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"Our education system is a mess; it is failing us, our children, our future" - a catchphrase I hear at conferences, during dinner and casual conversations.

This refrain takes me back to my school years. I remember sitting in class, listening passively followed by hours of rote learning and note taking. There was no room for creativity, collaboration or critical thinking. I refrained from asking 'silly questions'. And the thought of the stress of exams and grades continues to give me knots in my stomach.

Our education system wasn't much of a problem until now. The system addressed the 19th century industrial revolution needs for labour that could perform simple and repetitive tasks. But that era is long over. Our children must gear up for the 'gig economy'. By the time today's graduates are 38, they would have gone through 10 to maybe 14 jobs. Moreover, 15 years from now, 65% of graduates will be going into jobs that don't yet exist.

Given these trends, lessons taught in classrooms no longer seem relevant for our increasingly tumultuous world. Teachers are wrestling with how to break away from archaic pedagogies and curricula. Students are jumping off the education conveyor belt unequipped for an unforeseen future. Governments are eager to develop knowledge societies but are grappling to find concrete strategies to get there.

So indeed, to many, the plight of education may resemble the current state of our world: chaotic and ambiguous.

On the bright side, this turmoil is paving the way for innovation and creativity in the education world. For innovation stems from necessity and its when the going gets tough, the tough get going: and that is the story of education!

So, if you, like me, dig deeper, you will notice how gritty change-makers are leveraging this state of chaos to develop something new and creative. They are reimagining education to make it relevant, accessible and qualitative. They are providing teachers tools to transform the 19th century classroom into a creative learning space. And they are helping learners develop the skills needed to design future knowledge societies and economies.

BRAC, Escuela Nueva, Ideas Box, Me and My City, Big Picture Learning, Bridge International Academies are just some of the initiatives that are addressing the faults and rifts in education.

For instance, Escuela Nueva, originally from Colombia, is a pretty good incarnation of what innovation in education looks like. Founder Vicky Colbert started these schools in remote valleys of Colombia. The education program looks at what students care about, what is important to them. Learners work on projects and assignments that reflect the real world. Teachers are guides and mentors. Tests are about assessing and not measuring.

Another example is Big Picture Learning in the United States. Here there are no tests, no grades and no traditional classes to sit through and students are succeeding through real-world project-based learning.

Similarly, Ideas Box is changing the way we educate and train displaced people and refugees. The education initiative is turning knowledge into practice through mobile multimedia libraries.

Each of the above projects has its own magic touch yet they have plenty in common. The success of each project proves that it is possible to move from competition to collaboration, from listening to doing and from attending to being.

So, the good news is: change in education is real, it's innovative, scalable and impactful! The bad news is: it remains confined to certain pockets of the world.

Why? Because of our lack of appetite for risk and limited enthusiasm for change.

People around me who hear of these projects are pleasantly astonished. But in less than a few minutes, the surprise reactions turn into skeptic scrutiny.

"Sébastien, these projects are so interesting and 'cute' but our education system is so specific -these models would never work here. You know, it's hard to change the system," they say.

Indeed, it's hard to change the system.

But wait a minute...who shapes this system? Isn't it you, me - us?

I am an education expert, a parent and an educator.

Educators around the world, including myself, are willing and eager to try unconventional pedagogies in the classroom but our efforts would be futile without the support of parents, policymakers and the public.

We will of course face failures but every mistake will only bring us closer to bridging the gaping gap between the education we have and the education we need.

Like Mark Zuckerberg says "The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that is changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."

So, we have a choice.

We can continue complaining about poor education systems and outdated curricula. We can continue blaming teachers for our children's failures. We can continue criticising governments for poor funding and infrastructure.

Or we can take the risk to accept change, experiment and endorse new ideas.

Each night, as I tuck my two sons into bed, I try to visualise their lives ahead. What profession will they choose? Will they work next to robots? Will they specialise in a certain field? And most importantly, how will they lead meaningful lives?

And this is when I realise that a good education is the only tool I can arm them with for an unknown future.

But for that to happen, we, the people, must endorse change to make education great again.

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Education: Change Is Here, But Are You Ready For It?

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We can continue complaining about poor education systems, blaming teachers for our children's failures and criticising governments for poor funding and infrastructure. Or we can take the risk to accept change, experiment and endorse new ideas. What would you do to make education great again?

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Interesting read about authentic leadership

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Image credit: Silver Screen Collection | Getty Images

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

With the election looming and the two most disliked presidential candidates in history vying for the office, I find myself contemplating a topic I used to teach many years ago: Leadership. In the course of the developing that course I did extensive research reading literally dozens of books on the topic. (OK, I read 22 and three of them were pop-up books and another was a coloring book, but still it was a lot of work.) There's no shortage of people who write books on leadership, even though there seems to be a scarcity of real leaders. You don't need a book -- or even this article -- to tell you what constitutes a good leader. Most of you know intuitively what it takes to lead, so let this serve not as a "how to" guide, as much as a reminder of what it takes to be a genuine leader.

I guess I should begin by disclosing one of my most deeply held biases: Business leaders are born, not made. They are forged in the crucible of crisis and honed in the conference rooms of the corporate world. A person who does not have the traits to be a great leader isn't likely to miraculously acquire them, but that's a matter of opinion and fodder for a different article.

Attila.

