In the Words of Diane Ravitch

Readers of this blog appreciate that I have been posting since January 2010. In August 2011 and upon my retirement from the North Carolina system of public education, I re-purposed this blog of then Triangle Leadership Academy Executive Director to the blog of Steve Bingham, private citizen and continuing contributor to an amorphous audience of education and business leaders, including my graduate students, all candidates in the Master of Executive Leadership Studies at Gardner-Webb University. Students, I continue to be honored by your readership.

Alas, we now find ourselves at an intersection in our democracy so important that I want to turn to the words of a writer who has in me a secret admirer. The object of my admiration is the 70-something- young, Dr. Diane Ravitch, education historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H. W. Bush administration. I have written about Diane earlier. I yield to her now the balance of my post. From her own blog, Diane writes:

Over the past three years, I have been an outspoken critic of the education policies of the Obama administration. In my view, Race to the Top is a disastrous program that is almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s failed No Child Left Behind legislation. Both programs require teaching to the test, both encourage privatization of our public schools, and both have demoralized the nation’s educators while doing nothing to improve education.

But as bad as the Obama education policies are, they are tolerable in comparison to what Mitt Romney plans. Romney claims credit for the academic successes of Massachusetts, but he had nothing to do with the gains in that state, which were enacted 10 years before he became governor. The Massachusetts education reforms doubled the budget for public schools, increased spending on early childhood education, and raised standards for new teachers, but Romney intends to do none of that if elected President.

If elected president, Romney will curtail spending on everything except privatization of public education. He will lower standards for entering the teaching profession. His policies will devastate our public schools and dismantle the education profession. He supports charters and vouchers and welcomes the takeover of public schools by for-profit entrepreneurs. Unlike the Massachusetts reforms that he wrongly takes credit for, he offers not a single idea to improve public education. Romney nowhere acknowledges that free public education is a public responsibility and an essential institution in a democratic society.

Under a Romney administration, I fear not only for the future of public education but for the future of our society. Presently, nearly 25% of American children are growing up in poverty. We lead the advanced nations of the world in child poverty. Romney offers no proposals to reduce that scandalous number. Only government action can make a dent in a problem of that magnitude, but Romney believes in private charity, not government action.

What frightens me most about the Romney-Ryan ticket is the Republican Party’s rigid ideology. There have been times in recent history when moderate Republicans were in the ascendancy in the party. Today, the moderates are gone; the GOP is dominated by radical anti-government ideologues. The party seems determined to roll back the social policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and to bring our society back to the 1920s. We know what followed the free-market exhilaration of the 1920s.

If Romney has the chance to select one or two or three Supreme Court justices, then women’s rights, voting rights, and the rights of minorities will be imperiled. We can anticipate that a Romney Supreme Court would favor the rights of multinational corporations over consumers and individuals.

One shudders to imagine what will happen to our environment, to our water and air, if its protection is turned over to those who deny the reality of climate change and who despise regulation. We can expect that our precious resources of parks, beaches, and oceans will be handed over to private enterprise to mine for profit—theirs, not ours.

What of the millions of jobs that Romney promises to create? Romney’s private company was known for outsourcing well-paying middle-class jobs to low-wage nations. In the debates, he has expressed admiration for trickle-down economics, his belief that whatever helps the rich and powerful will eventually create jobs further down the food chain. We can expect that jobs of the future created by a Romney administration will be for retail clerks, fast food servers, operators in call centers, and home health aides, none paying the kinds of salaries that lift families into the middle class.

Romney has made clear that he will not pay for early childhood education, despite the fact that an independent survey by The Economist magazine ranked the U.S. 24th in the world in taking care of its youngest citizens.  His education platform says that he will not expand any federal aid to college students now drowning in debt. Nor will he increase support for prenatal care for indigent women, even though a survey by the March of Dimes reported last spring that the U.S. ranked 131st among 180 nations in protecting the health of pregnant women; in that respect, we rank shamefully alongside Somalia.

A Romney administration promises a society in which life is very sweet for those at the very top, but hard, mean, and brutish for the growing number of Americans falling out of the middle class and into poverty. Every successful nation in the world has taken positive steps to reduce income inequality, to reduce poverty, and to protect the environment in which we all live.

I cannot support a candidate who promises to shred the safety net for our most vulnerable citizens. I cannot support a candidate who wants to reward those who are richest and to deny government support to those who need help to survive. I do not want to turn the clock back almost a century.

That is why I will vote to re-elect President Obama.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Diane Ravitch.

An Unsustainable Course

President Bonner, my new boss at Gardner-Webb University, called a special meeting of faculty and staff today. It was a good news, bad news meeting. The good news--the freshman class is the brightest ever, and we're getting a raise! The bad news--higher education is on an unsustainable course. And the latter will ultimately impact the former. I'll tell you why.

Parents may already know that college tuition has outstripped wage increases among average Americans sixteen times over in just the last five years. Many of those costs to universities--ultimately passed on to parents and students--are brick and mortar--new buildings, including dormitories and especially student recreation and entertainment centers. Other costs are for talented teachers and administrators.

Make no mistake. Among universities of every ilk, the race for the brightest students is on. One reason is that more-capable students are statistically less likely to drop out. That was the other piece of bad news from President Bonner. Gardner-Webb is experiencing a five-year trend where fewer and fewer students either do not matriculate to the next level or fail to graduate at all.

We are not alone. Since 2008, college completion has fallen to less than 50 percent for all universities. I think we can agree that the Great Recession has hit more than home prices. So now, over one in five American families have significant college indebtedness at a level that exceeds even credit card debt, this at a time when many college graduates are underemployed or unemployed. 

The problem is such that even the brightest students and their parents are questioning the value of a college degree. What is the point of a degree if a career is not part of the deal? It's a fair question, especially in an age where knowledge acquisition is a click away. Want an actual college course? Many universities are giving them away for free, just to get their foot in the door.

The pundits and trend-watchers occupy space on a continuum from "take a deep breath and stay calm" to "the system as we know it is already dead." As I become increasingly acculturated in the world of higher education, I find myself somewhere in the middle. It's like I tell my masters and doctoral students in education--learn to work on a system, not the system. The system we know may or may not be dead, but it's fair to say that it's dying.

Everything we currently do to create and disseminate knowledge at every level of education should be subject to examination and change. We need to consider new revenue streams, public-private partnerships, new business models, new ways of convening and catalyzing learning communities. And we need to consider how we hold ourselves accountable for results.

I'm glad I attended the meeting today. President Bonner could have been any university president anywhere in the United States. I would love to hear what is happening where you work and what ideas you have. Let's get the conversation started about how we're going to make the unsustainable sustainable.

Idealized Design

"If you don't know what to do if you could do anything you want, how could you possibly know what to do if you could not do anything you want."

The late Russell Ackoff, Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania, had a lot to say about the limits of our imagination. In propagating a kind of thought experiment he termed  "idealized design," Professor Ackoff implied that the real constraint on our ability to change things is our own mind.

Ackoff argued that our ability to remake existing institutions, for example. might lie in a game of "Let's Pretend." Education reformers might consider the following:

Imagine that a nuclear holocaust has destroyed every infrastructure humankind has ever known. You are in charge of reconstructing an educational system. What do you do?

Students in my Gardner-Webb University School of Education doctoral course, "Change and Reform Theory in Education," are facing just such a question. To be clear, we are in the throes of designing a university laboratory school. Talk about authentic engagement.

Practicing educators in my class and that of my colleague, Dr. Steve Laws, are coming at the problem from slightly different perspectives, my students from a Curriculum and Instruction approach and his students from an Educational Leadership approach.

