Finding the Meaning of Leadership

Photo courtesy of "Dyanna" via Flickr

The always engaging and dynamic Dr. Troyce Fisher with the School Administrators of Iowa asked me to be a provocateur for a state group working on leadership in education. Troyce specifically asked “What do Iowa education leaders need to do to restore Iowa’s schools to best in the nation?” With hopes of raising the discussion on the meaning of leadership across our state, I am presenting my words here. The listing below contains what I consider the essential qualities real education leaders must have.

1. Get the goals right.

The question posed of “what must Iowa leaders to to restore the state’s education system to best in the nation” isn’t the right goal.

It’s not St. Paul; it’s Shanghai. It’s not South Dakota; its South Korea. Our expectations have to be higher. Best in the world – that is the only goal. We can accept no substitutes.

The October blueprint we released contained a huge number of strategies and ideas. Some of them made sense for the state, some didn’t. Some made it to the Governor’s plan, some didn’t. While we continue to argue about those strategies today, they weren’t what was most important. The first page of the document, which contained the title and the vision, was the most important.

We called the blueprint “World Class Schools for Iowa – One Unshakable Vision.” People had a lot of fun with that. It was a good punchline for those who wanted to disparage the effort of dramatically improving our schools in Iowa. Despite the detractors, we set the vision and the tone. It is about getting our schools to be among the best in the world. There can be no other goal.

If Iowa loses this focus, this “unshakable vision,” then we are finished before we even really begin.

2. Be adaptive.

The pace of change is just going to keep accelerating. Get used to it.

The world is faster now. It demands that we change, and then change again, and then change again. And this world is relentless and merciless when it comes to whether or not we adapt and improve.

Workers in other nations are now entering the global economy with the same, or superior skills, to Americans. In this era of intellectual commerce and instantaneous data transactions – location and natural resource advantages mean less and less.

We should ask ourselves: “Why will employers continue to pay American workers higher pay for the same quality they could get in other places at less cost?” We already know the answer … they won’t, and they increasingly aren’t. We have to adapt as leaders and push our education system to adapt to the furious pace this global economy demands.

3. Reject “change without change.”

We must never accept the appearance of improvement while actually perpetuating the status quo as any substitute for meaningful change.

Iowa is very guilty of this. While incremental change is laudable, it is also expected. We shouldn’t congratulate ourselves for a “job well done” because we made incremental improvements. If you aren’t getting better, you are getting worse. So, incremental change only allows you to keep the pace. Don’t confuse incremental change (which only allows you to survive) with real improvement.

It’s not enough to inch things along, call it a victory and pat ourselves on the back. For Iowa to build a world class school system, we’ve got to reject “change without change” as a viable long term strategy.

4. Find the courage to risk.

It’s always easier to say “no.” It takes guts, leadership, and determination to find our way to “yes.”

We shroud ourselves in “no” because it creates the illusion of safety and security. We might console ourselves by saying at least we know what to expect, or things will at least be predictable and this somehow justifies a position of blocking or saying no.

But that ignores the slower and more insidious danger of failing to risk. Failing to risk makes us, and our schools, more outdated and ineffective by the moment.

Again, it’s easy to say “no.” It takes guts, leadership, and determination to find our way to “yes.”

5. Fail - but (and more importantly) get up and go at it again.

Everyone gets tired of sports analogies, so I apologize in advance.

Arguably and perhaps the greatest and most successful athlete of our time is Michael Jordan.

Jordan said “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

We can’t be afraid of failure. Meaningful change involves things going wrong. Let me emphasize again … if you are enacting a meaningful change SOMETHING is GOING to go wrong.

Our future leaders will need to fail, learn, and go back at it again, and again – as many times as it takes.

6. Go big.

What we don’t need – more pilots, programs & small scale projects. We need ideas that take people’s breath away. We are already behind and we need rapid advancement in dramatic ways. Arguments for tinkering when major change is needed are just cowardice in disguise.

We need changes, improvements, and investments on the scale of the problems we face and this lesson goes beyond just education.

7. Take the heat.

You are the leader – it’s your job to take the shots, handle the pressure, be abused, be unpopular … and still keep pressing for improvement.

If you aren’t making people uncomfortable, you aren’t doing your job. Let me clarify, if you aren’t making “the right” people uncomfortable, you aren’t doing your job.

If you aren’t confronting the meaningful problems – you aren’t doing your job. We have lots of in-name-only “leaders” confronting problems that don’t really matter.

If you aren’t causing a commotion, causing a debate, causing a stir … you aren’t doing your job.

We need leaders who are willing and able to (gracefully, intentionally, respectfully) apply the pressure … and take the heat.

Acknowledgement to Phil Wise for some wisdom related to this post.

Remarks to School Administrators of Iowa Annual Conference

Good afternoon.

