Have a Seat with the C-Suite, Vol. 7

Welcome back to Have a Seat with the C-Suite. We are all politics and policy nerds so this week we bring you a roundup focused on exactly that. An unprecedented number of women and people of color are running for office at all levels. The articles below offer some additional context that may be of interest to educators and fellow wonk wannabees.

Try: On Funding, Candidates of Color Face an Uphill Battle Before They Even Start

You may have followed the recent campaign of Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams. After winning her primary, she is now running to be the first African-American woman governor in US history. One of the things that came to light during the election was that she carried a personal debt of six-figures. This may strike you as unusual among political candidates, but it is not unusual among candidates of color and particularly women of color. Communities of color are less likely to be able to fundraise the millions of dollars now necessary to run for the highest offices in the land (just over $1 million on average for a congressional campaign and more than $10 million for a senatorial campaign). As a result, candidates of color (like Abrams) often fund their own campaigns and go into significant debt to do so. Ample research demonstrates that elected officials are less responsive to constituents if they rely on outside contributions (which often comprise the very large-dollar donations) and that constituents in the bottom one-third of the income distribution have functionally no influence on their elected officers. This article sums up the problem for many candidates who are neither white nor male: “If a seat at the table costs millions, those at the table have real motives to avoid discussing the racial wealth gap.” Consider sending your own small-dollar contributions to national funding agencies (the Collective PAC, the Asian American Action Fund, or the Latino Victory Fund) who help candidates of color get to the table.

Read: Teachers Who Led strikes Now Turning Focus to Elections

In C-Suite, Vol. 3, we shared a state-by-state guide to teacher walkouts. While the media attention on those teachers has faded, the teachers’ political engagement has not. Many of those teachers are now turning their political activity from activism to elections. In Oklahoma, several dozen teachers filed to run for state House and Senate seats. In Kentucky, nearly 40 educators are running for seats in the state legislature. Many of these are first-time candidates with developed platforms that – no surprise – center on issues of education quality, teacher compensation, and learning environments. Additionally, even those who aren’t running are also taking a more active role in politics and especially in upcoming elections. A group of North Carolina educators is explicitly trying to unseat legislators who failed to increase teacher pay or provide sufficient funds for quality education. In several states, the collective power of teachers will be undeniable – either as a voting bloc or as a group of new candidates and (hopefully!) new lawmakers.

Share: Why the Lack of Women Leaders in Educational Administration Matters

This short article is perfect for distributing on your social media channels to get (healthy, nuanced) conversations going about the presence or absence of women in educational leadership. We’ve written before about the proportion of women in superintendent positions, about hiring practices that influence the promotion of women, and about persistent mindsets which equate effective leadership and maleness. What’s the connection here to politics? This author identifies in the field of educational administration the same problem that is so prevalent in the political sphere: assumptions about the capacity and value of women limit women’s ability to access the highest levels in any sector. This author goes on to suggest that education need not be just a side effect of increased gender equity in leadership but can instead spearhead that effort. He concludes with this: “If we want to change society, we have to change the way we teach them.” We’d only add that we want to change who is visible and who is empowered to make decisions at the top levels – in our schools and in our capitols.

Lead: How do Leaders Succeed Despite Tricky Workplace Politics?

Workplace politics – probably the kind of politics with which we all interact most frequently. We love this article because it addresses real problems that we’ve encountered in educational spaces that also seem to pop up across other sectors. One example: Employees want to know what to call a new executive officer who happens to be female and the hiring officer instructs them to call her by her full title, exactly as they did the last man who held the role. We also appreciate that this article captures the power of leadership to mitigate or direct workplace politics. Below, we distill some of the author’s suggestions and focus them specifically for use in educational organizations.

• Stick to your values. The author here suggests making sure employees feel truly heard and that the leader’s actions and messages are consistent. Do your colleagues (whether teachers, administrators, faculty or staff) feel like they have real opportunities to address problems, that leaders hear and acknowledge their concerns, and that problems are addressed with integrity? If the answer to any of those is no, what systems might be implemented to rectify that?
• Lead by example. Feedback and direct communication are the surest antidotes for toxic culture. If your organization is plagued by petty disagreements or us v. them narratives, address them directly. Return colleagues’ attention to shared goals, practices that make the whole organization successful, or ways in which gossip and toxicity detract from shared success.
• Explore others’ perspectives. Do you fully understand what motivates your colleagues? Do you know what frustrates them? Do you know how they best solve problems? Research is clear that educational leaders set the direction for their organizations and their interactions with teachers predict a school’s success or failure. Education leaders can enact systems that leverage and celebrate, rather than detract from, the ways in which teachers are motivated to work. A good leader is, often, a good listener.

- Lauren