So what is the problem of public schools? In other words, what do we want to change and why? This is the subject of our next class. To be sure, we will trace the sorry history of educational reform, one bandwagon after another, using in part the excellent Tyack and Cuban text, Tinkering Toward Utopia.

We will examine university laboratory schools such as the famous one established at the University of Chicago. What happened to it? How do we prevent the Gardner-Webb University Laboratory School from becoming a boutique for professors' children? How do we market the school within the context of the regular public school district in Cleveland County, North Carolina? What will make our school unlike any other school that has ever come before it? Big questions, these.

I am reminded of the first class in my own doctoral program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro 20 years ago. Ironically, one of my classmates was the current superintendent in Cleveland County, Bruce Boyles. With one other then eager young student and now a research associate at Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta, Paula Egelson, we were invited by our professors to "find a problem." That was an appropriate assignment given the title of the class, "Problem Finding Seminar," as if there were not enough already.

What our professors were hoping to do was to teach us to be creative, self-directed learners, to explore a problem we decided was important, as contrasted with a presented problem thought by someone else to be important. Akin to what painters or composers face confronted by an empty canvass or blank staff paper, respectively, the two kinds of problems could not present a greater contrast. One results in the life of the institutional tool, the other, the life of the inventor, the artist.

Idealized design provides the opportunity for educational leaders at every level, from classroom to boardroom, to bring out the best in themselves and others. Clearly, the outcome of our students' assignment to build a school will be a conversation, a result of research and collective imagination.

If we do this right, they will be telling their grandchildren about how they changed things for education in Fall 2012. I will keep readers posted on progress.

Alright in the End

"We have a saying," he said. "Things will be alright in the end. If things are not alright, it is not yet the end." The speaker is a bright, earnest young Indian man, seeking to turn around a down-on-its-heels hotel formerly owned by his deceased father and whose best days seem far behind.

Viewers of the newest-next British classic film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, now showing in art houses across the nation, will recognize him instantly. Sonny, like everyone else in the John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) film, is trying to begin anew.

A cultural counterpoint to the the post-boomer band of British retirees, including actors Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, and Dame Judi Dench, Sonny's character is trying to escape the thrall of a domineering mother to formalize a relationship, not only as keeper of an inn to house "outsourced senior citizens," but to marry an Indian girl born on the wrong side of the tracks. I highly recommend the film for anyone involved in leading change. And really, who would that not include?

Regular readers of this blog will appreciate my own interest in managing the transition that a new job with Gardner-Webb University and an impending move over three hours to the southwest of where we currently call home. Am I any different, I wonder, than the few fortunate people in the film determined not just to accommodate but to thrive amid new challenges?

Ironically, the first doctoral class I am assigned to teach is called, Reform and Change Theory Model. The Dean of the School of Education has given me a syllabus and a stack of books to read in preparation for teaching the class. Beyond those resources, there is another text that I have found very helpful in teaching aspiring school leaders. I will not require students to buy the text, but rest assured, ideas from William Bridges Transitions will drive class discussion.

Bridges equates change with a jump into the unknown. He says that, although we may not always be in charge of the change itself, we can manage our internal response to change. We do that by visualizing change in three zones.

The first stage is Endings in which we confront inevitable loss, anxiety and confusion. The second stage is the Neutral zone. Here we find ourselves adrift, devoid of solid ground. The third stage is the Beginnings zone where we may embrace a new way of being and plan for future action. I think leaders can be a lot more effective if they prepare their followers for the inevitability of transitioning through the three zones with up-front assurance that they will come out the other side in one piece. 

When I reflect on the characters in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, some succeeded at life and love in a new land while others failed. What the successful shared, it seemed, was an indefatigable embrace of the notion that change is a natural part of life. Like Bill Nighy's decent-man character or Dame Judi Dench's long-sheltered widow character, the next stage of life was met not only with optimism but a sense of adventure.

Go on. Do the hard thing. Make the change you need to make. "We have a saying," Sonny said. "Things will be alright in the end. If things are not alright, it is not yet the end."

Change is Opportunity

"They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom."

Here's the thing about Confucius--his words are easier to quote than they are to live. Same for Gandhi, "Be the change you want to see in the world," and sage Anonymous, "Sometimes you have to go to grow." Oh, to have a nickle for every time I have cheerily spoken those words.

What I have found oddly difficult, however, is appreciating when the wisdom of the ages actually applies to me. For example, there are a couple of times in my career when I wish I had enacted earlier the words of business guru, Jack Welch, "Change before you have to." Can I get an "Amen," from former Wake County Public School colleagues?

It is true. Leaders are leaders because they see things differently. Leaders see that which has yet to be and enlist followers to improve upon the present through a shared vision. Leaders have a concurrent responsibility to support people in identifying the path they are asked to beat as they walk it. It all begins, however, with the leader.

So if we are minimally leaders of our own lives, does it not stand to reason that we must deliberately seek personal change that leads to improved outcomes for ourselves and those we love? Are we not called upon to set ourselves up for success by attaining experiences and competencies to maximize the likelihood of achieving our dreams? I believe the answer to both questions is "yes." 

I would be sharing these thoughts with you in any case, but now it is even more important. You see, my wife, Deborah, and I soon will be leaving the community we have called "home" for seven years. Here we have met many wonderful and talented people, including perhaps you. The idea is that our friends and colleague will go with us. If they are willing, we hope part of us stays with them.

Effective in mid-August, I will become Associate Professor of Education at Gardner-Webb University, with primary teaching responsibilities at the home campus in Boiling Springs, a bit less than an hour's drive west of Charlotte. In some ways, I have prepared my whole life for this position. My best practical education, however, has been achieved since coming to the NC Research Triangle Park area. I am grateful to all of you for your tutelage, intended and unintended.

There will be time for good-byes later. There will be additional thank-yous to people who have helped me along the way. There will be information for my beloved students in the GWU masters degree cohort whom I'm leaving shy of graduation. There will be explanations for how Future-Ready Leaders Now©, LLC meets its current contracts and actually expands its leadership products and services. As it turns out, the company was created to outlive its founder.

For now, I'll let High Point University President and serial entrepreneur, Nido Qubein, have the final word: "Change is opportunity."  My hope for all my readers is that they both see and act on Nido's wisdom.

A Good Day for Education

It's a good day for education. No, not because of anything our North Carolina General Assembly has done, what with the starvation diet on which it has put public schools, rather it is a good day for education because of the official launch of the High Point University Educational Leadership Studio with which I have been working for nearly a year. As one participating superintendent asserted today, "The Studio has a lot of promise." I agree.

I have written about the Studio before but only in the context of the Design Team's work. Today the twinkle in the Team's eye was consummated by the Educational Leadership Doctoral Advisory Committee. Convened at the HPU Plato Wilson Ballroom, the purpose of the meeting was both to inform and create ownership for the Education Studio, a working place and a laboratory where public-school problems of practice are crowd-sourced, face-to-face and virtually, such that K-21 education professionals learn from and with each other. 

Present were superintendents of four NC Piedmont public school districts, central-service professionals, principals, university representatives, and Design Team members, including Dr. MJ Hall, founder of the Studio, and yours truly, consultant and thought partner to the initiative.

Although Design Team members were affirmed by the Committee's embrace of the Studio, it was clear to me that the heavy lifting lies ahead. In fact, it was de ja vu all over again. As readers of this blog know, I was co-founder and ultimately executive director of Triangle Leadership Academy, a public-private partnership of districts focused on leadership development and succession planning. We closed shop one year ago in July.

