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Chapter 1
Introduction
We write this book in a time of danger, fear, vast hope, and opportunity. If you are reminded of Dickensâs famed opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities (âIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times âŚâ), that is understandable. Perhaps it is the fate of all generations to hold such reflections. Yet, standing in what is still the threshold of a new millennium, wondrous advancement seems more thoroughly juxtaposed with the advent of hideous disaster than ever. If it is the inevitable human reflection to hold these extremes out as the salient descriptors of oneâs times, we have no less a claim than previous generations. For the first time in history, we have the possibility of housing, feeding, and caring for all of humanity, yet we live in a world of vast inequity and want. Our technology creates mass communication unthinkable a generation ago, but this creativity is often perverted to the cause of hideous animosities, leading to brutality we too soon thought relegated to a dark past. Tumultuous conditions in security, economics, the environment, and our exposure to technology-driven change abound. In light of these turbulent forces, is it any wonder that our ties are characterized by insecurity and fear for our childrenâs future?
At such times our education policy apparatus responds in a consistent, albeit worrisome, manner. For generations it has been our habit to focus on schools as the reason for our peril as well as the locus of our salvation. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first orbiting satellite, thereby beating the U.S. in technology and igniting the space race. We may have questioned our scientific community, but the real outrage for this perceived failure (the U.S. did soon catch up to the Soviets) was directed at Americaâs schoolsâspecifically a supposed spirit of complacency that threatened our security. In 1983, the same arguments were employed in the Nation at Risk report, the Reagan administrationâs attack on public schools and the now infamous ârising tide of mediocrityâ that they represented. While this trend is as unfounded as it is illogical, demands for urgent changes in P-20 education have become a national reflex. In our globalized economy, this reflex transcends borders and is now standard fare among policy makers in nearly every advanced economy.
Yet powerful concepts such as education reform are neither simple nor monolithic in their meaning. Attention must be paid to the details of projects traveling under such banners. In a recent article, one of us (Gross, 2014a) pointed to the positive image that reformers have in many cultures. In that same article, the complexity of reform itself was analyzed. Over the past century, progressives, essentialists, perennialists, and existentialists have all initiated their own brand of educational reform. In our time, in the wake of what Berliner and Biddle (1995) call the âmanufactured crisis,â education reform seems to be confined to a marriage of two allied traditions: essentialism and market forces. The former is in the guise of high-stakes tests, top-down standards, and harsh sanctions; and the latter emphasizes privatization, the end of teacher unions, and charter schools that are frequently owned by private corporations with fiduciary responsibilities to stockholders rather than communities. With a constant drum beat decrying the supposed mediocrity of public schools and their implied complicity in causing and sustaining the achievement gap, it is little wonder that the brand of reform has nearly monopolized public discourse.
Critics of this policy direction object to the notion that one size fits all (Ohanian, 1999), which they claim is currently the case with standards linked to high-stakes tests and the resulting narrowed curriculum (Ravitch, 2010). Many of the same dissenting educators and a growing number of the public question the premise that changes in schools alone can create a fairer society, or that refashioning schools into the factory-like settings they once wereâwhere students become both raw material and unpaid workersâis a fitting way to respond to the democratic premise of public education. Focusing on the market forces facet of the current reform policies, researchers question the claims that charter schools yield better results than their public school counterpartsâthe picture being far too nuanced for such sweeping claims (Miron, Urschel, Mathis, & Tornquist, 2010; Ravitch, 2013).
Looking at the landscape of this brand of education reform from a higher altitude, one finds even more disturbing problems. Whereas knowledge is ever expanding, educators and the students in their charge find themselves pitted against one another as they compete for ever-higher test results. Education itself seems twisted from its original mission of expanding our experience in the world into a dreary pursuit of manufacturing quietly efficient workers at all levels. Recent critiques of this phenomenon at our most prestigious universities, such as Deresiewiczâs Excellent Sheep (2014), illustrate this point.
The market forces brand of school reform raises high the banner of treating students and their families as customers. Critics believe this stretches the business metaphor to the point that it obscures one salient reality: the move from citizen to customer is a descent into transactional relationships, devoid of rights and community connections. For instance, one has a right to attend public school, but one typically must apply to attend a charter school. People only have access to businesses to the extent that they have resources to purchase services from those entities. By contrast, citizens have rights to share the public sphere, be it at the park, the library, or the local public school. The reverse is true. We have responsibilities to public enterprises that transcend our personal use. Our taxes go to support the park, the library, and the school, whether or not we use them.
Looked at another way, public enterprises compel us to define âweâ in a larger, more inclusive way. But customers owe very little to the businesses they frequent. In fact, the competitive marketplace sits upon the premise that customers make decisions based on self-interest, taking their custom where they will. There is such a thing as brand loyalty, of course, but it hardly seems sturdy enough a bond to hold a society together. In a postagrarian world, we all must be consumers to some degree. But the phrase âconsumer societyâ falls far short of the mark when it comes to the qualities needed to sustain even a semblance of a democratic ethical culture for us and for our children.
Education reform is certainly needed, but it is a qualitatively different kind of reform, based on a distinct vision for leadership and categorically different values than the ones described above.1The purpose of this book is to help reclaim school reform by advocating democratic ethical leadership in education. We do not accept the notion that students and their families need to be passive consumers locked into a dreary contest for their future. We believe that our schools, from early childhood to graduate school, need to inspire truly democratic ethical participatory cultures. We do not say this lightly, nor have we come to this conclusion recently.
