versial issues. One member, who later became president ofour board, suggested the creation of a simple form thatboard members could use to place issues of concern beforethe board for consideration. All of this was in marked con-trast to the past practices of this board.

Chapter 2 25

In some sense it seemed like a logjam had been broken.Many of the board members realized that some seriousproblems had been going unattended, but this board sim-ply did not have a culture that allowed them to be active in

attending to those kinds of problems.In some sense, people were relievedwhen we as a board could tackle someof the critical issues facing the dis-trict.

I think that those of my colleagueswho remain on our board some five

years later would agree that the relations and interactionsamong our board members became far more collegial andeven cordial after that highly productive board retreat. Theconclusion that I drew from this experience is that even ahighly contentious board can find its way, with the rightkind of skillful assistance, to become a productive andeffective working body that puts the interests of childrenabove all else.

The Drive Toward Improving StudentAchievement

As a result of our long-range goal setting, our boarddecided to focus on improving student achievement, whichto my mind is the first and foremost responsibility of anyschool board. Through a series of workshops with our con-sultant, we gradually came to adopt a goal of creating aworld-class school system. Next, we turned to our adminis-trative team to operationalize this broad goal and createsome measurable and specific goals that would defineworld-class excellence. Focusing on mastery became aprime element in these goals. Another key element that theadministrators incorporated into the goals was continuousimprovement.

Over the past four years it has been exciting to watchthe progress we’ve been making toward our academicgoals. Some goals have been reached. For others we’re get-ting close; and some of our goals seem like they are still


Even a highlycontentious boardcan find its way.

years away. However, by focusing the energies of the dis-trict on student achievement, we have started a process inwhich all our administrators and most members of our fac-ulty are realizing that results do matter. We are changingthe culture of our school community. People are concen-trating on the important issues of curriculum and instruc-tion. Many are working very hard, harder than they haveever worked before. The word is out that if you apply for aposition in our district, you’ll really have to work—extradays of staff development in the summer, careful analysis ofyour students’ test results to identify weaknesses in cur-riculum and instruction, quarterly meetings during theyear to improve the performance of your department, andmore.

Where did all of this change start? Where did theemphasis on improving student achievement come from? Itcame from leadership by school board members, peoplevolunteering their time to improve this most important ofpublic institutions, people leading to the schools we need.

Chapter 2 27

29

Chapter 3

Going to Work —Without Going Native

Many educators bristle at the idea that schools can berun “like a business.” If you as a business person show upas a school-board member or in some other role helping theschools, they’ll want to get you to fit into their culture,rather than the other way around.

And the system is adept at taking over newcomers andmaking its priorities their priorities. One study shows thatmore than 80 percent of school board agenda items are setby the superintendent, rather than the board. Rather thanproviding proactive leadership for a district, many schoolboards simply react to problems and put out fires. Schoolboard members are followers, not leaders, in many districts.

But you’ll be undercutting your value to the educationsystem if you yield to the pressure to “go native”—to layaside business skills and ways of thinking just so you’ll fit in.

Obviously there are differences between a school sys-tem and a profit-making business. But your special contri-bution is to bring your business skills to the table and applythem to this new situation.

A Focus on the Customer

One of the quickest ways to improve public educationis, in fact, to think like a business person and try to make itmore customer-focused. When was the last time yourschool district conducted a survey of its customers? If it diddo a survey, how long ago was it? Is the survey repeated on

a regular basis? What does your district do with the surveyinformation? How much change occurs as a result of a survey?

The fact is that few school districts have a program inplace to regularly survey their cus-tomers about the service they deliver.Even fewer districts use survey data tomake substantial changes in the waythey do business. School board mem-bers should therefore view themselvesas the ultimate customer/consumer of

public education—the “supercustomer.” School board mem-bers need to be constantly asking themselves if people shouldbe happy with the operation of their schools. They alsoshould ask themselves in the most objective and honest way:Should we accept the quality of our schools?

• Action Step: Ask your school district to survey its cus-tomers on a regular basis to determine the satisfactionof those customers. Make sure the surveys are conduct-ed by a reputable firm that will assist the district withinterpreting the data for the primary purpose ofaddressing problems in the district and improving stu-dent achievement.

Now that we have explored a few of the institutionalbarriers to achieving that excellence, it is time to look atwhat school board members need to know and do to builda culture of excellence in their school districts.

Creating a Vision with High Expectations

Just as with a business, once a school board memberhas a clear picture of the customers, the next step is a clearset of goals. The first step in creating a world-class schooldistrict requires that a school board create a world-classvision of what they want their district to be. One of the firsthurdles many school boards will face is the retort fromsome who may say, “But we can’t become that good!” Theanswer should be, “And why not?”

New Yorkers live in a state of extraordinary affluence.No, not all school districts share equally in that wealth, but


Few school districtsregularly surveytheir customers.

we still have access to significant sums of money to fundour schools. Unfortunately, we don’t always spend themoney we have in the most effective or efficient ways.

Money aside, the real problem is one of conviction anddetermination. Too many people and too many schoolboard members are afraid to aim high. Remember, no oneis saying that every school district can be the #1 district inthe state or in the country. What districts should be sayingis that they want to be at a level that is reached by thou-sands of quality schools throughout the developed world—a world-class level.

The first step in achieving such a standard of excellenceis to create a vision that includes world-class academicexcellence for your district. Most boards would be wise toseek outside assistance with the vision development taskand the entire planning and monitoring process that is thecore of this important change management effort. Talentedfacilitators from the university and corporate worlds areavailable to assist districts with this kind of work.

Once the idea of world-class excellence is accepted byyour board, the vision needs to be captured in meaningfuland measurable academic goals. What those goals shouldconsist of is up to each board of education. However, thelogical goal is for students to achieve mastery of the mate-rial they study, so goals focusing on getting high percent-ages of students to mastery would seem to be critical.