Dr. Wess Roberts in his 1990 work, Leadership Secrets Of Attila The Hun, identified seven key characteristics. Other authors have waxed on about the leadership styles of everyone from Genghis Khan to Kermit the Frog to Sitting Bull to Charles Manson. (OK, probably not Charles Manson.) While there is anything but consensus on the topic, I'd like to submit the following subset of all the leadership dross that's floating around out there. Let's call mine "Leadership Secrets Phil La Duke Stole From Famous People." (Just kidding, I don't plagiarize.)

When I taught that leadership course, we covered 17 characteristics of effective leaders, and there might be more. But here are my top five favorites, the ones my experience has taught me are most crucial.
Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader
Consistency.

People are more likely to follow someone whose reactions are predictable. I've worked for some great leaders who were feared by one and all, blowing up when subordinates erred, throwing furniture at the walls, and calling underlings everything but a child of God. But those same subordinates worshiped these ogres with the reverence that the acid-addled deserters have for Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

Knowing exactly how your leader will react to your successes and failures allows you to take risks and behave with a minimum of stress. Patton may have slapped a soldier and Woody Hayes roughed up a player, but in both cases the people who followed each would willingly walk through the bowels of hell for him.
Related: Why Leadership Hinges Upon What You Do -- Not Who You Are
Accountability.

Harry Truman had a sign on his office that read: "The buck stops here." It meant, "I am ultimately accountable for anything that happens on my watch." This is a refreshing sentiment at a time when baby boomer leaders belly ache about millennial entitlement, while at the same time blaming any and all their missteps on media misquotes, things being blown out of proportion, or a curse placed on them at birth by an evil troll. How long before we can get back to leaders who say, "I did it. The blame is mine and mine alone"?
Related: Leading By Accountability Is Contagious
Trustworthiness.

A good leader can be trusted. When we feel betrayed because a boss promised a raise or a promotion that didn't happen, we become dispirited and have no motivation to make the sacrifices that same boss needs us to make. We may do what they tell us to do, but we may also engage in malicious obedience.

I once worked for an executive who told me that if I wanted to be promoted, I would have to leave the company. He explained that while I was a valued member of the team I would always remain a "sole contributor." I didn't like the message but I was glad that he was honest with me. It was empowering knowing that no matter how hard I worked I was stuck where I was. It turned out he was wrong. In part because I didn't let his view of the world affect my performance, I ended up being promoted twice before leaving the company for greener pastures. I knew that I could trust him, not just to be fair with me but also to be honest and to tell me the unpleasant truths I needed to hear.

Vision.

When Pancho Villa died, his last words were reputed to be, "It can't end like this, tell them I said...something." The best leaders have a clear and articulate vision for life. We know what they stand for. What's more, a good leader can inspire us to put aside our own wants, needs, and desires in favor of a greater good.

This is why we revere military leaders so much. Generals have to inspire people to die for their visions. Think about that. Our bodies are designed primarily to keep us alive and well, and military leaders need to motivate us to do something that every cell in our central nervous system is telling us not to.

Courage.

To lead is to make unpopular decisions that need to be made without regard to whether people are going to like it. I worked with a CEO who had to cut 400 jobs, a substantial portion of the workforce. I remember someone telling him that the people weren't going to like it. He looked them straight in the eye and said, "I don't like it, but either we do this now or 5,000 people lose their jobs in six months."

We don't follow people because we like them -- hell, I can think of a score of people I like who I wouldn't follow out of a burning building. But there is a handful I would follow even when they seemed at odds with my values. No one follows a leader who is afraid to fail, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to admit mistakes, or afraid to lead.

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5 Leadership Secrets Stolen From Famous People

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6 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. With the election looming and the two most disliked presidential candidates in history vying for the office, I find myself contemplating a topic I used to teach many years ago: Leadership.

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Don't take the PC culture to seriously

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The solution to the problem, according to Ehrenreich, is for both sides to "lighten up." The conservatives should recognize that criticizing the great books of Western civilization is not totalitarian

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This article attempts to explore the presumed distinctive character of educational organizations. This is done by explicating and proposing an integration of four organizational models. The models...

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The Effect of School Administrators' Decision-Making Styles on Teacher Job Satisfaction - ScienceDirect

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This study,conducted using a correlational method, determines the relationship between school administrators'decision-making styles andteachers' job satisfaction levels. In total, 483 teachers and 167 administrators from primary schools in Sakarya Province, Turkey,were surveyed. The short form Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and Decision-Making Styles Questionnaire were used.

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Systematic review of research on educational leadership and management in Latin America, 1991-2017 - Felipe Aravena Castillo, Philip Hallinger, 2018

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The purpose of this systematic review was to further our understanding of educational leadership and management (EDLM) knowledge production in Latin America. We...

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Diverse families

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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As we welcome students into our classrooms each year, we are reminded of the important role families play in our students' education. We listen as administrators discuss the importance of community and parental involvement. We attend workshops that share strategies for engaging families and absorbing the rich culture our students bring into our classrooms.

But, how much of our involvement with families is lip service and how much is our honest attempt to cultivate connections?

It is well-documented that strong home-school connections are essential for the academic success of all learners, yet many of us struggle to engage families, especially linguistically and culturally diverse families. In light of the achievement gap that disproportionately affects this population, improving home-school connections should be at the forefront of every teacher's mind.