Certainly, the financial hurricane that blew in as a result of the recession was mainly responsible for our demise. In hindsight, however, there were deeper, more disturbing and intractable issues, some of which played out today in activities we facilitated for the Advisory Committee.

For example, we assembled Committee members in cross-district, cross-functional teams to consider and write one idea per sticky note things they thought their organization did well. After a brief working period involving independent writing, team conversation, and posting of notes to chart paper, we asked for a representative to report out.

It was hard not to notice that the superintendents posted and reported their good works in district-by-district fashion in ostensible disregard of their colleagues standing right beside them. One group stacked its sticky notes on chart paper chimney style, with as much space as possible between stacks. Not only that, each superintendent insisted on representing him or herself in the report out.

But why would we expect anything different? Our world is perfectly organized to create the behavior we are currently experiencing. The political reality is that every superintendent runs his or her own shop. In fact, one of them publicly lamented the limited opportunities superintendents even in neighboring districts have to share information, much less solve problems of practice.

Folks, it's not about ego; it's about culture, a culture of insularity that, in my opinion, weakens the greater system of public education. Our problems are neither created in isolation nor will they be solved in isolation. We are in this together or we are in this to fail. We need boundary-spanning leadership now more than ever.

The HPU Educational Leadership Studio is designed to strengthen the education system by connecting, convening, communicating, and co-designing in context. In the summer of 2013, the Studio will convene 100 professionals from Murphy to Manteo, classroom to boardroom, schoolhouse to statehouse. As we speak, the Studio has a web presence at http://educationstudio.highpoint.edu Check it out.

Given the assembled talent and committed professionals, I think it's a pretty cool dream that has a better-than-even chance of coming true. Today was a good day for education.

A Letter to the Board of Education

Looking back on it, I could have been fired. The letter that, as a young hotshot high school band director disgruntled by a proposed change proffered by the new district superintendent, I wrote and hand-delivered to board of education members during a board meeting may not have been protected by the constitutional right to free speech.

At minimum, my impertinence could have given the district pause to grant me tenure. Like many teachers then and now, however, tenure was not for me a reason to do or not do as I was already doing, which is to say, the very best I could.

As students of education law know, under certain circumstances, restrictions on constitutional freedoms may be justified by governmental interests. Such circumstances include when a teacher's behavior compromises teaching effectiveness, relations with principals and other administrators, or the operation of school generally.

So what did I write in that letter? First, it is important to know that I did not attend the board of education meeting in question. Unbelievably, the superintendent himself, unaware of its contents, distributed copies of my letter to each board member, several of whom had children in my band.

In retrospect, I do not know whether his confidence in me was born more of trust or ignorance. Inasmuch as this was his first superintendency, I suspect more the latter than the former. Yet, his not asking me about the letter's contents or my motive seems to this day incredible. No more incredible, I suppose, than was my brashness.

Sealed in separate envelops, my letter stated, point by point, my opposition to perceived damages to the band program due to the loss of teaching time in moving from a junior high school to a middle school model. Without remembering exactly the words I wrote, my intent was to derail the superintendent's plans, as if I were just anyone in the community.

But I was not just anyone in the community. As an employee of the district, I owed to my administrators my support even in the face of personal reservations about the proposed changes. Instead, I jumped over my superiors' heads and took my case straight to board members. This is one story I tell myself. The other story is that I had done all I could do to get the superintendent's attention, but my entreaty was falling on deaf ears.

When the superintendent found out what my letter said, it certainly got his attention. Within 24 hours, I found myself standing before him receiving a lesson in humility. He wanted, as he said, not to fire me but "to set the boat aright." Those were his words.

I was humbled, but only a little bit. Within a year, the new superintendent was himself fired. Did I contribute to his removal? I will never know. How close was I to removal myself? You tell me.

Up For a Fight

We all need a vacation. So it has been with me for nearly six weeks. In many respects, however, my web silence has been more a reflection of the near-paralyzing body blows recently inflicted by critics of public education. That they throw their punches from Jones Street is almost too much to bear. I said “almost.” I’m now on my feet, up for a fight.

Gratefully, I have professional sparring partners with whom to test my moves. Good moves get used. Bad ones get discarded. I have found that my Gardner-Webb University Master of Executive Leadership in Schools students are among the best sparring partners a learning leader like me could wish for. The blog this week is their story.

So 10 days ago, we reconvened for our course in school financing and education law. As a reflective activity at the end of the first class, they were to respond in writing to this “ripped from the headlines” prompt that they turned in as a kind of exit ticket:

“There are many proposals before the current NC State Legislature, including cutting budgets for local positions, increased accountability for teachers, and elimination of teacher tenure. Write personally about how you feel about the proposals for public education in North Carolina.”

Concerned citizens know these ideas, and a cornucopia of others whose collective intent is to improve public education, are contained in Senate Bill 795. The Senate passed the bill. The House is now debating it. Given its relevance to our course content, my students and I will be following the bill’s progress over the course of the semester. With their permission, here is some of what my students wrote, with my captions supplied after the fact. Their comments may surprise you.

Tenure

“I believe the tenure process has been abused . . . Good teachers will continue to work and be successful without the safety net of tenure.”

“To me, tenure seems unnecessary because, I feel if you are doing your job then there should be no issues.”

“Eliminating tenure would require all teachers to perform the very best in order to keep their job. The school could also go to merit pay and give more money to the most productive educators.”

“As far as tenure, there are teachers who are teaching and should not be. There are also wonderful teachers who should be protected by tenure so they will not lose their jobs.”

“Personally, I feel that the elimination of teacher tenure and placing more standards on teachers is ineffective in helping students in our public schools.”

“Lost job security or the ability to think out of the box for fear of not being in line will drive many teachers out of the profession and possibly into private sector or other jobs.”

“I can see both sides here, but I’m not sure how the elimination of tenure will have on teacher retention. People look for stability and don’t want to go through each year fearful about having a job the next year, but it could be an effective way to get rid of teachers that are consistently under-performing.”

Funding

“I feel it is costing me more each year to stay in the profession that I’ve already spent so much money on. I’m almost to the point where I can’t afford to continue in education unless something changes with the state budget regarding teacher salaries.”

“The current budget for education isn’t a fair trade-off when you compare it with the economic constraints of living conditions, mental and physical constraints on individuals that try to make an honest living.”

“Someone with a masters degree and six years teaching experience should not be struggling to pay bills and work two part-time jobs.”

“Current funding in education . . . needs to include the people who are at the bottom of the totem pole, monies should be allocated for raises for steps and longevity.”

“I feel that the current funding proposals in North Carolina are not focusing on the main stakeholders—students and teachers . . . At present, the moral is low among teachers.”

“I think overall, ‘funding’ for schools is broken.” 

Accountability

“I agree that teachers need to be held accountable to high standards, but this bill only shows teachers how undervalued some feel our job is.”

“I do believe there should be a system in place that supports increased accountability for teachers in North Carolina.”

“When are we going to say ‘enough is enough’ and trust the universities for quality education and rely on administrative observations to determine if a teacher is doing her job?”

“I understand wanting increased accountability, but it is adding more tests for students. I saw how hurt students were this year with field testing, benchmark testing, Case 21 testing, and now EOGs.”

Performance Pay

“Teachers have no incentive to teach both harder and smarter when they are not valued for their efforts. Great teachers are looking to get out of the classroom because of this (just look at our cohort) and less experienced teachers just happy to have a job out of college are teaching children that need the support of more experience.”

“Performance pay and tenure are low on my scale because I feel I am a good teacher. However, I’m not sure that the measures that would be used would reflect that.”

