A search for the superintendent
Friends. Just wanted to share the letter that Dr. Brown and I crafted and sent to the school board related to their search for a superintendent.
A Search for the SuperintendentAn opportunity for a “moment of creation”
In her wonderful and contemporary treatise on social justice and hope, Rebecca Solnit proclaims for those interested in improving the human condition that there is no need to save the world; rather, this work should involve keeping alive moments of creation. For Solnit moments of creation are those opportunities/experiences/events in which social justice, freedom, and democracy take one step forward. The goal, then, involves stringing these moments together toward a more profoundly just, improved, and extended condition.
The search for a superintendent of Kentucky’s largest school district is such a possible moment. Traditional perceptions of institutional need often reflect an unconscious will to make change without changing much. When confronted with the need for leadership change, we often focus more on individual personality rather than perform a critical review of the criteria we use to define requisite leadership qualities. Tying our leadership boat to institutional moorings within a safe harbor of tradition precludes us from venturing out, raising the sails of possibility, and catching the winds of hope. Moments of creation become less available to us in known waters without waves.
We have a compelling opportunity to seek a superintendent who is poised to navigate the
boundaries of tradition and who has the courage to lead us into the dark where hope can be transformed into reality. We risk little selecting a leader who will righteously tweak the edges of past ineffectiveness. We have much to gain selecting a leader whose spirit propels us toward a different idea of ourselves and a re-conceptualization of the daunting mission with which we are charged. It is no longer acceptable to spew platitudes of progress into tornado-like winds of destructive and demoralizing failure. It is time to stand against the wind united in collective thought and action and with resolute courage to redefine failure not as progress but as hopelessness rooted in sameness.
We conceptualize our vision for a superintendent around three main ideas: community, consciousness, and courage.
Community
Louisville has great potential for social and economic prosperity based on the diverse and deep talents of its population. Unfortunately, it is a community divided by race and class. According to a 2005 Brookings Institution report, published after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Louisville ranks 3rd, nationally, in concentrated poverty. That is, our city ranks third among all major communities in the US for neighborhoods that possess more than 4 out of 10 families living at or below the poverty line. Often, these communities of concentrated poverty are also racially identifiable. While the school system has attempted to stem the tide of reproducing poverty through integration practices over the last thirty years, progress has been slow. This condition may only be worsened by an anticipated adverse decision from the Supreme Court regarding the system’s race-based admissions practices. One need only read the first few chapters of Jonathan Kozol’s lamenting follow-up to Savage Inequalities to see that the return to “apartheid schooling” in many cities is, indeed, the Shame of the Nation.
A more specific and broader institutional concern with which the new superintendent will be confronted is the dehumanization of the teaching/learning experience that the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act has imposed. The new superintendent must have the courage to stand up for that which makes teaching a profession and that which makes learning a reality. A candidate who is not willing or prepared to struggle for the humanity and dignity of the teaching profession, the civil right of competitive equality of our students, and the responsibility of our profession to make the world better through a caring and educated citizenry, is an individual unworthy of consideration for the position of superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools.
Further, the new superintendent must work to build community in our city.Moving away from the economic purposes of education to consider the social is paramount to helping us realize how we might better live democratically and justly with one another, nationally as well as globally. Economic globalization and a competitive race for the bottom are not inevitable as Thomas Friedman and others conceive. If we more importantly focus on issues of community, collaboration, and consciousness, we could better ensure a process of educational equity and a more socially just nation and world for our children. The superintendent plays no small role in this possibility.
Consciousness
Regarding consciousness, the new superintendent will hold tremendous responsibility as an educator-leader, poised to activate an intellectual and social evolution in Louisville’s metropolitan community. The school system possesses access to tremendous resources both in the business and college/university sectors of the city. Her/His outreach to these local resources could have profound impact on the success and future of our children. As well, the new superintendent must be willing to act on and promote proven methods and best practices that are not ideologically driven or politically motivated.
Particularly related to colleges/universities, we are sure we speak for our colleagues at other institutions that we are ready and willing to democratically collaborate with the new superintendent and the school system. We at Bellarmine University are fortunate to work with some of the best and brightest teacher candidates in the region. As we have done in the past, we look forward to any opportunity through which we might communicate, collaborate, and/or co-design programs, activities, and partnerships. These joint ventures will allow the school system to reveal its latest initiatives or to demonstrate needs it has for future teachers and would permit us to share our latest research and to demonstrate the type of teachers we seek to construct. The majority of our graduates proudly, authentically, and critically give of themselves daily in Jefferson County Schools. We would look forward to an opportunity to find out how we might better prepare them to help serve our children’s needs and to demonstrate how they are ready, willing, and able to help lead change toward hopeful possibilities.