Getting to Know Them

Our work should begin by finding ways to learn about and from the families of our students and communities in which we teach.

We need a strengths perspective. As Lisa Delpit suggests in her book, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, we must learn to see and appreciate what our students' families and communities do know and do bring with them rather than focusing on what we perceive they don't know or don't have.

To see their strengths, we should first reflect on the way in which our own culture and background affect how we interpret the experiences and stories our students and their families bring. To inventory our own attitudes, we can create checklists to determine our biases, take privilege walks to recognize subtle inequities that may shape our families' experiences, keep reflective journals, and participate in ongoing discussions with others who can challenge our assumptions and push us to see differently.

Then we can begin to learn about and from our families and communities. Several strategies can give us access to their unique knowledge and perspectives and open our minds to the assets of their cultures, experiences, and languages.

Begin the year with a take-home questionnaire that includes such items as, "What are your goals and expectations for the year?" "What is some background information you would like for us to know about you and your child?" "What are some concerns you may have?" "Where is your family from/where have you lived?" Sometimes these questionnaires are sent home, but they can be done virtually or during face-to-face conversations and conferences.

Get to know families through back-to-school night community-building activities. These activities, such as reenacting a sample morning meeting with parents/guardians, using icebreakers, or encouraging open conversations about questions, concerns, and perspectives, are ways to encourage families to share and get to know one another.

Integrate families and community members into the curriculum. We might invite family and community members into the classroom to teach students about their cultures, knowledge, or skills. Many teachers use the "interview a family member" activity as part of curricular connections; others create curriculum units around the family, such as collecting folktales, writing memoirs, or exploring history from the perspectives of adults who lived during the historical period being studied.

Through this work, we learn and grow as teachers and our families and community members feel appreciated for their strengths. These efforts can change attitudes and improve the comfort levels of parents and guardians as we continue to engage them in the classroom.

Classroom Communication Strategies

Families of English Language Learners (ELLs) and students of color often face cultural, linguistic, and other barriers as they try to become involved in their children's education. Becoming familiar with our students' families, establishing communication, varying communication techniques, and gaining a cultural orientation are all important communication strategies.

Establishing Communication. Once we become familiar with the diversity reflected within our students and families, it's time to work on developing a strategy for communicating with them.

First, promoting welcoming and engaging environments for diverse families is critical to establishing successful communication. When we make an effort to reach out to families in daily interactions, we are doing more than participating in small talk-we are establishing trust. When we encourage two-way communication, we demonstrate our concern and value for their input.

Varying Communication Techniques. The next step to effective home-school communication with linguistically and culturally diverse families is to vary our communication techniques. We must communicate information to parents and guardians in culturally and linguistically responsive ways.

We ask families about their preferred language and method of communication and communicate with them in that way. Even if we do not speak the home language, we can locate someone in the school or community who is willing to help translate.

Although many families prefer online communication in this world of technology, we cannot assume all families have regular access to the Internet. Home visits, informal conversations at drop-off and pick-up time, phone conferences, newsletters, and bulletin boards are other means of communication.

Designing Parent Education Events. Another powerful communication strategy is to develop an action plan for educating linguistically and culturally diverse families about the ways they can support their child's academic achievement and provide them with information about school resources, routines, and expectations. Translators should be available in the languages represented in the school community.

During orientation events, we can suggest ways parents and guardians can acquire skills and knowledge necessary to participate in their children's educational process, including strategies for navigating the U.S. school system, tips for promoting their child's academic progress, school resources (access to libraries and labs), parent-teacher conferences, standardized testing, and the benefits of reading at home.

Forming a Philosophy of Practice. Finally, we want to find ways to infuse this practice into our personal philosophy. We want to reflect on our efforts to incorporate families into our classroom. Do we take into account cultural factors when crafting our lessons? What do our classroom materials and décor say about the representation of diversity? Are we incorporating our students' families and community within our assessments?

As we consider the way in which our classroom reflects the culture that surrounds us, we must consider our own cultural identity. How is our personal identity influencing our interpretation of diversity? In what ways is our own lens filtering our interpretations? What assumptions do we need to question?

Once we've taken an honest look at our practice, it's time to shape our philosophy. We want to start at the interpersonal level by making necessary adjustments for the cultural and linguistic diversity of our students. Considering our approach to holidays, classroom directives, and similar, often taken-for-granted instructional techniques, can go a long way to shaping our philosophy of practice.

In addition, we want to foster a sense of community within our classroom. We want to teach our students to value their culture and the diversity of others in daily classroom activities and dialogue.

Finally, we want to move beyond a mentality that views diversity only through holidays, language, and heroes. If we want to implement multicultural/anti-bias education into our philosophy, we must make it a daily practice to weave our students' cultures throughout our lessons.

Our classrooms are is filled with rich diversity. It's important to cherish this diversity and allow students and families to see the value they bring to our daily interactions.

Brooke Eisenbach is assistant professor of middle and secondary education at Lesley University.
beisenba@lesley.edu

Summer Clark is assistant professor of elementary literacy education at Lesley University.
clarksum@lesley.edu

Amy Gooden is assistant professor of TESOL and bilingual education at Lesley University.
agooden3@lesley.edu Published inAMLE Magazine, September 2016.

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Cultivating Connections with Diverse Families

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As we welcome students into our classrooms each year, we are reminded of the important role families play in our students' education. We listen as administrators discuss the importance of community and parental involvement.

