After tak­ing a short hia­tus from social net­work­ing due to the birth of my daugh­ter (cutie), I return to the school of the future series with a fury. In this post I would like to dis­cuss edu­ca­tional hier­ar­chy in gen­eral and school admin­is­tra­tions in par­tic­u­lar. Some recent events tak­ing place within my PLN have made this sub­ject even more top­i­cal. Recently Beth Still put out an invi­ta­tion for inno­v­a­tive admin­is­tra­tors to apply for an upcom­ing posi­tion at her school. She also asked other blog­gers in her net­work to cross blog her post, max­i­miz­ing expo­sure. In a sim­i­lar cir­cum­stance, Scott McLeod wrote an open let­ter to his school board implor­ing them to think about edu­ca­tional reform as they select new lead­er­ship. I think this is a rev­o­lu­tion in the way admin­is­tra­tors are selected for dis­tricts, and per­haps this will be a way admin­is­tra­tors are selected for schools of the future.

The most impor­tant ques­tion for me is: what are the qual­i­ties we need to see in pro­gres­sive admin­is­tra­tors to insure that edu­ca­tional reform can move for­ward. How much edu­ca­tion or expe­ri­ence does a per­son need to be an effec­tive admin­is­tra­tor in the 21st cen­tury? What per­sonal qual­i­ties do we wish our lead­ers to pos­sess? How can we insure that the great­est tal­ent goes to the most needy schools?

In my expe­ri­ence an admin­is­tra­tor with vision can be trans­for­ma­tive, and a leader with­out vision can be dis­rup­tive so I will begin the dis­cus­sion by answer­ing my own ques­tions. Cur­rently admin­is­tra­tors need to have quite a bit of school­ing to be qual­i­fied in my state, but hav­ing spent time in a class­room is not a pre­req­ui­site. Per­son­ally I wouldn’t mind if the edu­ca­tional require­ments were soft­ened in favor of a min­i­mum years of teach­ing require­ment. I think that school admin­is­tra­tors should be required to spend at least five years teach­ing. Hope­fully this would give some admin­is­tra­tors more per­spec­tive, both in terms of the stu­dents and the teach­ers. Admin­is­tra­tors should be open minded and for­ward think­ing when it comes to new tech­nolo­gies. Admin­is­tra­tors need to con­tin­u­ally chal­lenge the teach­ers in their dis­tricts to reject the sta­tus quo, but they should do so in a way that teach­ers feel safe. Admin­is­tra­tors need to have the courage to fix the prob­lems that exist in their schools, but act with a long-term, delib­er­ate plan that con­tains mea­sur­able goals.

If you were on the com­mit­tee choos­ing your school’s next admin­is­tra­tor, what would be non-negotiable?