These hopeful possibilities and the ability to serve our children’s needs will be significantly enhanced through researching, discovering, and abiding by proven methods and best practices that have been shown to reach all children. While the No Child Left Behind Act calls educators to use only scientifically-based research to drive practice, its own websites and bulletins offer little to no experimentally-designed research studies. Instead, we find ideologically/politically/corporate-driven data that irresponsibly focuses on standardized, inauthentic assessments and provides weak evidence of educational improvement for a yearly assessment that compares one group of children one year with another group of children the next year. Recognizing that funding is tied to these annual assessments, whether or not they are rigorously analyzed or proven, it will be necessary for the new superintendent to exhibit sufficient moral resolve to resist this (little) carrot and (big) stick approach and begin to formulate alternative possibilities with the community of principals, teachers, students, parents, scholars, and business leaders, who s/he serves.
Courage
Finally, this new superintendent will need to demonstrate great courage at this historical moment. While the opportunity to work with a wonderful community presents itself, we cannot also ignore the many challenges before us (some of which have been outlined above). As we suggest in our introduction, the answers to these persistent challenges do not lie in the comfort of the safe harbor, doing what we’ve always done. Rather, the future for our children and our community will lie in uncharted waters, doing something different. To activate a moment of creation, the new superintendent will need inspirational vision, an innovative and fresh strategy, and a firm conviction in social justice. To extend this moment of creation, the new superintendent will need to surround himself/herself with critical colleagues, staff, principals, teachers, professors, and business leaders who share this vision, can offer constructive criticism when necessary, and can capably carry out its strategy toward the improvement of all our children’s lives, educationally, socially, and economically.
Gandhi once remarked to a visitor as they looked out upon the people, “There go my people. I am their leader. I must run to catch up with them.” Gandhi was an ordinary man under extraordinary circumstances doing what was necessary if he wished to give full moral authority to the worldly charge he had been given. He rooted himself in the people’s cause as a selfless servant to their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. The new superintendent need not be a Gandhi, but s/he must be guided by Gandhi’s modeling of prophetic leadership needed to bring a transcendent vision of a way out of our historical public educational morass.
Those who will coordinate the search, those who are empowered to select our new superintendent, and all of us who will live the consequences of the choice that is made for us have an even greater responsibility to walk in front of our leader so that s/he may receive essential and continuous critical affirmation of the path on which his/her prophetic wisdom leads us. In the spirit of John F. Kennedy’s challenge to all Americans to fulfill their responsibility to their country, we must do so as well in the service of our schools, our community, our children, and our future.
If we choose to stand shoulder to shoulder with our superintendent, as one people, then we will have won.
A Search for the SuperintendentAn opportunity for a “moment of creation”
In her wonderful and contemporary treatise on social justice and hope, Rebecca Solnit proclaims for those interested in improving the human condition that there is no need to save the world; rather, this work should involve keeping alive moments of creation. For Solnit moments of creation are those opportunities/experiences/events in which social justice, freedom, and democracy take one step forward. The goal, then, involves stringing these moments together toward a more profoundly just, improved, and extended condition.
The search for a superintendent of Kentucky’s largest school district is such a possible moment. Traditional perceptions of institutional need often reflect an unconscious will to make change without changing much. When confronted with the need for leadership change, we often focus more on individual personality rather than perform a critical review of the criteria we use to define requisite leadership qualities. Tying our leadership boat to institutional moorings within a safe harbor of tradition precludes us from venturing out, raising the sails of possibility, and catching the winds of hope. Moments of creation become less available to us in known waters without waves.
We have a compelling opportunity to seek a superintendent who is poised to navigate the
boundaries of tradition and who has the courage to lead us into the dark where hope can be transformed into reality. We risk little selecting a leader who will righteously tweak the edges of past ineffectiveness. We have much to gain selecting a leader whose spirit propels us toward a different idea of ourselves and a re-conceptualization of the daunting mission with which we are charged. It is no longer acceptable to spew platitudes of progress into tornado-like winds of destructive and demoralizing failure. It is time to stand against the wind united in collective thought and action and with resolute courage to redefine failure not as progress but as hopelessness rooted in sameness.
We conceptualize our vision for a superintendent around three main ideas: community, consciousness, and courage.
Community
Louisville has great potential for social and economic prosperity based on the diverse and deep talents of its population. Unfortunately, it is a community divided by race and class. According to a 2005 Brookings Institution report, published after the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Louisville ranks 3rd, nationally, in concentrated poverty. That is, our city ranks third among all major communities in the US for neighborhoods that possess more than 4 out of 10 families living at or below the poverty line. Often, these communities of concentrated poverty are also racially identifiable. While the school system has attempted to stem the tide of reproducing poverty through integration practices over the last thirty years, progress has been slow. This condition may only be worsened by an anticipated adverse decision from the Supreme Court regarding the system’s race-based admissions practices. One need only read the first few chapters of Jonathan Kozol’s lamenting follow-up to Savage Inequalities to see that the return to “apartheid schooling” in many cities is, indeed, the Shame of the Nation.
