Educational Leaders Must Strive To Increase Resources Available For Their Schools

Contemporary educational leaders function in complex local contexts. They must cope not only with daily challenges within schools but also with problems originating beyond schools, like staffing shortages, problematic school boards, and budgetary constraints. There are some emerging patterns and features of these complex contexts that educational leaders should recognize. Educational leaders face a political terrain marked by contests at all levels over resources and over the direction of public education.

The vitality of the national economy has been linked to the educational system, shifting political focus on public education from issues of equity to issues of student achievement. States have increasingly centralized educational policymaking in order to augment governmental influence on curriculum, instruction, and assessment. With the rise of global economic and educational comparisons, most states have emphasized standards, accountability, and improvement on standardized assessments. Paradoxically, some educational reforms have decentralized public education by increasing site-based fiscal management.

School leaders in this new environment must both respond to state demands and also assume more budget-management authority within their buildings. Meanwhile, other decentralizing measures have given more educational authority to parents by promoting nontraditional publicly funded methods of educational delivery, such as charter schools and vouchers. Political pressures such as these have significantly changed the daily activities of local educational leaders, particularly by involving them intensively in implementing standards and assessments. Leaders at all levels must be aware of current trends in national and state educational policy and must decide when and how they should respond to reforms.

The many connections between education and economics have posed new challenges for educational leaders. As both an economic user and provider, education takes financial resources from the local community at the same time as it provides human resources in the form of students prepared for productive careers. Just as the quality of a school district depends on the district’s wealth, that wealth depends on the quality of the public schools. There is a direct relationship between educational investment and individual earnings. Specifically, it has been found that education at the elementary level provides the greatest rate of return in terms of the ratio of individual earnings to cost of education. This finding argues for greater investment in early education. Understanding these connections, educational leaders must determine which educational services will ensure a positive return on investment for both taxpayers and graduates. Where local economies do not support knowledge-based work, educational investment may indeed generate a negative return. Leaders must endeavor to support education for knowledge-based jobs while encouraging communities to be attractive to industries offering such work. Educational leaders must be aware of the nature of their local economies and of changes in local, national, and global markets. To link schools effectively to local economies, leaders should develop strong relationships with community resource providers, establish partnerships with businesses and universities, and actively participate in policymaking that affects education, remembering the complex interdependence between education and public wealth.

Two important shifts in the nation’s financial terrain in the past 19 years have worked to move the accountability of school leaders from school boards to state governments. First, the growth in state and federal funding for public education constrains leaders to meet governmental conditions for both spending and accountability. Second, state aid has been increasingly linked to equalizing the “adequacy” of spending across districts, which has influenced leaders to use funds for producing better outcomes and for educating students with greater needs, including low-income and disabled children. Complicating these shifts are the widely varying financial situations among jurisdictions. These financial differences have made significant disparities in spending between districts in urban areas and districts in rural areas common. In this dynamic financial context, educational leaders must strive to increase resources available for their schools, accommodate state accountability systems, and seek community support, even as they strive to increase effective use of resources by reducing class size, prepare low-achieving children in preschool programs, and invest in teachers’ professional growth.

Recently, two important accountability issues have received considerable attention. The first has to do with market accountability. Since markets hold service providers accountable, if the market for education choices like charter schools and vouchers grows, leaders may be pressured to spend more time marketing their schools. The second issue has to do with political accountability. State accountability measures force leaders to meet state standards or face public scrutiny and possible penalties. The type of pressure varies among states according to the content, cognitive challenges, and rewards and punishments included in accountability measures. School leaders can respond to accountability pressures originating in state policies by emphasizing test scores, or, preferably, by focusing on generally improving effectiveness teaching and learning. The external measures resulting from political accountability trends can focus a school staff’s efforts, but leaders must mobilize resources to improve instruction for all students while meeting state requirements. And they must meet those demands even as the measures, incentives, and definitions of appropriate learning undergo substantial change.

Public education is expanding in terms of both student numbers and diversity. An increasingly contentious political environment has accompanied the growth in diversity. Immigration is also shaping the demographic picture. For example, many immigrant children need English-language training, and providing that training can strain school systems. Economic changes are also affecting schools, as the number of children who are living in poverty has grown and poverty has become more concentrated in the nation’s cities.

