Educational Leadership Commons^™

Shared Decision-Making Serves Students, Gregory A. Reed

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

School-based shared decision-making is a system of administration in which the school is the primary unit of decision-making. I believe our students are best served when decisions that affect them are made collaboratively by the adults who are responsible for all aspects of their education. In theory, the teaching staff, administration, and support staff in the school with participation from parents, students, and community members should make all decisions concerning expenditures, curricula, and personnel. The role of the central office should be as a facilitator to the local school while the school board should continue to define and set district …

Demon In The Doorway, Satan In The Schoolhouse: The Myth Of Values Education As Social Savior, Aaron Podolefsky

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Conflicts of values are among the most intractable of disagreements. Because values are core elements of who we are, individuals tend to take positions from which they will not compromise. Because values are, ultimately, tied to norms and goals, groups become concerned about the larger agenda of others. Today, many educators are concerned because much of the pressure for teaching values in schools is coming from religious groups perceived as extremist, intolerant, and divisive.

Six Issues To Resolve For School-Based Shared Decision-Making, Michael W. Milligan

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Shared decision-making is a complex concept whose goal is clear, but whose implementation is lost in the labyrinth of methodology. While most current researchers regard shared decision-making as a vital component in improving student performance, there does not seem to be wide consensus as to how to achieve the desired goal of implementing and integrating the process into our schools. As with many supposedly new educational concepts, shared decision-making is not new at all, but can trace its roots back to the days of John Dewey. Additionally, current researchers fall victim to the disease of nomenclaturitis, (i.e., the inability to …

Shared Decision-Making: No Assurance Of A Focus On Student Learning, Harold A. Overmann

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

As schools have struggled to "reform" themselves over the last decade, shared decision-making (SDM) has emerged as a central component of the reform overnance structure. Diffusion of decision-making authority among the teaching staff at the school site is frequently equated with the production of quality decisions that guarantee student success. In reality, SDM provides no more assurance that decisions focus on student success than traditional decision-making modes.

Learning Opportunities Necessary For New Shared Decision-Makers, Steve Kwikkel

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

If the 1990s are destined to be the era of shared decision-making (NASSP, 1993) then those who embrace it must be willing to make and enforce the range of decisions that will follow. The biggest obstacle I see facing shared decision-making is the lack of opportunities that have traditionally been afforded to interested stakeholders-namely teachers. If teachers are an untapped leadership potential, then it is up to principals as the leaders of leaders (Schlechty, 1993) to nurture and develop these skills in teachers by offering ample opportunities. If the era of top down decision-making is to end, then schools as …

Issue Area Six: Changing Schools For A Changing Society: The Schools As A Positive Force, Maryellen Knowles

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Schools can be a positive force for change by being courageously and passionately committed to a vision that focuses on the learner.

Schools can become flexible with resources. An enterprising environment demands a high degree of flexibility with resources and a high tolerance for diverse implementation techniques. Schools must have the flexibility to shift resources from areas of low productivity to new ventures and areas of higher productivity. This flexibility calls for a reduction in rules that restrict enterprising activity and a greater tolerance on the part of decision makers for the ambiguity that is a result of enterprising activity. …

School-Based Shared Decision-Making: Questions Of Law, Tony Mcadams

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Not surprisingly, a considerable array of potential and actual legal dilemmas must be addressed if school districts are to successfully embrace a school-based management approach. We will identify some of those legal pitfalls.

Whose Children? Whose Schools?, James L. Kelly

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Whose children? Whose schools? An interesting title. Indeed, an interesting theme. The answer may not be so clear if one weighs all of the possible responses that can be attained. Parents, teachers, administrators, school boards, corporate attorneys, the local paper carrier, the children themselves, all may have a different answer or a different thought on this subject.

Children today come to school much the same as they have done the past 50 years, but, at the same time, dissimilar from the past 50 years. Children seem to bring so much more baggage with them now. Why? The answer, or attempt …

Democracy V. Dominion: Expression Or Oppression?, Jody Ripper

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Prior to the process of building consensus, it is valuable to consider the opinions and expectations of participants.

Religion is of primary and increasing importance in forming our view of the world and in our relationships to others. Information, and our confidence in that information, are primary factors in formatting of our views about the institutions in society and public education in particular.

Trust and respect often serve as translators in the consensus equation. The more diverse the beliefs are among participants, the more important trust and respect are to the process of consensus building and maintenance.

Changing Schools For A Changing Society, Jean Seeland

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

America has always believed that schools were too important to be left to teachers. Our first public school was founded in 1635 by Puritan ministers. They believed that lay teachers were not sufficiently pure to be trusted with the teaching of the young. To assure strict supervision, the ministers created a governing board, with themselves as governors.

This attitude, which persists today, began as an historical accident. It exists today only in England's colonies - only Canada, New Zealand, and Australia all have school boards like the United States. These four countries rely on the property tax to support schools. …

Building Trust In The Community, Carolyn Jons

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Building trust and respect in schools and communities actually happens one person at a time. Diverse beliefs can be a barrier, but despite disagreements there are effective ways to work together or at least not to sabotage each others' efforts. The six principles for how leaders build trust, found in the book Credibility (Kouzes & Posner, 1993) provided the framework for my suggestions for fostering successful interactions.

