[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_00:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Lindsay Wharton. Lindsay is president of the Holdsworth Center, a nonprofit organization in Texas dedicated to building educational leaders. Initially serving seven school districts and 42 leaders in 2017, The Holdsworth Center has served more than 1,900 leaders in 89 public school districts as of today. Lindsay is a teacher, writer, speaker, and advocate for public education and educators. And she was a Rhodes Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar and holds a master's degree in comparative social policy and a doctorate in social policy from Oxford University.
[00:47]
And she's the author of Teachers' Unions and Education Reform in Comparative Contexts, as well as A New School Leadership Architecture, a four-level framework for reimagining roles, which we're here to talk about today.
[01:00] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[01:02] SPEAKER_00:
Lindsay, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thanks so much for having me. I'm very interested to talk about redesigning school leadership roles because I think there's so much potential to go beyond the traditional dichotomy of you have teachers and you have administrators, and they're two totally different things, and there's no other leadership going on. What did you see as the need in the field for this book, and what inspired you to write this book?
[01:26] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I sat down to write a book, and I thought I was writing a different book. And I had this realization actually in the process of doing the drafting. I thought I was writing a book about how to lead at different levels and the skills that educators needed to build as they move through them. And this was three years ago. And so that was post-COVID. But we were seeing, you know, the pressure that had really built up on the education profession, you know.
[01:50]
experienced, excellent, passionate teachers who were saying, I can't sustain myself in these jobs. You know, I was watching that personally, you know, with some people who I love who are just exceptional educators that were really just being ground out, you know, by how difficult the work was. Through our work at Holdsworth, you know, seeing principals, seeing district leaders who were just working tirelessly and still felt like it wasn't enough. So I'm sitting writing this book about leadership and I just had this realization that I was at risk of sending the wrong message because I think it's too easy for those of us who are in leadership development or people development to accidentally sound like we're saying, if you just worked harder and were more skilled, then everything would be fine. Of course, I think we have to support our educators to work hard. And I think, of course, we can build skills to help people lead more effectively and
[02:42]
But I realized that I think we've come to a breaking point where there's more than just will or skill that the people who work in our schools need to be successful and to be able to sustain themselves. And in Texas in particular, the other trend that I would layer onto that is when you look at what's happening with the teaching profession, where turnover has really spiked in Texas over the last five years. It's hovered closer to 20%. And the pool of eager new teachers has really been shrinking and drying up. And so districts are really scrambling to find new teachers to fill all of those vacancies. And we're seeing a profession that is trending much more towards very novice, years one through three.
[03:27]
And this is true nationally, but more true in Texas. Very novice teachers with very limited pre-service preparation. And so I think If we just keep thinking that we can ask the principal or we can ask the assistant principal or we can ask the grade level lead to just work a little bit harder to close those gaps, I just don't believe that that's true. And we've reached a point where we need to be willing to think differently about how we set up these jobs and how we support people in them.
[03:53] SPEAKER_00:
Because it's not that the turnover and the new teachers are just one more task. It's that they really fundamentally changed the nature of the job from one where you're working with people who by and large are in the middle of long careers and they know what to do into a job where there's just a lot more turnover, a lot more induction, a lot more support needed, just a whole different ball game. Talk to us a little bit about your view of leadership and kind of who does it in the school, because there's this traditional paradigm that teachers should kind of mind their own business and leave leadership to the administrators. Take us into your view of that.
[04:31] SPEAKER_01:
So first, I think it's really important to say, I don't think I use the word administrators in the book, except for maybe to acknowledge that that's a word that other people use. And so when I think about leadership, I think I use the word in two basic ways. One is an activity that anyone does. You know, it's like leading is a verb. And I think it's the activity of any person who influences, mobilizes, and supports other people to work together to move towards a good outcome. And I think there's a whole bunch of different ways that that happens.
[05:00]
And I think anyone can do that in their lives and in their work. And then I do think there are leadership jobs and leadership roles that we assign to people. I think in an organization, there are specific kinds of formal leadership work that has to happen that is assigned to specific people. So that's kind of like the formal version of leadership. And in the book, I boil down an extremely complicated literature on leadership into two basic things that leaders are responsible for doing, which is one, building the capacity of other people. And the other is a series of activities that go into delivering results.
[05:32]
You know, whether it's setting vision, mobilizing people towards it, setting priorities for change, driving continuous improvement, using data to identify how we're doing, all of that package of work. So my argument is that we need to think about all of the building capacity work that needs to happen in a school and all of the delivering results work that needs to happen in a school. And then we need to make sure that we've actually built a leadership structure with leadership jobs that collectively can get that work done. And again, In my structure, this isn't about administrators versus teachers. It's about taking all the talent that we have in the building and saying who's best positioned to get that work done.
