- GENESIS OF ADMINISTRATION
- ADMINISTRATION AS PR
- SCHOOL BOARDS AND HOW ADMINISTRATORS CONTROL THEM
- DOG AND PONY SHOWS
- TYRANNY OF EXPERTISE
- THREE ROADS TO ADMINISTRATION
- ADMINISTRATOR VS TEACHER COMPETENCE
- THE HEAVY HAND OF GRANDFATHERING
- HOLLOW GOAL SETTING
- HOLLOW LESSON PLANS
- SUPERVISION
- ALL ADMINISTRATORS MUST TEACH
- UNSTATED, INVISIBLE AND UNHOLY ALLIANCE
- ETHICS
- CLASSIFICATION
- FOXES IN THE CHICKEN COOP
Educational administration is the most burdensome weight on American public education, the part of the establishment that stands most in the way of education reform.
The three basic paths to education administration are: 1) promotion of successful athletic coaches; 2) promotion of highly successful classroom teachers; 3) unsuccessful classroom teachers working their way into administration through the required courses in educational administration that will lead to official state certification in administration. And, of course, the old boy network plays a significant role in smoothing those three paths for their favorite buddies.
None of those paths comes close to being an ideal means to choose administrators, but even if any of those paths does sometimes produce a competent administrator, that shouldn’t mask an unspoken reality: administrators in general are less competent to do their assigned job : administering, than teachers are to do theirs: teaching.
This is an inherently unhealthy situation: the less competent -- and more highly paid to boot -- exercising authority over the more competent. Proposals for education reform virtually never recognize, let alone attempt to address, this severe problem.
Attempting education reform without scrapping the prevailing top-down false industrial model of education, with teachers as assembly line workers on a factory floor, supervised by less-than-competent administrators, is fatuous.
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