Public School As A Force For Change, Floyd D. Jury

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Public schools are not now, nor have they ever been, forces for change in society. One need only read The Education of Henry Adams (1918) to recognize that there has been little substantive change in public schools during the last 76 years. While the outward appearances of the classrooms may suggest change, such as students who are using computers instead of slates, the teaching style and philosophy has changed very little.

Students are still herded unceremoniously from one class to the next according to some rigid, arbitrary schedule. Teachers still stand at the blackboard delivering dull lectures while students dutifully …

Shared Decision-Making: Training Or Culture Change?, Judy Jeffrey

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Before beginning this paper, I must advance one important consideration. Shared decision-making is a value, not a training program. Topics can be introduced, discussions held, and skills enhanced, but if the people in the organization do not have an underlying belief that shared decision-making is the way to do business, only superficial activities will occur. If people believe they will be giving power to someone else, then the decision-making relationship will be inherently unbalanced. That belief implies that someone has power to give and, therefore, can take it away. It also implies that the person who received power was powerless. …

How To Prepare Teacher Candidates And Educators For School-Based Decision Making, Les Huth

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

It is interesting how students in a teacher education program respond to the concept of restructuring schools to provide an equitable education to all PreK-12 students and also to improve students' performance. It becomes obvious that they can philosophically accept the need to restructure and participate in school-based decision-making, but they see so many barriers that it would be easy for them to retreat. They are very idealistic and want an education system which has equity, justice, and quality education, but they see many barriers to that happening.

School Board Support Essential For Successful Shared Decision-Making, Barbara Grohe

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Shared decision-making is a powerful tool in the transformation process. Its power lies in its ability to move decisions closer to the children and people who know them best, and to engage a broader spectrum of the school community in the decision-making process. This engagement often raises serious questions among those accustomed to the traditional power structure. For the school board and the superintendent who are still responsible and accountable for the decisions, this can be a disquieting and uncomfortable situation.

Involving Parents In The Consensus Building Process, Cheryl Budlong

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Consensus building is an important skill educational leaders use to generate trust and respect in the community. Because consensus building is a process, it can be learned and developed. However, not all issues can and should be solved by consensus building; for example, legal imperatives may preclude community discussions and decision making. For consensus to occur, all stakeholders must be involved in the process. One critical constituent is, of course, the parent.

Parental involvement in the schools is an essential ingredient in the education of children. Parents are children's first and predominant teachers of the value of school, trust, respect, …

Issue Area Four: Identification Of Legal/Governance Issues Related To School-Based Shared Decision-Making: What Needs To Be Resolved?, Ronald Rice, Louise Esveld

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

This group's task was to identify major legal/governance issues related to school-based, shared decision-making that need to be resolved. The group first set definitions for which issues would be considered legal and those which would be considered governance. Legal issues, the group determined, are those issues concerned with external controls to the school district, generally imposed by the legislature and/or by the federal government and the Constitution. Governance issues, the group decided, are those local decisions made within the boundaries of external, legal constraints. It was within these definitions that the group began deliberations.

Early in the conference the group …

Moving To A New Paradigm Of Leadership, System, Values, Mick Starcevich

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Two of the most popular current themes in local school district management writings and discussions are empowerment and site-based management. These two themes tend to run together a$ we look at restructuring our organization. Organizations have been conceived, constructed, and evaluated on the premise that leaders are responsible for directing and controlling the organization. As leaders try to open up their organization by embracing values such as participation, diversity, and reflection, they face a constant tension resulting from the conflict between these values and the current values used to judge successful leadership. Before leaders can institute real change, they must …

Abracadabra Doesn't Work, Deon Senchina

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

As a banker for the last 20 years I have had the opportunity to study, analyze, and work with many businesses. These businesses are facing many of the same struggles schools face: how to be pro-active in our rapidly changing world and meet future customer needs more effectively. The "solution" for businesses and schools will undoubtedly be different. Yet I have found there is much about the process of change that is alike.

Abracadabra doesn't work. Change will not happen without both time and effort. There isn't a magic genie or fairy godmother to ensure all the necessary ingredients for …

Time For Change: An Outline Of Problems And Solutions, Charles K. Johnson

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

As we look forward to the next century, the needs of learners and of society require the creating new educational structures. The traditional factory model of schooling was adequate when teaching was understood primarily as the delivery of facts. Under that model teachers were seen as "deliverers of content" (Watts & Castle, 1993, p. 306). Such factual instruction could be done by individual teachers working in relative isolation.