[06:06] SPEAKER_00:
And you use the word architecture in the book. You say that schools need a new leadership architecture. What does that mean?
[06:13] SPEAKER_01:
I struggled to come up with the right simple description for this. I think I landed on architecture and we use blueprint sometimes interchangeably. I do think, and the thing I'm most worried about is that people will hear four levels and they'll think big hierarchy. Because to me, the idea that we need to define the leadership work and who needs to do it, I mean, and that that requires a structure structure. And I think when we think about architecture, it's like the blueprints, the plans that ensure that like the building can stand up and be strong and sustain itself over time. And the details of that look a little bit different from one building to the other, but they have some common components that allow them to be like robust and strong.
[06:51]
I mean, I think that's the idea of the architecture, but that to me, that doesn't mean that it needs to be a hierarchy. Like hierarchy is about a leadership mindset. It's about how you think about control, how you think about who gets to make decisions. And I believe we can have more levels of leadership and we can have more leaders. And that doesn't require us to operate as a hierarchy. We can share leadership actually more effectively by getting really clear about who has the responsibility to build capacity and deliver results in certain ways.
[07:18] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I do like architecture as the metaphor because no one says, well, hey, there's a roof that needs to be held up. Let's just mandate that the roof stays up and that'll work. Like in architecture, we understand that there has to actually be something there to hold up the roof. And in education, sometimes we try to use wishful thinking or unfunded mandates to try to make things happen that don't necessarily have that structure in them and the people there to do that work. But I appreciate your point that the way that work is organized can look a lot of different ways.
[07:53]
I wonder if we could start by talking about what may be at the back of people's minds as the main challenge with doing anything differently, which is money. People might say, well, we have teachers and they are completely busy and we have fewer teachers than we need anyway. And we have administrators and they're busy and we don't have any more money to do anything else. So when you're working with schools and districts to look at their leadership architecture, how do you approach that question of money? And if we're going to reconfigure things, how do we pay for that or think about that?
[08:25] SPEAKER_01:
I think the starting point has to be, this can't all just be about addition. Because if we do everything by addition, we know that there is not a surplus of resources that are sitting around. And that's true with both money and it's true with people. We don't have an infinite supply of ready, willing, and able educators at this moment. And so I think the starting point has to be, we have to start by thinking, we have to look at every resource we have and say, are we putting that to use in the best possible way? And so one place that that will lead is at times it's about repurposing.
[09:00]
So one of my kind of favorite provocative stats is if you look over the last 20 years at the growth in the student population and the growth in the teaching population, the student population has started to level off and slightly decline due to demography over the last couple of years. We've actually seen an increase in the number of the teaching positions that outstrips what you see with students. And there's a variety of explanations for that. One is kind of specialization in secondary schools. But a lot of that is about the crew. We've created a lot of specialized positions over the last 10 years, whether it's like instructional coaches, instructional specialists, instructional facilitators.
[09:37]
And there was a really interesting study in like the mid 2010s that looked at leadership and found that in many schools, as many as 12 new positions have been created for every principal. But if you survey principals, they still see themselves as bearing the full weight of leadership responsibility. And that says to me, we've created a lot of positions that we've added into the structure without rethinking how it all works. And so I do think one question is you've got to look at all those roles and say, are we maximizing the contribution? And the leadership potential of all those people that we already have in our schools. And some of that is going to get into questions of what capacity we built at central office.
[10:16]
And are there some positions that we've created in central office that actually could give us a lot more leadership capacity in our schools if we repurpose that? And we've had districts who have made decisions to rethink some choices there. The other big bucket of discussion that I think there's a lot of potential for is to say, where are we having human beings do things that it just doesn't make sense to ask that human being to do? That we can deal with compliance in a more efficient way. We can utilize technology to deal with some of the more administrative components of some of these jobs. And we can try to streamline some of the work that we have flowing down to schools.
[10:54]
I think that's part of it. And then the third bucket is where I think there's really complicated and hard trade-offs that communities have to make around how they staff their schools. And this is where the third rail of education discussions, how do you think about class size? It comes into play. And it's not to say that there's one right answer, but we have to remember in a world of limited resources, We can't always have everything that we would want. And we have to think about how we're going to prioritize the use of our resources.