Implementation: The Devil is in the Details

Once a board has created a vision for a world-class schoolsystem and developed clear and measurable academic goals,an implementation plan is needed to turn those goals intoreality. Here is where the administrative team needs to carrythe ball. The implementation is the responsibility of manage-ment; the day-to-day management of schools is not theresponsibility (nor is it the province) of school boards. Theboard’s responsibility is to oversee the implementation plan,provide a reality check to make sure the plan seems workable,and keep the administrative team on track by periodicallyreviewing the district’s progress toward the goals.

Chapter 3 31

The board also has another very important role to playin this kind of change management effort. The board needsto ensure that the administrative team has the appropriateresources to successfully implement the plan. It simply isn’t

reasonable for a board to ask itsmanagers to achieve major improve-ments in academic performancewithout ensuring that a reasonablelevel of resources, deployed in themost appropriate ways, is availableto the administrative team. To deter-

mine what kinds of resources are needed and at what levels,the board and its administrative team, perhaps workingtogether with a consultant, can undertake a gap analysisand a needs assessment.

Finding the Gaps

As discussed above, the first step in improving schoolsis developing an understanding of where they are now. Wehave data about where schools stand at the state andnational levels, but when working at the local level a dis-trict also needs to understand where its own schools stand.

The gap analysis examines the gaps between where yourdistrict is now (in terms of student achievement) and whereyou want it to be at some point down the road (the academ-ic goals you have identified). For example, suppose theschool district in the imaginary community of Milltown,New York determines that a part of world-class excellencemeans that 80 percent of its students should score at masteryor above on all Regents exams. Next, the Milltown schoolboard takes a look at its current Regents results and findsthat on average only 35 percent of its students reach mas-tery (a score of 85 or better on a Regents exam). In this caseMilltown has identified a critical gap in student perfor-mance—moving from 35 percent of students scoring atmastery to the goal of 80 percent at mastery.

In actuality, there is much more that goes into a gapanalysis, but this is where good change management con-sultants can help.


Create a vision thatincludes world-classacademic excellence.

The Needs Assessment

One way of looking at a needs assessment is as a tool foraddressing the identified gaps in performance. The needsassessment looks at the identified gaps, prioritizes the gapsin the results, and focuses efforts on the most importantgaps that need attention.4 Once the gaps—and the resultsneeded to close those gaps—have been identified, theadministrative team can begin the construction of animplementation plan to close the gaps. A central part of theplan will be to continue to look at needs, but in a more spe-cific way. What actions will the district need to take to closethe gaps? These can include changes in curriculum, ininstruction, in staff development, in culture, in schedules,in staffing, in hiring practices, in budgets and allocations ofresources, and in contracts with teachers and other staffmembers.

Here is where the rubber meets the road. Here is wherethe greatest challenges will be. Public schools, like manyother institutions, tend to resist change, and there will beopposition to many of the changes your district will need to

make if you want to accomplish any-thing more than modest, incrementalimprovement. While your adminis-trative team is charged with carryingout the implementation plan and

making the necessary program, budget, and personnelchanges, your board of education must also play a leader-ship role. The board can clearly and firmly communicate toall the stakeholders in your school community and thecommunity at large how important these changes are. Yourboard can set the tone, help change the culture, and fullysupport the administrative team as it goes about the diffi-cult job of making your school district much more account-able for student performance.

Chapter 3 33

Institutions tend toresist change.

4 Roger Kaufman, Mapping Educational Success (Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.,1992)

Question Dogma

School boards must also constantly question the educa-tional dogma of the day, including the accepted practicesfor curriculum and instruction. To paraphrase LewisThomas, school boards need to realize that much of theeducational dogma that is used to run schools is nonsense.Too many things done in public education are not support-ed by good, hard science to validate their efficacy.

One of the most important areas in which teachers needfar better training is in the teaching of reading. Many teach-ers and administrators fall prey to educational fads support-ed by poor research (if any). Indeed, it appears that much ofthe work in the field of educational research is of question-able quality. The good research that exists is sometimes

ignored if it does not comport with theeducational philosophy of the day—ormore particularly the educational phi-losophy of the particular faculty thatruns a specific teacher education pro-gram. Consequently, too many teacherswind up trained to use exciting-sound-ing approaches that at best have little

research behind them, and at worst do real harm by failingto properly educate children. The most discouraging exam-ple of this tendency can be found in the teaching of reading.

There is probably more scientific research about theteaching of reading than there is about any other topic ineducation. In the mid-1990s the federal government decid-ed to conduct a rigorous review of the reading researchthrough a project conducted by the National Institute forChild Heath and Human Development (NICHD) at theNational Institutes of Health. A major conclusion drawn bythe expert panel convened for this review of the research,The National Reading Panel, was that systematic, explicitphonics instruction is a critically important part of any goodreading program. Yet phonics is simply not acceptable inmany schools, because it is not acceptable to the teacherswho were trained to believe that phonics is unnecessary andcertainly should not be emphasized.


Educationalpractice must bebased on goodresearch, not fads.

Another large study was conducted by the federal gov-ernment in the 1960s and 1970s. Studying close to 10,000children, this research examined various teachingapproaches. Of the nine models studied for teaching disad-vantaged children, only one approach, Direct Instruction,was found to be consistently more effective than all the oth-ers. Unfortunately, for the children, the characteristics ofDirect Instruction ran counter to the progressive educa-tional fads of the day, and powerful groups within the edu-cational establishment worked hard to discredit this veryeffective approach for teaching reading and other subjects.