The shift to a knowledge-based economy and demographic changes accompanying the shift challenge the schools that are attempting to serve area economies. Given such demographic challenges, school leaders must create or expand specialized programs and build capacity to serve students with diverse backgrounds and needs. Leaders must also increase supplemental programs for children in poverty and garner public support for such measures from an aging population. Educational leaders must cope with two chief issues in this area: First, they must overcome labor shortages; second, they must maintain a qualified and diverse professional staff. Shortages of qualified teachers and principals will probably grow in the next decade. Rising needs in specialty areas like special, bilingual, and science education exacerbate shortages. Causes of projected shortages include population growth, retirements, career changes,and local turnover. Turnover generally translates into a reduction of instructional quality resulting from loss of experienced staff, especially in cities, where qualified teachers seek better compensation and working conditions elsewhere. In order to address shortages, some jurisdictions have intensified recruiting and retention efforts, offering teachers emergency certification and incentives while recruiting administrators from within teacher ranks and eliminating licensure hurdles. In these efforts, leaders should bear in mind that new staff must be highly qualified. It is critical to avoid creating bifurcated staffs where some are highly qualified while others never acquire appropriate credentials. Leaders must also increase the racial and ethnic diversity of qualified teachers and administrators. An overwhelmingly White teacher and principal corps serves a student population that is about 31% minority (much greater in some areas). More staff diversity could lead to greater understanding of different ways of thinking and acting among both staff and students. This survey of the current context of educational leadership reveals three dominant features. First, the national shift toward work that requires students to have more education has generated demands for greater educational productivity. Second, this shift has caused states to play a much larger role in the funding and regulation of public education. Third, states’ regulatory role has expanded to include accountability measures to ensure instructional compliance and competence. Educational leaders must take heed of these features if they hope to successfully navigate the current educational terrain.

Managing Former Peers (A Cheat Sheet for Busy Managers)

Managing former peers is probably your most immediate challenge if you’ve just been promoted. Below we suggest five key steps to managing peers.”Congratulations… you’ve got that promotion you wanted so badly. Now go fire your best friend.”5 Steps to Managing Former Peers
Decide if you actually want the job of managing peers
Reach out to all stakeholders
Establish one on ones with your new direct reports
Strike the balance between over and under managing peers
Be a professional
Decide if You Actually Want the Job of Managing Former PeersJust because you are offered a promotion, doesn’t mean you necessarily have to take it. You need to think through whether you want the added burden of managing peers. Some things to keep in mind:
Your peer relationships will change whether you want them to or not. Don’t be naïve enough to think they won’t.
You can’t control others’ attitudes and/ behavior. Even if you are ready to make the new relationship work, that doesn’t mean others will be as willing.
If your personal relationships at work are really important to you, you may want to decline your new role of managing peers.
Reach Out to StakeholdersFor anyone in a new position of leadership, it is crucial to reach out to important stakeholders. It is especially important when managing former peers. You should speak with your new direct reports, your boss, and other people you interface with often. Here are some thoughts as to what to ask them:
What would you focus on if you were me?
What can be done better?
What would you suggest is the top priority?
Be systematic and thorough – even when it becomes onerous and time consumingEstablish One on One Meetings With New Direct ReportsWhen managing peers, it is important to establish structured and regular one on one meetings with these people. Well-executed one on one meetings will ultimately save you time, and make managing peers easier. These meetings provide an opportunity to:
Set expectations
Reinforce and reward desired behaviors and performance
Communicate and clarify roles and goals
Update status on action plans.
Best of all, regular one on one meetings significantly reduce the number of “drive-bys” or drop-in meetings when managing peers.Strike the Balance When Managing Former PeersDo not come on too strong and micromanage your new situation. BUT… you are no longer “one of the girls”, either. If you experience any significant challenge to your authority, you need to deal with it directly and quickly. Also make sure you delegate appropriate when managing peers. If you hoard all the work yourself, you will ultimately fail.Be ProfessionalProfessionalism is paramount when managing peers. In order to do so effectively, you need to detach yourself from your personality, and rather view yourself as the new manager of the group or department. Here are some guidelines for maintaining professionalism when managing peers.
Stay focused on facts
Maintain confidences
Tow the company line. You are management’s representative in your work group. You undermine your own credibility, and are not doing your job if you don’t properly represent management views.
You need to refrain from company gossip and going out for cocktails with you direct reports should be done with extreme caution.
Don’t play favorites
3 Things to Remember About Managing Former Peers:
Figure out if you really do want the opportunity. Most often you do have the opportunity to say “no”.
Your friendships will change. It won’t be the same once you are the boss.
Communicate several times. Everyone in a new leadership role should look to over-communicate by a factor of ten.

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