Political risk-taking: a requirement of today?s instructional leadership

Abstract

Educators in the United States are currently in an era of high-stakes accountability whereby federal and state policies impose severe consequences on schools that fail to make adequate progress on standardized achievement tests (Allington, 2002; Shannon, 2001). This high-stakes accountability environment places enormous pressures on educators to teach to the test, adopt “canned” approaches or programs, and in other ways, submit to deskilling (Shannon, 2001). At considerable risk, some individuals, schools, and districts do not submit to these political accountability pressures but engage in instructional practices they determine are most effective in their particular settings. This paper session will report findings from a multi-case study that was designed to examine what happens in school districts that make educators willing to take risks by resisting political accountability pressures.