Political Contexts of Educational Leadership

ISLLC Standard Six

Jane Lindle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781135921323
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Co-published with UCEA, this exciting new textbook is the first to tackle the ISLLC Standard #6—the political context of education. This unique volume helps aspiring school leaders understand the dynamics of educational policy in multiple arenas at the local, state, and federal levels. Leaders are responsible for promoting the success of every student by understanding, responding to, and influencing the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural contexts in which education and learning reside. Featuring Case studies and Suggested activities, this book provides an authentic illustration of the political dynamics that emanate from individual, social, economic, and cultural issues surrounding all schools and further aspiring school leaders' understanding of political issues through experiences. By presenting problem-posing cases, theoretical grounding, relevant research, and implications for practice, this book provides aspiring leaders with the background, learning experiences, and analytical tools to successfully promote student success in their contexts.

Companion website – includes shared resources relevant to all ISLLC standards, along with particular activities for ISLLC Standard #6

CHAPTER 1

Politics in Education and its Importance in School Leadership

Jane Clark Lindle and
Kenyae L. Reese

Schools reverberate to the fortunes and misadventures of their students, their families, and their neighborhoods and communities. These daily, even moment-to-moment, interactions mirror the social conditions in a local milieu. Schools also function as the nexus for educational policies developed outside their walls from school district boards, state legislatures, and the U.S. Congress with regulatory guidance generated by the federal Department of Education. In many ways schools expose a phenomenon known as policy transfer; that is, the remarkable adoption and adaption of policy features found in many other democratic nations worldwide (Ball, 2001, 2003; Levi-Faur & Vigoda-Gadot, 2006). Schools experience global politics in a microcosm. Schools exist locally, and simultaneously absorb global impacts of social and economic conditions, politics, and culture.

Since the genesis of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium’s (ISLLC) Standards for school leaders in the mid-1990s, Standard 6 emphasized educational leaders’ awareness of strategies promoting student success through recognition of the contexts in which education and student learning reside (Council of Chief State School Officers, CCSSO, 1996; National Policy Board for Educational Administration, NPBEA, 2011a, 2011b). The ensuing version of ISLLC (CCSSO, 2008) re-articulated Standard 6 requiring educational leaders more directly engage in the certitudes of politics in education. Such an emphasis combines political activity with cultural responsiveness across multiple arenas from the school to worldwide issues and trends (Riehl, 2000; Skrla et al., 2004). ISLLC Standard 6 states:

An education leader promotes the success of every student by understanding, responding to, and influencing the political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context.

ISLLC provides three more guiding aspects to Standard 6, which call for school leaders to proactively engage and shape the political contexts of student success. For preparation programs, the Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) provides even more detail about the knowledge and skills associated with each of the guidelines (NPBEA 2011a, 2011b). These three guidelines include the following:

6.1 Advocate for children, families, and caregivers.

6.2 Act to influence local, district, state, and national decisions affecting student learning.

6.3 Assess, analyze, and anticipate emerging trends and initiatives in order to adapt leadership strategies.

(NPBEA, 2007)

The Standard and its guidelines are grounded in “research informing craft knowledge that is derived from a foundation of ‘doing’ school [and district] administration” (NPBEA, 2011a, pp. 32–33; NPBEA, 2011b, p. 34). The action verbs in these guidelines reflect decades of school leaders’ descriptions of their work on behalf of students. Additionally, these guidelines include demands for school leaders’ actions backed by more than a half century of research about leadership in schools, in the U.S. and internationally, where students, despite their social, economic, and political situations, are successful (Edmonds & Frederickson, 1978; Leithwood et al., 2006; Lezotte, 1992; Louis et al., 2010). Schools need these kinds of leaders.

Schools require leaders who are empowered to speak for their students and schools. Standards-based preparation, supported by decades of research, demands that school leaders find their civic and professional voices as active participants in their political contexts. All of the chapters address ISLLC Standard 6 holistically as each provides multidimensional insight into the political and politicized social, economic, and cultural issues that surround and impact schools and schooling.

While each of the chapters in this book offers a particular insight into one or more of the guiding elements associated with ELCC, Chapter 1 sets the background for the variety of case-based learning in the remaining chapters. Chapter 1’s primary purpose is to provide an orientation to the field of politics in education’s concepts—or as referenced by NPBEA’s documents (NPBEA, 2011a, 2011b) —knowledge and skills. Chapter 1 sets the stage for instructors’ and their students’ use and application of case-based learning about politics in education and school leaders’ legitimate role in the politics of schooling.

MAPPING CONCEPTS IN THE POLITICS OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

Politics in education remains firmly embedded in every school’s environment whether professional morés permit admitting its existence or not. From the beginning to well into the latter half of the 20th century, those morés held a firm recommendation that school leaders avoid politics in education (Layton & Scribner, 1989; McCarty & Ramsey, 1971). Today’s 21st century requirements for educational leadership recognize the necessity of adopting professional and civic agendas for ensuring every student’s success.