The teachers’ unions have been vocal in recommendingthat schools and teachers use validated approaches to read-ing instruction. A report issued by the American Federationof Teachers in 1999 referred to the large new body ofresearch available to schools and teachers5. However, thereport also pointed out one of the systemic barriers to mak-ing good use of that research in the classroom:

Few of today’s popular textbooks for teacher prepa-ration in reading contain information about theknown relationships between linguistic awareness,word recognition ability, and reading comprehen-sion. Few discuss in any useful detail how the Eng-lish writing system represents speech. Basic conceptssuch as the differences between speech sounds andspellings, the fact that every syllable in English isorganized around a vowel sound, and the existence ofmeaningful units (morphemes) in the Latin layer ofEnglish (about 60 percent of running text) are rarelyexplained. Few texts contain accurate informationabout the role of phonology in reading development,and few explain with depth, accuracy, or clarity whymany children have trouble learning to read or whatto do about it. Teachers are often given inaccurateand misleading information based on unsupportedideas….

Chapter 3 35

5 Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and BeAble to Do, American Federation of Teachers, June 1999.

A recent review of major classroom reading programsshows that they continue to lack the content necessary toteach basic reading systematically and explicitly.6

Remember, the National Reading Panel has also statedthat systematic, explicit phonics is a critical component ofany good reading program. Yet, according to MichaelBrunner, former senior researcher in phonics at the Nation-al Institute of Education, the textbooks for training teach-ers to teach reading with systematic, explicit phonics havebeen out of print for 50 years.7

Imagine your doctor refusing to use the latest researchabout cancer, just because he likes to practice medicine adifferent way. Well, if he’s your doctor, you have a choice.You can switch doctors and find yourself someone whokeeps up with the scientific research in his or her profes-sion. But most children don’t have that choice.

Reading is one example of an area inwhich school board members, business-es, and community members can makea real contribution by demanding thattheir school districts deliver instructionthat is supported by rigorous scientificresearch—in this case the researchcoming out of the National Reading

Panel. There are many other areas in which instruction thatis of questionable validity is being delivered at publicexpense. School boards need to be vigilant about ensuringthat best practices, those that are rigorously proven to behighly effective and efficient, are being utilized in theirschools.

• Action Step: Ask your school district to report to thecommunity about the alignment of the district’s instruc-tional practices in reading with the research from TheNational Reading Panel and NICHD at the NationalInstitutes of Health.

• Action Step: Ask to see a list of all the training thateach of the elementary teachers in your district has had

You must hold youradministratorsaccountable forreal results.

6 Ibid, p. 13.7 Michael Brunner, personal communication, November 1997


in providing “systematic, explicit phonics instruction”as recommended by the National Reading Panel at NIH.

• Action Step: Ask your school board to recruit only ele-mentary teachers who have substantial training in pro-viding “systematic, explicit phonics instruction” andwho have advanced training in reading instruction asrecommended by the National Reading Panel.

Support and Results

While your board must provide unflinching leadershipand support for the difficult work your administrators willundertake, you must also hold your administratorsaccountable for real results. This is one of the most impor-tant responsibilities of school boards—and one they oftenoverlook. Just because your administrators work with youto develop an implementation plan, and just because theyactually implement the plan, that doesn’t mean they (andyou) are off the hook if the plan does not achieve meaning-ful results.

If the school district is not demonstrating real progresstoward the district’s goals as you move along a reasonabletimeframe, then the board and your administrators need tounderstand that they may need to make changes in theirplan. Administrators may need to work together with theboard and a consultant to identify the barriers to successthat keep the district from making real progress toward itsgoals. What you may find in such a case is that the prob-lems confronting your district—problems that prevent chil-dren from learning as well as you would like—are far moreintense and complex than you first estimated. Here iswhere adjustments in the deployment and application ofresources may again come into play. Here is where yourboard may have to start asking very tough and direct ques-tions about how every dollar in your budget is spent. Final-ly, here is where you may need to step back and look at thebig picture by asking some fundamental questions:

Chapter 3 37

• Do we have a culture of excellence that pervades everynook and cranny of our school district?

• If we don’t, how can we create it?

• Do all members of our school community—boardmembers, administrators, teachers, staff, students, andparents—share a commitment to academic success andacademic excellence?

• If they don’t, how can we address that?

• How do we make sure that everyone understands thatsuccess in school needs to be the #1 priority?

• Do we have the quality of leadership we need to reachour goals?

This last question should come last—not first. Too oftenschool boards jump right to the idea that a lack of progressis the superintendent’s fault, and they decide to find anoth-er superintendent. That’s the easy way out, and often it pro-vides no real solution. If the superintendent isn’t beingsuccessful in leading the district, then the board first needsto ask itself if it has done everything possible to provide thesuperintendent with the resources, the support, the train-ing, and a reasonable amount of time in which to achievereal progress toward the district’s goals. The board alsoneeds to find out if there are institutional barriers tochange that the board can help overcome. Only after allthese areas and questions have been explored, should aboard question the need for a stronger leader.

• Action Step: Investigate the concept of performance-based contracts for all school administrators in yourdistrict. When a manager’s compensation is linked tothe performance of his or her organization, there is anew incentive for managers to make the hard decisionsthat otherwise get ignored.

However, it must also be noted that many superinten-dents do not have the skills, the training, and the leadershipability to bring about fundamental change in a publicschool system. One key in evaluating the performance of a


superintendent is not whether he or she is being immedi-ately successful, but whether they display an attitude thatthe job really can be done:

• Is the superintendent willing to work with a board to sethigh goals for academic achievement—to put him orherself on the line?

• Is the superintendent willing to go out and get the train-ing and education he or she may need to get the jobdone?

• Is your district’s leader determined to find and mobilizethe resources necessary to reach your goals?

While a superintendent may not always have all theresources at hand that he or she needs, the attitude andcommitment that person displays toward getting the neces-sary resources is critical. The job of the school board in thisarea is twofold: You need to make sure you provide for theprofessional development of your superintendent—makesure that he or she has the skills and training necessary tomove your district toward academic excellence. And youalso need to hold your superintendent accountable forresults. He or she needs to know that you take your dis-trict’s academic goals seriously.