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Theories of Leadership

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It is widely believed that a good principal is the key to a successful school. No Child Left Behind encouraged the replacement of the principal in persistently low-performing schools, and the Obama administration has made this a requirement for schools undergoing federally funded turnarounds. Foundations have invested millions over the past decade in New Leaders for New Schools, an organization that recruits nontraditional principal candidates and prepares them for the challenges of school leadership. And the recently launched George W. Bush Institute is making the principalship a focus of its activities. Yet until very recently there was little rigorous research demonstrating the importance of principal quality for student outcomes, much less the specific practices that cause some principals to be more successful than others. As is often the case in education policy discussions, we have relied on anecdotes instead.

This study provides new evidence on the importance of school leadership by estimating individual principals' contributions to growth in student achievement. Our approach is quite similar to studies that measure teachers' "value added" to student achievement, except that the calculation is applied to the entire school. Specifically, we measure how average gains in achievement, adjusted for individual student and school characteristics, differ across principals-both in different schools and in the same school at different points in time. From this, we are able to determine how much effectiveness varies from one principal to the next.

Our results indicate that highly effective principals raise the achievement of a typical student in their schools by between two and seven months of learning in a single school year; ineffective principals lower achievement by the same amount. These impacts are somewhat smaller than those associated with having a highly effective teacher. But teachers have a direct impact on only those students in their classroom; differences in principal quality affect all students in a given school. We also investigate one widely discussed mechanism through which principals affect student achievement: the management of teacher transitions. Importantly, because high teacher turnover can be associated with both improvement and decline in the quality of instruction, the amount of turnover on its own provides little insight into the wisdom of a principal's personnel decisions. We confirm, however, that teachers who leave schools with the most-successful principals are much more likely to have been among the less-effective teachers in their school than teachers leaving schools run by less-successful principals. The final component of our analysis considers the dynamics of the principal labor market, comparing the effectiveness of principals who move on to those who stay in their initial schools. Constrained by salary inertia and the historical absence of good performance measures, the principal labor market does not appear to weed out those principals who are least successful in raising student achievement. This is especially true in schools serving disadvantaged students. This is troubling, as the demands of leading such schools, including the need to attract and retain high-quality teachers despite less desirable working conditions, may amplify the importance of having an effective leader.
The Texas Database
Our analysis relies on administrative data constructed as part of the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Texas Schools Project. Working with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), this project has combined different data sources to create matched data sets of students, teachers, and principals over many school years. The data include all Texas publicschool teachers, administrators, staff, and students in each year, permitting accurate descriptions of the schools led by each principal.

The Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS), TEA's statewide database, reports key demographic data, including race, ethnicity, and gender for students and school personnel, as well as student eligibility for subsidized lunch (a standard indicator of poverty). PEIMS also contains detailed annual information on teacher and administrator experience, salary, education, class size, grade, population served, and subject. Importantly, this database can be merged with information on student achievement by school, grade, and year. Beginning in 1993, Texas schools have administered the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) each spring to eligible students in grades 3 through 8. Our analysis therefore focuses on principals in elementary and middle schools, for whom it is possible to develop performance measures.

The personnel data combine time as a teacher and as an administrator into total experience, so it is not possible to measure tenure as a principal accurately for those who became a principal prior to the initial year of our data (the 1990-91 school year). We therefore concentrate on the years from 1995 to 2001. Over this period, we are able to observe 7,420 individual principals and make use of 28,147 annual principal observations.
Measuring Principal Quality
The fundamental challenge to measuring the impact of school leaders is separating their contributions from the many other factors that drive student achievement. For example, a school that serves largely affluent families may create the illusion that it has a great principal, when family backgrounds are the key cause of high achievement. Alternatively, a school that serves disadvantaged students may appear to be doing poorly but in fact have a great principal who is producing better outcomes than any other principal would.

Our basic value-added model measures the effectiveness of a principal by examining the extent to which math achievement in a school is higher or lower than would be expected based on the characteristics of students in that school, including their achievement in the prior year. Put another way, it examines whether some schools have higher achievement than other schools that serve similar students and attributes that achievement difference to the principal. This approach is very similar to that employed in studies that measure teacher quality using databases tracking the performance of individual students over time.

The main concern with this approach is that there may be unmeasured factors that affect school performance. Our data contain only basic information on student background characteristics, such as gender, race or ethnicity, and eligibility for subsidized lunch. As a result, we cannot control for more nuanced measures of students and their families, such as motivation or wealth. We are, however, able to control for students' test scores from the previous year, which may well capture a lot of the characteristics that we cannot measure directly. Moreover, there are also school factors not under the direct control of the school, including the quality of teachers inherited by the principal. Below we describe alternative approaches to isolating the contributions of the current principal.

In estimating principal effectiveness, we want to minimize the influence of specific circumstances and look at the underlying stable differences in impacts. This issue is important because a principal's impact may vary with tenure in a school. A principal's impact on the quality of the teaching staff (whether negative or positive), for example, probably increases over time as the share of teachers who were hired on her watch rises. To account for any differences in effectiveness that are related to tenure as a principal in a given school, we begin our analysis by focusing on data from the first three years a principal leads a school.