Historically, the avoidance of politics in schooling was a matter of professional survival for teachers and other educators (Clifford, 1987; McCarty & Ramsey, 1971). In the early history of U.S. schools, school boards often required teachers to register with a certain political party, vote to elect, or re-elect, certain board members, and in a related intrusion into citizen’s rights, attend certain churches (Cuban, 1985; Eliot, 1959; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Some of these constraints were related to then-current paternalistic social concerns about protecting predominantly female teachers, and by extension, their impressionable charges, from making incorrect choices (Blount, 1999; Clifford, 1987). By the beginning of the 20th century, the progressive public school movement sought to sanitize education from the taint of party politics and to promote a more professional standing for teachers and school leaders by placing them apart from party machines (Dewey, 1903; Tyack & Cuban, 1995.) The result of this attempt to purify schooling added to its complexity in the U.S. system.

Even today, the vast majority of the more than 13,000 school systems in the U.S. are special districts deliberately differentiated from, and independent of, local municipalities such as counties, cities, towns, or townships (Bowman & Kearney, 1986; U.S. Department of Education, 2012). Typically, but not in all cases, these special districts remain independent financially from local municipal oversight. Typically, but not in all cases, most school districts operate as empowered local agents of state legislatures, while simultaneously holding a quasi-independent relationship with state education agencies. Like these special districts, state education agencies vary in the degree of authority delegated to them by state constitutions and laws. Thus, the essence of U.S. public schooling is a jumble of at least 13,000 systems with all their accompanying jurisdictional diversity encompassing the human diversity of hundreds of thousands of people, students, and communities.

This jurisdictional complexity derives from the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reserved specified powers to the states (Spring, 1993; Wirt & Kirst, 1992). In short, the 10th Amendment removed the federal government from direct authority over education and asserted sovereignty for each state in determining its approach to schooling its citizens. This arrangement is peculiar to the U.S. Moreover, the consequence of the 10th Amendment has relegated federal intervention in the states’ schools to a variety of influential, thus political, policy strategies (Goertz, 2005; Wirt & Kirst, 1992). These policy strategies include the blunt instrument of funding contin gencies as well as slightly more finessed requirements for testing and quality indicators (Goertz, 2005; McDonnell, 1994).

As a result, considerable court case law has been generated to adjudicate the powers of the federal government in addressing matters of schooling in each state (Alexander & Alexander, 2012; Tyack & James, 1986; Zirkel, 1997). Litigation is one signal of conflict over how schools should operate as well as stimulating competition over which person, groups, or entities have a say in that operation (Stout et al., 1995; Zirkel, 1997).

The enduring questions in political struggles in education include questions about who decides what curriculum to teach, which people are permitted to teach that curriculum, and which students are allowed to attend classes (Stout et al., 1995). From the civil rights era to the inclusion of students with disabilities to the issues of practicing [which?] religion in public schools, political questions about schooling frequently rise to litigation surrounding schools. The involvement of courts further diffuses power and authority over decision making in U.S. schools (Sergiovanni et al., 2004; Spring, 1993; Wirt & Kirst, 1992).

Because the authority over U.S. public schools has dispersed over many jurisdictions, the means of enacting educational policy hinges on influence, a basic political ploy (Ball, 1987). The ploys of both macro- and micropolitics arrive at the schoolhouse door on a daily, if not hourly or moment-to-moment, basis (Fowler, 2004; Sergiovanni et al., 2004; Spring, 1993). School leaders must be prepared to engage in schoolhouse politics with particular attention to the best interests of students and their families (NPBEA, 2011a, 2011b; Stefkovich, 2006).

The image of the stalwart school administrator as pillar of the community also is an image as old as the position of school manager (Tyack & Hansot, 1982). The difference between yesteryear’s community role model and today’s politically savvy school leader is a level of proactive engagement with both schools’ and surrounding communities’ cultures and social conditions (Begley & Johansson, 2003; Cubberley, 1916; Stefkovich, 2006).

Multiple studies over decades depict the degree of necessary leadership and responsiveness to the contextual conditions of schools and the people in them. Today’s school leaders negotiate scarce resources for their students and families, expressly championing the cause of the underserved and marginalized (Bustamante et al., 2009; Cooper, 2009; Jacobson et al., 2007; Johnson & Fauske, 2000; Johnson, 2003, 2006; Mawhinney, 2010; Murphy, 2005; Murtadha & Watts, 2005; NPBEA, 2011a, 2011b; Owen, 2006; Riehl, 2000; Schoen & Fusarelli, 2008; Shields, 2010; Shields et al., 2002; Theoharis, 2008, 2010; Ylimaki & Jacobson, 2013). The research on the proactive political engagement of successful school principals is extensive (NPBEA, 2011a) and expands beyond the decades of debates about the political role of school superintendents (Buchanan, 2006; Iannaccone & Lutz, 1970; Kirst & Wirt, 2009; Kowalski, 1995; McCarty & Ramsey, 1971; NPBEA, 2011b).

Instructors’ and students’ access to extensive literature on politics in schools and especially the roles of school leaders are included in both publications of the National Policy Board for Educational Administration: (a) one focused on preparatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• ISLLC Leadership Preparation Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Politics in Education and its Importance in School Leadership
• 2 School Micropolitics for Improving Teaching and Learning
• 3 The Politics of School-Level Community Engagement and Decision Making
• 4 The Politics of District-Level Decision Making
• 5 Politics, Culture, Social Conditions
• 6 The Politics of Community Collaboration
• 7 The Politics of Interest Groups in Education
• 8 School Leaders’ Professional and Civic Political Voice
• 9 Forecasting Future Directions for Political Activism in School Leadership
• Notes on Contributors
• Glossary
• Index