Chapter 3 39

41

Chapter 4

The People Factor

One basic way in which schools are just like business isthat people are the key to the whole thing. Getting goodpeople, motivating them, rewarding them, bringing out thebest in them—every one of these things is just as importantto the schools as to your business.

And for schools, as for businesses, the importance of“the people factor” starts at the top of the organization.New York State Commissioner of Education Richard Millshas noted that many of the schools that are achieving greatimprovements in student achievement are also schools thathave great leadership. If a school district is really con-cerned about excellence, it needs to recruit and train topquality administrators, the best and the brightest that theprofession has to offer. Great leaders can change the cul-ture of their schools. They can focus the energies of the fac-ulty and staff on the one thing that makes the mostdifference in student achievement: instruction.

Yet too often, school districts have not realized theimportance of inspired leadership in their buildings. Admin-istrators have often been underpaid for the breadth andcomplexity of their jobs. Not only is a principal expected tobe the instructional leader in the building, but she or heoften is also expected to handle the numerous social anddiscipline problems that plague far too many of today’sschools. These problems can require principals to spendconsiderable time working with social workers and psychol-ogists as well as spending time in court dealing with verydisruptive students. Add to that the voluminous amounts ofpaperwork, far too many state-mandated committees on

which principals must participate, and an expectation thatthe principal should show up at every athletic event anddrama or music presentation. Now, we have created a jobthat in many school districts few qualified people want.

How did we arrive at this state of affairs? Schools havefor too long taken on more and more of the problems fac-ing society. From feeding hungry students to providingcounseling and therapy to offering after-school care, therole of school has expanded far beyond the academic con-cerns for which the institution of public education was firstdeveloped. Who becomes responsible for coordinating andoverseeing so many of these additional services? Why, theprincipal, of course.

In too many cases principals havebecome institutional managers ratherthan educational leaders. Many pro-grams for training educational admin-istrators focus on management—withlittle concern for instructional leader-ship. This helps create an imbalancebetween what we really need principalsto do to improve student achievement,and what we require of them to keeptheir buildings functioning.

Can they effectively run fire drills, or make sure thecafeteria is properly staffed, or supervise the janitorialstaff? In most cases the answer is “yes.” But do they spendmore than a small fraction of their time in classrooms on aregular basis? Do they feel confident enough about subjectmaterial and instructional practices to focus their energieson ensuring that all the instruction in their buildings ishighly effective and highly efficient? If the answers to thosequestions are “no,” then that is a significant barrier to mak-ing systemic improvements in public education.

The problems facing superintendents are at least asgreat as those facing principals. The vast majority of super-intendents have worked their way up the educationalcareer ladder to their current positions. But along the waythey have become part of an educational culture in which“accountability” is often a dirty word. In efforts to keep


Too many principalshave becomeinstitutionalmanagers ratherthan educationalleaders.

teachers’ unions from getting too upset with changes in thedistrict, many superintendents are inclined to approachchange at such a slow pace that little of value is ever accom-plished. On the other hand superintendents in New York Statealso face very difficult state policies covering the employmentof the people who work for them; for example, it is all butimpossible to dismiss an incompetent or lazy teacher.

If school boards want to hire a higher caliber of schoolsuperintendent, they will need to pay a competitive salary.The difficulties and pressures associated with being aschool superintendent, along with the increasing account-ability for school district performance, make it clear howinadequate are the compensation packages offered bysome, if not most districts. Here is where another $30,000-$50,000 invested in a superintendent’s position could yielda payback many times over in terms of increased organiza-tional efficiency and effectiveness when a top-flight admin-istrator is hired.

You and your fellow school board members are also akey part of the leadership in our consideration of “the peo-ple factor.” In the absence of significant knowledge abouteducation or leadership skills, too often school boards tendto over-rely on school administrators. As noted above, oftenschool board agenda items are set by the superintendent,rather than the board. School board members are follow-ers, not leaders, in all too many school districts.

The Legislature should mandate professional trainingfor school board members once they are elected to office.Education is a state responsibility that the Legislature hasdesignated to local communities. The Legislature has theright to ensure that this responsibility is carried out byappropriately trained individuals.

The Faculty You Need

The teaching faculty is ultimately the key force thatdelivers education to your district’s students, and a key partof a school board member’s responsibilities is to make surethat the district is getting the best possible teachers, andmaking the most of their talents.

Chapter 4 43

We would all like to be able to hire only the most high-ly qualified and well-trained teachers for our schools.Unfortunately, not only are severe shortages developing incertain parts of the state, but also in certain subject areassuch as foreign languages, science, math, and special edu-cation among others. Even in areas for which no shortagehas yet developed, the supply of high-quality candidates isoften limited. Many veteran teachers are now refusing toaccept student teachers in their classrooms, because theyare so disappointed with the preparation these teacher can-didates bring to the classroom.

School boards need to take a much more aggressive rolein demanding that only highly qualified teachers be hiredfor their districts. School boards in New York State mayhave to start recruiting much more aggressively out-of-

state as they look for the best andbrightest candidates from across thecountry.

Unfortunately, teaching does notalways attract the most able or mostscholarly individuals. While there arewonderfully talented and well-educat-ed people who decide to go into teach-

ing, this is not necessarily the norm. Perceptions about lowsalaries and low prestige, combined with the difficultatmosphere that exists in many schools, are just a few ofthe impediments to attracting the best and the brightestinto this profession. Some researchers have suggested thatas a group, those individuals who choose careers in teach-ing are among the least academically able people in col-leges and universities. For example, thousands of teachersworking in New York State under a temporary license areunable to obtain teacher certification because they cannotpass a relatively easy state examination. Some candidateshave taken the exam numerous times and still cannotachieve a passing score. Other teachers who have graduat-ed from teacher colleges, passed the appropriate stateexaminations, and received their permanent certification inNew York State, are inadequately educated to serve as


School boardsshould demand thatonly highly qualifiedteachers be hired.

teachers. Some are unable to write well, yet are chargedwith teaching students to learn to write well. Some haveinadequate knowledge in their subject areas. Some elemen-tary teachers, who are required to teach science and math,have little meaningful preparation in these areas and fartoo little command of the disciplines themselves.