“A teacher could be the best or worst in his or her building and that distinction may not be reflected at all in the teacher’s paycheck or level of career achievement.”

Politics and Policy

“I feel the current plan is not addressing the most important problems in NC. Talking about taking away tenure for teachers and cutting positions is irrelevant to fixing the education system.”

“The current funding is not what I am as concerned about. It is the fever to the disease of disrespect towards schools and school employees.”

“Proposals before legislatures involving teacher tenure and budget cuts are complex. Making changes today is likely to be as ineffective as the current policies as lag-time for the well-equipped teachers to step into tenure-less roles is nonexistent.” 

“I feel that our legislators are very pro-private schools and they have very little regard for public education in our state . . . I feel that the quality of life in our state will decline if these people [current legislators] stay in power.”

Of course, each cited comment was part of an extended narrative. I did my best to avoid misrepresenting the writer despite the loss of context of his or her words. You should also know that any one student could be, and often was, cited under more than one caption.

As you can see, my students and I have lots to talk about. And we will do it using facts and feelings. As with our legislators, not everyone is in agreement about every issue. Beyond the hope that my students learn, however, what I most want is for the teachers’ voice to be heard and respected by our elected officials. Is that too much to ask?

Educating Leaders

I read it in the News & Observer. Peter Burian is holding his last class this Wednesday after 44 years teaching Classical Studies. As a teacher myself, I can identify. Let's hope they throw him a party. Beyond that, those of us concerned about leading schools and businesses would do well to reflect on what the Duke University professor was trying to do.

In this age of accountability and data-driven decision making, teaching 2,000 year-old Greek drama enters it into few educational leadership or business administration preparation-program curricula. If understanding ourselves and others, however, is a prerequisite for effective leadership, it should.

"There's something important about recognizing that people have been worrying about the same things, arguing about them, desperately trying to understand them, forever," Burian told reporter, Jane Stancill. That even the mighty ancient Greek warrior, Achilles, ultimately proved vulnerable should remind us of our own fragility as modern-age leaders. If anything, digital technology has rendered us even more vulnerable than our ancestors. Think about the last time your laptop crashed or the battery on your smart phone failed.

The fragility of the powerful is but one lesson the Classics, and more broadly, the Humanities teach us. "In the end, the kinds of human issues that we all face are identifiable," Burian said. The enduring truths of human behavior--avarice, pride, lust, envy, and yes, love, generosity, and hopefulness--are expressed through drama, art, music, poetry and literature. For a leader, spending significant time with the Humanities is time well-spent.

I count myself lucky to have been an academic grazer in my youth. I'm sure my parents did not appreciate what seemed to them lack of focus. In my undergraduate majors, I wandered from English to Journalism to Music Education. As a career, I considered the priesthood, the military, medicine, entertainment, and information science. In the end, I became a band director, school leader, educational researcher and writer, curriculum developer, college professor, and chief executive officer of my own company. My next career remains a secret even to me.

Through it all, I remembered, and continue to remember, the lessons of my high school teachers. They were what today we might call "purists." Each teacher taught as if their subject existed alone. If they collaborated at all, I am sure it was only to make my teenage life more miserable. My undergraduate professors were no different. Thanks to them, my address was the library with subsequent digs in the music studio. Yet, there is something to be said for their standards and their demands.

When I am King of the World, I think I will pass a decree for new standards. The decree will insist on a broad liberal education for every leader of everything that is led. There will be no data-driven decisions until the leader surfaces the truth driving the data. Decisions will ultimately be rendered in terms not of information but of knowledge and wisdom.

In my kingdom, standards are implemented by leaders who recognize that one size fits few. Standards are guided by the passion of individuals aspiring to meet a greater common good. There will be no failure because, having developed personal learning agendas, there is no way to fail. And educating leaders will be everybody's business because, in my Kingdom, everybody leads. Now somebody pass me my crown.

Why We Need the Ed.D.

It's dead. The Doctorate in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.) is no more, at Harvard University at least. Since Harvard birthed it way back in 1921, I guess it is poetic symmetry that Harvard buries it, and does so a only bit shy of decade before its centennial birthday. But its prerogative to do so does not make it right.

As a beneficiary of the degree and longtime advocate for it, I beg to differ with our friends from Cambridge. If you talk with them, they will cite at least three reasons why the degree is no longer relevant. One, the historic knowledge and skills accruing to matriculates from conventional programs is unnecessary to lead schools or school districts. Two, the Ed.D. is often used as an pathway for classroom teachers to earn additional income for no additional work. Three, it is essentially a watered-down replica of the Doctorate of Philosophy degree sought by aspiring university teachers and researchers.

Critics of the terminal degree for school leaders are wrong. Permit me to present my abbreviated argument by responding to the three reasons for discontinuing the degree cited above. First, the knowledge and skills needed by leaders of 21st-century schools and districts has only grown in complexity, to say nothing of the need to build ownership and consensus for increasingly fragmented communities. Although the curriculum needs to be re-imaged, the need for learning beyond the master's level is, if anything, more important now than ever.

Second, teachers are expected to be leaders in today's schools. Principal leadership is necessary but insufficient to achieve the outcomes the public demands of its schools. Most of the same knowledge, skills, and dispositions appropriate for principals are also appropriate for teacher leaders. Creating a compelling vision, enlisting the school community in the vision, deploying the process skills of dialogue, conflict resolution, and coaching for performance requires a deep understanding, not so much of the tools themselves, but of those who would use the tools, including one's self.

Third, the historic differentiation between the Ph.D. and the Ed.D. has been the focus on research, the former requiring more of it than the latter. Folks, this is a red herring, a contrived and pointless distraction to embracing multiple ways of knowing. I would argue that every professional educator at every level needs to be a savvy consumer of research and engaged in action research as a normal part of his or her job. The kind of research produced in academia is no more or less useful than that produced by a teacher seeking to improve her practice with a classroom full of ten-year-old students.

Many more lines than readers of this blog are accustomed to reading would be necessary to flesh out the argument. And I do not think I am alone in making it. Meanwhile, I will continue to promote the Ed.D. for students I teach. Not all will feel called and perhaps not all may qualify, but all should be invited.

Just When You Think You're Done

One minute. That's how much better my time to run a half-marathon race was this year than last. Me and fine wine. Uh, right.

Seriously, I am a "good tired" right now having completed the Run Raleigh Race earlier today in a blazing 2 hours and 6 minutes. For reasons which will later become clear, I need to mention that the race sponsors included the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

I owe my personal best, and this story, in large measure to my friend, Jim Palermo, himself a one-time marathoner and Saturday running companion for the last 12 weeks. Predictably, Jim finished ahead of me today not only because he is younger and in better physical shape, but because I exploited a situation that matched my growing fatigue with a younger runner's need for coaching.

Jim and I learned that Shane, whom we met at about mile 5, is a Wake County middle school teacher. For obvious reasons, we had an immediate connection. At some point, I noticed on the back of Shane's t-shirt a hand-written message: "For Broken Dogs," Shane's race was personal.

Shane recovered his 60-pound mut and the impetus for his race participation, from the pound with buckshot still under his skin. "Wiffie," we learned, was Shane's constant running companion until his four-legged friend's hip gave out.

In a kind of sympathetic cosmic reaction, Shane found himself recovering most of last month from a blown knee incurred in a softball accident. Shane decided only last Friday that he would keep his commitment. Plus there was a girl to impress, as Shane later revealed to me.

About mile 10 when weenies and winners begin to separate, Jim shot ahead of us as I gratefully hung back with Shane, now doubting his ability to finish the race.