A more specific and broader institutional concern with which the new superintendent will be confronted is the dehumanization of the teaching/learning experience that the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act has imposed. The new superintendent must have the courage to stand up for that which makes teaching a profession and that which makes learning a reality. A candidate who is not willing or prepared to struggle for the humanity and dignity of the teaching profession, the civil right of competitive equality of our students, and the responsibility of our profession to make the world better through a caring and educated citizenry, is an individual unworthy of consideration for the position of superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools.
Further, the new superintendent must work to build community in our city.Moving away from the economic purposes of education to consider the social is paramount to helping us realize how we might better live democratically and justly with one another, nationally as well as globally. Economic globalization and a competitive race for the bottom are not inevitable as Thomas Friedman and others conceive. If we more importantly focus on issues of community, collaboration, and consciousness, we could better ensure a process of educational equity and a more socially just nation and world for our children. The superintendent plays no small role in this possibility.
Consciousness
Regarding consciousness, the new superintendent will hold tremendous responsibility as an educator-leader, poised to activate an intellectual and social evolution in Louisville’s metropolitan community. The school system possesses access to tremendous resources both in the business and college/university sectors of the city. Her/His outreach to these local resources could have profound impact on the success and future of our children. As well, the new superintendent must be willing to act on and promote proven methods and best practices that are not ideologically driven or politically motivated.
Particularly related to colleges/universities, we are sure we speak for our colleagues at other institutions that we are ready and willing to democratically collaborate with the new superintendent and the school system. We at Bellarmine University are fortunate to work with some of the best and brightest teacher candidates in the region. As we have done in the past, we look forward to any opportunity through which we might communicate, collaborate, and/or co-design programs, activities, and partnerships. These joint ventures will allow the school system to reveal its latest initiatives or to demonstrate needs it has for future teachers and would permit us to share our latest research and to demonstrate the type of teachers we seek to construct. The majority of our graduates proudly, authentically, and critically give of themselves daily in Jefferson County Schools. We would look forward to an opportunity to find out how we might better prepare them to help serve our children’s needs and to demonstrate how they are ready, willing, and able to help lead change toward hopeful possibilities.
These hopeful possibilities and the ability to serve our children’s needs will be significantly enhanced through researching, discovering, and abiding by proven methods and best practices that have been shown to reach all children. While the No Child Left Behind Act calls educators to use only scientifically-based research to drive practice, its own websites and bulletins offer little to no experimentally-designed research studies. Instead, we find ideologically/politically/corporate-driven data that irresponsibly focuses on standardized, inauthentic assessments and provides weak evidence of educational improvement for a yearly assessment that compares one group of children one year with another group of children the next year. Recognizing that funding is tied to these annual assessments, whether or not they are rigorously analyzed or proven, it will be necessary for the new superintendent to exhibit sufficient moral resolve to resist this (little) carrot and (big) stick approach and begin to formulate alternative possibilities with the community of principals, teachers, students, parents, scholars, and business leaders, who s/he serves.
Courage
Finally, this new superintendent will need to demonstrate great courage at this historical moment. While the opportunity to work with a wonderful community presents itself, we cannot also ignore the many challenges before us (some of which have been outlined above). As we suggest in our introduction, the answers to these persistent challenges do not lie in the comfort of the safe harbor, doing what we’ve always done. Rather, the future for our children and our community will lie in uncharted waters, doing something different. To activate a moment of creation, the new superintendent will need inspirational vision, an innovative and fresh strategy, and a firm conviction in social justice. To extend this moment of creation, the new superintendent will need to surround himself/herself with critical colleagues, staff, principals, teachers, professors, and business leaders who share this vision, can offer constructive criticism when necessary, and can capably carry out its strategy toward the improvement of all our children’s lives, educationally, socially, and economically.
Gandhi once remarked to a visitor as they looked out upon the people, “There go my people. I am their leader. I must run to catch up with them.” Gandhi was an ordinary man under extraordinary circumstances doing what was necessary if he wished to give full moral authority to the worldly charge he had been given. He rooted himself in the people’s cause as a selfless servant to their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. The new superintendent need not be a Gandhi, but s/he must be guided by Gandhi’s modeling of prophetic leadership needed to bring a transcendent vision of a way out of our historical public educational morass.
Those who will coordinate the search, those who are empowered to select our new superintendent, and all of us who will live the consequences of the choice that is made for us have an even greater responsibility to walk in front of our leader so that s/he may receive essential and continuous critical affirmation of the path on which his/her prophetic wisdom leads us. In the spirit of John F. Kennedy’s challenge to all Americans to fulfill their responsibility to their country, we must do so as well in the service of our schools, our community, our children, and our future.
If we choose to stand shoulder to shoulder with our superintendent, as one people, then we will have won.
posted by adam at 4:42 PM
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