What do thirty five Superintendents of Schools learn from a day long conference on the role of the Superintendency? Four such administrators who participated in such an event offer their opinions of what transpired in September, 1995 at the University of Albany, State University of New York. The conference combined the opinions of practicing district administrators with the ideas of doctoral students and faculty of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies interested in grade k-12 operations.

While each Superintendent offers valuable insight, their combined message can be summarized into several premises about the role of the school superintendent in the mid 1990's. Together, the four perspectives offer a summary of the key ingredients of what it means to be an effective chief school officer of a New York school district. Together, the perspectives capture the highlights of conferencing discussion that took place.

Dr. Marilyn Terranova, Superintendent of South Lewis Central District, argues for one of the two major conclusions from the conferees. Above all, the superintendent must confirm and reconfirm the core values and ethical premises of the public's school system and what educator professionals do to operate an effective school system.

Dr. Geoffrey Davis, Superintendent of the Little Falls City School District at the time of the conference and now District Superintendent of the Hamilton- Fulton- Montgomery Board of Cooperative Educational Services, presents the other major conclusion from the conference. Each superintendent of schools must concede the political nature of the administrative role and act in a politically astute manner if she or he is to be effective.

Dr. George Amedore, Superintendent of the Plattsburgh City School District, translates the Terranova and Davis conclusions into a recommendation to focus upon the appropriate "mindframes" for effectiveness and success in the 21st century.

Dr. Maureen Flaherty, Superintendent of the Florida Union Free District, translates the Terranova and Davis conclusions into a recommendation to focus upon the negotiations process and aspects of administration that relate to bargaining behaviors.

The superintendency is based upon the power of compelling ideas and the meanings they hold for others. Shared leadership or participatory leadership creates conditions in which ideas in their most compelling form can flow up and down the organization. Staff, students, parents and administrators are highly involved in creating a shared vision and are focused on a compelling purpose. Shared leadership promises to lead to better decisions and better results.

Hierarchical strategies based upon assumptions of centralized authority are inadequate in promoting change. The shared idea structure, or "community of mind," becomes the primary source of authority for what people do. There is a sense of community where participants in the decision making process see themselves as complementary and mutually supportive contributors and followers of the dream.

Top administrators are dependent upon others for successful change within the organization. By sharing power and asking for help, administrators can tap latent resources. By relying on staff members, administrators give them a greater sense of efficacy, responsibility and control. But the capacity for dependency is rare, for many top administrators have been taught that they exercise power and they should not appear weak.

This fear may be evident in expectations about shared decision making and working as a team. To alleviate the reluctance the superintendent ( with building level administrators in larger districts) should charge the team with their mission, that is, curriculum improvement, restructuring the teaching and learning day, raising standards, creating new assessments and so on. The initial charge of expectations will minimize the fear that shared decision efforts will focus upon trivial events and problems.

Once underway, the superintendent should insure that action plans are formulated with goals, timelines, and people delegated to complete specific tasks. It is natural that some administrators have a difficult time understanding the role parents and business community play with respect to shared leadership. Administrators should articulate their own bedrock convictions about the teaching and learning process, and then make sure parents and citizens understand who they are and what they stand for. One walks a fine line, however, in terms of carrying out bedrock convictions and making sure one's vision is shared by the other key stakeholders in public education. One cannot implement a personal vision at the expense of the community building process. Top administrators can play a vital facilitating role asking serious in-depth questions about teaching and learning in relation to school improvement efforts to expedite change.

Use of active listening skills and asking thought provoking questions can generate comfort with the superintendent's role in the shared decision process. The superintendent moves the team to a relationship of mutual commitment and interdependence. The goal is to have each member of the sharing exercise appreciate the need for commitment to an interdependent vision and helping all stakeholders to become involved in a team effort. Relationships characterized by mutual caring and the interdependence coming from mutually held obligations has been called transformational leadership; power is dispersed, influence is reciprocal, responsibility is shared and coalitions provide active support.

One of the greatest challenges for the transformational superintendent in the last part of the 1990's decade is to enlarge the attention of teachers and others involved in shared decisions to appreciate district, regional and state level implications of local or classroom level choices. Interrelationships necessary for the improvement of public education must span the boundaries of school to community and classroom to state education department.

* Dr. Terranova suggests the following literature:

Murphy, Jerome, "The Unheroic Side of Leadership" Phi Delta Kappan., May l988, pages 654-659.

Schlechty, Phillip, Schools for the 21st Century, 1990, San Francsico: Jossey-Bass Publishers

Sergiovanni, Thomas, Building Community in Schools, l994, San Fransciso: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Tichy, Noel and Mary Anne Devanna, The Transformational Leader, 1986, New York: John Wiley.