How could such a state of affairs have developed? Thepast 40 years have brought about critical changes in thedemographics of education. Up until the last third of the20th Century, there were limited career options for womenwho chose to pursue a career outside the home. The tradi-tional options were teaching and nursing. The women’smovement changed all of that. Now, with almost limitlesscareer options, the brightest women no longer have tochoose between nursing or teaching, as they once did.

While the academic achievement of people who chooseto enter teacher preparation programs is often weak, thequality of teacher preparation programs is notoriouslyuneven, and downright poor at some institutions. Somehave suggested that 50 percent or more of teacher educa-tion programs in America are so substandard that theyneed to be radically improved or closed. During the nextfew years all teacher education programs in New York Statewill have to become accredited. Yet real questions still existabout the quality of the potential accrediting programs andhow rigorously programs will be evaluated.

If the Commissioner of Education and the Board ofRegents are serious about improving teacher quality, theymust ensure that weak teacher education programs dra-matically improve or close. The Regents should also con-sider matching the output of teacher candidates to marketneeds in both geographic and subject areas. For example,some teacher education programs that are producing toomany graduates with certification to teach social studies(for which there are few shortages) should shift resourcesto train more math and science teachers (for which thereare many shortages). The Legislature could offer economicincentives to draw students into subject areas and commu-nities with the greatest shortages.

Chapter 4 45

• Action Step: School boards must create powerful newrecruitment strategies to find the best teachers. Thesemight include competitive salaries (for which increasedstate aid will be necessary in some districts); career lad-ders for professional advancement; fully funded sabbat-icals at regular intervals to allow teachers to renew

themselves and avoid getting stale in theclassroom; and powerful communicationsvehicles that tout all the advantages ofteaching in the district—including thehigh expectations the district sets for stu-dent achievement, the district commit-ment to professional development, etc.

And the “pitch” you make to attract high-quality teachers must be real. There must be a cultureof excellence and high achievement, to create a placethe best teachers want to be.

Compensation Issues

Many will argue that teaching is not a full-time job,with teachers receiving numerous vacations during theschool year and another ten weeks off during the summer.Certainly, teaching salaries have improved significantly inthis state during the last generation with the growth ofteacher unions and their vigorous bargaining with schooldistricts. Yet, why is teaching not a more attractive profes-sion for talented individuals?

Let’s look at where the shortages are the greatest—inour urban centers. The starting teaching salary (2001) inNew York City was $31,900. This is within a few hundreddollars of the starting salary in the small upstate city ofGlens Falls. Yet the cost of living in New York City wasmore than 126 percent greater than in Glens Falls. A start-ing salary of $31,000 in Glens Falls, adjusted for cost of liv-ing, would be over $70,000 in New York City. If Glens Fallsis having trouble attracting enough highly qualified teach-ers, it’s easy to imagine how New York City isn’t even in theballgame with such low starting salaries. In many commu-nities uncompetitive compensation is a real barrier to


Salary is not theonly barrier toattracting goodteachers.

attracting highly capable people into the classroom.Uncompetitive salaries are a particular problem when itcomes to attracting teachers in the math and science areas,since individuals with backgrounds in these subjects canearn substantially more in the private sector.

• Action Step: School districts need to increase compen-sation for entry-level teachers.

• Action Step: Districts need to abandon the single salaryschedule and move to differentiated salary schedulesthat allow districts to offer higher salaries for hard-to-fill positions in shortage areas. Compensation for teach-ers should also be based upon performance rather thanlongevity in the classroom. Outstanding teachersshould be properly rewarded, while economic disincen-tives should be put in place for teachers who do notachieve results or put forth strong effort.

Lack of Career Opportunities

One of the significant frustrations in the teaching pro-fession is the lack of opportunity for career advancement.Unless a teacher is willing to leave the classroom for therole of an administrator, there are few options for teacherswho are motivated to find new challenges and keep grow-ing professionally. This lack of opportunity for career devel-opment contributes to teachers becoming stagnant andburned-out. It also means that most teachers are stuck onthe same salary schedule that compensates all their col-leagues regardless of how much effort and time eachteacher in the school district puts forth.

• Action Step: School districts need to develop careerladders with new positions such as teacher mentors,master teachers, and supervising teachers. School dis-tricts can provide increased compensation for thoseteachers who choose to pursue more responsibility andsupervisory teaching positions.

Chapter 4 47

Working Conditions

In the 1999-2000 school year the New York City Boardof Education, with the cooperation of the city and the Unit-ed Federation of Teachers, instituted a plan to offer masterteachers the option of receiving a 15 percent bonus if theywould teach in one of the city’s lowest-performing schools.While approximately 11,000 teachers were qualified toapply for this program, only about 500 chose to participate.It turns out that salary is not the only barrier to bringinggood teachers into the schools that really need them. All

sorts of other work environment issuesexist, including: lack of safe parking; poorphysical conditions in buildings; weakleadership; lack of resources includingtextbooks, chalk, and computers; andmany other working condition issues thatprovide disincentives for teachers tochoose these schools and to excel in them.

In regard to the environment in which students and teach-ers must work, one estimate suggests that at least $6 billionis needed just to fix the school buildings that are in disre-pair throughout the state.

Business persons have to deal with these kinds of work-er satisfaction issues all the time; they can bring the sameskills and the same attitude to the work of school boards.