"I am spent," Shane said. So we walked a couple of minutes, catching our breath, feeling the burn of lactic acid in our quads and calves.

"We can do this," I told Shane. I took off in a slow jog, looking back over my shoulder. He followed.

"Only a mile left," said a race official at last. By now, both of us were just putting one foot in front of the other, lifting our knees no further from the ground that it took to clear it. In a moment of clarity, I said to Shane:

"Shane, we have been running for nearly two hours. I have discovered that you are the exact age of my youngest child. Everyone on this course is now near exhaustion. God willing, someday you will be where I am. You will work hard in your career. Toward the end, you will find yourself nearly give out. Then something wonderful will happen. Just as you think you are about to give out, you will start to give back. And when you do that, you will find new energy. I'll see you at the finish line."

I left Shane once again, secretly hoping he would find the strength to follow. I did not look back this time.

And you know what? Only three minutes after I arrived at our Cameron Village finish line, I saw Shane sprint to the wire. I shouldered my way to him through the throng. We embraced. Shane immediately thanked me, and wanted Jim and my email address to invite us to a year-end pig-picking at his house.

It was a good day. Just when you think you are done, the fortunate find a way and a reason to go on.

Data: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

You've heard the statisticians' joke? "There are outliers; and there are out-right liars." Okay, the humor is kind of lame. And it is probably as likely that you will hear Jay Z sing Brahms' Lullaby as wring humor from a number cruncher. No offense intended. It's only that I know who you are. The point is that in any given data set, such as scores from standardized student assessments, there are extremes.

Most scores that lie outside the norm are due to random variation. However and as we know, some scores may be attributed to manipulation, a kind of insider trading--usually perpetrated by adults--that inflates the average. That the outliers systematically inflate, as opposed to deflate, the average is the key detecting the crime. Just ask the good folk in Atlanta Public Schools.

I do not mean to pick on any one particular district, as there are many professionals who have fallen prey to the punitive pressures wrought by No Child Left Behind. APS one is but the most recent example. I will leave it to Diane Ravitch and her expose, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, about which I have written before, to argue the case for reexamining how we gather, use, and too often abuse data in the name of helping children.

For the readers of this blog, I wish to make two points tonight. Point One, we need to remember that data by themselves not only say nothing (as in the oft-repeated phrase, "The data speak for themselves") but are, in fact, a kind of idol, standing for, but not actually being, the children in our care. Point Two, we need to make sure we educators are gathering the right data about our instructional choices. Collectively, the points constitute the good, the bad, and the ugly of data.

Let me begin with a confession relating to Point One. I hate "data-driven decision making." There, I said it. Yes, I know it's sexy and infectious (not in an STD way, mind you) and all the rage in capitals across the continent. And who doesn't want to be fashionable? I will also grant that those well-meaning people who use the term intend only that we best decide issues using data. But they don't say it that way.

In my mind, there is something insidious to the point of Orwellian to being driven by as opposed to driving. If data do not speak for themselves, then what is being said by whom on behalf of collected data that would make practitioners harness themselves to an unknown man's plow?

In the interest of being constructive, may I offer this simple verbal substitution: let us henceforth be "data-informed." If driving is to be involved, I'd rather be the driver than the driven. Who knows whose hands were last on that plow?

Seriously, I have seen more times than I can count programmatic over-correction and even abandonment because of the misinterpretation of student test scores. The best way to know if you are driving or being driven is to think to yourself: What else could these data mean? 

About Point Two, what are the right data to inform instructional choices? Victoria Bernhardt argues in Data Analysis for Continuous School Improvement that there are four areas in which we may collect data: demographics, perceptions, student learning, and school processes. We are familiar with and adroit at collecting the first three. The fourth, however, school processes, not only constitutes an area that we typically ignore but is, she argues, the one over which we have the greatest control.

Questions about and opportunities to collect data include: How do we group students for instruction and what impact does it have on achievement? What is the impact of the school bell schedule on learning? To what extent and with what impact are professional learning teams making a difference? School processes are the practices that make a school a school. Does it not make sense that the way the school organizes and operates daily be subject to a little investigation?

Bottom line: Leaders get to start conversations that make people think. I suggest that leaders use words carefully and remember why and who they serve. Data are no replacement for thinking.

Action Research and Principal Teachers

"Teacher." That is the answer to every final examination in every course I have taught my aspiring principals for the last seven years. It's a "pass-fail" proposition. You get it or you don't. Oh, yes. The question: "In school, 'principal' is an adjective that modifies what noun?"

Somewhere in the ebb and flow of history, education practitioners and policymakers dropped the original term conferred upon individuals who would lead a school. Archival evidence shows that, rather than the legally-appointed middle manager manifest in the contemporary principal, the leader of our earliest schools was a kind of step-ahead teacher.

Mostly he (and believe it or not, time was that only men were permitted to teach) was the most accomplished, well-respected teacher in the school. People understood then that as the dance company has its principal dancer and the orchestra its principal violinist, the school has its principal teacher.

This line of thought is important for present purposes only to the extent that aspiring principals would do well to promote what, in my mind at least, is the most important role a teacher can play. That role is action researcher. The proposition is really not as radical as it may at first appear.

Action research is traced to John Dewey and the progressive movement arising in the first quarter of the 20th century. By definition, "Action research is any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers, principal, school counselors, or other stakeholders in the teaching/learning environment to gather information about how their particular school operate, how they teach, and how well their students learn" (Mills, 2011, p. 177).

A careful reading of the definition comports very nicely with what we are learning about effective teachers, particularly if one extends to teaching, specifically, peer review as a necessary component of scientific research generally. As in the peer review process required for professional publication, collaboration among teachers, such as that advanced in professional learning community, results in a better mousetrap.

If some strategy worked in my classroom, maybe it will work in yours too, so goes the thinking. But how can teachers say with certainty what worked in the absence of systemic inquiry around a particular area of focus, collection of data, analysis and interpretation of those data, and subsequent action based on findings? The answer is, of course, they cannot.

Bottom line: Effective principals are principal teachers who themselves engage in action research even as they expect it of their teachers. I will repeat now and with even more certainty what I wrote for Phi Delta Kappan nearly six years ago reporting on the SERVE Teachers As Researchers Academy:

"As well-meaning reformers work to create community, expertise, and a professional knowledge base for teachers, we submit that TR [Teacher Research] is an avenue whereby such conditions may be more authentically and powerfully created by teachers themselves" (Bingham, Parker, Finney, Riley, and Rakes, 2006, p. 688).

A World in a Grain of Sand

What a wonderful storyteller is the mind! Under the slightest provocation, it may weave coherent wholes from random parts. My preparing to teach a master's class in Case Study Methodology tomorrow has elicited from my own mind a story on leadership, interpretative research, and William Blake. I'll start with Blake and work my way back to leadership.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. . .

You may have recognized the first stanza from "Auguries of Innocence" without necessary having known that William Blake wrote it. Two years as an English major and this is what I recall! It is fair to say that I am a charter member in the Club of Knowing a Little About a Lot.

So what do Blake's words mean? Most literary critics suggest that the poet was reflecting on the state of apprehending wholes from parts. Even contemporary physicists are beginning to believe that reality is kind of like broccoli--each little stalk is a microcosm of the stalk of which it is a part. What might one learn about broccoli by examining a little piece? Can we see a world in a grain of sand?