What an amazing time to get to work in education in Iowa. My wife Sarah and I continue to be provided so many blessings from Iowa. Sarah is very excited about starting the new school year as a teacher with Des Moines Public Schools and I have been so impressed with the leadership of Nancy Sebring for that district.

We come off a recent education summit here in Des Moines last week that I think set the stage for meaningful and lasting improvements for our state.

We can sometimes get caught up in arguments about the current condition of Iowa’s schools and how they might stack up in comparison to the schools here in the past, or how Iowa’s schools stack up against other states, or how our schools stack up against other nations. I will advance that while this comparative exercise is important and constructive, it is fundamentally the pushing on the wrong questions.

The right question we should be asking is “can our schools be better than they are today?” Of course, we know they can.

And if we believe that our schools can be better than they are today the next question is “how good should they be?” Of course, the only answer that this proud tradition of education in Iowa will tolerate is that these schools must be “among the best in the world.”

When you look into the eyes of the kids and the families you serve, all of you know in your hearts there is really no other morally acceptable answer.

So, I would advance that we can probably agree that our schools can be better than they are now, and we can also probably get some general agreement that we want Iowa’s schools to be among the best in the world. Agreement on these two points moves our discussion from one of a defensive posture, focused on what is or what was – to a forward focused posture, focused on what could be.

Our collective ability to undergo this paradigm shift to coming together on a plan to improve Iowa’s schools, right now and as a community, is going to make or break this effort. If we fail in this, what a tremendous opportunity we have collectively lost.

The recent education summit raised a number of interesting policy approaches for Iowa to consider in the years ahead. Note that I said “years” because while we can and must undertake some dramatic changes that can immediately improve our schools, we learn from the highest performing systems in the world that meaningful and lasting improvement takes a focused direction and a deep and lasting commitment.

While the Governor and I are dedicated to opening a real discussion and allowing the free market of ideas to surface the best strategies for Iowa, we certainly have our priorities and we are working with and listening to people all over the state to shape and hone a blueprint for this major remodel of Iowa’s education system and I’d like to share some of the major tenets of our thinking with you today.

Let me preface any “plan” that we might design with the notion that Iowa must move from being a fractured system of schools to being a school system. For too long we have left too much to chance that each individual school district would provide a world class education to each and every student. There is a balance of state and local control that we must find and frankly, capacity needs to grow on both sides of the equation.

I will accept that the Iowa Department of Education hasn’t always been a model partner and too often we have been an impediment to meaningful improvement and change. But we are committed to getting better and I see positive changes across the organization almost daily. The truth is, for Iowa to truly be one of the finest school systems in the world, it’s going to take us all and I am committed to tending to and growing the department of education into a state agency all of you can be proud of.

The blueprint for building a world class school system for Iowa involves three main parts and I will cover them briefly with you, though we expect to issue our formal plan in mid September.

First, Iowa needs a better system of high student expectations and fair measures of those expectations. The work of the Iowa Core and its merger with the Common Core were positive steps in the right direction but we need to finish the job and get to full implementation of the Iowa Core. Every teacher in Iowa should know what their students are expected to learn and how to design curriculum and lessons to those standards. Assessments in Iowa should be aligned to those standards and provide meaningful information that captures both achievement and growth and provide information that is useful and timely for instruction.

And accountability in Iowa should be a broader concept than just results on these assessments and reflect more than just if you live in an affluent or poor zip code. Secretary Duncan has asked states to design meaningful accountability systems that meet the spirit of No Child Left Behind but define accountability and consequences in more realistic and meaningful ways. Iowa should step up to this challenge and engage in the work of designing a new accountability system as part of our efforts around ensuring we have high standards and fair measures.

Second, Iowa must invest heavily in educator quality – making sure we have great teachers and leaders in every school for every kid. We must take on a hyperfocus in this areas that involves considering who we recruit into education, how we prepare them, licensing, initial and ongoing support communities, teacher leadership roles, providing capable and visionary building and district leadership, and we must collectively, openly, and systemically be able to remove the rare rare case of the ineffective educator who does not want to improve.

Finally, Iowa must make innovation an institution and an expectation of our field of education. This may seem counter intuitive, but what I mean by creating an institution of innovation is that new ideas should be welcomed, supported, nurtured, tried, learned from, and taken to scale if they are effective. It’s difficult to think about creating a “system” to support innovation but this is exactly what we must do. As Michael Fullan puts it, the learning must become the work the whole system engages in.

Now, I know I’ve shocked most of you by going this long without talking about compensation. But I simply can’t hold out any longer!

I do not expect anyone else in this room, perhaps in the world, to get as excited about educator compensation as I do and that’s ok! In fact, I know that many would prefer that we just not discuss it at all because of the contention the topic usually raises. But I do need to keep pushing us back to this topic for one simple reason: Its where the money is. I want to be clear that I am in no way talking about paying educators less – we should be paying them more. But we should also be paying them smarter.

