For a school district to meet the challenges of the future, educators at the school level must be empowered, Jerry Patterson, superintendent of schools in Appleton, Wisc., told participants at ASCD's 21st Annual Symposium on Urban Curriculum and Instructional Leadership, held in December in Baltimore, Md. Only through broader participation by school-level educators can a district make real headway in better serving students, he argued.
"If public education is going to land on its feet and run, we need to open the system to all the employees," said Patterson, who is the author of ASCD's Leadership for Tomorrow's Schools. "We need to be releasing the energy within the system, rather than keeping it harnessed," he urged. "I don't think we have an alternative."
Administrators must believe that "we is better than me," when it comes to charting a course for schools, Patterson told the assembled urban leaders. "If you ask staff members, they're going to make quality decisions." When districts move to site-based budgeting, for example, schools become penny-pinchers, he said, and school-level educators make good decisions on behalf of students.
The concept of opening up the system to broader participation is discussed "ad nauseam in our literature today, and everybody thinks they're doing it," Patterson conceded. However, in most cases, districts are only dabbling in "dispensed participation": the leader decides when others will—and will not—participate in making decisions. This practice is actually disempowering, Patterson said. Yet administrators who follow this practice "think, with very good conscience, that they have opened the system."
While he strongly advocated broad participation in most decisions, Patterson did cite three exceptions—areas that he said are the responsibility of a district's leadership. These include setting the philosophic direction of the district, making personnel decisions (such as final selections in hiring), and some aspects of budgeting.
Officials in his own district struggled with the question of whom to involve in defining core values, Patterson said. In the end, they did not include teachers in the process, because "you don't negotiate the core values" that guide the district. The core values the Appleton schools identified—and work to foster—include empowerment, risk taking, and a sense of community.
Open to Conflict
Administrators who want to empower educators at all levels in their districts must open the system to diversity of perspectives—to differing points of view, Patterson said. "If we're going to grow as a system, we must celebrate diversity and dissenting opinions," he asserted. Although this may sound easy in theory, he added, in practice it can be very painful.
To elicit all points of view, administrators must be willing to accept conflict, Patterson said. To many administrators, however, this idea is anathema. Most say: "We're already up to our necks in alligators—why should we encourage conflict?"
The reason, Patterson contended, is that districts must work through conflict to make real progress. Although today's administrators are "usually trying to keep the lid on the pressure cooker," he said, in the future, effective leaders will move toward the "tension points" rather than trying to avoid them. Leaders will try to foster—and capitalize on—the conflict that arises in the debate over what's best for children. But he was adamant about the need for training in skills such as conflict resolution and consensus building to make this kind of conflict productive.
Empowering others is not simply a matter of handing over control, Patterson emphasized. "The worst form of empowerment in the world" is asking teachers to take on authority and responsibility without giving them adequate training to do so successfully, he said. Without training, attempts at participation can degenerate into unproductive wrangling, and "people get hurt and shut down." To avoid this pitfall, Patterson's district obtained a federal grant to train every employee in conflict resolution and consensus building.
Of central importance is creating a "safe environment" where people can speak candidly, Patterson said. At meetings in his district, participants adhere strictly to protocols, such as speaking in turn (so assertive people won't dominate) and consensus bargaining (so the superintendent can't "pull a power play").
"You don't legislate safe environments" from the top, Patterson noted. Training—in techniques to reach consensus, for example—"absolutely is a must." And, in practice, every voice must be heard. ("I try to model listening to the dissenting voices without getting defensive," he said.) Equally important, the group must try to learn from differences of opinion. Besides eliciting more honest and fruitful discussions, these practices tap "the power of letting people talk about their worst fears and highest hopes," he said.
How can an administrator foster a climate of trust in which participation will thrive? Fostering trust is a "systems issue," Patterson said. Administrators need to "build in due process" so that educators can challenge what they perceive as bad faith. As an administrator, "you must walk your talk," but also "design a process for people to call you on it if you don't, in a safe environment," he said. Unreliability becomes a trust issue, he added. "It's the surprises that do us in, in terms of trust."
Involving Parents and Students
Patterson also endorsed opening the system to authentic parent involvement—despite the belief of some educators that participation should be limited to "the professionals." But he cautioned against involving parents before teachers have been trained and have become comfortable with group decision making: "You'll be creating a monster you can't corral." He also warned against trying to open the system to all constituent groups at one time, arguing that such an undertaking would make it impossible to provide adequate training for all. "It'll crack under the weight of the system."
Involvement should extend beyond school personnel and parents to include students, Patterson contended. The end goal will have been achieved "when we've empowered the children, too," he said. But he admitted that initial efforts to do this in his district have been stymied by student reluctance and apathy. "We've not turned that corner," he confessed.
Patterson also advised his audience that the move from a climate of "artificial" to "genuine" community is never a smooth one. "There's going to be pain in change that can't be avoided," he said. Genuine community cannot be achieved without working through conflict, talking about fears, and unloading emotional baggage from the past. "You have to give [people] space to grieve, to be angry, to take cheap shots," he said.
A Leap of Faith
Opening up the system requires determination, because pushing against the outer limit of the organization causes educators to "bounce back" to the old ways, Patterson said. It also takes a "leap of faith" to move to a new way of relating to others. But such a change is necessary to increase the capacity of the system to stretch and grow, Patterson asserted. And he expressed a sense of urgency about this need to change: "We have to address these issues if public education is to survive."