My training and experience with case study research suggests that it attempts to do just what Blake wished for his reader--to create from a unique and bounded case a universe of meaning. It does so by exposing the theoretical frame of the researcher, selecting with precision whom or what is to be studied, drilling deeply into the peculiarities of examined people or programs, and validating its findings through collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from multiple sources.

While serving a doctoral internship with the regional education laboratory in the 1990s, I authored a case study of teacher leaders in a comprehensive high school. Even before its being codified in the North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process, the concept of teacher as leader was gaining nation-wide currency as a strategy in school reform efforts. The principal, so goes the thinking, is a leader of leaders, one who leads not from the front but from the center.

My study, conducted as part of a class called, Interpretative Inquiry, occurred over the course of one school semester. I assumed an ethnographic stance, looking in as an outsider, an interested but objective observer. My data consisted of hours and hours of personal interviews and examination of archival documents, including journals and meeting minutes in a Piedmont North Carolina high school. I used a member-check strategy involving teacher-subject review of interview transcripts. Assisted by a software program called HyperQual, I distilled emerging themes from my tomes of data.

My attempt to remain a dispassionate observer, however, frequently left me sleepless. For example, after several meetings with the female head of the math department, I listened to a poignant story of how the teacher had been excoriated by a parent upset with a grade she had given a student, a grade which the principal ultimately changed to favor the disgruntled parent. Her eyes watered up.

"I don't think they understand why I gave the grade I did or why I teach as I do," she told me. "They accused me of 'not caring.' That really hurt. I do care. I love my students so much that I demand only the best from them. I care in the long run." When I left the high school that day, I think I cried a little, too.

For present purposes, the results of my study are unimportant. What is important is this: At the end of residency and return to my district to be a principal, her words became a cornerstone of my leadership code of conduct. I decided then that I would love my teachers so much that I would expect the best of them. And I would support them in doing their best. I would care in the long run. I hope that I did.

My University of North Carolina at Greensboro professor, Svi Shapiro, encouraged me to publish my case study. I was not as confident then as I later became, but I did present my paper at a research conference. And you are reading about it now. Despite a novice researcher's lack of courage in submitting his work for peer review, maybe it is enough that you may be encouraged to conduct a case study that could inform your leadership practice.

I can honestly say that of all the research that I have read, evaluated, or produced none have more influenced my career than the lesson offered me by that teacher leader on a cold, overcast Monday nearly 20 years ago. A world in a grain of sand.

Demagogues Also Lead

For the last several weeks, regular readers of "Future-Ready Leaders Now" have witnessed a kind of roll-out. I have made no secret of my fascination with the ideas presented in behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  I have shared them with weary colleagues and hapless strangers at every opportunity. Tonight is no exception.

Preparations for a lesson on causal-comparative and experiment research for students in my Master of Educational Leadership for School Executives class led me to reread part of a famous text, a single quote from which pretty much sums the reason for the course I am teaching and our need for Kahneman's book. Leaders would do well to commit it to memory. Here's the quote:

"Our predilection for premature acceptance and assertion, our aversion to suspended judgment, are signs that we tend naturally to cut short the process of testing. We are satisfied with superficial and immediate short-visioned applications. If these work out with moderate satisfactoriness, we are content to suppose that our assumptions have been confirmed.

Even in the case of failure, we are inclined to put the blame not on the inadequacy and incorrectness of our data and thoughts, but upon our hard luck and the hostility of circumstances. . . Science represents the safeguard of the [human] race against these propensities and the evils which flow from them. It consists of the special appliances and methods. . . slowly worked out in order to conduct reflection under conditions whereby its procedures and results are tested."

The quote is attributed to noted philosopher and University of Chicago professor, John Dewey, writing nearly a century ago in his landmark book, Democracy and Education.

As you will remember, Kahneman asserts that our "System One" brain is quick, associative, and often wrong in its conclusions because of its tendency to "cut short the process of testing" to borrow from Dewey. On the other hand, humans are alive today because of System One's thin-sliced responsiveness to fight or flight information. 

Consider now "System Two." Kahneman says this system of thinking is logical and methodical. In theory, it has the capacity to analyze all the data and seek more. Alas, System Two is lazy. To paraphrase Dewey, System Two is all too readily "satisfied with superficial and short-visioned application." If there is a way to merge both systems of thinking to a greater good than either one of them could have attained alone, it lies in the scientific method.

I think, for example, about the pseudo arguments to which our elected officials sometimes subject us, ignoring for political gain evidence produced by disciplined inquiry around issues ranging from climate change to the evolution of the species.

In my mind, our only defense against hogwash from demagogues who would purport to tell us "how it really is" is to demand empirical evidence to support their assertions, examine rigorously the evidence and how it was produced, and push back against error when it occurs.

Someone once wrote that we are always but a generation away from ignorance. If any leader reading this blog needs a reason for acquainting him or herself with the methods of science, remember that demagogues also lead.

Klingon Warships

You need not have attended a Star Trek Convention to remember the dreaded Klingons. Here is a little Klingon trivia I have been thinking about lately: Faced with impending attack and nowhere to run, Klingon warriors engaged a cloaking device rendering their spacecraft invisible. When you're the most reviled being in the galaxy, that's a pretty good tool to have, isn't it?  

Sometimes I think our mental models, our maps of the world and ourselves, are like Klingon warships. Invested in our livelihood and the stories we tell ourselves, our models are self-protective. In their drive for preservation, our stories and models trump even scientific fact. I offer one example from Nobel-prize winning economist, Daniel Kahneman's 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Several years ago, Kahneman consulted with a prestigious group of investment advisors whose clients were among the wealthiest people in the United States. In the course of his work, Kahneman acquired a spreadsheet summarizing the investment outcomes of 25 anonymous advisors, for each of eight consecutive years. Note that advisors' year-end bonuses depended primarily on their outcome score.

To determine whether there were persistent differences in skill among the advisors and whether the same advisors consistently achieved better returns for their clients, Kahneman ranked the advisors by their performance in each year and made the appropriate comparisons. He then computed correlation coefficient between the rankings in each pair of years: year 1 with year 2, year 1 with year 3, and so on up through year 7 with year 8. The result was 28 correlation coefficients, one for each pair of years.

What happened next was not a shock to Kahneman whose theories about the persistence of skill foretold the outcome. Are you ready? The average of the 28 correlation coefficients was .01. In other words, there was no relationship between investing skill and portfolio performance. It was impossible to predict the former from the latter.

"Our message to the executives was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill. This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not. There was no sign that they disbelieved us. How could they? After all, we had analyzed their own results, and they were sophisticated enough to see the implications, which we politely refrained from spelling out. We all went on calmly with our dinner, and I have no doubt that our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on just as before" (pp. 216).

Kahneman explains our tendency to excuse statistical fact from individual cognition as an artifact of System 1 thinking, that is, our drive to create a story based on often-faulty memory to give meaning to otherwise unpredictable, disconnected, and therefore psychologically untenable circumstances. Over time, these stories become, and then reinforce, our mental models. And like Klingon warships, those models cloak themselves in invisibility, protecting themselves from existential threat.

So what is it that educational leaders need to know that their mental models have rendered invisible? What maps need to be redrawn? Clearly, throwing out extant models and leaving everything to chance is foolish. We can indeed draw a clear and convincing arrow from degrees of skill and varying outcomes in many things. Playing a musical instrument, shooting a basketball, and driving a car come to mind. If you don't believe me, experience a middle-school band concert; then go to a concert performed by a professional symphony.

Kahneman's work does suggest, however, that in highly-skilled professions like developing school principals and teachers and educating children, critical contributors to outcomes may not be as apparent as one might think. And then there is the matter of chance.

