What kind of leadership is needed in today's public schools? This question was vigorously debated by four panelists, all of whom have recently written books on the topic.
Steven Gross of Trinity College (Vt.), author of Staying Centered: Curriculum Leadership in a Turbulent Era, described qualities common to successful school leaders he has studied, such as their determination to "stay centered on students and learning" and their ability to be "highly engaged but never overwhelmed."
ASCD's Executive Director, Gene Carter, coauthor of The American School Superintendent: Leading in an Age of Pressure, emphasized that school leaders must have a compelling purpose, integrity, and a strong sense of ethics. "Talent and power amount to nothing if you're not ethical," he said. School leaders must also be able to deal with the chaos and ambiguity that characterize "the real guts of what actually occurs at the school-site level," he added.
Tom Sergiovanni of Trinity University (Tex.), author of Leadership for the Schoolhouse, suggested that schools should become more like social organizations, where leaders are less important than common allegiance to shared ideas and values. Sergiovanni also criticized traditional "rational" views of school management, which focus on monitoring and assessing performance. "I'm sick of Total Quality Management and results," he said. "One wouldn't think of a family or a faith community in terms of performance outcomes."
Mike Schmoker of the Havasu City (Ariz.) Public Schools, author of Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement, confessed himself bewildered by Sergiovanni's "strong critique" of school management that emphasizes data collection and performance outcomes. Schmoker defended the need for educators to define—and insist upon—results. Many schools, he said, "have made dramatic gains by using things that I think you're a little too critical of: data-based teamwork, continuous improvement processes, and even a lot of the stuff we've learned from people like Tom Peters."
In response, Sergiovanni contrasted the "life world" of an enterprise—its cultural life and sense of community—with the "systems world," or managerial side. Increasingly, he charged, the systems world is dominating the life world.
"These are not mutually exclusive realities," Schmoker insisted. "I've seen lessons in the literature from the business and organizational world that link to education in ways that have made a real, palpable difference for real kids—including the lowest-achieving—in many, many schools."