This first analysis indicates that the standard deviation of principal effectiveness is 0.21 standard deviations of test scores (see Table 1). This is a very large figure, perhaps unbelievably large, implying that a principal at the 75th percentile of this effectiveness measure shows average achievement gains of 0.11 standard deviations (relative to the average principal), while one at the 25th percentile shows average losses of 0.15 standard deviations. These differences are even more pronounced in high-poverty schools, for which the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile principal is more than one-third of a standard deviation. On average across all schools, the impact of having a principal 1 standard deviation more effective than the average principal is as much as seven additional months of learning in a single academic year.

As noted above, this initial estimate of the variability in principal effectiveness may partly reflect differences in school characteristics that are not under the principal's control, such as the quality of the school building, or decisions made by district administrators as well as unmeasured parental influences. As a result, it may overestimate the amount of influence principals actually have.

We begin to address this issue by measuring principal effectiveness based only on comparisons of within-school differences in student achievement growth over time. In simplest terms, we compare average student achievement gains in the same school under different principals. This method eliminates the influence of any student, school, or neighborhood characteristics that do not change over time. Its main drawback is that it ignores all differences in principal effectiveness between schools, potentially underestimating the amount of variation in principal quality. For example, if each school tends to attract principals who are similar in quality whenever it searches for a new principal, this approach will understate the true extent of variation in principal effectiveness.

We conduct this second analysis using all of the principals in our data, not just those in their first three years leading a school, because the numbers of schools with two principals observed in their first three years is quite small. (Note that re-doing the prior analysis using data on all principals does not significantly alter the results presented above.) Restricting the analysis to comparisons within schools, however, cuts our estimate of the variation in principal effectiveness in half. Even this reduced estimate is substantial, however, indicating that a 1-standard-deviation increase in principal effectiveness raises school average achievement by slightly more than 0.10 standard deviations. This impact is roughly comparable to that observed for variations in teacher effectiveness in studies that use the same kinds of within-school comparisons.

Our first two methods involved estimating effectiveness measures for individual principals and then calculating the standard deviation of those measures. Although any unmeasured school factors that are unrelated to principal quality would not bias these results, such factors would inflate our estimates of the variation in principal quality based on these approaches. We therefore employ a third approach that gauges the amount of variation in principal effectiveness directly by measuring the additional fluctuation in school average achievement gains when a new principal assumes leadership, as compared to typical fluctuations from year to year.

Focusing on the additional variation in school average achievement gains around principal transitions reduces the magnitude of the estimates. Nonetheless, the results remain educationally significant: a 1-standard-deviation increase in principal quality translates into roughly 0.05 standard deviations in average student achievement gains, or nearly quality between schools and again ignores any tendency for a given school to attract principals of similar quality over time, suggesting that it likely understates principals' actual impact.
Teacher Turnover
The results presented so far rely on indirect measures of principal impact, namely, student learning gains during a principal's tenure in a school. The data do not include any observations about what a principal actually does, or fails to do, to improve learning. We now turn to an analysis of the interactions of principals with teaching staff, which bears directly on a number of current policy debates.

A primary channel through which principals can be expected to improve the quality of education is by raising the quality of teachers, either by improving the instruction provided by existing teachers or through teacher transitions that improve the caliber of the school's workforce. Teacher turnover per se has received considerable policy attention, largely because of the well-documented difficulties that new teachers experience. The potential benefits of reducing turnover nonetheless hinge on the effectiveness of both entering and exiting teachers.

We expect highly rated principals to be more successful both at retaining effective teachers and at moving out less-effective ones. Less highly rated principals may be less successful in raising the quality of their teaching staffs, either because they are less skilled in evaluating teacher quality, place less emphasis on teacher effectiveness in personnel decisions, or are less successful in creating an environment that attracts and retains better teachers. Although better principals may also attract and hire more-effective teachers, the absence of reliable quality measures for new teachers and the fact that many principals have little control over new hires lead us to focus specifically on turnover.

Unfortunately, our data do not contain direct information on personnel decisions that would enable us to separate voluntary and involuntary transitions, and existing evidence suggests that teachers rather than principals initiate the majority of transitions. In addition, the Texas data do not match students to individual teachers, meaning that we must draw inferences about teacher effectiveness from average information across an entire grade.

With detailed information on teacher effectiveness and transitions, we could investigate whether better principals are more likely to dismiss the least-effective teachers and reduce the likelihood that the more-effective teachers depart voluntarily. In the absence of such information, however, we focus on the relationship within schools between the share of teachers that exits each grade and the average value-added to student achievement in the grade. We examine how this varies with our measures of principal quality based on student achievement gains. For example, in a school where 5th-grade students learn more than 4th-grade students, we would expect a good principal to make more changes to the 4th-grade teaching staff.

The results of this analysis confirm that the relationship between higher teacher turnover and lower average valueadded in a given grade is stronger as principal quality rises. This pattern of results is consistent with the theory that management of teacher quality is an important pathway through which principals affect school quality. The fact that less-effective teachers are more likely to leave schools run by highly effective principals also validates our measure of principal quality. If our measure was just capturing random noise in the data rather than information about true principal quality, we would not expect it to be related to teacher quality and turnover.
Principal Transitions and Quality
Along with teacher turnover, instability of leadership is often cited as an impediment to improving high-poverty and low-performing schools. Consistent with these concerns, we find that Texas schools with a high proportion of low-income students are more likely to have first-year principals and less likely to have principals who have been at the school at least six years than those serving a less-disadvantaged population. Sorting schools by initial achievement rather than poverty level produces even larger differences (see Figure 1). The proportion of principals in their first year leading a school is roughly 40 percent higher in schools in the bottom quartile of average prior achievement than in schools in the top quartile; the proportion of principals that have been at their current school at least six years is roughly 50 percent higher in schools with higherachieving students.