Since focusing on chance and things over which we have no control gets us nowhere, we can and must think strategically about the educational outcomes we seek, as well as on how we intend to get them. From our thinking, including the results of correlational research, we will build better models; but first we must see the models. What Klingon warship will you uncloak today?

Jackie and Me

He was three years older than me, Jackie. And in the vernacular of my childhood time and place, Colored. I'm thinking about Jackie tonight because the elementary school I attended and where 30 years later, I found myself principal, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Jackie's school experience and mine could not have been more different. Let me get you up to speed.

A few weeks ago, my brother, John, still living in the town of our birth, saw and informed me of a piece in the local newspaper inviting former students, teachers, and parents both to contribute to and attend a celebration of the longest-continuing school in the district. Naturally, I contacted the writer.

This past Sunday, my wife and I attended a meeting of parents and former students who were planning the big event. Except for current PTA officers, we were the "babies" of the bunch. One gentleman was, in fact, among the first students of the school, having begun 1st grade in 1937. He is a former mayor of the city and a testament to everything I remember as both student and principal about the school. Park Street School created leaders, all without the help of End-of-Grade tests. Imagine that.

Park Street School was then and now set off a tree-lined street of middle- to upper-middle-class homes only a few blocks from the center of town. The street and school was named for the grassy five-acre, oak-treed park across the street from the school and linked to the school by a pedestrian tunnel. It was then our playground. If those tunnel walls could talk, they would tell of chewing tobacco, first kisses, and childhood dreams in technicolor.

There was no way I could have known then that my classmates and I had the best of everything. The best textbooks, the best lunches, the best facilities, the best teachers.  At Jackie's crosstown school on the "Hill," not so much. There was a certain adjective that prefaced "Hill," that I will not repeat.

So you know, Jackie was the son of our domestic housekeeper, Ellen. Jackie was big and strong for his age, and I remember he loved baseball. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jackie had no Little League team, no Kiwanis or Rotary Club sponsor. Jackie had only his sandlot friends with whom to play. With the "Whites Only" water fountains and restrooms downtown and the "Balcony Reserved for Coloreds" signs in the local theater, that was just the way it was.

Years later, education historian, Diane Ravitch, would write that public school Black students in the Carolinas routinely used the hand-me-down textbooks of the White schools and enjoyed only one-fourth the fiscal resources. Moreover, the state spent only 1/100 of the cost to transport Blacks as it did Whites. Neither Jackie nor I knew it at the time. That was just the way it was.

So now I find myself at the end of my career in public education and at the beginning of the next chapter of my life enjoying an opportunity to revisit the way it was in my childhood. I will locate in my attic all the artifacts I can find that may bring life to who we were then to a new generation. They will marvel at how we looked, how we wrote, how we measured success, and they will know nothing of our experience. And that is just the way it is.

Me, well, I went on to earn an academic doctorate and enjoyed a successful career as an educational innovator. I have been an award-winning high school band director, a professional musician, a principal and assistant principal, a director in a regional education research and development laboratory, a graduate school professor, an author, and director and executive director of an organization building leadership capacity in the highest-performing school districts in North Carolina.

Jackie? He never lived to see fifty, in part I am convinced, because he, except for the abiding love of his family, had the worst of everything. The worst education, the worst diet, the worst access to health care, the worst career opportunities.  I am humble enough to know that who I am is as much a product of chance as of my own effort. To some extent, the same holds true for Jackie. Jackie chose neither his skin color nor the place and time of his birth. He played the cards he was dealt.

On the other hand, where Jackie went to school, how his school and adult life were resourced was more a matter of policy and practice than of chance. The way it was was not an accident.

When I attend the 75th anniversary of my elementary school, I want to talk about Jackie and me, good luck and bad luck. But most of all, I want to underscore how policy and practice favored me and not Jackie. That is not my fault but it is my opportunity.

So I hope Jackie's grandchildren will be there. I hope to tell them the story of their grandfather, my friendship with him, and the way it was then. I intend to leave them with a message of hope and a vision of how it may be. And that is just the way it is.

The Law of Regression

"Hiding in plain sight," says Daniel Kahneman. According to the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, regression effects are so common that we do not even see them. Like the air we breath, regression is invisible. I hope to show why leaders need to work harder to make the invisible visible.

As you may remember, regression to the mean is the statistical phenomenon that explains why children whose parents are extraordinarily tall tend to be shorter. For any set of quantifiable characteristics, there is an arithmetic average of the observed characteristic. Successive measures of the observed characteristic tend to approximate the average, not the extreme. This is the Law of Regression.

Why is increased awareness of the regression effect important to leaders generally and school leaders in particular? There are several good reasons, but I will confine my thoughts to one.

We know that human performance is a characteristic subject to observation and measurement. And we know that we've spent a king's ransom on instruments specifically designed to measure observed performances, for example, North Carolina End-of-Course and End-of-Grade Tests for students.

Normally-matriculated students take a particular EOG or EOC test only once, yet from this sample, the public makes inferences about the student population as a whole and the impact of teachers on those students from one year to the next. In fact, we have included progress on these tests in the evaluation of teachers and principals. Whether fair or not, you may infer for yourself aided by this text.

Here's the thing: The Law of Regression cares not that different students took the tests. Nor does it care whom or what got better or worse. The Law of Regression does one thing. It aggregates the blob of bodies to whom the tests are administered, year after year, and with steely logic demands that variation around some floating average results in a mean to which all successive scores will tend.

Someone check me on my own logic, but is it not the case that, given the Law of Regression, we might err when we attribute improved scores to improved teaching and identify the former as causing the latter? Equally, is it not the case that we may err when we attribute a decline in test scores to something gone horribly wrong at school when, in fact, it is simply random variation? These are the stories we tell ourselves because we must make sense of things. Honestly, we must. Luck is for losers, right?

Undoubtedly, the Law of Regression applies to organizations and organizational results far beyond public education. Rather than reflect on the Law of Regression when it favors us, however, we leaders pat ourselves on the back for our contribution to building a better employee. Of course, if performance declines, it was the employee's fault. Isn't it grand to be human?

Red Flags for Leaders

Obsessed? No, but I'm pretty sure I could spend every day for the next year writing about my latest read, Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Daniel Kahneman. Regular readers of this blog know that my first commentary was last week.

Knowing how our two systems of thinking--one fast and intuitive, the other slow and analytical--shape our judgments and decisions, says Kahneman, is the key to minimizing the aversive impact of cognitive biases, illusions, and inattention to statistical laws.

Arguably, the impact of failing to act on what we know would be most aversive for those individuals responsible for others' well-being. I am talking, of course, about people in leadership positions. People like you. I have distilled from my reading then a few simple lessons I call, Red Flags for Leaders. My hope is that when you see the flag, you will think--fast and slow--before you act.

The first red flag is ignoring the Law of Small Numbers. It is particularly timely inasmuch as I teach a unit on statistical sampling to my aspiring school leaders in the Gardner-Webb University Master of Executive Leadership in Schools program in a couple of days. If principals are not taught to be reflective practitioners, there is little hope that their teaching staff will be either.

Kahneman broaches the subject by describing that research has found that the highest incidence of kidney cancer in the United States is found in sparsely-populated, rural counties of the South, Midwest, and West whose citizens vote predominantly Republican. As an intelligent reader, you may quickly and accurately dispense with political affiliation as a related factor. You may remember, however, that the rural lifestyle is often characterized by a high-fat diet, lack of access to quality health care, and tobacco and alcohol abuse. 

