"Building trust" with staff is a central concern in the educational literature for school principals. This worry is so prevalent that it almost exists as a convenience to explain away the failure to realize the gains in achievement promised by whatever trendy teacher-centered reforms are being pushed by educational researchers at the time. (Heavens forbid, after all, that these researchers ever admit that their precious, meticulously "researched" ideas were either impractical, ineffective, or just plain out-of-touch.)
The preoccupation with "building trust" has a flip side that I have yet to see be explored. There exists in every school district veteran principals who are respected, trusted, and even loved by their staff. I can think of many in my own school district. In schools like these, what remains as a barrier to the enactment of any good idea? Gains in school-wide achievement should be automatic, no?
The fact that an achievement gap persists, in schools with both high and low trust among staff and administration, shows that the industry of educational research and publishing produces little that is of practical value for schools. Instead of a relentless focus on how to make teachers better, a wider lens needs to be applied to the perceived underperformance of children in our public schools. Our scope should also include the underlying systems and structures of schools and the cultural values of our communities and families.
No comments:
Post a Comment