Top-Down Leadership Stinks

Taking the Good, Leaving the Bad: An essay on how one school administrator blends system level policy with school level  leadership 

The Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB), my school district, operates a  leadership model consisting of a top-down hierarchy of policy creation which contradicts  its vision statement, resulting in disingenuous attempts at incorporating equitable  practices and an avoidance of honouring the voices of those who matter most, the  students. Further, my district fails to view areas of growth from any point of view other than  that of standardization.

In Ontario, Canada, elected officials have the power to create,  destroy and manipulate education policy and do so not for the betterment of the system,  but for job retention purposes. My position as a school principal puts two people between  me and an elected policy maker. The TVDSB has a director of education who answers to  the minister of education and who oversees the district’s superintendents.

There are 161  schools in my district and each superintendent oversees a portion of these schools. Each  school principal reports to one of the superintendents. This model, in which policy is  created at the top and streams down, looks like this:

Senior leadership in my district is in a constant battle between forcing the  implementation of policy created by selfish politicians and doing what’s best for students.  They create teaching positions whose sole purpose is to improve standardized test scores  while at the same time have a mission statement of ‘we build each students’ tomorrow,  everyday.’

The system uses single loop learning strategies (Argyris, 1994) to solve  superficially identified areas of need. The following will describe how I, a school principal,  navigate district level policy, rely on my personal leadership resources and work to flatten  the hierarchy in my school. 

The TVDSB has many equitable practices at the forefront of their image but when  push comes to shove, they are pushed and shoved to the side to make space for decreased  suspension rates, increased graduation rates and better test scores.

As a school principal,  who believes in student identity, I rely heavily on the district’s equity practices to push  aside their less than equitable practices. For instance, Ontario holds an annual  standardized test near the end of each school year. This past school year, my district  began focusing on improving overall district test scores in September. I was told that the  grade 3 and 6 teachers in my school needed to teach to the test. My push back relied on  other initiatives the district had in place including, meeting students where they are and  the essential conditions for learning. The essential conditions for learning is a framework  which requires students to build relationships in order to feel safe and a sense of belonging  before they can regulate and learn. Teaching to the test ignores this framework, which is  advertised heavily on the district’s website. I focus on the aspects of my district that I believe are good, in order to steer away from those I believe are not. But how do I know I  am right? 

The first step is understanding and honouring my core values. These values are  intertwined with personal leadership resources. I believe in student agency, compassion  and integrity. I also believe that schools are in service of students and require a policy  development model that begins with them and ends with the minister of education. I have  heard this referred to as flipping the system. This is in alignment with my district’s equity  framework, as superficial as it may be.

My integrity forces me to push back against policies that contradict my district’s mission statement, putting scores ahead of students. My compassion and belief in student voice, agency and engagement as well as educator voice, allow me to build authentic relationship from which a holistic picture of the state of our  school can be developed. With these core values guiding my actions and equity guiding my  practice, I am able to being a leadership journey at the school level that helps mitigate the  incompetencies which exist above me.  

The authentic relationships I am able to build and foster at the school level not only  help set essential conditions for learning, where students and staff feel safe and feel like  they belong but also afford me insight into school climate, and individual identity. I firmly  believe that schools are in service of students, which may be a shift from the centuries old  industrial model. With this in mind, building student capacity and achievement needs to  stem from their voice, including the voices of those who support them, their community. 

As my leadership journey as a school administrator continues, I find the most success in  times when educators, parents and most importantly students, have worked together to identify areas of need and built a plan to improve. For instance, the district, through their  standardized testing, identified our grade 3 students as low performers in math. We knew  we were quite proficient in math based on far more data than a one off standardized test.  

Working as a team, with me as an orchestrator, not an anchor, we identified that it was  quite possibly students’ self consciousness in speaking French which was leading to low  math scores on standardized testing. Our French immersion school was not doing a great  job at promoting imperfections when speaking French, leading to students not speaking  French, which lead to students not understanding French as well as they should have. Our plan to promote a safe French speaking culture was developed through a flattened  leadership model and likely solved many other problems such as attendance records and  participation.  

Top-down leadership models in a system where the top rely on their position based  on popular votes is not in service of students.

Breaking this system down at a provincial  level is not feasible but holding them accountable to their policies which honour student  identity is possible. Aligning these policies with leadership qualities that honour students  and break down the hierarchy, helps build schools where students feel like they belong,  where students feel like they can contribute and feel like they can grow into better versions  of themselves.