What would it take to get good teachers to willinglyteach in the schools with the most problems, the poorestbuilding conditions, and the weakest leadership? Would ittake a 30 percent premium, 50 percent, 75 percent? What ifeven a 100 percent premium was offered and large num-bers of teachers still wouldn’t participate? What does thatsay about the viability of these poorest performing schools?

Let’s go back to the small city of Glens Falls. For manypeople this community offers an almost idyllic setting:small neighborhood schools to which children can walk, amoderate-size high school with a large offering of AP cours-es, and a community that regularly supports its schoolswhen passing annual school budgets by wide margins. Yet,even here there are teachers who can’t wait to retire,


Teachers feelthat they are nolonger allowedsimply to teach.

because the environment for teaching has become moredifficult. In communities like Glens Falls, it’s not the build-ings or the lack of resources that frustrate teachers. Inmany communities like this teachers are ready to quit assoon as they can, because the atmosphere for teaching haschanged.

Too little support from parents, too much control byadministrators, too many discipline problems, too manytests, and simply too many responsibilities! Teachers feelthat they are no longer allowed simply to teach. In far toomany instances, the teacher must also act as counselor, par-ent, drug educator, sexual abuse educator, and more.

And teachers are the ones who most often get saddledwith numerous new responsibilities for which they oftenreceive inadequate training—and for which they have toolittle time. Children are pulled out of class for physical ther-apy, for occupational therapy, for remedial instruction, forgifted and talented instruction, for music lessons, for thisand that, and pretty soon an elementary teacher is lucky toever have her or his entire class together for an entire day.At the same time the student population has changed. Ourpublic schools serve more children with attention deficitdisorder and other learning disabilities, with emotional dis-abilities, and with abusive home situations.

Focusing on Effectiveness and Efficiency

A concept known as the education production functionhas typically focused on the inputs and the outputs inschools. Historically, much of the analysis of public schoolsfocused on the inputs: How many books, how many teach-ers, how much money, etc. did we invest in a school? By the1990s the focus began shifting to an examination of theoutputs: What are we getting for all this investment? Thedevelopment of New York State’s School Report Card wasone step in the process of examining how much bang tax-payers are getting for their buck.

Unfortunately, there has been far too little analysis ofwhat happens between the inputs and the outputs. As oneeducational economist described it, when a teacher closes

Chapter 4 49

the door to her classroom, nobody knows what goes on.Nobody knows how the educational inputs are being trans-formed into outputs.

One teacher may be very effective in using the variousresources she has at her disposal to achieve the desired out-come: a large number of her students mastering the materi-al she has taught. Another teacher right across the hallteaching the very same material with equivalent resourcesand an equivalent makeup of students may achieve signifi-cantly weaker results. The difference in achievement of thetwo classes may most logically be attributed to the nature ofthe instruction provided by the two teachers. One teacher

may be using a very strong set of skills andvalidated instructional practices, while theother teacher may be lacking in skills, insubject area knowledge, and in classroommanagement techniques.

The problem is that often nobody isresponsible for ensuring that comparablyhigh levels of quality instruction are tak-ing place in both classrooms. Neither fel-low teachers nor most administrators are

keen about suggesting to the weaker teacher that he reallyneeds to make major improvements in his instruction.Even if anyone was inclined to provide such useful advice,it simply can’t happen if there is rarely anyone in the classobserving the deficiencies in the teacher’s instructionalapproach.

How can schools be held accountable for their perfor-mance with such a state of affairs? How can schools beheld accountable for ensuring that instruction is deliveredboth effectively and efficiently?

Many principals and other administrators may protestand argue that all teachers are observed on a yearly basis,and that those administrators who make the observationsdo in fact provide feedback to the teachers. But there are afew problems with such a response. First, administratorsare not necessarily trained as experts at instruction. Theymay not have sufficient experience supervising teachers tomake high-quality observations that are useful for more


Current tenurerules make itdifficult to dealwith incompetentteachers.

than a handful of teachers. Second, many administratorsare reluctant to criticize tenured faculty members for fearof upsetting the atmosphere of the building.

The notion of instructional leadership and supervisionin schools looks great on paper, but it simply doesn’t alwayswork well. If it did, our schools would be improving at amuch faster rate. That’s a real challenge for school-boardmembers.

The Tenure Trap

A school board’s effort to impact the quality of what’shappening in the classroom is further hampered by the vir-tual impossibility of removing a chronically under-per-forming teacher.

Originally developed to prevent inappropriate dismissalof teachers by vindictive or nepotistic school boards,teacher tenure as it exists today puts undue, if not impossi-ble, burdens upon school districts in dealing with incom-petent teachers. The problem is not with the concept oftenure itself. Rather, it is with Section 3020-a of New YorkState’s Education Law, which specifies the process bywhich a school district can dismiss a tenured teacher. Con-trary to what some in the profession will argue, incompe-tent teachers cannot, for all intents and purposes, bedismissed under Section 3020-a. Section 3020-a is only use-ful when dismissing teachers for grossly inappropriatebehavior, such as criminal activity. As a result of theextremely onerous burdens put on school districts for 3020-a proceedings, it can cost a school district $100,000 ormore to pursue this course of action.

Although an incompetent teacher can theoretically bedismissed under the current law, the absence of a clear def-inition of competency in the profession makes the lawunworkable. The simple fact that incompetent teachers donot get dismissed through 3020-a proceedings shows that,in fact, the law does not provide school districts with theability to remove incompetent tenured teachers. The bot-tom line is that it can’t be done.

Without an ability to control the quality of his or her

Chapter 4 51

staff, how can a principal really be held accountable for theperformance of that staff? How can a superintendent beheld responsible? For that matter, how can a school boardbe held responsible? Changes in Section 3020-a of the Edu-cation Law need to be addressed by the Legislature, in myopinion.

Parents, The ‘Friendly Enemy’

The ultimate power in public education rests with par-ents and other community members who, with their votes,control the makeup of school boards and the approval ofbudgets in most communities throughout the state.

