Will the next APS superintendent “tinker” or truly influence teaching and learning?

The other day I was pulling a book someone wanted to borrow off of my bookshelf, and it was right next to my copy of an almost 20 year-old book titled Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform by Larry Cuban and David Tyack.  I pulled it off the shelf as well and began flipping through pages I’d tagged and scanning sections of the book’s description:

Why have Americans come to believe that schooling has regressed? Have educational reforms occurred in cycles, and if so, why? Why has it been so difficult to change the basic institutional patterns of schooling? What actually happened when reformers tried to “reinvent” schooling?

Tyack and Cuban argue that the ahistorical nature of most current reform proposals magnifies defects and understates the difficulty of changing the system. Policy talk has alternated between lamentation and overconfidence. The authors suggest that reformers today need to focus on ways to help teachers improve instruction from the inside out instead of decreeing change by remote control, and that reformers must also keep in mind the democratic purposes that guide public education.

Though it’s a long time from 1995 when the book was published, to me the wisdom of the book still rings true today, perhaps even more so.  I think there are particularly important lessons for us right now here in Atlanta.  There is a tremendously ripe opportunity for improving the educational outcomes for students across the city as the district emerges from the cheating scandal, prepares for the election of the district’s school board, and searches for a new superintendent.  Will what comes next be mere “tinkering” like introducing new programs or leadership structures that do little to change the core of what actually happens in schools?  Or will there be changes that fundamentally address the challenges schools in APS face and that directly involve teachers, students, and parents in their development?

In press coverage and forums, most all of the APS board candidates have emphasized the importance of getting the right person in the job as the next district superintendent.  As a relatively small urban school district with such potential, I would think that there would be plenty of interested and strong candidates out there.  If the goal is to hire someone who can have meaningful and positive impact on the district and who is able to do more than tinker around the edges, here are some characteristics I would look for in the next superintendent:

• Experience working as an educator: by and large, the most successful school districts have been led by an individual with teaching experience.  History has shown that a primary background in private industry, the military, etc. does not translate into sustained success as a school superintendent.
• Willingness to challenge inequity: like many urban school districts, Atlanta is rife with inequities.  And the system is one of the most segregated–by race and by class–of any in the country.  A superintendent who is able to harness the resources and political willpower to deal with these facts would be able to have enormous positive impact on the educational experience of Atlanta’s students, no matter their backgrounds.
• Genuine interest in what teachers have to say and demonstrated actions that have shown it: as Cuban and Tyack suggest, “Ask teachers what bothers them the most…then begin reforms there.”  Countless efforts at “reform” have failed because they do not get at the core issues faced by educators.  Figure out ways to put the resources (time, money) and flexibility in place to nurture changes from the “inside out”.

There are other traits that are likely important, but, without at least these three, the next superintendent will have a much more difficult–if not impossible–job.  Of course, no matter who is hired, all of this work is easier said than done–which is why I am writing a blog and not a superintendent!