To appreciate the politics of education is to embrace a systems perspective of the public schools as an institution, recognizing that components do not exist in isolation but rather as innumerable, interdependent web-like strands. It does not diminish the role of the superintendency to appreciate such political interdependence as it constitutes a system. A system has been described in the literature as consisting of common planning, common priorities and integrated networks of services addressing common needs, sharing common vision and values. In many regards, this description makes system an extension of a "learning organization." As chief executive officer of a system of public education, the superintendent must recognize and internalize the variety of networks which comprise social and economic spheres of influence within the political meanings of local, regional, state and national community.

Patterns of social relationships fostered in public schools are hardly irrational or accidental. Local control of education, actualized through the relationship between Boards of Education and the chief school officer, requires astute political wherewithal to guide assessment as to the needs and desires of the community and articulation of development and implementation possibilities. Inherent in such an assessment is an appreciation of the systematically political nature of delivering educational services.

Failure to acknowledge and embrace an integrated model of human service delivery, for example, coupled with failure of the leader to understand a system of political relationships, may well cause an organization to falter or not survive. Working within the context of a system, the superintendent can best appreciate the politics of education through collaborate projects, each with a defined purpose and intended outcome. By building coalitions of individuals from either connected or somewhat separated components of the system, and then charging the coalition with a task that serves to unite their efforts, the superintendent can show the positive benefits of political association. The purpose of the public schools must be aligned with that of other constituencies to accomplish the fundamental political objective of being the public's school system.

The superintendent serves as the lead manager, responsible to the rest of the public school system for consistency of purpose and continuity in the organization. As lead manager, the superintendent must believe in the ability of the education system to produce quality results, and in the value of input from workers who know best what is needed for the "grassroots" organization to be successful. Glasser notes, " the lead manager continually teaches the workers that the essence of quality is constant improvement. People must know that the main manager job is to facilitate by providing the best tools and workplace setting as well as a friendly, non coercive, non adversarial atmosphere in which to work."(page 15) A political meaning of such a role presupposes a systems based philosophy of leadership and that problems are generated by patterns of association throughout the system as opposed to individual teachers or parents.

Communication is the critical tool of the superintendent in the role of lead manager, coupled with sincerity and integrity in translating a politicized belief in organizations as systems. Communication, sincerity and integrity lead to respect for constituencies in the system and success in negotiating organizational and political challenges. Accepting political realities allows the superintendent to capitalize on existing networks and relationships to further the mission of the public schools.

Dr. Davis recommends the following literature.

Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. Schooling in Capitalist America, 1976, New York: Basic Books.

Deming, Edward The New Economics (2nd Edition), 1994, Cambridge: Center for Advanced Engineering Study.

Glasser, William, The Control Theory Manager, 1995, New York: Harper, Collins.

Scholtes, P. Communities as Systems, 1995, Scholtes Seminars and Consulting.

Senge, Peter, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 1994, New York: Doubleday.

Why is there widespread conviction that our public schools are failing and persistent public clamor for change? Part of the answer, I believe, lies in the reality that American public schools face major and long-standing problems which afflict the nation in general. The political ideologies that presently dominate in Albany and on Capital Hill in Washington DC are loath to confront and invest in resolving the social issues that affect the citizens, opting instead for tax relief as the highest priority.

Another part of the answer is captured in what a recent study by Berliner and Biddle identified as "the manufactured crisis of fraud and myths used in the attack on America's public schools." These researchers reinterpret the statistical evidence used to document the attack on public school credibility since the "nation at risk" commission report of the early 1980's. Reanalysis led these authors to declare that much of the evidence used to indict school costs and performance was contradictory or downright wrong. This conclusion does not come as a surprise for many of us who have spent a lot of time in public schools.

The real challenge facing America and its public school system is the restructuring of the meaning of work. There is a shift in occupation from production and service to information processing. Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor, discusses this transformation phenomenon as the rise of the symbolic analyst but it is essentially the same as the information processor when we think of such changes as the computerization of business and industrial workplace. What was imagined at the outset as an "automation" of business-as-usual changed the nature of work itself. The automation that was to reduce numbers of conventional workers and create greater efficiency in doing normal tasks turned out to be much more. Computer use changed the very purpose of some organizations and blurred lines of managerial authority and technical specialization in all cases. The need to function in a "mediated" environment of processing information and problem solving transformed the meaning of worker. Access to information emphasized the authority of the knowledge worker.

The problems to convention posed by restructuring work created a parallel set of problems for appreciating the role of public schooling. The functional American citizen of the future and the meanings of higher standards today both imply the larger context of social change. I am convinced that such restructuring efforts are most effective as district wide initiatives based upon shared visions. At the risk of referencing overworked terms like systemic change and strategic plan I suggest that the superintendent can play an unique role in facilitating qualitative change. The key is to frame change activities within a scheme driven by reconceptualization of public schooling goals appropriate to the restructured meaning of work in the 21st century.

