Tag Archives: accountability

Leadership Longevity Is Tenuous

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Leaders, who are not self-employed, live in a fragile world of employment security made increasingly more tenuous with each passing year. Making a career as a leader is a role to which many aspire but few will achieve longevity. Their reality is that leadership is the art of swimming in deep water while carrying the weight of their decisions. The sign on the leader’s office door says, “No lifeguards on duty.”

In The Anguish of Leadership (2000), Jerry Patterson describes a leader as a person always swimming in deep water. At the beginning of his tenure, a leader swims quite well. He enjoys the honeymoon of employment when his employers and most employees wish him well and their support gives him buoyancy. Also, his pockets are empty. He has no experiential record, good or bad, in this employment.

I paraphrase Abraham Lincoln with “You can be successful with all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot be successful with all the people all the time.” Every time a leader is unsuccessful, a rock is placed in the leader’s pocket. Events that are hugely unsuccessful load in larger and heavier rocks. And, rocks in the pockets make it increasingly more difficult to swim in deep water. On the positive side, rocks may be taken out of his pockets by professional successes. Interestingly, there is no correspondence between the rocks taken out for a success and rocks placed in for a failure; the rocks of failure are heavier and more numerous than the rocks of success.

Adding a second paraphrase, this from John Wayne in Big Jake, “ … my fault, your fault, nobody’s fault, I am going to hold you responsible.” Patterson believes that a leader’s professional well-being is affected by the successes and failures of everyone in the business for whom he is responsible. When a subordinate is unsuccessful, rocks may be placed in that person’s pockets but always some rocks will be placed in the leader’s pockets. When President Truman placed his famous “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk, he also was saying “This is my rock pile – all grievances, disagreements, and disenchantments with my leadership go here.”

Eventually, Patterson writes, the total weight of the rocks in his pocket will pull almost every leader under the water. Or, the constant burden of swimming with heavy rocks in his pocket wears down the leader and he succumbs. Few leaders escape significant drowning as they work through their careers. Some leaders will re-emerge in a similar leadership position in a different organization and many may enact a resurrection several times over the length of their career, but almost all will drown once.

Head coaches for professional sports teams are a case in point. As the person leading a professional team, the coach is ultimately responsible for the success of the team as expressed in the team’s win and loss record. Wins are good and losses are “rocks”. Too few wins and too many losses creates a heavy pocket of rocks. On Monday, December 29, the day after the final game of the 2014 National Football League season, four head coaches and two general managers were fired. Each had accumulated too many rocks in their pockets. 2014 is not unique. The average tenure of a head coach in the NFL is 2.39 years. The average tenure in the National Hockey League is 3.0 years, 3.03 in the National Basketball Association and 3.8 years for Major League Baseball head coaches. Leaders drown in the deep water of professional sports every year and sometimes at mid-season.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-02-29/managers-coaches-tenure/53376918/1

Public education is no different. The keeping of wins and losses is not as dramatic in education as it is in sports, but school leaders are handed rocks just as often as head coaches. The average tenure of a school district superintendent is 5.5 years. The rocks for urban, super-large districts are heavier. Their average tenure is 3.3 years. Approximately 15% of all superintendents professionally drown each year.

http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=740

Superintendents are hired and drown in the shadow of the Lincoln paraphrasing. Few are fired due to a criminal act or professional malpractice. These do happen, but they are rare. The great majority of drownings are the result of a general loss of confidence in the superintendent. A loss of confidence make occur with major stakeholders in the school district, such as parent groups or special interest groups. These groups control large piles of rocks. Local religious and business leaders have their own stockpile of rocks. Students, the most important group of people in a school district, also control rocks albeit smaller rocks. And, of course, the confidence of the Board of Education is essential. When the Board loses confidence in the superintendent a professional drowning is soon to follow.

A superintendent making important decisions for a school district will inextricably offend some rock holders even with the best of decisions. It is a fact of life for a leader. Creating smaller class sizes is a good thing for students, teachers and most parents, but it stirs the rocks of taxpayers who object to increased costs. Cutting costs is a good thing for taxpayers, but diminishing the resources for schools and classrooms stirs the rocks of the teacher’s union and PTAs. Allowing school events on Wednesday evenings wins the admiration of sports and fine arts fans who enjoy more games and concerts, but it raises the rock throwing ire of church leaders who lose time for religious education generally held on that night of the week. No matter, rocks find their way into the pockets of every school leader and even the best eventually sink lower and lower into Jerry Patterson’s deep end of the pool.

So, knowing the reality of a leader’s professional world, those who aspire to be leaders, those who are still above water in the deep end of the leadership pool, and those who employ leaders should honor Robert Herrick’s verse to The Virgins. Leaders must lead as well as they are able to and for as long as they are able to remain above water because no leader survives the eventual weight of the rocks in his pockets.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles to-day

Tomorrow will be dying.

