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.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, April 9, 2012
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.
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.
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