The frame of mind necessary for such a task is not easy. The model most people understand and appreciate imagines change as a linear process of sequential steps. This model can be valuable for restructuring when identified with the collaboration and decision skills people need to monitor their progress toward accomplishments. It is also valuable when curriculum changing is couched in the real life obligations of organizational context and resource availability. When people understand that each "step forward" involves mutual commitment and coordination throughout the public school system the model is a positive frame of mind.

However, for those that translate linearity and sequential approach as a rigid arrow of the past driving the future such a model is a disaster. Our future is not static or stable in some constant sense. Firm values provide intellectual bases for continuity and congruence among people but "future gazing" about restructuring work and public schooling demands concession to reality. Michael Fullan describes the tightrope of such multiple expectations this way; " No amount of sheer brilliance , authority or power could possibly resolve the problems of non linearity because it is organically part and parcel of the way complex organizations must evolve." The superintendent is in an unique position to describe both the nonlinear coherence of a system changing as a dynamic setting (e.g. the values of redundancy in critical links and multiple investments or "trial balloons" when venturing into the unknown) and the clarity gained by appreciating linear expectations of all those participating in change efforts.

The "common vision" that a superintendent mobilizes and maintains as the change process unfolds toward a restructured 21st century becomes the crucial evolutionary rationale that grounds the present to the future. It is the frame of mind that bridges

the certainty that the present meaning of public schooling will change with the uncertainty of future incremental adjustments coupled to dramatic transformations.

Dr. Amedore suggests the following literature;

Berliner, David and Burce Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis, 1995, Boston: Addison-Wesley

Fullan, Michael, "Turning Systemic Thinking on its Head" Phi Delta Kappan, February 1996, pages 420-423

Reich, Robert, The Work of Nations, 1991, New York: Knopf

When a superintendent thinks about negotiations and how a district might compare with other k-12 jurisdictions he or she must realize that the magnitude of comparability between districts is directly proportional to the financial gain a collective bargaining unit can achieve through utilizing such an argument. We would all like to think of district comparability in terms of academic or public relations foci but the tradition of financial comparability is deeply rooted in the negotiation mentality of teacher organizations throughout New York.

There is a micro and macro discussion of district comparability that demonstrates the fiscal preoccupation in teacher expectations. Bargaining units which lag behind in their region may effectively employ the micro argument to achieve gains, while leaders for a particular region may cite state level statistics to achieve gains in compensation.

The dichotomy of this argument, rooted in the unequal fiscal status of public school districts (e.g., the Levittown court challenge), generates symbiotic relationships between and among districts. An ever spiraling salary structure is the end result.

At the regional level, many professional educators look to the highest paying districts as trend setters for other jurisdictions to emulate. A modification of the micro argument is created. The premise of this argument is that everyone purchases services within a particular geographical sphere and those who perform the same job service should have equal purchase power within the economy. The fundamental fallacies in the argument of equal compensation are the assumptions of equal ability to pay and meanings of equal performance that vary with a district's available resources (e.g. cash flow to indebtedness).

The accumulation of micro arguments throughout the state generates the distinction with macro profiling of k-12 public school districts by the handful of those with the most wealth and demonstrations of high academic performance. Research has confirmed that the higher paying districts have employed the highest qualified teachers. The arguments for equal purchase power within a region are replaced by the claim of increased concentrations of professional skill and competencies leading to the identity of most excellent districts.

There is a strong demand for use of statewide performance based results to sustain the excellence status and allow these districts to be raw "benchmark" jurisdictions or the locations of the most "commencement" focused reform efforts. For the rest of the k-12 jurisdictions such action seems a form of self praising promotion.

Such demonstrations of professional worth create the spiraling pay scales in the most wealthy regions of the state (e.g. Long Island, Westchester and Rochester suburbs) and may drag the rest of the state along. Ironically, the original "equal pay by region" argument based upon a philosophical rationale of fiscal fairness in distributions statewide is replaced by the stratification of fiscal enrichment when a cluster of "best" districts serve as a "lead" regional proxy.

Superintendents must recognize that the proxy serves as the greatest obstacle to the strict "ability to pay" argument. Teacher negotiators can speak of equal pay for equal work based upon the most expensive locations rather than the cost of a service in any particular marketplace. Further, the reference to performance over operating costs lets the teachers appear on the high road of moral correctness while leaving the superintendent the low road of many names.

In many public school districts teacher salaries and compensations account for more than four fifths of the entire school budget. The spiral creates the need for increased property taxes. As demands for taxes increases, the degree of permissiveness allowed by superintendents during the negotiations process relative to the comparability argument decreases. This is a double edged sword for the superintendent. Diminished state level resources for public education preoccupy the public with ability to pay concerns. Forced to that side, the administrator may lose in recruitment and retention of excellent teachers and be charged with promoting academic excellence "on the cheap."