A Lose-Lose Deal: Timid Leadership Yields Half-Baked Policies
by Frederick M. Hess • May 2, 2012 at 8:44 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareReaders may know that I'm currently finishing the manuscript of my Cage-Busting Leadership book for Harvard Education Press, with the crack assistance of Whitney Downs (who coauthored this post). Writing the book has made it clear that one major problem with leaders failing to take advantage of the operational freedoms they already enjoy is that it forces advocates and policymakers to try to compensate with the crude tools at their disposal. Absent bold leadership, reformers feel they have little recourse but to resort to crude policy proposals that often fail to address real chokepoints and let timid boards and superintendents off the hook.
Case in point: the hundreds of Massachusetts school boards and superintendents who, by failing to lead assertively, have set the table for a lose-lose fight over a ballot initiative (Petition #11-20) which would micro-manage how schools across the commonwealth must evaluate, retain, and dismiss teachers. It would require school districts to either use "model educator evaluation standards" or a state approved evaluation system when deciding how to measure teacher quality and how to weigh teacher experience. It would require school systems to use a state system that is brand new and evaluations that aren't even half-baked, and in which few have been trained. In late January, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) filed suit to block th