Yet the import of leadership turnover also depends on whether highor low-quality personnel are leaving, something prior research has been unable to address. We therefore examine whether the likelihood that a principal leaves following the third year in a school varies with her effectiveness and with the share of low-income students in the school. We observe principals making a variety of career decisions: remaining in the same school as principal, becoming a principal at another school in the same district, becoming a principal in another district, moving into a central office position, or exiting the public schools entirely. We divide principals into four equal-sized groups based on estimates of their effectiveness using the first of the three methods described above. We also limit the data to include only principals with fewer than 25 years of total experience in order to minimize complications introduced by the decision to retire.

Our results confirm that the least-effective principals are least likely to remain in their current position and most likely to leave the public schools entirely. With the exception of the schools with the lowest poverty level, however, there is not a consistent relationship between the likelihood of remaining on as principal and principal quality (see Figure 2). In high-poverty schools, for example, principals in the middle two quartiles of effectiveness are substantially more likely to remain than those in the bottom quarter. The most effective principals are more likely to remain in the same position than those in the bottom quartile, but are considerably more likely to move on than those in the middle of the quality distribution.

Another result emerging from this analysis that is troubling from a policy perspective is the frequency with which low-performing principals move to principal positions at other schools. This trend is particularly striking in high-poverty schools, where more than 12 percent of poor performers annually make such a move. In contrast, less than 7 percent of the poorest performers in more-affluent schools become principals at other schools. This may reflect the fact that it is challenging in high-poverty schools to separate the effects of school circumstances from the quality of the principal, leading district administrators to give principals from high-poverty schools a chance at a different school.

The simple conclusion, nonetheless, is that the operation of the principal labor market does not appear to screen out the least-effective principals. Instead, they frequently move to different schools, perhaps reflecting the bargain necessary to move out an ineffective leader in a public-sector organization. Potentially, this is where the superintendent enters the picture. Making good decisions on the retention and assignment of principals may be among the distinguishing characteristics of successful superintendents, a possibility that warrants additional study.
Conclusions
The role of principals in fostering student learning is an important facet of education policy discussions. Strong leadership is viewed as especially important for revitalization of failing schools. To date, however, this discussion has been largely uninformed by systematic analysis of principals' impact on student outcomes.

Determining the impact of principals on learning is a particularly difficult analytical problem. Nevertheless, even the most conservative of our three methodological approaches suggests substantial variation in principal effectiveness: a principal in the top 16 percent of the quality distribution will produce annual student gains that are 0.05 standard deviations higher than an average principal for all students in their school.

There are many channels through which principals influence school quality, although the precise mechanisms likely vary across districts with the regulatory and institutional structures that define principal authority. Because all principals participate in personnel decisions, we have focused on the composition of teacher turnover. For the best principals, the rate of teacher turnover is highest in grades in which teachers are least effective, supporting the belief that improvement in teacher effectiveness provides an important channel through which principals can raise the quality of education.

Finally, patterns of principal transitions indicate that it is the least and most effective who tend to leave schools, suggesting some combination of push and pull factors. This pattern is particularly pronounced in high-poverty schools. It is also worrisome that a substantial share of the ineffective principals in high-poverty schools takes principal positions in other schools and districts. Clearly, much more needs to be learned about the dynamics of the principal labor market. For student outcomes, greater emphasis on the selection and retention of high-quality principals would appear to have a very high payoff.
Gregory F. Branch is program manager at the University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center. Eric A. Hanushek is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. Steven G. Rivkin is professor of economics at University of Illinois at Chicago.

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It is widely believed that a good principal is the key to a successful school. No Child Left Behind encouraged the replacement of the principal in persistently low-performing schools, and the Obama administration has made this a requirement for schools undergoing federally funded turnarounds.

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A teacher's open letter to parents, asking them to stop their "bizarrely lenient attitude toward disciplining children" is going viral.

Erin Axson is a middle school reading and writing teacher in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In her open letter posted to her Facebook page, Axson said she knows not all parents will agree with her, but said she felt the need to say something after finishing the school year feeling "exhausted."

This is the note she shared to Facebook:

"Dear Parents,

I rarely go off on social media tangents. It's not my style. But this has been laid on my heart and the good Lord won't let me rest until I've put it out there. But, this is LONG, so swipe to the next section of your news feed if I annoy you.

Not all of you are going to agree with what I've written. Some of you will be downright mad after you read it. As with anything, this doesn't apply to every parent out there. I do have those of you that support me and work with me - you know who you are and you know how immensely grateful I am for you.

As this school year came to an end, I started some research about the current state of our school system. This all started as I stared at myself in the mirror one morning, wondering if I should look and feel THIS exhausted. I am a mother of three, we are a farming family, and I am a middle school teacher. Most would say that right there is a sure-fire recipe for exhaustion. But this goes deeper than simply being tired. This school year has left me feeling depleted, defeated, and unsure of my place in my little corner of the world. Rather than throw in the towel, I thought I'd do some digging and try to get to the bottom of my feelings. I was surprised by my findings, and what initially provided me some twisted form of comfort - knowing I wasn't the only teacher feeling this way quickly turned into fear for our society's future.

