Learner-Centered Ecosystems as Opportunities for Superintendent Leadership

Superintendents of schools are much like the captains of jet-passenger planes. They are ultimately responsible for every child in a school system having a safe, enjoyable, and productive learning experience. The overwhelming majority of superintendents take that responsibility extremely seriously and work seventy-hour weeks to meet it. 

So, their reaction to a proposal for, in essence, abandoning school districts as they presently exist and, instead, implementing equitable learner-centered ecosystems is skeptical at best and hostile at worst. Airplane captains would react the same way to proposals to replace planes with rocket ships. 

Unfortunately, however, we live in a time when the present school system structure doesn’t meet the expectation that every child, with no exceptions, will learn what they need to learn in order to be successful once they leave formal schooling. This is the case—despite many successful attempts to transform the system—because the system inherently:

• Makes time the constant and learning the variable. 
• For the most part, requires learners to adapt to instructional styles, instead of adapting itself to the learning styles of learners. 
• Subjugates learner interests to the content demands of the system. 

In other analogous words, there’s no way to make a jet plane do what a rocket ship can do. 

So, where does that leave superintendents? Will they simply be relegated to working very hard to keep in place a system that will eventually be replaced? Or can something be done to help superintendents become leaders of efforts to give every learner the option of being in an equitable learner-centered ecosystem? The answer to that last question is a tentative YES. 

The answer is tentative because:

• It will be difficult to get public momentum behind it. 
• It will require superintendent preparation institutions to radically alter their programs.
• It will cost money. 

While there is a widespread public perspective that the present educational system isn’t producing the results that are needed, there is also a widespread perspective that what needs to be done is to return to a mythical version of the educational yesteryear.

Too many people regard proposals for structures such as equitable learner-centered ecosystems as just the latest unrealistic attempt by a group of elites to indoctrinate children. Instead, they focus on trying to implement what they inaccurately remember as their own educational experiences, many of which they didn’t like when they were experiencing them. 

In this atmosphere, getting sufficient public attention on preparing superintendents to be in the group of leaders who will produce equitable learner-centered ecosystems will be impossible unless there are at least a handful of learner-centered ecosystems in place in which learners are flourishing. 

For the same reason, it will be extremely difficult to convince preparation institutions to alter their programs, unless a demand can be established for leaders of learner-centered ecosystems—a demand that must be fueled by the existence of a few such systems. 

Finally, because learner-centered ecosystems will be options that learners can choose, it will cost money to get some learner-centered ecosystems off the ground. Systems that provide learners options are almost by their very nature more expensive than systems that offer no choices. The money won’t be forthcoming unless advocates for it can point to such systems in which learners are flourishing. 

So, unless these and other challenges are met, there will be an insufficient number of learner-centered ecosystems in place to create support, let alone demand, for leaders who have the knowledge and skills to transform learner experiences so that they are learner-centered. 

Given all of this, should we simply give up? The answer is a definite NO. It would be foolish to consciously exclude from the learner-centered movement people with the leadership skills that most superintendents possess. 

If transformation was easy, it wouldn’t be transformation. It requires faith, patience, persistence, and the willingness to forgo ego gratification. To what, then, can these qualities be devoted so as to establish the platform for efforts to prepare superintendents to be among the leaders of the learner-centered ecosystem movement?

At this point, a definitive list of efforts cannot be justifiably established. Among an eclectic list of efforts, however, is one that would result in equitable learner-centered ecosystems being established on a regional basis in which a number of communities and school systems already belong. Learners within the regions to which their communities belong would have the option of having their educational experiences happen in the regional ecosystem. 

As long as the funding of the regional ecosystems doesn’t occur in a structure that reduces resources for already established systems, a substantial majority of superintendents would endorse the establishment of those ecosystems. After all, the ecosystems would assist superintendents in meeting their basic responsibility to provide a safe and effective educational experience for every learner. 

Once those regional ecosystems are established, they will produce results around which the general public will rally and that will have the residual effect of establishing support for programs to prepare leaders for these ecosystems. At first, a noticeable number of sitting superintendents and superintendent aspirants will enroll in such programs. The momentum will then be established to expand those programs until they become large enough to meet what will be the need. 

Other ways to establish a demand for programs that prepare leaders for learner-centered ecosystems can surely be identified. All of them need to be effectively implemented so that the superintendency itself is transformed from one that leads a community’s schools to one that leads a community’s learning.