Educational Leadership Moment

Educational Leadership Moment treats school leadership as something worth taking notes on. Dr. Kim Moore, the host, starts by asking for a favorite beverage, a pen or a pencil, and a notepad. She means it. What follows is dense with frameworks, named programs and quotations. Dr. Moore describes her background as classroom teacher, school administrator and central office staff member, and she talks to leaders directly, often in the second person. Staffing is a good example of her approach. She describes leaders who feel the pressure of an empty classroom and grab whatever is closest: a reading specialist moved into a homeroom because the master schedule needs a body, or one person asked to be part counselor and part testing coordinator with no protected hours. Her verdict is blunt. That is improvisation wearing a job description. The fix she proposes is a coordinated set of approaches rather than a single model, with reallocations, hybrid roles, itinerant staffing, homegrown pipelines and regional partnerships working as instruments in the same orchestra, and she points to Alaska's Southeast Regional Resource Center along the way. Career advancement gets the same practical treatment. In 'From the Classroom to the Cabinet' she borrows John Maxwell's line that everything rises and falls on leadership, then argues that aspiring district leaders have to take on the identity of the role, not just the title. She points to AASA's Aspiring Superintendents Academy, including its tailored academies for women leaders, Latino and Latina leaders and urban school system leaders, and to the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders. The other strand is advocacy, and the titles state it plainly: 'Traditional K-12 Public Schools Are an Excellent Choice for Your Child', 'What Traditional Public Schools Offer That Many Families Overlook', 'Certified Teachers Prove Why Traditional Public Schools Are Worth Choosing'. The evidence she lines up is concrete. AP courses let students earn college credit, dual enrollment can put an associate degree within reach, and career and technical education pathways connect to healthcare, information technology, manufacturing, agriculture and construction. Extracurriculars from debate to robotics count too, and she cites 2006 research on extracurricular participation. She sums up certification in one line: it is a floor, not a ceiling. She also recalls a group she worked with in which every member passed and went on to become a school administrator. Her tone becomes more civic when she invokes Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from the Birmingham jail, John Dewey on public education as the foundation of democracy, and Frederick Douglass on building strong children. She asks public school leaders to rethink how they see the open door and the promise that every child will be welcomed, educated and valued. Her sign-off points to her website, kimdmoore.com, and repeats the line she keeps coming back to: when students are led well, they learn well. For the operational side, a good place to start is 'The Staffing Model That Fits Your District's Real Capacity'. For the argument for public schools, several titles are available.