Bruce Karhoff                                                 

EDL 702: Ethics in School Leadership

12 November  2012

 Develop two elements of a Vision for a new school

In a democratic society, public education is a sine qua non in forming its citizenry; in this light, quality education can be seen as an ethical imperative.  If its schools fail, a democratic society fails.  One can argue, too, that the schools serving the most vulnerable to being excluded from the political, social, and economic processes that shape daily life are the most critical to ensuring an equitable, and thus just, society.  Schools that live up to this challenge are those with a strong vision—a vision that fosters the formation of the whole child.  While we have identified six aspects of a strong school vision, this paper will focus on two: the development and evaluation of systems to foster academic culture, and school governance.  Each aspect is critical for schools to serve their proper role in a democratic society.

Development and Evaluation of Systems to Foster Academic Culture

While the development of instructional systems within a school may not, on the surface, seem to have an ethical component in and of themselves, school that do not have quality teaching and learning are failing in their most fundamental societal role—that of educating students.

The most important system to ensure a strong academic culture is one that gives teachers and administrators the time and space to develop the school’s programs.  As such, it is imperative that a school designs its weekly schedule to allow for regular, and “sacred,” meeting time for faculty during the school day.  This “Faculty Gathering” time, as I will call it, must be regular—it is built into the school’s program on a weekly basis.  By allowing teachers to meet at regular intervals, it allows them to think of their professional development and student evaluation as a process, one that encourages systematic reflection and experimentation.  Knowing that they will have dedicated time in one or two weeks to evaluate a new teaching strategy, for example, will foster deeper thinking among staff about new methods or strategies discussed at current meetings.  The time set aside for Faculty Gathering must also be sacred, in that professional development and evaluation of student work must be the sole priority.  The school must have a plan to deal with other issues that arise during the day or week at a time other than Faculty Gathering.  Finally, Faculty Gathering must occur during the school day.  Schools may ask, or even expect, that teachers meet at times outside their regular school day, but by setting aside time during the day—when te3achers are being paid—sends the message that the school community values colleagues meeting of teams of professionals to think about teaching and learning.  In short, a dedicated Faculty Gathering fosters an academic culture that says instruction is vital to the school’s vision.

Equally as important as dedicated time for the full faculty to gather weekly is a system that allows teaching teams to meet regularly.  The school’s program must allow for teaching partners to have common prep periods, or for teaching teams to define their common planning time.  The Department of Education has given school the flexibility to sue some of the time set aside for small group instruction for this common planning time.  However the school carves out this time for teaching teams to meet is not as important, though, as creating a system that gives teachers this time and holding them accountable for this time.  Whether the times are assigned to teaching teams or whether the teams themselves select their common planning time, posting publicly within the school community the team meeting times and places allows for greater teacher/team accountability, and gives the instructional support team easy access to the teams.  Administration must then create a plan for academic coaches, department chairs, master teachers, and the administrators themselves to support these teachers during their common planning time.

Once the time and place for faculty to meet has been established, school leaders must provide guidance on structured use of that time.  The school leaders should provide professional development at Faculty Gathering that speak directly to the school’s instructional practices as outlined in the school’s mission and vision.  The professional development that addresses areas that are long-held instructional commitments of the school should be differentiated to allow new faculty to understand the basics while also allow senior faculty the chance to refine and hone their practice.  Professional development should also promote the idea of teachers as instructional leaders whenever possible.  Time should be given for teachers to share curricula, unit plans, and individual lessons within and across departments to check for alignment with the school’s vision, to identify areas of potential cross-curricular collaboration, and to allow for individual reflection and feedback from colleagues.  A Faculty Gathering calendar developed and posted for the entire year or semester will encourage school leaders to scaffold the professional development and encourage growth for individual teachers, departments, and the school as a whole over time.  Such systems will allow for the implementation of the school’s major instructional goals.

Also during Faculty Gathering and common planning times, teachers must be given time and structure to look at student work, identify the strengths and weaknesses of individual students, develop strategies for supporting those students, and to share those strategies with the wider faculty.  Grade-wide team meetings of teachers, paraprofessionals, and counseling staff should be a regular part of Faculty Gathering.  While Grade Teams should monitor the progress of all students, the Teams should be especially aware of students with special needs or who have struggled academically in previous years.  Students with IEP’s, English Language Learners, and students identified by the city in the Lowest Third of the cohort, at minimum, should serve as target populations.  Once they identify student who continue to struggle, Grade Teams should identify strategies what have and have not worked with these students, and to share those with the wider school community.  By using Grade Teams to look at individual students holistically, the school sends a message that its mission is to educate all students.

Finally, the school also needs to develop systems that support students outside the traditional classroom.  While each system outlined above will support and strengthen the school’s academic culture in the academic classroom, this culture needs to be reinforced outside the math or English classes as well.  An Advisory system is critical to foster the relationships between adults and students, and to provide a forum for teachers to advance an academic culture that goes beyond the academic disciplines.  Advisory can allow for a discussion in depth on the Habits of Work and Habits of Mind, for example, that are important for student success.  Furthermore, advisory can be a place for a teacher to share the feedback from Grade Teams with individual students.  In addition to an advisory system, the school’s disciplinary and counseling systems should be designed to ultimately support student success in the classroom.  In short, the proper social-emotional growth of students will support academic achievement; systems put in place to encourage this growth are an important part of establishing a strong academic culture.

