Culture is Just as Important in Public Education

As we near the holidays, I wanted to talk briefly about culture.   One of the things I have highlighted several times in my posts is the need for superintendents to be trained like CEOs.    They are, in essence, the CEOs of their school districts.   And like any good CEO, they need to surround themselves with strong talent, including strong educators.   While public policy has severely hampered the ability of superintendents to effectively manage their school districts, they are still the leaders and thus, are the people that run these school systems.

I wish that superintendents such as former APS Superintendent Dr. Beverly Hall would have been given the management training to be effective leaders.  And unfortunately, the Atlanta business community turned a blind eye to all of this throughout the past decade.  Having said that, a recent post in the Harvard Business Review contains some "best practices" that district superintendents should definitely heed about how great organizations manage culture:

1. They invest more in their employees
2. They're upgrading
3. They recognize that culture is critical to talent retention.
4. They know their stakeholders

My new year's resolution is that we FINALLY start seeing reinvention of our public education system, and that we start laying the foundation for eventually reasserting our reputation as a global leader in educating our children for success in the 21st century work environment.  This will require creating a true "innovation ecosystem" that will allow new instructional methods such as blended learning to become integrated into the instructional pedagogy.   And lets work on investing in social and emotional learning programs (e.g., after school enrichment programs in the arts and music) so that at-risk youth can have an equal chance at the American Dream.  

Comments

[Kevin @Flyer Online]

Those are really the best practices. But I doubt that many superintendents are following them.

- Kevin Wiess

[Jackie]

I agree with you in regards to blended education. Also, after school programs have other benefits besides helping out youths at risk. Studies have shown that students who participate in music programs tend to perform better academically as well.

Online College

[Al Meyers]

You are absolutely spot on about music programs. Take a look at a nonprofit I co-founded, the Atlanta Music Project. www.atlantamusicproject.org. A January 2011 article in Child Development Magazine published researched about the importance of social and emotional learning on academic learning. Music is a perfect example of this research in action.