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Expertise about how best to address the challenges schools face does not reside solely in the central office. Columnist Joshua P. Starr discusses how district leaders should rethink their roles to ensure that they are focused on the work that only they can do. Some tasks will be better suited to leaders at the school level, and sometimes expertise is available outside schools.

Despite significant societal changes, the high school experience hasn’t changed much in recent decades. Joshua P. Starr reflects on his own high school experiences and that of his son and considers how schools might change their focus away from requiring students to learn specific facts and toward having them develop skills as they engage in rich content that interests them and their teachers.

Events of recent years have led many students and parents alike to question why schools work the way that they do. Students have asked why they should have to come to class when they can do the work at home. Community members have questioned why students are having to learn about contentious issues. While not all of questions are equally valid, education leaders have a responsibility to provide some kind of answer. Joshua P. Starr suggests that the answer comes down to ensuring that the value proposition for schools is clear. And in this new era, the development of community may be among the most important value propositions for public schools.

Teresa Lance came to her position as assistant superintendent for equity and innovation in School District U-46 in Elgin, Illinois, after leaving a superintendency where community leaders were unwilling to change the status quo. Joshua P. Starr describes how Lance’s previous experiences led to her current role and what she learned along the way.

It’s not always easy to balance high expectations with the need to make exceptions when students are struggling. The pandemic has made educators and the public more aware of how social-emotional needs can affect students’ ability to learn, but students still need to meet some academic standards. Joshua Starr suggests that knowing students personally and using data to understand students’ stories can help educators attend to student needs in ways that also support their academic development.

The work of a school leader can be compared to that of an architect, who must bring a team together to create something original on a solid foundation. Aaron Spence, superintendent of Virginia Beach City Public Schools, came to the district nine years ago, ready to serve the district where he’d grown up. His previous experiences in school leadership had given him a vision for equity-based transformation, but the district had a more immediate need — getting all schools accredited. Joshua P. Starr explains how focusing on this urgent need enabled him to build relationships that helped him when it was time to turn to more transformative goals. This initial work proved to be the foundation on which the new work could rest.

Soon after Xavier Botana took over as superintendent of Maine’s Portland Public Schools, he realized that, despite the district’s professed commitment, efforts to promote equity were embedded in other programs rather than being its own goal. He knew that if he were going to make his vision for equity a reality, he would need to get the community’s commitment to the effort. Joshua Starr discusses why community engagement is essential to the success of equity initiatives and describes how leaders like Botana can build a team of supporters within the school district and across the wider community.

As new school leaders take over the district’s top jobs this fall, they and their communities face transitions. Joshua P. Starr explains that too many leaders focus on entry and fail to engage in a thoughtful and comprehensive transition process. Transition isn’t just about change; it’s also about loss. Organizational transition is about how people respond to these changed circumstances. Even if people are ready and eager to embrace the new beginning, they still lose their old way of doing business. For those who resist the new or are just unsure of what it means for them, their sense of loss can manifest in active opposition to a leader’s new ideas. A good transition process involves the creation of a transition team with committees made up of administrators, teachers, parents, students, and community members, who will be more likely to support plans that come from their work.

Across the country, many school districts are now creating new staff positions with titles like Chief Equity Officer and Director of Equity and Diversity, notes PDK’s CEO Joshua Starr. That’s a positive step, suggesting a new level of commitment to meeting the needs of all students. However, serving as a school system’s equity leader can be difficult and lonely work, and it’s important that superintendents define the job, and its scope of responsibilities, in ways that allow people to succeed in the role.

Tools for monitoring student performance often cause parents, teachers, and students to focus on whether students are completing academic tasks up to a certain standards. But Joshua Starr wonders if they put too much emphasis on the product of learning and not enough on the process of learning. He encourages educators to pay more attention to students’ experiences of learning.