The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow Read online

  LEADING KIPP SCHOOLS

  I first met Susan Schaeffler in 2005 when she was still the founding school leader of KIPP Academy, a middle school in southeast Washington, D.C. I was amazed at how well-written were the essays and book reports the kids had produced, and their test results showed significant year-by-year gains over the average in D.C. At that time, 70 percent of these inner city, mostly African American, children lived with a single parent, almost always the mother; 10 percent in foster families; 10 percent with their original parents; and 10 percent with one biological and one step-parent. Eighty percent of the families were under the poverty line.

  Schaeffler has since become executive director of the three KIPP schools she helped develop in Washington, and she has gained chartering authority for three more elementary and two high schools. Clearly, the board of education has been impressed with KIPP results, and clearly Schaeffler, like the best KIPP leaders, is also an effective entrepreneur.

  Schaeffler graduated from Colorado State University with a major in human development, specializing in adolescence. She started out in D.C. as a public school teacher after serving in the Teach for America program and teaching in Ethiopia for a year with International Foundation of Education and Self-Help (IFESH). Like Feinberg and Levin, she enjoyed working with kids. She had thought about becoming a lawyer (“getting a real job”) but when she interned in the public defender’s office, she didn’t like the work. When Feinberg and Levin recruited her, she started a small program in an Anacostia church, which in 1991 became KIPP Academy, the highest-achieving public middle school in the country.

  Schaeffler is an authoritative leader, and she’s been good at selecting school leaders from the ranks of KIPP teachers. I asked her what kind of person she looks for and what she sees as the main developmental challenges of beginning KIPP principals. I’ve asked Levin the same question, and essentially, they agree that for teachers becoming school leaders, the major challenge is to accept their new authority, to “be the boss” without forgetting that they’re also teachers. Good KIPP school leaders demand accountability from teachers and students. They don’t let things lapse, and they don’t shy away from conflict. Schaeffler notes that some excellent teachers “would be miserable with conflict” and would fail as school leaders. Furthermore, they’d avoid making necessary but unpopular decisions. I suggested these are the caring erotic personalities, and once I had explained this personality type, Schaeffler nodded and said, “They are not good school leaders.” Nor are the obsessives who get caught up in details and micromanage the teachers. And the marketing types sometimes shy away from being authorities rather than interactive siblings. Schaeffler says she wants to find more interactive narcissists; her leader is the type of person who wants to change the world and who “embraces conflict, even enjoys it.”

  Levin and Schaeffler are describing a very different kind of leader from the bridge-builder facilitator admired by Rowena Davis (mentioned in chapter 6). Levin goes so far as to say that the best KIPP principals are “benevolent despots” who demand high performance from teachers as well as students. However, these despots are working within a set of agreed-on operating principles. The teachers they lead are collaborators, not followers, and the KIPP school leaders I’ve met move from being doctors who educate beginning teachers to democrats who involve them in key decisions. They can be compared to the best football coaches, described in chapter 2, who share responsibility and accountability with team members but also insist on peak performance and drive for results. At the same time, these school leaders have to be able to be authoritatively paternal with the kids and more siblinglike with the teachers. In effect, they’re leading different social characters, and they need the Personality Intelligence to understand the people they lead.

  I asked Schaeffler whether she thought there was a difference between male and female school leaders. After noting that all the school leaders she’s chosen are women, she said, “Women need to work harder to gain respect. A female has to come out fighting from day one. You’re not given anything.” Possibly women have a harder time than men in leadership roles because they are more likely than men to run up against the mother transference—the expectation that they’ll be nurturing and resentment when they’re not. They may need to show they are going to be neither fairy godmothers nor wicked witches.

  An excellent school leader with a well-developed Personality Intelligence is Julene Mohr, principal of the KIPP high school in Houston. She got her BA in sociology and anthropology, specializing in American culture, at the University of Michigan, then taught in the Teach for America program in Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Mohr joined KIPP in 1995 and started teaching fourth- and fifth-grade kids with learning disabilities. She says one thing that impressed her about Feinberg was that he was a principal who could think like a fifth-grader. Like Levin and Schaeffler, she says KIPP school leaders need to learn to accept authority, to be decisive with teachers. But she adds that principals also need to be able to defuse controversy; to be “charming with parents”; and to get teachers, parents, and students “to buy-in, make it seem win-win.” The entrepreneurial KIPP school leader has to gain collaboration from school superintendents, boards of education, foundations, and philanthropists.

  For the children they lead, these school leaders are transitional leaders, more autocratic than the ideal leader in the knowledge workplace, but perhaps essential to transform the social character of the street into the motivated Interactives that graduate from KIPP schools.

  CAN KIPP BE A MODEL FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS?

