Several years ago I met a school director who was, and I think I am being charitable here, mediocre. She had no educational vision, was incapable of forming a team, and just floated along. The school continued to exist because it was selling status, not education, and its parents were able to pay for private tutors for SAT and ACT etc preparation not realizing, or not caring, that this meant they were in effect paying twice. She then "moved up" to another school where she lasted two years, again making no impression other than perhaps to the board that she was not what they needed. How she has a very senior position in the central office of a large for-profit corporative group of schools which has just advertised for a deputy suggesting they both like her and intend to keep her as they expand. And so?
School groups and corporations are different from individual schools, whether private, independent or charter, although in terms of finance and control they could be seen as similar to district schools. In an inidividual school, heads and administrators and teachers are responsible to the school, and thus for its direction, policies, activities and success. In particular, the head sets the school's culture, and s/he decides on its priorities in order to achieve the school's vision. In a properly-governed school, the board sets overall strategic goals and the head determines who, what and how to achieve them.
This is of course the best way to operate a successful ("highly effective") school, and time and successful schools have shown, this. However, with bad or mediocre leadership, it is also on a good day a bad way. The person I mentioned above was clearly ineffective at this. In two schools, she failed to show or to achieve anything and while her departure from School A has causes unknown, her brevity of tenure at School B strongly suggests an exit with cause.
Conversely, in a corporate situation, central office managers, school heads and those below are no more than bureaucrats, or cogs in a wheel if you will. No decisions, no prioritizing - just do what you are told from above, and in a for-profit situation what you are told is tied to maximizing profit.
So this person is now clearly doing well on two measures. She is good at doing what she is told, no more and no less, and/or she is good at concealing from her boss (es) that she is unable to do anything other than doing what she is told.
This can be a good thing if the corporation has good ideas, good aims, and good strategies. However, this can be a bad thing when the corporation does not and it is easy to see a myriad of things where an aggressively for-profit orientation can conflict with educational purposes. This particular corporation is funded with venture capital rather than commercial finance, and I am reasonably confident in asserting that venture capitalists look for high returns, quickly.
Her boss has already been replaced by his boss so in just two or so years there have been two occupants of the corner office. One of the positions at her level, HR, seems to have changed multiple times while a curriculum director who answers to her was replaced by a former school head of department, not someone with experience of leading school-wide programs, let alone a group of several schools, of several types and offering several levels.
Time will tell in this case, but I am prompted to wonder about how yet again, mediocrity in educational leadership is so common and so frequently rewarded. I see a direct line to Bush's big hammer approach, and to Obama's soft bigotry of low expectations. I am not advocating any approach other than recruiting and retaining effective and dynamic educational leaders, and I am afraid we are doing neither.
**Please leave your comments and queries below.**
Further reading
https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2021/09/updatemediocre.html
https://teaching-abc.blogspot.com/2021/02/mediocre-hires.html
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