Background of the New DEEL
Even as neoliberals argued that rising test scores and market forces could diminish income inequalities and high rates of poverty, another narrative was emerging. Scholars in the field of educational administration called for more progressive, ethical, and democratic forms of renewal for schools in the U.S. and abroad (Aiken, 2002; Begley, 1999; Begley & Zaretsky, 2004; Boyd, 2000; Davis, 2003; Gross, 2004b; Reitzug & OâHair, 2002; Sernak, 1998; Shapiro & Purpel, 2004; Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2011; Starratt, 2004; Young, Petersen, & Short, 2002).
These writers were part of a long tradition linking social justice and democracy with education. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr made the same connection at Hull House (Addams, 2002), as did Hilda Worthington Smith at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (Smith, 1929). At the height of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the Civilian Conservation Corps for unemployed men, also based on much the same logic, while Eleanor Roosevelt made a valiant effort to offer the same kind of program for women (Cook, 1999; Gross, 2004a).
Those educational administration scholars questioning neoliberalism in the 21st century also drew inspiration from the democratic administration movement of the 1930s and 1940s in the U.S. The parallel between the two eras seemed apt; the U.S. faced harsh economic times in the Depression. At the turn of this century, the technology bubble had burst and our economic future seemed dimmed. The U.S. faced a threat to its democracy from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan, and now faces an era of terror, war, and challenges to civil liberties in the post-9/11 world. Therefore, it is instructive to recall our fieldâs reaction in school leadership programs in the 1930s and 1940s, which was to emphasize democratic power-sharing among administrators, teachers, and parents. The works of Harold Rugg and Alice Miel of Teachers College (Kliebard, 1987; Koopman, Miel, & Misner, 1943); George Counts (1932); and the career of Ella Flagg Young in developing teacher councils when she served as the first woman school superintendent of a major U.S. city (Webb & McCarthy, 1998) all undergirded this movement.
Central to the thinking of this group of 21st-century scholars was the philosophy of Ella Flagg Youngâs colleague John Dewey. In The School and Society (1900), Dewey railed against education that sought to mold children like so much raw material:
I may have exaggerated somewhat in order to make plain the typical points of the old education: its passivity of attitude, its mechanical massing of children, its uniformity of curriculum and method. It may be summed up by stating that the center of gravity is outside the child. It is in the teacher, the textbook, anywhere and everywhere you please except in the immediate instincts and activities of the child himself.
(Dewey, 1900, p. 34)
But leaders of the emerging movement also looked at contemporary international leaders for inspiration. In God Has a Dream, Archbishop Desmond Tutuâs (2005) description of ubuntu illustrates the potential of democratic ethical educational leadership:
According to ubuntu, it is not a great good to be successful through being aggressively competitive and succeeding at the expense of others. In the end, our purpose is social and communal harmony and well-being. Ubuntu does not say, âI think, therefore I am.â It says rather, âI am human because I belong. I participate. I share.â Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum bonumâthe greatest good. Anything that subverts, that undermines this sought-after good is to be avoided like the plague. Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are corrosive of this good.
(p. 27)
In 2004, we decided to take action and moved to organize other like-minded educational administration academics and field administrators. We agreed on the name âNew DEEL,â standing for Democratic Ethical Educational Leadership, and challenged ourselves with the daunting job of changing the direction of educational administration in the U.S. and abroad.
Early Development
Almost immediately, we shared our vision for a new movement in educational administration with faculty and department leaders from the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Vermont, Rowan University, the University of Oklahoma, the University Council of Educational Administration, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, as well as U.S. and Canadian practitioner leaders. The group agreed that democratic citizenship and ethical leadership were the top priorities for our educational system in any era, and especially in the new century, where violence, economic dislocation, and environmental degradation were daily news events. To develop the New DEEL, two winter strategy sessions were held at Temple University, the first in 2005 and the second in 2006. These sessions resulted in refining the concept of the New DEEL, its implications for educational administration programs, and a mission statement that united the group. The New DEELâs mission statement focuses on these values:
The mission of the New DEEL is to create an action-oriented partnership, dedicated to inquiry into the nature and practice of democratic, ethical educational leadership through sustained processes of open dialogue, right to voice, community inclusion, and responsible participation toward the common good. We strive to create an environment to facilitate democratic ethical decision-making in educational theory and practice which acts in the best interest of all students.
(Gross & Shapiro, 2005, p. 1)
Gross (2009) described the emerging values of the group in this way:
New DEEL members believe that the first job of the school is to help young people become effective citizens in a democracy. Learning how to earn a living is crucial, but it is a close second, in their opinion. Democratic citizenship in any era is a complex task, but it seems especially difficult in our era where international conflict and growing economic and social inequality are the rule. New DEEL members consider the either/or choice among school improvement, democracy and social justice ⌠to be a false dilemma. They believe, instead, that there is no democracy without social justice, no social justice without democracy, and that these mutually inclusive concepts are indispensable ingredients to school improvement worthy of the name.
(p. 262)
The groupâs concept of educational leadership applies to teachers, students, parents, and community members just as much as to the person sitting at the principalâs desk. Moreover, to respond to the challenges of our era, educational leaders needed to move beyond their buildings, and their school systemâs structure, to make alliances with community leaders in areas such as health care and commerce.
The New DEEL group quickly grew from a handful of academics, mostly in the U.S., to include educational administration faculty from over 30 universities and practitioner colleagues in Canada, Australia, Tai...