Governance

School governance is a direct reflection on the school leader’s philosophical stance towards democratic decision making.  More importantly, it serves as a model of participatory democracy for all those within the school community.  While an autocratic decision-making style may seem to be more efficient or just easier to some school leaders, a hierarchical model breeds resentment and resistance.  If as school leaders we are charged with fostering engaged citizenship, the school’s governance must reflect the democratic values we wish to see in our fellow citizens.

The governance philosophy should be reflected in all levels of decision making with the school community.  The school’s leadership must be structured in a way the principal can get regular feedback and input from representatives of all the constituencies of the faculty.  Although there is a danger in having too many committees or too many avenues for input in decisions, the leadership must establish systems and protocols for consultation before major decisions are made, as well as for feedback to evaluate the efficacy of decisions already made.  One such system could be a cabinet made up of staff that represents the various constituencies of the school, who could solicit input and channel feedback to the school leader on a regular basis.  The principal should establish regular meeting times with different groups of school leaders, such as the AP’s, the Department Chairs, or the UFT chapter leader.  The principal should acknowledge input for each of these groups of leaders; often, the simple practice of acknowledging concerns and suggestions from other leaders will create greater ownership of the ultimate decision.  Furthermore, by encouraging other school leaders to think of how decisions about issues in one aspect of the school’s functioning will affect other areas of the school, the principal can foster a greater sense of the complexity of decision making and thus a greater appreciation among the school’s leadership of the school as a whole.

The school must also establish systems for involving teachers in the decision-making process.  A wise principal will consider which decisions concern the school’s vision directly, and then allow for greater decision-making authority for others in cases that are peripheral to the vision.  By allowing teachers, in departments, in grade teams, or in other teams, to make decisions on what might be minor issues when seen in the larger scope of the school, the principal can foster greater participation and eventually greater ownership of those decisions by staff.  On issues that speak to the school’s vision, the principal can still encourage input from teachers filtered through their respective departments or grade teams.  By first framing the issues for larger groups of teachers but then sending them to teams to offer input or feedback, the principal can allow for teacher engagement but still shape the discussion, foster growth in teacher leadership capacity by having them consider “bigger issues,” and reserve the final decision for herself.

At all times, whether for major decisions or minor ones, the principal should seek ways to encourage the growth of leadership capacity in teachers.  Even short, seemingly inconsequential conversations between administration and individual teachers about decisions the school is facing can send a strong signal to teachers that their voice is important.  Many teachers may not aspire to be leaders within the school, but having that trust placed in them to make or shape decisions fosters a culture of shared decision making and democratic values.

Just as the school leaders should set up systems to encourage input from faculty and staff, structures need to be established to recognize student voice.  At the high school level, the establishment and running of a student government not only can allow for a means of student input into the school’s decisions that affect them, but it also can serve as a model for all students of the democratic process.  By having a school wide and publicized nomination process, campaign, election, and then visible student government, all students can participate in the democratic process.  And again, by giving the students a voice, through their elected representatives, in school decisions, especially those that directly affect them, students can become more vested in the school.  Other avenues of student participation should permeate the school’s culture.  Students should be involved in the setting of classroom and advisory norms.  With proper training, student can serve as peer mediators, and students can and should help guide the student culture, such as events like spirit week.  As with teachers, framing issues is key when encouraging student input in school governance.  If the school’s vision is clear to the students, students are quite capable of recognizing the limitations of decision making, and can be taught to consider issues of governance from multiple points of view.  Fostering student leadership capacity through avenues of school governance can promote a more democratic school.

Finally, schools should encourage input from families and community partners.  While ultimately the principal must make the final decisions based on the school’s best interests and the promotion of the school’s vision, she should have open communication with these groups and get their input into decisions that affect them directly.  Parents and families will generally support the school’s decisions if they feel the school and principal are treating them fairly and have been transparent with the school’s operations.  Although it may not be possible to have the level of parental involvement that many school would like to see, having that parental support is important in implementing decisions made by the school.  Community partners can play a key role in providing resources that will allow a school to fulfill its vision.  School leaders should see where a school’s vision does or can align with the vision of these outside organizations.  While school governance should not be geared toward altering the school’s vision to meet community partners’, school leaders should seek synergistic relationships, and then draw in the community partners and engage them in a discussion on how each organization can benefit from a partnership.  Good school leaders then educate community partners on the constraints of school governance—and educate themselves on the constraints the partners face—so as to allow creative thinking on the part of both to promote mutually beneficial decisions.

Summary

All elements of a vision carry with them an ethical dimension.  Establishing systems to foster a strong academic culture speak directly to the quality of the education a school provides.  The culture and systems of school governance model the way we expect decisions to be made.  For public schools in a democratic society, it is critical that both of these elements promote access to a strong education, foster an engaged citizenship, and promote democratic values.