You've been superintendent of a small school district for a few years now, but you're still deluged with unsolicited advice from well-intentioned board members, concerned citizens and enlightened consultants on the instructional innovation of the day.
Every time you send a principal to a professional conference, he or she returns with an $18 million purchase requisition for the latest brain-based learning program. (By the way, what learning is not "brain-based?") Your board of education president appears obsessed with whatever curricular innovation is being tried by the school district next door. And your teachers' association is demanding that, in addition to offering a program of study that encompasses the great books of the Western world to students who speak 159 different languages, you also require high school students take a course on romance novels as the Shakespearian literature of modern times.
So before a small lynch mob of true believers storms the central office and carries you away to the next PowerPoint presentation of the must-have, must-see, gotta-have curricular innovation, consider this: Competing agendas only diminish the limited time and human and financial resources of your school district.
Personal Touch
It's not time to set a new course, outrun the bad guys, change horses in midstream or accelerate to warp speed. This is the time to do a few things and do them well. Sometimes doing less is doing more. Here are my five considerations for taking this approach.
* Step 1: Know thyself.
Some qualities make your school district unique. If you're a small school district, capitalize on the personal touch your size provides. For example, your teachers and administrators know the students and their families. Emphasize the benefits of your relationships with and within the community you serve.
Big school districts can't offer this. Yet in mega-school districts, size affords the luxury of offering a variety of programs and services. Capitalize on your menu of offerings. Your responsiveness to community needs is your strength.
Take time to reflect on who you are as a school district and what you do well. Share your thinking with your administrative team to confirm or alter your perceptions.
* Step 2: Stop trying to be all things to all people.
Don't delude yourself or drive your principals crazy trying to be first in the world in every blooming thing. Admit it: Your school district cannot be known for the blue ribbon academic prep school, the blue ribbon alternative education school, the blue ribbon fine arts school, the blue ribbon career academy and the blue ribbon tech-prep center. Your resources are limited. You do not have the human personnel, the financial solvency and the time necessary to be internationally renowned for every educational program under the sun.
Start by limiting your own expectations for your school district to two or three goals. Remind yourself that even the most successful programs or innovations take three to five years to demonstrate measurable results. Your agenda should be synonymous with these two to three goals. Better yet, ensure these goals are extensions of what you're already doing in your school district. If not, you'll need to come to some agreement with your board of education and administrative team on what your priorities and strengths are as a school system.
* Step 3: Tell your story.
Once you know who you are as a school district, it's the role of the school district leader to tell your story to every one of your stakeholders. Share your two to three goals with board and community members, your principals and teachers and your support staff. Your story should be concrete and succinct.
Now you're the keeper of the dream. You're the spokesperson for who "we" are as a school district, what "we" believe as an administrative team and what "we" do well to serve our community. Every time you tell your story it has the potential to become a shared story, a shared vision, a shared agenda. That's the point of telling your story. It moves from being "your" agenda to "our" shared agenda.
Competing Agendas
* Step 4: Preach the dilemma of dueling agendas.
Your board members, administrative team and principals will need to be reminded that competing agendas are not unlike the latest computer virus attack. Point out to them the competing agendas you see in their thinking.
No, they can't teach integrated reading/writing/speaking/listening in the primary grades and intensive phonics in the upper elementary grades and hope that students will succeed. No, we just can't toss out the district's program of 33 multiple intelligences after two years because a new "52 Styles of Learning" program just hit the market. Two years is not enough time to show measurable results. It's too soon to make a programmatic change of this magnitude without verifiable evidence.
Ask your administrative team, board members and principals to share in uncovering and dismantling competing agendas whenever they rear their ugly heads. These competing agendas will zap the energy from any well-intended innovation or program change.
* Step 5: Realize that less is more.
Finally, stop asking your school district to play the competing agendas game. Let your principals off the hook. Don't ask them to do more than they possibly can under the guise of site-based management or school improvement processes. Your schools cannot implement board of education goals, superintendent goals, professional growth goals, annual school goals and school improvement goals. You can be the educational leader who rids your schools of competing agendas. Your community and its children will thank you. (Just don't expect it to happen publicly or in the newspaper.)
Dennis Rudy is an assistant professor of education at Indiana University-South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Ave., South Bend, Ind. 46634. E-mail: drudy@lakehouse.org. He is also a program evaluator with Lakehouse Evaluation.