Lately, it seems that many parents have adopted a bizarrely lenient attitude toward disciplining children as well as bending over backwards to accommodate their children's every demand. It's unclear what's causing these parents to believe that children should be subject to no limits, no discipline, and no stringent requirements at school. Whatever the cause, these parents are, in fact, doing a terrible disservice to today's young people and to society as a whole. And, they are leaving their children's teachers feeling frustrated, ill-supported, and utterly exhausted.

The rate at which good teachers are exiting the school system is sky rocketing, and if things continue at this pace, no one will be willing to go into teaching at all. The average new teacher these days is lasting a whopping 4 years before calling it quits. Those seasoned teachers that have witnessed this strange, cultural shift firsthand are dropping like flies, realizing they don't have the energy to fight this uphill battle. But, perhaps the saddest thing is that these schools are turning out children who are ill-suited to being constructive, productive members of our society.

Childhood is a phase of intense physical, emotional, and psychological development. Children need to learn what behavior is appropriate in our society, and how to get along with their peers and the adults in their lives. They need to learn how to play by the rules, as opposed to being taught that it's acceptable to break the rules or simply ignore the rules altogether, fostering a serious sense of entitlement among our youth.

Kids need to learn essential values such as empathy, responsibility, hard work and self-discipline. They must be taught conscientiousness, resilience and integrity. When parents refuse to set limits, give kids consequences, or have appropriate expectations of academic and social performance, students are deprived of the skills and attitudes necessary for their future success. We are essentially robbing them of the greatest gift we can give them.

If there's one thing we can all agree on - we mommas do love our babies. Unfortunately, someone - somewhere - at some point in time - planted a seed of doubt in our minds, telling us if we set limitations for our children, then we don't love them. Oh how I would love to come face to face with this person in a dark alley.

If you think spoiling makes for happier kids, you haven't done your research because the statistics I found completely contradict this. A recent article I read pointed to research which shows that the rate of depression, anxiety, and drug addiction in high-school and college students has exploded in the past five years, and many are saying that over-protective parenting and overly lenient school environments are a large part of what's to blame for this. Turns out, despite all the eye rolling, these kiddos really do feel safe, loved, and worthy when we show them who's in charge.

Ok, so that was a lot.

Ready for the good news?

I know I am.

This isn't rocket science. You don't have to earn some fancy degree to understand it. We, if we band together, can clean up the mess we've made. These are simple ways we can fix this as well as a bunch of personal promises I will make to you as your child's teacher.

1. For starters, your kid is capable of doing and saying things that will shock the living daylights out of you. We work with these kids every day and see your child in a different light than you do. If we come to you with a problem or write your child up for disrespectful behavior, don't automatically fight it. Take a moment to digest it. We don't have it out for your child. We don't hate your kid. We don't get a weird thrill out of writing detentions. We want what you want - for them to rise to the occasion and be the best version of themselves they can be. But, they aren't born with the tendency to do this. We must guide them, direct them, and model this for them.

Please know that I am right there in the life raft with you. I have a rising 7th grader, 4th grader, and kindergartner. Most nights end with me lying in bed praying for God to help me do it better tomorrow. My three babies are so perfectly imperfect. When my 9 year old's (AKA the least likely member of our family to be accused of people pleasing) teacher emails me to let me know that he has lost his recess due to inability to sit still and keep his hands off his classmates, I resist the innate urge to 1) crawl under my desk and hide, 2) jump to his defense (he's a little boy who'd rather be outdoors!), and 3) ignore the problem that he's obviously causing in her classroom. Will he have his side of the story? Yes. Will I hear him out? Yes. Will it change the fact that an adult took time out of her busy day to email me because my child upset the flow of her teaching day? No. Punishing him at home for disrespecting authority at school is difficult. It's tiring, takes a lot of effort, requires a tremendous amount of patience, and is just plain inconvenient. But, the fact is: his teacher needs me to follow through, just as I need her to educate my boy. She and I have to work together to drive this bus, otherwise the wheels fall off and we all end up in the ditch.

2. Trust me. When I write a child up or tell parents that their child has been a behavior problem, I can almost see the hairs rise on the back of their necks. They tense up and are ready to fight, defend their child...and let me tell you - it is exhausting. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I tell a mom something her kid did and she turns, looks at him and asks, "Is that true?" Well, of course it's true. I just told you.

We (women) tend to tear each other down. I see a heavy gravitation toward this with my middle school girls. They can be mean, hateful, and downright cruel. Unfortunately, some of us never moved on from Mean Girl University - in fact some of us are still regular attendees hoping to graduate magna cum laud. We don't lift each other up and support one another. We jump at opportunities to attack each other, albeit much more behind the scenes in adulthood - it's an attack nonetheless. And, let's be honest, it hurt when we were teenagers, and it's hurtful now. It's no wonder when I come to you with something your child has done wrong at school; your defenses immediately go up. Somehow it has turned into me pointing the finger at you, whispering behind your back that you are a bad mom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your child's bad choice isn't a direct reflection on you as a person. The way you choose to handle it - IS. Every kid will mess up. Every kid will disappoint us at times. Every kid needs a slew of adults to be invested in them, care about them. This isn't supposed to be a competition among us as women. I want to be part of your village - goodness knows, I need my children's teachers to be part of mine.

