For Principals, Good Reason to 'Creatively Non-Comply'

This from the School Book:

The new school year has begun. Most positions are filled and difficult decisions have been made for the third year in a row about where to make cuts. For the most part, core instructional programs have remained intact, but diminished resources have resulted in reductions of student activities; after-school programs; purchases of equipment, supplies and materials; per-session or faculty compensation for extra work; enrichment activities; and, even arts education.  

While not devastating, the erosion of resources our schools have experienced has taken its toll. Just as resources have diminished, so has principal and school autonomy. We seem intent on proving, once again, that unlike the schools, the central office is incapable of change, let alone innovation. Central is also suffering from the familiar delusion that it has the capacity to control what takes place in 80,000 classrooms when teachers close their doors each morning — and that, even if it could, some good would come from it.  

During my 17 years as a high school principal in New York City, I understood that one of my major responsibilities as school leader was to create the space for good people to do their best work, and to hold them accountable for the highest levels of student performance. My job was to filter out the noise and distractions that the political establishment within and outside the school system regularly inflict upon schools so that my teachers could focus on how best to meet the academic and affective needs of our students.  

Sometimes this meant “building with canvas,” a term borrowed from Thomas Sergiovanni, a professor at Trinity College and renowned expert on school leadership. It refers to a strategy employed by the United States military to place canvas tanks on the battlefield to convince the enemy that it had more firepower than was actually the case. 

Principals need to build with canvas rather than defer instructional and curricular authority to others who don’t understand your communities, have never met with your parents and don’t know the names of your students. The expertise necessary to educate our students for success in the 21st century must be resident in each school. As former Schools Chancellor Anthony Alvarado used to say and regularly practice, “creative non-compliance” is a critically important response available to principals. Do not allow the central office to set the agenda for your schools. That’s your responsibility, and theirs is to hold you accountable for student outcomes, not to tell you how to get there...