Now society needs learners who can apply knowledge to real-life problems and work together in an ever-changing world. To produce learners with these abilities, teachers need to be involved in planning and …

Trust, Respect, And Consensus: Turning Principles Into Practice, Charles K. Johnson

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Certain basic principles lead to the growth of trusting and respectful relationships between individuals, groups, and organizations. They are commonly spoken but perhaps not so commonly practiced. Courtesy, kindness, justice, open-mindedness, and good will are the foundation stones upon which fruitful communication can be built. Yet these values are too often lost in the clash of ideas we are witnessing in the late twentieth century. Education finds itself at the center of what some have called a 'cultural war.' As our society grapples with an onslaught of perceived threats to our health, well-being, and beliefs, many in our communities have …

Issue Area Four: Separation Of Church And State: What Are The Legal Issues?, M. J. Dolan

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Religion in the public schools is a topic that appears to have two sides-those in favor and those against. Placing a line down the middle and dividing people interested in an issue into two segments lends itself to stereotyping and creating perceptions of the members of each side as being exactly the same as every other member of that side. In fact, the persons interested in the issue of religion in the public schools fall along a continuum ranging from those fully in favor to those adamantly against. It is important for public school officials, students, parents, and citizens with …

If Not Now, When? If Not Me, Who?, Robert J. Gilchrist

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

This paper will be divided into two sections. The first will be Whose Schools? That question will be addressed in the legal sense and from personal opinion. The second section will be Whose Children? which will be addressed from personal opinion.

The Code of Iowa is clear. The schools belong to the people of Iowa. The Constitution of Iowa spoke to education in Article IX, which has been repealed and put into the Code. The Constitution of Iowa stated, "The educational interest of the state, including common schools and other educational institutions, shall be under the management of the Board …

Understanding Society's Process Of Change, Thomas Wells

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

At first glance, the question Whose Children? Whose Schools? seems fairly straight forward. State law requires public schools to educate all children between the ages of 5 and 16 who present themselves at our doors. But of course the real question being asked is something quite different than this simple one. The real question is how and why do we educate young people in our democracy? The issue is further confused by the increasingly pluralistic nature of our society because we, as a nation and society, have not even agreed as to whether we value this diversity. As a country, …

Which Values? Those To Create A Society To Benefit All People, Dwight Duckstein

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

One basic premise needs to be established to examine the subject at hand: It is not primarily the state's responsibility to inculcate values into children. That responsibility rests primarily with the parents (Prince v. Massachusetts), and, in a religious sense, with the church. Schools are in the position to reinforce those values the parents have taught, but are not given the mandate to originate or fundamentally alter them.

The question of whether a school should teach values, however, is somewhat moot-if subjects dealing with history and human behavior are included in the course of study, values will be addressed. To …

Compassion, Justice: Foundations Of A Moral Education, Jeff Perrin

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Almost anything gets respect in our country today except genuine moral integrity, traditional families, and deference to Judeo-Christian values. Ethical relativism, "values-free," and "multicultural" describe the philosophy not just in the media or the universities but increasingly in our schools and cities as well. In the national rush to be liberated from the defining values and moral heritage of Western Civilization, we are almost now becoming de-civilized and decadent. The foundation of our uniqueness as a nation is being disregarded irresponsibly with expected, ominous consequences. The very qualities that have contributed to our nation's greatness have met a growing opposition, …

What Is Best For All Children?, Laurie L. Musel

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Why public schools? Horace Mann in his 1847 report entitled, On the Education of Free Men, answered that question. Because "it is the only foundation on which republican government can securely rest" (cited in the National Coalition for Public Education, 1991). During his lifetime Mann had seen a public disinterest in schools, a religious and class discord, and the popularity of private schools. This was causing a national separatism that motivated him to contemplate a "common" school for all children. He disagreed with many who felt education should be enjoyed only by those who could afford it. His common school …

Coming To Consensus, Charlene Fulton

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Consensus building is a strength of mine. Allow me to share a few of my experiences to show how consensus building became a strength for me. I was raised on a farm in Southeast Iowa as the fourth in a family of eight children. I learned as a youth that life would be much smoother if I could help work out the differences between my older and younger siblings. In most families, the middle child learns to be the mediator as part of the survival skills of growing up, and I found that helping our family come to consensus was …

A Road Map For Consensus Building A Road Map For Consensus Building, David H. Swim

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Throughout the history of our nation, education has been controversial as individuals and various groups (administrators, businesses, philosophers, politicians, parents, religious groups, students, teachers) have expressed their concern about the quality of American education. In most geographic regions/states there has been an unresolved debate regarding the definition of education, the relationship between school and community/society, the distribution of decision-making power in educational matters, and the means for improving all aspects of our educational systems. Therefore, it is the opinion of this author that a road map for negotiating the twists and turns of this diverse and bewildering landscape needs to …

Local Control, Stable Purposes And Changing Teaching Strategies: A Positive Force, Rod Wilbeck

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

The topic of school change, the necessity for it, and those aspects of schools that need changing has been in the forefront on the national, state, and local level during the past few years. Is there an assumption here that schools must change to meet the needs of society? If so, what aspects of a changing society should schools address? To what extent? Can one take the position that schools can anticipate the societal needs of tomorrow and meet the needs of a changing society? Adding the words, "The schools as a Positive Force" may imply that position. In my …