New school leaders must create a system where ethical behavior is the norm.
By Edward L. Queen
he cheating scandal that has engulfed Atlanta Public Schools ought to call the entire community, including our governmental leaders, into a process of reflection on and engagement with the public school system. The guilty must be identified and punished as appropriate — the gravity of these violations is too great. Punishment cannot and must not be the end of it. There is much that we as a public and a society need to learn from this scandal and actions that we need to undertake individually and collectively.
First, there must be a careful review of the administrative and managerial policies that led to such widespread corruption. Any response to this scandal has to move beyond punishing those who are guilty. It must focus on changing that culture. This transformation will require ongoing, meaningful and committed attention to the ethical environment within and throughout APS.
The acting superintendent, Erroll Davis, has made a good first start on this with his call for greater and more intensive ethics education. Education alone, however, is insufficient. What was needed, and must be created, is a culture at APS that constantly emphasizes and reinforces the ethical norms and which encourages and supports those who report unethical behavior. Senior administrators must take the lead on this and must constantly communicate and manifest their commitment to ethics in both word and deed.
Second, we have to ask what drove people to such actions. Clearly there were internal pressures on individuals to engage in cheating, but there were external pressures as well. Attacks on public education have created an environment where some individuals may feel driven to act inappropriately in order to protect themselves and their jobs and indeed, even the system itself. In such an environment, evaluation turns into an occasion for judgment and punishment instead of for correction and formation.
Politicizing education has resulted in the unwitting embrace of perverse incentives. The awarding of teacher bonuses based on increases in scores has tempted educators — just as such bonuses did with Wall Street managers and the mortgage industry — to manipulate the numbers, to cut corners, to lie and to cheat.
Rather than use this scandal as an opportunity for scoring political points, it ought to occasion a serious, committed and united attempt to improve public education. The governor should convene a state commission to review public education in Georgia, bringing together state and local governments, educators, the business and philanthropic sectors. This commission should have as its sole mandate the goal of improving public education for all of its children and generating the public commitment to making Georgia one of the leaders in public education.
Finally, we need to reflect on our culture’s idolatrous worship of success. We value people for what they make and what they have, not for what they are or do. More than 100 years ago, William James condemned the moral flabbiness produced by an exclusive worship of the goddess success defined monetarily. We care not how people reached their goals, simply that they have. The results, therefore, are insider trading, steroid use, corked bats, hacked cellphone calls and changed answers.
Each of us individually can and must say no to the “success is everything” mentality. We need to support the whistle-blower, turn our backs on the steroid user and refuse to lie to gain our own advantage. Only by doing so can we undo the culture of corruption that has permeated our society to the point of undermining one of the most noble professions.
Edward L. Queen is director of the D. Abbott Turner Program in Ethics and Servant Leadership and coordinator of Undergraduate Studies at Emory University’s Center for Ethics.
The school board’s role, too often ignored, must be central to renewal.
By John Carver
Erroll Davis, new interim superintendent, inspires confidence. It isn’t clear yet if the school board does. The board’s struggle with interpersonal discord is improving, but whether it is better able to govern is an unanswered and, in the long run, a more critical question.
Just as former Superintendent Beverly Hall is accountable for system failures whether she knew of them or not, so must the board be held to the same standard. In a properly rigorous conception of governance, there is nothing that goes on in an organization that the board hasn’t either caused or allowed.
But while looking backward to assess blame and take necessary steps, the more productive engagement will be with the future. If the next superintendent were to allow unacceptable system behavior, will this board be any better equipped to deal with it than before?
This is the central question for Atlanta Public Schools governance now. By unacceptable behavior I mean insufficient student learning, improper care of plant and equipment, mishandling money and a long list of system criteria, not just today’s focus on cheating.
If we charge the APS board for failing in its responsibility to children, the public, parents and staff, then it’s only fair that we recognize that, were it not for the grace of good luck, many public school boards would be in the same spot. As a governance author and consultant, I have worked with many school boards, as well as corporate and nonprofit/NGO boards. When things blow up, boards tend to react in one or both of two dysfunctional ways.
First, the board hires a savior CEO who will save the day by bringing savvy executive leadership. We have reason to believe the board’s trust in Davis is not misplaced. But the savior phenomenon is still problematic because his is an interim leadership, so another savior will need to be found. Moreover, the wide latitude the board must give Davis so he can get the job done can easily sour over a few months of differing opinions and hard choices. A variation on this theme occurs when a board expects its governance to be better because it has a new CEO. Management improvements can conceal poor governance for a time, but never makes governance better.
Second, the board reacts to its former undercontrol by plunging enthusiastically into overcontrol — not only due to board members’ sense of duty but for political appearances and public confidence. The pendulum swings from too little engagement (sometimes rubber stamping) to stultifying engagement (micromanagement). This trap is made even worse when a board fails to recognize that no single board member, including the chairperson, should have any authority whatsoever over the superintendent. Of course, the board as a whole should have total authority. Only boards that fail to exercise their group responsibility allow the role of chair to be as monumental and worth fighting over as has been the case at APS.
Although we give lip service to boards with terms like “ultimate accountability” and “final authority,” our public behavior is as if boards don’t matter much — even though it is boards, not their CEOs, that are answerable to the public “shareholders.” Most blame in the media falls on administrators and teachers.
While methods of management have advanced by leaps and bounds for a few decades, prevalent governance methods still rely more on seat-of-the-pants judgments, personal opinions, piecemeal questioning and posturing.
We can do better. Like an alcoholic who hits bottom, the APS board has been presented with a painful opportunity for an inspiring comeback — as long as the board and the public understand that even if Davis works magic with internal affairs, he can’t relieve the board of its duty to govern.
John Carver of Atlanta is an expert in school board governance.
