Education leaders at all levels are grappling with big challenges. Students and staff are still recovering from the pandemic. Declining enrollment threatens economic stability. And partisan politics has intensified in startling ways—just look at the series of executive orders and press releases on the U.S. Department of Education’s website. And the public’s trust in their schools continues to decline.
These challenges raise a foundational question that should guide today’s education leadership: Who is best positioned to do what work in service of excellent teaching and learning, especially during these turbulent times? We don’t have time to wring our hands when students continue to depend on their schools for learning.
At the end of a required doctoral course at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (taught by Jennifer Cheatham) last year, the participants shared their reflections on that question. Here are some of those insights on how experienced K-12 leaders at all levels can keep the focus on student learning:
Central-office leaders must protect and support principals as innovators.
District leaders face a long-standing tension between promoting innovation in individual schools while ensuring coherence systemwide. Districts need centralized guidance to provide clarity and alignment while ensuring compliance with state and federal laws. Yet, too much top-down control can alienate those doing the daily work of teaching and learning. The balance has never been more important.
If schools do nothing more than follow the script, it is unlikely they will evolve quickly enough to meet the needs of today’s learners. But it is hard for principals (and, in turn, their teachers) to innovate in an environment that doesn’t feel safe. With stronger partnership between central-office leaders and schools, the central office can provide both oversight and political cover for innovation, regularly updating official guidance based on what they learn from schools.
For example, in today’s political climate, many principals want to actively support immigrant students and families who don’t feel safe to send their kids to school, but they don’t want to risk doing the wrong thing. Never has there been a more important time for the central office to provide crystal clear guidance, resources, and guardrails, so that it isn’t up to a school principal to decide. Instead, they can focus their energy on targeted ways to provide support to individual families in their schools.
In the Chelsea, Mass., public schools, where a couple of our class participants were assigned a fellowship in the past year, the district promptly posted clear guidance for immigrant families when parents and staff voiced concerns for student safety. In a district that is majority Latino and has a large and growing immigrant community, these are the kinds of swift actions that principals need from their superintendents and senior leaders.
To what extent is your central office supporting and protecting school principals? What does that look like? What support do they need? What clear guidance and guardrails do they need? Where is there room to innovate?
Principals must advocate with on-the-ground insight.
Principals are uniquely positioned to translate the district’s vision for excellent teaching and learning into instructional coherence at the school level. But in addition to making district policies real for teachers and students, they must also transmit information back to the district as advocates for their schools.
As Deion Owens, a former principal and student in our class said in a follow-up interview, “Principals are the connective tissue. They bring district priorities to life, elevate local needs, and hold together communities that are often under strain. Their closeness to both classrooms and families is one of the system’s most valuable assets.”
When district policies or resource allocations fall short, it is principals who must raise the alarm, surfacing needs that might otherwise go unheard. Their proximity to educators, families, and district leadership lends them a more immediate, nuanced understanding of how system decisions play out on the ground.
But so often, school districts don’t capitalize on this insight, and principals don’t see that they need to do more than lead their school.
The typical monthly districtwide principal meeting can no longer be the place where principals simply receive information or learn about new initiatives. Instead, principals should use these meetings to also provide information and inform initiatives. In a district one of our students worked with, principals were given regular space at the daylong principal meeting to work with peers and grapple with timely dilemmas.
One structure that we have seen work effectively in principal meetings is the classic consultancy protocol, which allows principals to present real dilemmas and receive thoughtful, structured feedback from peers. By sharing these scenarios, they support one another and provide crucial information and wisdom that the central office can act on.
To what extent are your principals providing insight and advocacy? Do they see themselves as system leaders? Are there clear mechanisms for collaborative problem-solving?
School districts must build bridges with external partners.
Budget shortfalls, legislative shifts, and political pressure to improve engagement and performance have left school district leaders with fewer tools and less room to maneuver. External partners, particularly philanthropic and nonprofit organizations, are urgently needed to expand the system’s capacity to respond, adapt, and improve.
These organizations also act as connectors between systems and communities. They can amplify family and student interests, steward feedback from those most affected by policy, and help ensure that decisions are grounded in lived experience.
Our nearby Cambridge school district, for example, co-hosted its second annual School-Community Partnerships Gathering during this past school year, bringing together over 150 educators, family liaisons, and community program leaders. This event focused on fostering collaboration between schools and community organizations to address shared challenges and build sustainable solutions. Such initiatives demonstrate a school district’s commitment to responding to community needs and building trust.
This is not about any single partnership but about creating a web of partnerships that can support and protect a community’s young people.
To what extent are you building relationships between and among local partners? Are you listening to partners to better understand their perspectives on problems? How are you generating solutions together?
There is no single blueprint for how this work should unfold. But one thing is certain: Advancing excellent teaching and learning in today’s climate depends on each of us doing the work we’re best positioned to do—with clarity, conviction, and one another.