  The idea of charter schools came from a speech in 1988 by Albert Shanker (1928–1997), the visionary larger-than-life president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). I was hired by Shanker in the early 1990s to help AFT create a vision and structure for its future, based in large part on his thinking. Unlike union leaders who just focus on getting the most they can for their members, Shanker taught that society would not support a teachers’ union that was only out for itself, not also for the success of the students. He understood before most people did that schools designed for an industrial-bureaucratic society were not preparing students for the knowledge age, and he conceived of charter schools as providing the R&D for the public school system of the future.

  So do Feinberg and Levin. Feinberg told me he’d like KIPP to be the FedEx to the U.S. Postal Service, the mouse that pushes the bureaucratic public school system elephant to start dancing. But can public schools learn from KIPP? There are some critics who raise concerns about the degree of discipline and the scrip incentives at KIPP schools. Are students being bribed to learn by getting the scrip, and will they continue to learn when there are no “money” incentives? Levin responds that “some kids are interested and motivated from the word go, but the majority are not, so the rewards are like a crutch to get them working on their own.” The scrip also gets the kids thinking about earning money and builds self-esteem when they succeed in saving enough for excursions. Money is a big factor in the knowledge workplace, and these kids need to connect it with good work.

  Another concern about replication is the argument that KIPP parents are more motivated than parents of other public school kids. This is hard to prove one way or another, since it could be that they get more motivated once they join the KIPP family. Levin invites the doubters to compare the test scores of KIPP kids when they enter the program and after enrollment. The entering students have the same low scores and disciplinary problems as kids in other inner city schools; at KIPP, their scores rise well above the city average.

  What about the teachers? Can they sustain the intensity, the long hours they put in? Levin says, “You can’t build a system with martyrs.” Teachers are paid for the extra time, and they are proud to be part of the KIPP family (Feinberg and Levin like to talk about team and family as KIPP values). Some teachers aspire to become school leaders. Others see KIPP not as a lifetime career but as a deeply meaningful learning experience. Schaeffler says that, o
f the seven teachers who started with her in 1991, two are running KIPP schools in D.C., two are still teaching, two are at home with their children, and one is in medical school. That’s four of seven still with KIPP. However, 50 percent of new public school teachers leave teaching after five years. Another 12 percent transfer each year, and the percent who leave high-poverty schools is even higher. 12 Furthermore, 45 percent of all workers in America today say they want to change jobs at least every three to five years.13

  Some union leaders voice concern that the funds given to charter schools are being diverted from improving the public school system. But I’d argue that KIPP is playing the R&D role that Al Shanker envisaged, at least for inner city schools. To be sure, KIPP schools raise private funds to get started, and some continue to raise up to $150,000 a year to support special activities. However, Susan Schaeffler says that in D.C., KIPP operates with the same amount allocated to any public school, once funds have been raised for buildings.

  I doubt that all public schools can copy KIPP , and I question whether the KIPP schools are the right model for more affluent kids who might not need the strict discipline, whose social character has been shaped at home to prepare them for the knowledge workplace. But as we saw in chapter 7, organizations can learn from great models without copying them. In particular, there are two elements that all public schools can learn from KIPP. One is that to be effective for the knowledge age, schools must be learning organizations, self-organizing social systems powered by values and principles more than rules. The second is that these schools must have leaders with the authority and ability to lead, even though leadership methods may be different at schools for the more affluent kids. This calls for leadership education. Where will this education be found? It’s a challenge for schools of education. Dave Levin wants to found an institute to train school leaders, and he deserves the chance to provide a model for schools of education.

  BARRIERS TO CHANGE

  What keeps schools from learning from KIPP? First of all, the public and even school boards are just beginning to hear about KIPP. When I met members of the prestigious National Academy of Education in the fall of 2005, two deans of major university schools of education I spoke with had never heard of KIPP. However, many supporters of charter schools blame the bureaucratic school system and especially the teachers’ unions for resisting change. Steven F. Wilson’s view is representative: “Organized interests have successfully resisted calls for radical change in the organization and delivery of public education, none more than the two national teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the AFT. Today, the majority of K–12 public school teachers belong to a local union, nearly all of which are NEA and AFT affiliates. Together, the two unions count 3.5 million public school teachers, support staff, preschool teachers, and college faculty among their members.”14

  Wilson goes on to argue that collective bargaining and union rules promote bureaucracy and distrust and undermine the power to lead and a culture of collaboration based on shared purpose. No doubt this is the case in some school districts, but not all. Wilson notes in passing that Dave Levin gained agreement with UFT (United Federation of Teachers), the New York affiliate of AFT, to accept the KIPP rules and values. Underperforming teachers were induced to leave KIPP for less demanding schools, and Levin was able to use emergency and temporary certification provisions to hire qualified and motivated teachers who lacked formal credentials.