Yet parents are sometimes non gratawhen it comes to asking questions aboutthe actual operation of the schools theyfund with their tax dollars. When schoolsask their parents to become moreinvolved, they often mean in terms ofmaking something for the bake sale orsupporting the soccer team. When parentsbegin raising questions about curriculum

or instruction, then up go the walls of professionalism.“Leave those topics to us—we’re the professionals.”

Well, given the documented problems in our public edu-cation system, the “professionals” running them must notbe perfect. There is a role for outsiders, and particularlyparents, to play. The schools need scrutiny and pressurefrom their customers if they are to improve.

Ultimately, parents and taxpayers need to become bet-ter informed about the dubious fads that dominate publiceducation. They also need to elect school board memberswho will be willing to challenge the educational establish-ment about unsupported instructional approaches that areused in place of highly validated practices, which haveundergone rigorous scientific evaluation.


The professionalsare not perfect.There is a rolefor parents.

53

Issues Beyondthe District

As you work on issues in your own school district, yourattention inevitably will be drawn to issues beyond the bor-ders—the impacts of professional practice, state policy, andother factors have on your ability to get the best perfor-mance from your own local schools. I’ll conclude this hand-book with a few observations about some of these factors.

An Ill-Prepared Profession

Perhaps the largest and most serious concern is that inmany important ways, the education “profession” isn’t.Both teachers and administrators receive academic prepa-ration that is often inadequate or even counter-productive.And in their work they can be swept along by fads, byresearch that is unsubstantiated and unscientific, and by agroup mentality that can be resistant to (rather than eagerfor) constructive change—in all respects, the very oppositeof what we think of, when we think of the best professions.

Teaching has often been viewed by many as a relativelyeasy and uncomplicated endeavor. After all, look at howsociety respects and rewards teachers. When was the lasttime you heard someone at a cocktail party boast, “My sonis becoming a teacher.”

Why is the profession not held in high esteem? For onething the entrance requirements to teacher education pro-

Chapter 5

grams are so low that these programs often become havensfor the least academically able students in higher educa-tion. Students who choose to enter teacher education pro-grams, as a group, have the lowest SAT scores whencompared with students who choose other professions.One consequence is that the academic quality of teachereducation programs is often quite low and often less thanscholarly. This makes it harder to imbue the entire profes-sion of teaching with high levels of rigor or scholarship.

Dr. Douglas Carnine, the director of the National Centerto Improve the Tools of Educators, has explored the natureof the education profession. In the following excerpt, hediscusses the need for education to become a mature pro-fession.

For the most part, education is in an immaturestate. Curriculum specialists routinely make deci-sions in a subjective fashion, eschewing quantita-tive measures and ignoring research findings.The influence of these “experts” affects all theplayers in the education world. Below is adescription that could very well describe the fieldof education:

The history of the profession has never been aparticularly attractive subject. . . . For centuryafter century, all the way into the remote millen-nia of its origins, [the profession] got along bysheer guesswork and the crudest sort of empiri-cism. It is hard to conceive of a less scientificenterprise among human endeavors. Virtuallyanything that could be thought up for treatmentwas tried out at one time or another, and, oncetried, lasted decades or even centuries beforebeing given up. It was, in retrospect, the mostfrivolous and irresponsible kind of human exper-imentation, based on nothing but trial and error,and usually resulting in precisely that sequence.

The above quote does not describe education, butwas written about medicine. Medicine hasmatured. Education has not. The excerpt, from a


book by the late Dr. Lewis Thomas, former presi-dent of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Cen-ter, continues:

Bleeding, purging, cupping, the administra-tion of infusions of every known plant, solu-tions of every known metal, most of these basedon the weirdest imaginings about the cause ofdisease, concocted out of nothing but thin air—this was the heritage of medicine up until a littleover a century ago. It is astounding that the pro-fession survived so long, and got away with somuch with so little outcry. Almost everyoneseems to have been taken in. The real revolutionin medicine did not begin with the introductionof science into medicine. That came years later.Like a good many revolutions, this one beganwith the destruction of dogma. It was discovered,sometime in the 1830s, that the greater part ofmedicine was nonsense.

Education has not yet gone through the meta-morphosis from an immature to a mature profes-sion. It seems that invariably, outside pressure,usually intense and sustained, is needed for a pro-fession to go through the metamorphosis neededto become a mature profession. It is critical tonote that dogma does not destroy itself nor doesthe profession of its own volition drive out dogma.

The metamorphosis is often triggered by a cata-lyst. Catalysts are pressures from groups that areadversely affected by the poor quality of serviceprovided by a profession. The public’s abhor-rence of the Titanic’s sinking served as a catalystfor a metamorphosis of seafaring. In the early1900s, sea captains could sail pretty much wherethey pleased, and safety was not a priority. The1913 International Convention for Safety of Lifeat Sea, convened after the sinking of the Titanic,quickly made rules that are still models for goodpractice in seafaring.

Chapter 5 55

The post-metamorphosis status of a mature pro-fession is characterized by the use of methods fordetermining efficacy: (1) A shift from judgments of individual

experts to judgments constrained byquantified data that can be inspectedby a broad audience

(2) Less emphasis on personal trust andmore emphasis on objectivity

(3) Diminished autonomy by experts and agreater role for standardized measuresand procedures informed by scientificinvestigations that use control groups.

The push for methods for determining efficacy,qualification, objectivity, and standardization hasbeen greatest in political democracies, where var-ious groups are able to promote their own wel-fare. Groups exert pressure when their welfare is

threatened or harmed or whenthere is distrust between groups.For example, Alan Williams (citedin Porter, p. 101) described policymakers in Britain as authoritarianand paternalistic in assuming they

knew what is best for society. A catalyst thatdiminished their authority came during WorldWar I when Britain attempted to impose wageand price controls. Distrust between unions andcorporations forced policy makers to adopt costaccounting, which was more objective, quantita-tive, and standardized.