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time

Public Ed Is Focused on the Wrong End Game

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Public education is focused on the wrong end game. For too long the leaders responsible for public education have focused on the graduated student in an adult-world context. For the purpose of daily and school-year instruction this traditional end game is too abstract and too distant to meaningfully connect with everyday teaching and learning. The end game should be to cause every child to successfully learn their annual curricula on a weekly or monthly basis regardless of their learning conditions. This new end game is meaningful, measureable, and accountable and directly connects teaching and learning in ways that schools, teachers and students, and communities can see and understand. Change the end game focus to change the end game outcomes.

There is nothing wrong with a big picture end game when you are willing to wait until the “end” to understand your success. It is like leading a life for the purpose of going to heaven when you die. Such a purpose provides excellent tenets for living, but you won’t know the success of your life’s mission until you die.

Or, hearing a pre-school child say “I will be a fireman when I grow up” and having the local fire commander write in the station log “In fifteen years, following high school graduation and technical school training Tommy will be sufficiently educated to enter our probationary program.” Maybe and maybe not.

A long distance end game is not a good strategy for ensuring a high quality education for every child every day of every school year. The end game must be shorter-termed with clearly stated end-of-instruction learning outcomes. And, the end game plan must drive instruction so that every child successfully learns their curricula.

Imagine how this works. The school mission reads:

This year your child will successfully learn her (grade or subject) curricula. To accomplish this, her teachers will use best instructional practices including frequent assessments and reports of learning accomplishments.

Another way to understand the end game problem is to ask “And, whose success is the measure of interest?” When the district’s end game focus is to prepare graduates for life after school, it is the district’s rate and degree of graduation preparation that is of interest. When the end game is each child’s successful learning of an annual curricula, it is child learning that is of interest. Child learning is an appropriate and better end game.

Once again, change the end game focus to change the end game outcomes. The management piece for this new end game includes:

  • analyzing and dissecting the curricula into instructional segments,
  • pre- and post-assessments of each segment,
  • necessary pre-teaching and re-teaching to assure every child’s success with each segment,
  • a combination of personalized and grouped direct and indirect instructional sessions within each segment, and
  • advancement to the next segment only when learning indicates readiness for that segment.
  • Learning accomplishments will be recorded and reported to parents at the end of each segment.

The upside to this new end game is that instruction is directly connected to the immediate and annual learning outcomes. The connection is clear, measureable and accountable. It is not like the goal in a traditional outcome in which children are taught a curricula of Civics in 8th or 9th grade for the purpose of making them better informed citizens as adults. Admirable goal, but its outcome is disconnected from its instruction.

An upside to this end game is that each child is a successful learner regardless of their learning conditions. Exceptions are not made. Children who are not English-speakers are taught the vocabulary and concepts of their curricula before and as they are taught the curricula. Children who need special education assistance receive it in conjunction with their curricular instruction not in lieu of or in addition to. Children who need more time for their initial learning get more time for their initial learning; it is more effective and efficient to assure successful initial learning than it is to remediate learning later.

An upside to this end game is that as every child successfully learns their annual curricula they also are progressing toward the district’s graduation goals of college or career readiness, responsible citizenship, economic productivity, and community contribution. The district’s success in causing these summative goals is ensured by every child’s success with their annual curricular goals.

A downside to this end game lies in its incumbent accountability. When the school says that “every child will successfully learn their annual curricula regardless of learning conditions” this becomes the school’s and the teachers’ annual commitment. Sadly, very few if any schools have ever fulfilled a commitment to assure the learning success of every child.

This raises a really large question of “Why not?” The answer is that the traditional end game focuses upon distant learning outcomes disconnected from annual teaching and learning and that obscures the reality that many children do not successfully learn their annual curricula. Most learn just enough to “pass.” Schools and teachers were and are seldom held accountable for student success on clearer and shorter-term learning outcomes. Our obsession with student and school outcomes on statewide and international academic assessments is indicative of the current focus on the big picture end game and not timely and locally-measured student learning

A downside to this end game is that educational leaders need to be so connected to the instruction of every teacher and the learning of every child in their school that these leaders can assist teachers to make necessary adjustments to instruction when children are not successfully learning. This requires a significant change in leadership and the skill sets of instructional supervision. But, this also is the most significant upside to the new end game. School leaders and teachers will be immediately connected to their teaching and child learning in their school. This is an upside that can and must be achieved.

It may be impossible for public education to implement all of the mandates for educational reform that are currently being demanded if its leaders continue to use the traditional end game focus. If we can change the end game, we can improve the learning outcomes for every child. The improved outcomes of the new end game will change the way in which everyone, include educational reformers, looks at public education. Change the focus now!