The War on Public Education
As I open my sixth educational compliance email from the state’s education agency this week, I add four more things to my to-do list. These are four more things that will rob me of time to dream, create, collaborate, and inspire and be inspired by those around me. This is the norm in public education right now. Educational leaders are being forced to chase compliance mandates. Many of these mandates are tied to funding sources.
As the compliance piles up, fear and disillusionment become the driving emotions of educational leaders. We struggle with managing all of the mandates while balancing the soul of the work, which is to inspire innovation in the hearts of the students and staff we serve. We run the risk of becoming so defeated and burned out that we leave no margins for creativity, for inspiration, for hope, and for rejuvenation. We run the risk of “innovation paralysis.” While we become paralyzed and stifled by fear and disillusionment, schools of choice, free of the public education bureaucracy, open up on the corners in our surrounding areas, proclaiming the innovative opportunities they will afford staff and students. While we are attempting to figure out the newest public school funding formula, as layers are added with new accountability measures to interpret, teachers leave public education in droves. In turn, we see staff morale in public education decline and anger towards one another. This has been the vicious cycle of public educators post pandemic. This is exactly the distraction those in favor of privatization are seeking. They have declared war. Their strongest weapon is to create doubt in the hearts of each of us who choose the call of public education.
Winning this war will require a new kind of educational leadership. It will require leaders who are deeply focused on the people who remain called. It will require leaders with vision, voice, and an insatiable passion for reimagining school, alongside the communities they serve. It will require leaders who create margins for staff and students to create and innovate amidst all the distractions, amidst all the temptations to turn on each other, and amidst all the appealing options to run for a refuge from this hopelessness. It will require leaders to courageously step out from behind the fog of compliance and create the new future of public education.
How are we supporting the creation and growth of these kinds of educational leaders?