Administrators Shouldn't Make All the Decisions — We Don't Have the Bandwidth
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why principals need to empower teacher leadership rather than trying to make every decision themselves.
Key Takeaways
- Principals can't do it all - Administrators lack the bandwidth and subject-specific knowledge to make every instructional decision
- Teacher leadership is essential - Empowering teachers to lead within their areas of expertise produces better outcomes
- Distributed decision-making scales - The best decisions happen closest to the classroom, not in the front office
Transcript
So I'm working on a new book about teacher leadership, and I wanted to share one of the big ideas behind the book.
The idea that the people closest to a decision, the people most affected by a decision, the decision is about the work of some people.
Like those people should be the ones who make the decision.
And too often in education, we have this kind of artificial division between teachers and admin.
And admin are supposed to make all the decisions and teachers are supposed to implement them or ask for things if they need them.
And often that is just kind of the dumbest possible option, right?
That's the worst possible scenario because if you are directly affected by a decision, you have information that other people don't have.
An administrator who is more, you know, far removed from your practice and from your needs.
just doesn't have the information to make that decision.
And if we view education as something where, as a profession where administrators have to make all the decisions, then often we're going to be in this position where not the right person is making the decision.
And administrators honestly do not want to make all of the decisions for teachers.
There's a bottleneck issue, there's a bandwidth issue.
Administrators just don't have the time or the knowledge or the opportunity to make every single decision.
So I think one of the big things we've gotta do as a profession and get our heads around as a profession is this idea of making decisions by having people make decisions that affect them.
Having the people closest to a decision make that decision.
Does this come up in your work?
Do you have decisions that you would like some control over because they directly affect you or are you having to you know, kind of run things up the pole, kick things over to an administrator to make a decision when it would just make a lot more sense if you had the authority as a teacher to make that decision because it's about your stuff.
One big area is budget.
You have a departmental budget that allows you to buy the things you need.
Just one example of many, but let me know what you think.