Momentarily bracketing further thoughts about the story you are telling yourself, you need to know that research has also found that the lowest incidence of kidney cancer is found in sparsely-populated, rural counties of the South, Midwest, and West whose citizens vote predominantly Republican. What?

If you had been told the last research finding first, you may again rightly assess that being a Republican is inconsequential. You remember, however, that with country-living comes clean air and water, reduced stress, access to fresh food, and greater social cohesion. Of course folk there have less kidney cancer, you tell yourself. It's the lifestyle.

Would you believe that the statical Law of Small Numbers makes both findings true? In any small sample, such as rural counties with small populations, extremes will be found. Not convinced? Let's do an experiment:

From an urn filled with equal numbers of red and white marbles, you draw 4 marbles and have a friend draw 7 marbles. Over repeated drawings, the chance that you will obtain all red or all white marbles--the extreme--is exactly eight times greater than that of your friend drawing the larger sample. It works out to expected percentages of 12.5% and 1.56%, respectively.

It's simple math really, but we ignore it. Why? It's just how we think. System 1, the intuitive, associative, story-telling mind strives mightily to create a causal narrative from any set of observations, even if the story ignores statistical law. You probably found yourself caught up in System 1 thinking as you read about the incidence of kidney cancer in rural counties. System 2 is more deliberate and analytical but it's also lazy.

So leaders, here is your Red Flag of the Week: When you have only a few data points to work from, do not fall prey to the Law of Small Numbers. Whether it is assessing human performance or evaluating an intervention, the pressure to tell yourself a potentially inaccurate story will be great. Dismiss the pressure. As Quality advocates say, "Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast." Put lazy System 2 to work and then decide. We will talk about the Law of Regression next week.

The Premortem

My wife will soon be a happy woman. It has nothing to do with my life insurance policy. I am absolutely confident that Deb wishes only well for me. Generally.

For the last two weeks, I have found it impossible to let her accomplish her nightly classroom chores at the dining room table without "Deb, you've got to listen to this," as I excitedly blurt out a passage from the book that I am (gratefully from her perspective) almost done with.

I highly recommend that every person who would presume to lead buy a copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow, by winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Daniel Kahneman. A syntheis of his forty-year opus of research on decision making, the thesis of Kahneman's book is that we  possess two systems.

System 1 is fast, from the gut, a real shoot-first, ask-questions-second actor. System 2 is slow and deliberate, systemic and analytical, ostensibly rational. How we make decisions, good and bad, is a function of both systems.

I am confident that the book is so replete with things leaders need to know and be able to do that I am committed to sharing ideas from it for the next several weeks. Here is the first idea.

Behavioral economics research suggests that, at the outset of new initiatives, entrepreneurial teams and organizations are prone to a bias that Kahneman terms “the illusion of control.” Its attendant elements include “competitor neglect” and “overconfidence,” both of which are a function of the optimistic temperament, an adaptation needed to persist in the face of obstacles.  

Research: Only 35% of small businesses survive the first five years of opening. A survey of American business founders, however, revealed that the average estimate of the chances of success for “any business like yours” was 60%--almost double the true value.

The bias was more profound when people assessed the odds of their own venture. Eighty-one percent of these entrepreneurs put their personal odds at 7 out of 10 or higher, and 33% said their chance of failing was zero.  

To provide partial remedy to “nasty surprises,” Kahneman reports on a strategy created by psychologist Gary Klein called “premortem.” Conducted in the mid-to-late stage of designing a product, program, or event, the procedure is as follows:

The facilitator or leader convenes the team for a work session. The premise of the session is a short speech: “Imagine that we are a year into the future. We implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Please take 5 to 10 minutes to write, independently and silently, a brief history of that disaster.” Individuals’ “disaster stories” are then shared aloud for the whole team.

The premortem has at least four inter-related advantages: One, it overcomes the groupthink that affects even high-performing teams once a decision appears to have been made. Two, it legitimizes doubts that otherwise may be suppressed. Three, it encourages supporters of the decision to search for possible threats they had not heretofore considered. Four, it unleashes the imagination of knowledgeable individuals in a much-needed direction.

Is the premortem a strategy you may use? I thought so. Tune in next week for another good idea. 

The Risk and Reward of Trailblazing

"Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

It will soon be 200 years since the great American transcendentalist penned these words; yet adventuresome folk world wide have lived and will continue to live out Ralph Waldo Emerson's directive for as long as there is civilization. In fact, civilization depends on trailblazers.

Two sources inform my thoughts tonight, one a report from the January 5, 2012 edition of Education Week on Connecticut superintendents' proposal to transform their schools, and two, an October 2011 National Geographic article on the teenage brain. Bear with me. There are important leadership implications here.

Source One. Spurred by the same challenges facing all US schools--international and racial achievement gaps, low levels of student engagement, limited measures of assessment and accountability, and inadequate preparation for post-secondary education and careers--all 135 Connecticut superintendents have aligned with university professors, educational experts, and the governor to explore alternative public school structures and systems.

Notably, many of these alternatives, if enacted, will lead to superintendents ceding power and control to others and taking more than a little professional risk. "We're not at all naive about the challenges before us. We're goring every ox there is," says  Joseph Cirasuolo, the executive director of the group.

My experience suggests that the complexity of the plans and actions required to realize the superintendents' proposal is tantamount to colonizing Mars. What is amazingly simple, however, is the goal of the group's 134 recommendations--learner-centered education.

From a practitioner perspective, making learning personal will require designing and implementing experiential learning, building charter and magnet school programs, delivering just-in-time authentic student assessment, and capitalizing on technology. Resting squarely on the shoulders of policymakers will be replacing regulatory state mandates with mandated student-learning outcomes, then rewarding schools for meeting or exceeding those outcomes. If the coalition can pull this off, that is trailblazing. 

Source Two. When I read a recent report of the teenage brain in National Geographic, I was struck by the candid pictures of adolescents involved, or about to be involved, in risky or novel behavior. To cite but a few examples, the journalist photographed teens texting while driving, dancing the length of a ten-feet-high fence, tagging graffiti in a tunnel, and participating in a rave adorned in neon body paint. The presumed end of several other photographs violates the PG-rating of this blog.

The author explained that teens take risks not because they haven't weighed aversive consequences. They have. They do what they do--and drive us crazy in the interim--because they have calculated, often quite precisely, the rewards of the behavior and judge them as preferred to less-likely (in their mind) punishment.

We all know that the pursuit of novelty leads teens to dangerous behavior, but what we fail to see is that such behavior also generates positive ends. Meeting people, for example, can create a broader circle of friends, inspire happiness, induce health, and increase life success. Researcher Jay Giedd calls this hunt for sensation the inspiration needed to "get you out of the house."

I will leave it to you to review the narrative explaining prolonged brain plasticity and myelination and its role in turning thrill-seeking teens into risk-averse adults. In the interest of space, I close with author David Dobbs' stunning quote: "In scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain in the ass. But they are quite possibly the most fully, crucially adaptive human beings around."

I invite you to consider similarities in the behavior of the Connecticut superintendents and Dobbs' teenagers. The superintendents are going out on a limb because the status quo itself has become aversive. Kids are failing to graduate from high school, the white-minority student achievement gap is growing, and teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

The teenagers are skateboarding down stair railings and driving cars faster than the law allows because they are exploring the limits of what's possible. And presumably like Connecticut superintendents, they hope to get kudos from their peers. After all, we are social animals.

In closing I don't know how the Connecticut experiment will end. I wish them well. In fact, I'd like to see North Carolinians join them. And if you have a teenager in your house, God bless you. Here's what I do know. We all need to "get out of the house" a little more.