Four Leadership Qualities Needed to Change Schools

© Copyright Tony Wagner, 1998 (first published in Education Week, April 22, 1998)

Despite all the rhetoric about shared decisionmaking, top-down, compliance-driven school leadership still seems to be the norm in many communities. The reason is that most school boards still expect new superintendents to come in and "take charge." And superintendents often expect the same of their principals. But these behaviors and expectations are badly out of date.

A 'Constructivist' Methodology for Reinventing Schools

© Copyright Tony Wagner, 1998 (first published in the Phi Delta Kappan, March 1998)

FOR THE last several years, the big push in education reform has been to develop new, more rigorous state and district standards for learning. While the debate continues to rage in many communities over the exact nature and extent of these standards, as well as over how they will be assessed, it seems that we may have reached some kind of national consensus that there will be standards. For now, at least, many educational leaders have come to believe that the need to monitor progress toward genuine equality of educational opportunity and achievement outweighs the danger that the standards movement will simply lead to more of the same: more "coverage" of the same stale Carnegie-unit curriculum and more use of the same standardized tests for accountability purposes.

© Copyright Tony Wagner, 1999 (first published in School Administrator, December 1999)

Most of us achieve more when we have aim for a higher bar. As a motivator, fear gets us only so far. That will be the big "a-ha" in education a few years from now--fear of not being promoted, fear of not graduating, fear of sanctions and, above all, fear of tests. These fears will begin to weigh us down rather than help us over the bar.

Standards for The Heart?

© Copyright Tony Wagner, 1999 (first published in Education Week, May 12, 1999)

Killing classmates is made more imaginable for adolescents by glorified revenge fantasies in the media and video games, and it is easier to accomplish with ready access to guns, but the root cause is neither of these. It is the absence of community for a growing number of young people. And reweaving that safety net of caring and respect for all our youths is everyone's responsibility.