Guest writer

Good leadership

It makes Rogers schools stand out

As a social scientist, I long specialized in the study of government failure. I mastered disasters, a buzzard picking at public-policy roadkill. I relished knowing more than arrogant politicians and judges with vast bureaucracies at their disposals.

Joyfully, I spent countless hours asking questions like why we lost in Vietnam after hugely outspending a technologically inferior foe. Why did President Lyndon Johnson appoint Army General William Westmoreland, who had no idea how to fight a counterinsurgency, rather than Marine Generals Lewis Walt and Victor Krulak, who did?

Domestically, why did Johnson's "Great Society" concentrate poor people in high-rise ghettos? As a blue-collar kid growing up in a blue-collar town, I saw welfare replacing dads, crime tripling, and federally funded bulldozers killing communities.

If I could see it, why couldn't Washington?

Recent conservatives have proven every bit as clueless. Why did President George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. invade Iraq without bothering to plan what came next? Why did everyone (until Barack Obama) stick with a Cuban boycott aimed at regime change that for 50 years failed to change the regime?

Thinking big picture, how could W's administration have at least four different foreign-policy strategies in eight years? And how could the Obama administration fail to have any strategy at all beyond illusory lines in the sand with zero follow-through?

How could both Democrats and Republicans see their enemies as fellow Americans rather than certain (and certainly not most) foreign Islamic leaders who cheerfully murder Muslims and non-Muslims alike? How could our "leaders" not realize that we are in a war requiring long-term ideology, strategy, and alliance--not campaign spin?

How did our two major political parties, which claim to support free markets, nominate crony capitalists with few accomplishments beyond self-promotion?

In my main area, education, how could Kansas City Public Schools triple per-pupil spending in just seven years--and get worse?

Of course my tribe, the professors, are the ultimate Monday morning quarterbacks. We who have all the time in the world and rarely run anything larger than a seminar delight in criticizing politicians making decisions with limited time, little information, and no benefit of hindsight.

A few years back a successful public school principal called out my negativity. He challenged me to study the good things going on in schools, and in general.

His advice was golden. I branched out to study success, asking new and mainly positive questions. How did the New York City Police Department cut homicides by over 80 percent (saving 25,000 lives!) at the very time when social scientists predicted rising crime? How did NYPD reduce police killings of civilians by nearly 90 percent? And why didn't academics and activists notice?

How did the Bill Clinton/Newt Gingrich welfare reforms, which I considered risky, help far more poor people than they harmed? How did their reinventing-government efforts save over $100 billion and improve public service?

Back to education, how do some public schools successfully educate disadvantaged kids on budgets far smaller than Kansas City spent on failure? That brought me to Rogers. At my principal friend's urging, my colleagues at the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas began recognizing public schools that over-perform, controlling for student poverty. It turns out Arkansas has some great schools in out-of-the-way places like De Queen and Cross County. Among big districts, Rogers stands out. Why?

Fieldwork in Rogers schools convinced me that much of the credit goes to the recently deceased Roland Smith, who was superintendent back in the 1990s, and to his successor, the just-retired Janie Darr. Between them, Rogers Public Schools had two decades of great leadership.

Smith and Darr developed school cultures that don't give up on kids: can-do culture spawned successful tactics.

Rogers educators use data to focus on pulling up elementary kids who fall behind before it's too late. Rogers works to build relationships with low-income parents who often see school as outside their comfort zone. Rogers headhunts top educators from other districts, because talent matters. Rogers developed New Tech High for kids wanting a small, techie environment, since different kids have different needs.

Arriving from a successful stint leading the Olathe, Kan., public schools, Marlin Berry just replaced Janie Darr as Rogers superintendent. My advice to him is that sometimes the best leadership is telling folks to keep doing what they're doing.

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Robert Maranto ([email protected]) is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.

Editorial on 07/18/2016

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