Another example comes from pharmacology in theearly 1900s. Unreliable drugs from pharmacistsresulted in public pressures for standardization.


We must turnteaching into amature profession.

8 Douglas Carnine, The Metamorphosis of Education into a Mature Profession, KeynoteAddress to the Society for Prevention Research, Sixth Annual Meeting, Park City, Utah: June1998.

A maverick who ushered in standardization wasPaul Ehrlich, who found that the diphtheriaantitoxin could be maintained in a dry state,which allowed for the standardization ofdosages (p. 31). External pressure seems not to merely accompa-ny the metamorphosis of a profession but to bean absolutely essential ingredient. A professionwill not mature without external pressure and theattendant conflict.8

Where will the pressure come from, to turn teachinginto a mature profession? Who will pressure teacher-train-ing institutions to fundamentally improve their programs?Could the customers of public education play a role in cre-ating such pressures? Could the parents, businesses, andother taxpayers play a role in bringing about some of thecritical pressure needed for institutional change?

What about school boards? As the representatives of thecommunity, school boards can provide some of the externalpressure that is needed. However, the average school boardmember needs to become far better educated him- or her-self to understand why and how such a weak supply ofteachers (and administrators) is being offered for hire toschool districts.

The Role of the State

Since the provision of public education is a stateresponsibility under New York’s Constitution, it makessense to look to the legislative and executive branches whenit comes to finding systemic solutions for improving theeffectiveness and efficiency of the state’s public schools.

One of the most significant problems that both the Leg-islature and the governor have yet to address is the ques-tion surrounding the purpose of public education. Asdiscussed earlier we have allowed public schools to becomeresponsible for solving so many of the non-educationalproblems of modern society. By taking a system designed

Chapter 5 57

more than 100 years ago for the specific purpose of teach-ing academics, and then incrementally changing its mis-sion to include many more responsibilities withoutsignificantly changing the structure of the institution, wehave adversely affected both the efficiency and effective-ness of that institution. Simply put, we have been pilingextra baggage on the system for at least 50 years now—ask-ing it to undertake functions for which it was neverdesigned.

The time has come to rethink this public policy deci-sion. There is a reasonable chance that society could findfar more efficient and effective ways to provide the neces-sary non-academic services that schools are now being

asked to deliver. By removing those respon-sibilities from schools, schools could thenbetter focus on their primary mission ofeducating children.

Interestingly, many European countriesalready have a more focused approach toacademics in their public schools. Forinstance, schools in many Western coun-

tries do not have responsibilities for providing meals, fortransporting students to and from school, or for runningathletic programs. Without these responsibilities, Euro-pean countries can better focus their educational dollars onacademic development. New York State should undertake are-examination of what services its schools should provideand how limited educational dollars can be better focusedupon academic achievement.

The Status Quo

The fact is, every step of the way you will find it hard tochallenge the status quo in public education. A number offactors contribute to this situation. Being a monopoly with-out significant competition from other providers in manyparts of the state, public schools have limited incentives tomake major changes to improve their effectiveness. If aparticular school, or a particular teacher protected by life-time tenure, fails to meet the needs of customers, there are


We offereducators verylittle reward fortaking a risk.

few consequences. A teacher can’t be fired, and a schoolwon’t be closed unless its results become horrendous.Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a system that isfree to perpetuate mediocrity. We offer public educatorsvery little reward for taking a risk to try fundamentallymore effective approaches that would provide muchgreater success for children. Monopolies and tenure aretwo powerful forces that maintain the status quo and inhib-it large-scale change. Few other members of society haveguaranteed jobs for life.

Organizing Parent PowerWhile teacher unions exert influence in Albany to main-

tain the status quo, there is another group that could easi-ly exert even more power with legislative leaders and thegovernor: the customers of public education—parents andbusinesses.

• Action Step: Concerned parents, taxpayers, and busi-ness leaders should unite to demand higher effective-ness, better efficiency, and more accountability fromthe state’s public schools. Such grassroots efforts couldcarefully leveraged their efforts to bring about funda-mental changes in state laws governing tenure, thetraining of teachers and administrators, and the opera-tion of schools.

An effective organization of public education’s “cus-tomers” could help educate the public (as well as educators)

about fads versus truly effectiveeducational practices. It couldshowcase highly successfulschools and school districts fromaround the state and help parentsask tough questions in their owncommunities about why such

successful practices were not being used for their ownschools.

Chapter 5 59

We need an effectiveorganization of publiceducation’s ‘customers.’

The creation and development of such a citizen organiza-tion is more than feasible. It could unite countless concernedparents, business leaders, and educators who are tired of see-ing billions of dollars wasted on unproven fads and poorinstruction. It could shine the light on poor leadership inschools and school districts. It could lobby the Legislature torelease school districts from state mandates that do nothing toimprove student achievement—mandates like an 1100 pagecurriculum for teaching about the potato famine in Ireland, ora mandate that all students be taught about Arbor Day.

Ultimately, our schools can be fixed. But that can onlyhappen when people who share a common-sense approach topublic education band together—in local communities, mostimportantly, and at the state level as well—to overcome theinertia that dominates this most important institution in ourcommunity life.


Todd Feigenbaum is a business owner, education policy analyst, andschool board member in Glens Falls, New York. He is a member of theEducation Committee of The Business Council of New York State, Inc.He chairs the Tech Valley North Committee of the Warren County Eco-nomic Development Corporation and serves as public representative onthe New York State Professional Standards and Practices Board forTeaching. He is certified as a school business administrator and holdsa Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Policy Studies from theUniversity at Albany, State University of New York.

The Public Policy Institute is a research and educational organizationaffiliated with The Business Council of New York State, Inc., NewYork’s largest broad-based business organization.

9 781884 841033

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