Customer Reviews

District Leadership That Works: Striking the Right Balance

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In this study, Marzano and Waters (MW) used meta-analysis to investigate the relationship between district leadership and student achievement at the school building level. Their study found that there were positive effects between school district leadership and student achievement. Meta-analysis has many critics. Some describe the process as mixing apples and oranges to discover how tomatoes grow. MW provides technical notes from pages 117 to 139. These notes were inscrutable since I have not yet acquired the specific research skills to understand them.

Their research has led them to advance five district responsibilities (or initiatives). They are: ensuring collaborative goal setting, establishing nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction, creating board alignment and support of district goals, monitoring achievement and instructional goals, and allocating resources to support goals for achievement and instruction (p. 6).

MW also made a perplexing finding, called Defined Autonomy. "Defined autonomy means that the superintendent expects building principals and all other administrators in the district to lead within the boundaries defined by the district goals (p. 8). How Defined Authority should be implemented takes up the rest of the book. MW advocates that school districts become high reliability school districts by tight coupling regarding achievement and instruction (p. 18).

The authors draw on the model of high reliability organizations (HROs). A HRO is an organization that has succeeded in avoiding catastrophe in an environment where normal accidents are expected due to risk factors and complexity (Wikipedia). MW cites organizations such as electric power grids, commercial aircraft maintenance, air traffic control, and nuclear power plants. MW acknowledges that HROs are far removed from education, but uses the concept to advocate for high reliability schools districts.

This begs the question: what educational accidents need to be avoided? The authors did not make a list of educational accidents to be avoided. Uppermost in the minds of parents, students and teachers are the issues of bullying, violence and school shootings. Perhaps MW in their next study could develop a list of educational accidents to be avoided through the development of high reliability school districts.

Schools are social institutions established by law. HROs are technical organizations managed by humans. HROs need high reliability or people may die in accidents. MW tries to combine insights from technical organizations with school districts, similar to meta-analysis.

The authors manage to confuse first-order change with second-order change. HROs require first-order change since changes to avoid accidents are technical in nature. Second-order change requires changes outside of current paradigms. Second-order change will not occur when first-order change, as advocated by MW, is implemented. The authors would benefit from reading Leadership & Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action.

What MW miss, as many educational researchers do, is that schools are almost totally impervious to change. First, they do not take into account that children are legally compelled to attend school. Children are human beings. Making technical changes does not affect their motivation and frequent resentment for being in school.

Second, schools are mostly staffed by teachers who are fallible human beings and who can be resistant to change in the conditions of their employment. What MW proposes as nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction is regarded by teachers as control of their workplace. The authors are typical in bemoaning the Teachers' Union. Unions came into existence in order to redress workplace conditions. Marzano and Waters would benefit from reading Who Controls Teachers' Work?: Power and Accountability in America's Schools and The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation (Jossey-Bass Education Series). These studies help the reader discover the effects of implementing nonnegotiable goals.

Teachers are professionals who are sometimes managed by leaders who do not grasp the impact of the resistance and resentment of teachers who do not buy in to change. This does not even take into account the response of students to such "noble" nonnegotiable goals. I do hope Marzano and Waters will research and report on educational accidents.

Dr. John Merks
Teacher
Riverview High School
Riverview
New Brunswick
Canada

This book provides a connection between research on teaching, administration and best teaching practices. I recommend to anyone who is in education.