School Leaders and Data

Becoming a school leader requires a number of accomplishments. You generally need to have been a successful student, a successful teacher, and then demonstrated some leadership competencies along the way.

Unfortunately, many educational structures push aspiring leaders into mutually exclusive pockets of belief. The most famous of which has to do with a belief in whole language or phonics, and most people ignored the fallacy of this construct.

Lesser known is the same forced choice around data. Leaders are forced to characterize themselves as data driven or child-centered. Those that are data driven are thought to be ruled by numbers, imminently objective, and also uncaring. Those that are child centered are thought to be empathetic, caring, and blinded by preference, doomed to choose less effective pathways.

Effective leaders cannot choose to be one or the other. Good school leaders must treat their jobs like a mixed-methodology study — using both quantitative and qualitative data to help them make good decisions, and we should be helping aspiring leaders to understand this.

Quantitative decision making processes are important because, as humans, we are deeply susceptible to many errors in thinking that can lead us to draw conclusions that are not valid. The most prominent being the fact that nearly all of us experienced school and our interpretation of events is shaped by our own experiences, not realizing that our experience is a totally inadequate sample size upon which to draw.

However, being over reliant on the data in front of us results in making decisions about things that we simply do not have adequate data to describe. Being able to integrate experiences, feelings, and individuality to make the data come to life is an important humanizing step in managing a uniquely human institution, like school.

The next time someone tries to put you into a box of being “either/or” challenge that construct and bring the fallacy to light. Very few things in leadership are so mutually exclusive, most are a blend of contextually important factors. Be proud of being able to think flexibly and to use all of these tools when needed.

We live in the world our questions create.

— David Cooperrider

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