  It all depends on leaders. Ed McElroy, president of AFT, states that union-management collaboration has resulted in better schools and improved results in Toledo, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Rochester, and Pittsburgh. He maintains that the union contract allows teachers to feel safe about trying new approaches. All of those cities have had innovative and courageous AFT local presidents who took the initiative with school management.15

  Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education at New York University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and at the Brookings Institution, and former assistant secretary of education in the George H. W. Bush administration, is a respected historian and a fair-minded observer of schools. In contrast to union bashers, she believes unions, by protecting teachers and giving them voice, play an essential role in school reform.16 This role can even be creative, provided there are leaders people want to follow.

  ABC UNIFIED SCHOOLS

  An example of a positive union-management relationship is the ABC Unified School District in three California cities—Artesia, Cerritos, and Hawaiian Gardens—south of Los Angeles. The superintendent of schools, Dr. Gary Smuts, and the AFT local president, Laura Rico, collaborate in a partnership that has shifted the union-management relationship from what Smuts described as conflict over work rules to collaboration to improve education. The result: continual improvement of scores on the California state English language and math proficiency tests. The ABC scores are 10 percent higher than the state average (see table 8-1). In the Hawaiian Gardens Schools with over 80 percent Hispanic children, the annual percent improvement in results from 1999 to 2005 was 179.17

  TABLE 8-1

  ABC District scores compared with California average

  PERCENT PROFICIENT

  State of California ABC District

  English language arts

  2002 33 43

  2003 35 45

  2004 35 46

  2005 40 50

  Math proficiency

  2002 35 50

  2003 41 51

  2004 42 52

  2005 47 57

  Source: These statistics were provided by the superintendent, Dr. Gary Smuts.

  Smuts and Rico meet weekly, and union and management leaders meet periodically to review progress or participate together in leadership training. The guiding principles of the partnership emphasize common purpose.

  Rico says that working on the partnership has been the hardest part of her job. I can understand that. When I served from 1980–2000 as consultant to the collaboration between AT&T and the Communication Workers of America (CWA), I learned that local union leaders can lose elections if members believe they are too close to management. 18 Some of Rico’s members are suspicious of the partnership, but she reports everything discussed, all partnership activity and decisions. Rico sees her role very much in the way Al Shanker believed it should be: meeting the members’ needs for fair wages, benefits, work rules, and professional development, and also furthering the success of the children they serve. “If you belong to the union,” says Rico, “you never have to be afraid. There is someone there for you for help in coaching or improving skills. We won’t let you fail.” As a leader, Rico is a doctor with skeptical teachers and a democrat with those who share her purpose.

  What about the school principals? Do they have the power to lead? Smuts, who was himself a teacher and principal, says that in the past, the principals’ main role was administration. At meetings, they just talked business. Now the business is done on the Internet and meetings concentrate on leadership skills. Principals are involved in curriculum, but teachers run the committees, and Gary allows the different schools latitude in textbook selection. Union and management have together agreed on a new evaluation instrument for teachers which emphasizes their development, and Smuts believes principals have the power to get rid of nonperforming teachers, as long as they follow California’s due process regulations. Do the ABC principals have optimal authority and ability? Rico thinks even with enough authority, many still don’t know how to lead.

  Few school districts can boast the collaboration of ABC, and this is a failure of leadership on all sides, including boards of education.19

  NUESTROS PEQUEÑOS HERMANOS

  Foundations and international relief organizations spend millions to save the lives of people in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean who suffer from disease—HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria—and malnutrition. But millions of children are orphaned or abandoned victims of war, crime, domestic violence, and the diseases that ki
lled their parents. What about them? Even if they get food and medicines that save their lives, what will become of them? Will they become just like their parents? Will they join criminal gangs? Or will they develop the skills and social character to become successful and responsible members of their societies? Unless we focus on the development of these children, we can expect more crime and violence in the future. However, I have seen at first hand that these orphaned and abandoned children can be developed into productive citizens of their countries. But it takes leadership.

  William B. Wasson (1923–2006), a Catholic priest, was the kind of leader needed to create the centers to educate these children. His work for more than fifty years in Latin America and the Caribbean (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic20) produced thousands of successful graduates of the homes he founded. And most impressive, eight of nine directors of these organizations are themselves orphans raised by Father Wasson and his followers.

  He didn’t plan this career. Father Bill, as he was called, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and received an MA in social science from San Luis Rey University in Santa Barbara, California. He entered a seminary with the intention of becoming a Catholic priest, but the presiding bishop refused to ordain him because of a thyroid condition. He then got a job teaching adolescent psychology at an English-language university in Mexico City. He met the innovative bishop of Cuernavaca, Don Sergio Méndez Arceo, who recognized his spiritual qualities, ordained him, and placed him in a church in the city’s teeming marketplace.