3. For the love of Pete, please quit with all the excuses. If you really want to help your children be successful, stop making excuses for them. Last summer, I was at the pool chatting with a parent and her son about his summer reading assignments. He told me flat out, with no shame, that he hadn't even started, and I let him know I was disappointed because school started in two weeks. His mother chimed in quickly and told me that it had been a difficult summer for them and that she was allowing him some "important fun time" because it was summer. Wow. Some parents will make excuses regardless of the situation. Unfortunately, they are raising children who will grow into adults who turn toward excuses, unable to exhibit a strong work ethic. If you don't want your child to end up 30, jobless, sitting on your couch, eating Lucky Charms and playing Fortnite, then stop making excuses for why they aren't succeeding and demand more from them. God has trusted you with this child. You owe them that gift.

4. Parents, let's be partners. It's OK for your child to get in trouble sometimes. It builds character and teaches life lessons. As teachers, we are confused by parents who stand in the way of those lessons; we call them helicopter parents because they hover over us, waiting for the opportunity to dive in and save their child every time something goes wrong. If we give a child a 79 on a project, then that is what the child deserves. Don't set up a time to meet with me to negotiate an 80. Each time you do this, you are slowly chipping away at our ever so important parent/teacher relationship. Let them fall down. Let them hurt a little. And, I can assure you, they will want to do better next time.

5. This one may be hard to accept, but you shouldn't assume that because your child makes straight A's they are getting a good education. The truth is, a lot of times it's the ineffective teachers who give the easiest grades, because they know by giving good grades, everyone will leave them alone. I honestly can't blame them. They aren't verbally attacked on the cereal aisle at the grocery store (true story). They don't avoid social media because of rants ending with hashtags that are...well, just plain mean ( ). Parents will say, "My child has a great teacher! He made all A's this year!" Come on now. Seriously? In all honesty, it's usually the best teachers who are giving the lowest grades, because they are raising expectations. Yet, when your child receives low grades, you complain to the headmaster, not only exhausting our school administration, but leaving your kids' teachers feeling like they have no value. Please, take a step back and get a good look at the landscape. Before you challenge those low grades you feel the teacher has "given" your child...you might stop to realize your child "earned" those grades and that the teacher you are complaining about is actually the one that is providing the best education.

6. Teachers walk on a sea of eggshells. The sad reality is - a great number of administrators and teachers these days have hands that are completely tied. In many ways, we live in fear of what will happen next. We walk on eggshells in a watered-down education system where teachers lack the courage to correct or re-direct a child without fear of being summoned to the office to explain ourselves. Administration is overwhelmed trying to please parents (b/c we are paying a pretty penny for education), taking vitally important time away from running our school. It's a cycle that, if not broken, will have truly devastating effects.

7. Last but most certainly not least...I KNOW you love your children. I love them too. These kids get into my heart in a way I can't explain to you. I just ask - beg of you - to trust me, support me, and work with me, not against me. I need you to have my back. I need you to give me the respect I deserve. Please don't badmouth me in front of your kid. Please don't passively aggressively attack me on social media. Lift me up and make me feel appreciated. I promise every chance I get, I am lifting you up in my classroom. I promise I appreciate the hard work you are doing at home. I promise I am not the enemy. I promise I am on your side. I promise I am cheering your kid on with the loudest momma voice you can imagine. I promise in the end, you and I want the exact same thing. And finally, I promise - if you will let me -to give your child the best education humanly possible.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Erin Axson"

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Stop 'bizarrely lenient attitude toward disciplining children' - Teacher's open letter strikes a nerve

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A teacher's open letter to parents, asking them to stop their "bizarrely lenient attitude toward disciplining children" is going viral. Erin Axson is a middle school reading and writing teacher in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

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Silent tragedy

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No, "increased diagnostics alone" is not the answer!

No, "they all are just born like this" is not the answer!

No, "it is all the school system's fault" is not the answer!

Yes, as painful as it can be to admit, in many cases, WE, parents, are the answer to many of our kids' struggles!

It is scientifically proven that the brain has the capacity to rewire itself through the environment. Unfortunately, with the environment and parenting styles that we are providing to our children, we are rewiring their brains in a wrong direction and contributing to their challenges in everyday life.

Yes, there are and always have been children who are born with disabilities and despite their parents' best efforts to provide them with a well-balanced environment and parenting, their children continue to struggle. These are NOT the children I am talking about here.

I am talking about many others whose challenges are greatly shaped by the environmental factors that parents, with their greatest intentions, provide to their children. As I have seen in my practice, the moment parents change their perspective on parenting, these children change.

What is wrong?

Today's children are being deprived of the fundamentals of a healthy childhood, such as:

Emotionally available parents

Clearly defined limits and guidance

Responsibilities

Balanced nutrition and adequate sleep

Movement and outdoors

Creative play, social interaction, opportunities for unstructured times and boredom

Instead, children are being served with:

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The Silent Tragedy Affecting Today's Children

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There is a silent tragedy developing right now, in our homes, and it concerns our most precious jewels - our children. Through my work with hundreds of children and families as an occupational therapist, I have witnessed this tragedy unfolding right in front of my eyes.