[11:24]
And my push is if we don't figure out how to build a system that can provide really robust coaching and support to our teachers, particularly our new teachers, if we don't invest in that is going to cost us in countless other ways. And so it's got to be a higher priority item on our list.
[11:42] SPEAKER_00:
For most educators, classes have not gotten much smaller. It doesn't seem like there are more resources. But if you look at per student expenditures. And if you look at the total number of adults employed by a district on a per student basis, I mean, those numbers have gone up. There is more staffing out there. You see criticisms that central offices are bloated and maybe have hired people that they didn't need to and some individual districts have kind of gotten in hot water over that.
[12:06]
But from the classroom teacher's perspective, you know, the job is harder than ever. We're stretched as thin as ever. And in the book, you highlight two levels of leadership that maybe have not gotten enough attention. And one, I would say everyone is familiar with the team leader or the department head. type position and i remember being the department head which was a position i obtained by virtue of my colleague saying he didn't want to do it because he was about to retire so that's how i became the department head and i'm sure i was just a super effective leader of that department of two for that year but there's the department head and team leader role that we're familiar with and often Those people do a lot of work, but it's not really considered all that much of a school level leadership role. But then you also introduce a different role that most of our listeners will have not heard of that perhaps you're coining, the bridge leader.
[12:56]
Tell us about those two roles.
[12:58] SPEAKER_01:
I intentionally use leadership levels and not titles or positions because I think those concepts are often not related. And team leader is a classic example of that. The metaphor I use in the book, I think when we use the term teacher leadership, that means a wide range of things. that span from like what I would call team captain positions to coach positions or player coach positions. I have a basketball background, so I hope you'll accept the sports analogy and like team captain roles. You're a player, you know, and 90, 90, 98, 99% of your time is spent playing.
[13:30]
And then you take on some additional informal or honorific kind of leadership responsibilities, but you don't spend your time in dramatically different ways. I mean, you're not compensated differently for that position and you don't have any real authority over your peers. And I think that's most department heads in most of our school systems. And so the way I define team leader in the book is that, and NIET has done great work on this. I mean, there's others who have been doing work around teacher leadership for many, many years, but it's really about formal teacher leadership, you know, where you have real time to dedicate to the work of leading others. You're paid for that work appropriately.
[14:05]
And you have both real accountability and real authority. So you view yourself as, as actually responsible for the results that the people that you lead achieve. And you have like the time, authority, and agency to help contribute to improving those results. So that's, I think the key distinction with team leadership is it's not just about giving people a bunch of extra things to do and no time to do it in. In fact, I think that's what contributes to what's really discouraging for a lot of teachers in our school right now. So it's about really empowering those people to lead and then, you know, leveraging like all that they know and all they can contribute to the school so in a big school let's imagine I mean high schools in Texas are like 4,000 kids and so if you have team leaders who are leading let's say six to eight teachers I mean you could end up with you know 15 to 20 team leaders in a really big high school in Texas and I would argue somebody needs to be coaching those folks I think that's the other mistake we make with teacher leaders is we say you're so great
[15:05]
We're going to give you this new job. Best of luck to you. And we need someone who's actually building the capacity of those people to continue to become great in how they coach and develop other people. And if the principal has a bunch of other things on their plate, I still don't think they have enough capacity to be really investing in those people in a meaningful way and connecting them to each other. You know, those team leaders need to work together on how they're driving results in the school. So that's really the role of a bridge leader.
[15:30]
And that Ideally would be many of our assistant principals. It may not be all of the assistant principals that we have today. I think if you look at our schools, you have a lot of assistant principals who are closer to team members. You know, they have work that they are expected to deliver that often is very compliance oriented. I think we have some assistant principals who are team leaders. You know, they're coaching and developing teachers.
[15:52]
And I think especially on our big campuses, We have to figure out how to empower more of our assistant principals to really be instructional leaders invested in building the capacity of other leaders in our schools.
[16:04] SPEAKER_00:
What do you see as some of the challenges to the authority that people need, you know, to giving team leaders the authority that they need to do that job? Because I think a lot of team leaders would say, well, yeah, I mean, like I'm responsible for going to the district meetings where I meet the other department heads and I'm responsible for the budget and the supply budget, but I don't evaluate the people in my department. I didn't hire them. I can't fire them. You know, like in terms of a lot of the traditional markers of authority, you know, those still belong to the principal who's stretched thin and doesn't really, have as close a view of what's happening in the department?