We have a terrible history of coming up with great ideas in education and then funding these great ideas with one time money in “pilots.” When the one time funding dries up the great idea dies with it. We also have a history of hanging funding for great ideas on the side of our regular funding. Time and time again we see that when times get tight, funding gets cut, and the great idea goes away.

How many times do we have to go through this exercise before we finally learn?

I will advocate for changing compensation systems to sustainably fund several key reforms most people in this room can probably agree on. Raising base teacher pay, raising new teacher pay, creating teacher leadership roles, creating collaborative time for educators to work together, creating extended day and year programs for students who need it, addressing labor market issues such as shortages of math, science, and special education teachers, and for acknowledging exceptional educators.

On this last point, I have no illusions that performance-pay models will be any sort of panacea to cure education’s problems and I am very aware of the uneven to poor track record of success for “merit pay” models. But take note that I am not talking about some simple “merit pay” approach. I am talking about a revolution in teacher compensation that allows for broader and more systemic changes to be enacted and more importantly … sustained.

The Des Moines public school district was the birthplace of the step and lane pay system that has persisted nearly a century. Iowa should also be the place with the innovative spirit to transform educator compensation – to put in place a strategic compensation approach.

We can’t just keep asking for more and more money to do the same things, just more expensively. While I think we can ask for increased funding if we can really put together a transformative education reform package, we also have to be willing to use the billions of dollars we already have in our system more efficiently and strategically.

In the debates on improving education in this country, international comparisons and the threat of America losing it’s place as the premier nation on this earth have become so commonplace they nearly lose their meaning. I am a student of history and know these threats are not new.

But a detailed study of the history of education in America does not tell a story of a stagnant system that refuses to budge but of a system that has risen up to meet the challenges this country faced. From the birth of this democracy, to the industrial era, through recessions, depressions, and wars and through waves of international competition across decades this nation’s system has risen up to the challenges it faced time and time again.

During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln said “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

These words were meant for a different time and a different context, but they ring true today – at least for me – because today we are challenged with making another wave of major improvements and another wave of competition. It is the responsibility of the educators in this room to have our schools meet this challenge. This is our time to shine, our time to make history.

We shouldn’t fear rise of nations around the world – increasing education, health, and freedom across this planet is not a zero sum game and we can celebrate everyone getting better – but we should fear our own inability to act and counter it with the courage necessary to make bold improvements.

I’d like to close with a sincere thank you for all that you do for your schools, your communities, and your students. I am honored to be among you.

Remarks for Iowa Administrator of the Year Awards

I delivered the following remarks today to a ceremony and reception honoring the Iowa Administrators of the Year. The School Administrators of Iowa hosted the event and I had the honor of following Governor Branstad in addressing the attendees. I thought a lot about my father, a career teacher and school administrator, when I wrote these words and I’d like to share them with you now.

Good afternoon,

I want to extend my appreciation to the School Administrators of Iowa for this invitation and opportunity to recognize and to celebrate exceptional leadership in our schools. Taking the time to acknowledge these tremendously talented and dedicated leaders in Iowa’s education system is important and highlights the incredibly critical role of leadership to our schools and our children.

School leadership scholar Ken Liethwood has studied high performing school systems and leaders and the conditions around which schools have made dramatic improvements. Leithwood noted in his studies “there are virtually no instances of troubled schools being turned around without the intervention of a powerful leader.” This is worth repeating: “there are virtually no instances of troubled schools being turned around without the intervention of a powerful leader.”

The importance of leadership cannot be understated. It is a crucial, if not the crucial, element in what has made our schools great in the past and the necessary ingredient for what our schools will desperately need in the days to come.

Leadership, for all it’s importance, is difficult to quantify. But we all recognize it’s power to drive toward positive change, respect it’s inspiration, and feel when we stand in it’s presence.

The list of characteristics that make up an effective leader is long, situational, and contextual. But I’d like to give you my short list of ingredients in what makes up great leaders.

First, vision. The vision to see what could be, instead of what is. Vision to see opportunity, instead of scarcity. And the vision to believe in what others say can’t be done.

Second, real leadership demands courage. Courage to tackle the hard problems that others ignore, to take stands that are often unpopular or even strongly opposed, and the courage to rise up again – and again – and again from the many small failures that accompany challenging difficult issues.

Finally, real leaders understand personal sacrifice. They put the wellbeing of others ahead of themselves. They put in time and energy when everyone else has long gone home, and they are willing to sacrifice their own goals and pride in pursuit of something larger and more enduring than themselves.

The leaders recognized by the School Administrators of Iowa exemplify these characteristics and today we acknowledge their incredible service and dedication.

Thank you so much Dan Smith for the chance to be part of this day … and to stand with these tremendous Iowa educators.

Jason Glass
Des Moines, IA