[16:36] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. Well, the evaluation piece, I don't think evaluation is the only question here, but we'll spend a minute on it. I mean, I pose the question because I do think it's a real choice for school systems, particularly when you think about efficiency of resources. The question I pose is why couldn't the team leader be the evaluator? And I don't think that's the only way to do it. I think there's many right ways to do things in any big organization, but there is this real deep resistance to that idea in a lot of schools.
[17:03]
And I think that my challenge is, if I'm a teacher, what I really want in my evaluation is for my evaluation to be delivered by somebody who's an expert in what I do, who actually has a pretty deep understanding of what my classroom looks like and what my teaching and what my practice looks like, not just on a spot check two to three times a year, but on a regular basis. And I would want, ideally, my evaluation to be a summary of all of the coaching and feedback that I've gotten throughout the year so that it doesn't come as a surprise. You can achieve that if your team leader is the one doing the evaluation. They're more likely to be like all of those things. And I think when we separate it, we set evaluation up to be more of a compliance exercise, to be less focused on growth and development, and to be more of a gotcha exercise. And we also duplicate resources because you've got a team leader who's in your classroom all the time and then an assistant principal or principal usually who's coming in to execute the evaluation.
[17:55]
So I pose the question of why couldn't those things be combined? And there are certainly some policy requirements in some states that would be a barrier. A lot of people raise the question of unions, you know, but we've had forward thinking unions since the 90s who have developed like peer review processes. So it's all possible. And I think that's something we've got to think about if we're going to be willing to change structures. But I think the other big part of it is, you know, the teaching profession has a history in this country of having a, like, I'm an expert who closes my door and makes good decisions for kids.
[18:26]
And I do think that that mindset is something that we're going to have to dig into in this next phase of our schools. And we're going to have to dig into it if we rethink the structures. And one piece that I would also push on, I think sometimes there's this reaction that says, yeah, it's a good thing for our new teachers, right? to get coaching and feedback. But like our experienced teachers, they don't need somebody else like looking at their practice. And I think that comes from a place of deference and respect for our experienced educators.
[18:55]
But I think it is also coming from a place of deference and respect to say teaching is one of the most complicated jobs that you can have. And it requires deep knowledge of content, huge levels of creativity, and like a lot, lots of in the moment judgment that's really hard to develop. And so even our best teachers are still going to have opportunities to keep improving their practice. And having another expert colleague who can reflect back what they're seeing and where there might be opportunities to improve is good for all of us. But I think we bring such a at times we bring such a deficit based mindset to what coaching and support looks like for teachers. And I think we need to be more asset based and view this as really a reflection of how important and how hard this job is and that everybody deserves support and a shoulder partner and getting better.
[19:40] SPEAKER_00:
So Lindsay, talk to us a little bit, just in closing, about how you envision readers using the book. I imagine there are different stakeholders who might use the book differently, but there's a lot to think about here and a lot to consider redesigning that often we don't think about, that it's kind of untouchable. So how do you envision people using this book to start to do some of that thinking and redesigning?
[20:02] SPEAKER_01:
So there's kind of two big audiences. I make the case in the book that school districts have to take responsibility at leading this work of changing structures just because they have so much control over people and money and systems and they should do it in partnership you know with principals and with school leaders but so I think that audience of the book my hope is that they take kind of the first half and use that to think about how they might create space to change structures and then the second half of the book has a different entry point which is no matter who you are in the systems And I should say, actually, even if you're not a school district, I think creative principals can find ways. They may not be able to get everything done, but they can find ways to move their system and move towards a new structure. So I think they may use that part of the book as well. But then the second half of the book is really for any individual who's a sitting leader or someone aspiring to take on greater leadership responsibilities.
[20:56]
And it's really a guide that says, hey, when you move from one leadership level to the next, there are big changes you have to make in the skills that you use and the way you spend your time and the way you think about yourself. I mean, it tries to outline what those changes are and give people some tools and resources to think about how they can practice making those shifts. So I think that second half of the books for any teacher, any team leader who's navigating that and anybody who's coaching those leaders. So my hope is that there's lots of folks who can find an entry point and can use the ideas to figure out how to respond to their contacts and the challenges that they face.
[21:30] SPEAKER_00:
And Lindsay, if people want to find more information about your work, your organization, what is the best place for them to go online?
[21:37] SPEAKER_01:
The best place to find out more information will be at our website, holdsworthcenter.org, as well as a variety of social media channels. You'll find there opportunities to sign on to a list to stay updated. about the book, and then you can find the book through the Corwin website.
[21:53] SPEAKER_00:
So the book is A New School Leadership Architecture, a four-level framework for reimagining roles. Dr. Lindsay Wharton, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
[22:03] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
