So, how is the summer “break” going? I know, you are only a few days into it by now, but I thought I would ask.

By the way, I always found it funny when people would ask me if I “worked” over the summer after I became a school administrator. I always patiently explained to them that in many ways, the summer is the busiest time of year for school leaders. Between getting ready for the next school year (can you say “master schedule”) and professional development activities, summers seem to fly by.

Speaking of PD, what are YOUR needs for PD this summer and in the upcoming school year? I know yinz have been thinking about next year n’at so…

The most important activity you can do for your school (and yourself) is to plan what you need to learn. 

Start with this question: “What do I need to learn to accomplish my goals for the upcoming school year?” If you have not created goals for the upcoming year, do so now! I would suggest that you create three goals. One instructional goal. One achievement goal. Finally, create one operations goal for your school.

Once you have done that, think deeply about what you need to learn to help you (and your school) achieve the goal. Since none of us knows everything, I am sure it will not take long to think of things you need to learn.

Once you have your list of things to learn, think about where you are going to find the information to learn.  Here are some go-to places I use to learn new things.

• Books
• Podcasts
• Conferences
• Articles
• Blogs
• Mentors

Don’t forget the power of the last option…mentors. Find someone who excels in an area you want to learn about. Contact that person and start a conversation so you can learn.

As an example, when people ask me how they can make better use of their time, I direct them to Michael Snell’s book Clockwork: Time-Saving Routines and Tested Strategies for Success. This is a great resource, and since Michael is a former Pennsylvania school leader and current Assistant Executive Director of the PA Principals Association, you can actually talk to the author!

So, I ask again, what do you need to learn this summer?

I was a school counselor for four years. In many ways, it was the most fun I had in my career! As I was contemplating moving “to the dark side” into administration, I asked some school leaders I respected what they though about me moving in that direction.

Every one of them told me that school counselors make bad administrators.

They told me that school counselors are too “soft” and will give in too much.

Two things:

I hope I have proved them wrong and…

The most valuable skills I have used as a school leader came from my training as a counselor. I will be very specific with the one skill that has helped me the most: the ability to “sit in someone else’s shoes.” In other words, the ability to be empathetic.

You see, what I really think my mentors were talking about was their belief that school counselors would not be able to hold people accountable. They were making a common mistake in defining empathy and accountability. They believe that empathy makes people “soft.” 

I, of course, disagree. I believe empathy is a skill that helps you create accountability in people and the system you lead.

Since I am getting a little long in the tooth in my school leadership days, I have three ways I think about the intersection of empathy and accountability.

1. Empathy without accountability is just coddling.
Too many leaders confuse being kind with being soft…my mentors sure did!  In my view, empathy is not an excuse to avoid high standards, it’s actually the foundation to help people reach them!

Action Step: Start meetings (both one-on-one and larger ones) with a personal check-in, but end the meeting with clear follow-ups and expectations.

2. Relationships aren’t built in staff meetings.
I have seen too many school leaders (myself included) who believe a great welcoming speech on the first day of school, or a wonderful Christmas party, builds the relationships that are necessary to combine empathy and accountability. 

Action Step: Block monthly one-on-ones with your team. let them set the agenda for the meeting and show up with tape over your mouth so you will listen and learn.

3. Be Curious because empathy is about not being judgmental
Great leaders are less controlling and more curious. They don’t jump to fix the problem; they listen and allow space for a person (or a team) to create their own solution.

Action Step: Summarize what you have learned in a conversation before you give an opinion. It shows people that you listened to what they had to say, and it serves as a feedback loop so you don’t have a mistaken assumption about what was said.

Let me know if this was helpful. My reflections were based on a blog I read. You can find the blog post below.

Ever feel like you’re leading one crisis at a time? Like your job is a never-ending game of academic Whac-A-Mole?

Yeah, me too.

School leadership has a way of pulling our focus to the next class period… or if we’re lucky, next month’s PD day. We plan in short bursts.

We measure in test scores.

We lead like we’re stuck in the current chapter of a story…forgetting the story isn’t even finished yet.

But here’s the hard truth: We don’t know what chapter our students are in. We sure as hell don’t know how their story ends. And yet we build entire systems to evaluate, judge, and track students based on one snapshot in time.

That’s not just short-sighted, it’s a failure of imagination.
If we want to lead well, we have to see beyond the chapter we’re handed.

So, what can we do as school leaders to help us lead like we are “waiting for the end of the story”?

Three things school leaders can do:

1. Audit your timelines.
   Look at your school improvement plan, PLC agendas, and PD sessions—are you thinking in months or in years? Push your team to plan with a 5-year lens, not a 5-day one.
2. Stop fetishizing the test score.
   Use it as one data point—then spend time learning your students’ actual stories. Create space for narrative data: student reflections, parent feedback, teacher observations.
3. Talk about the future more than the past.
   In staff meetings, IEP teams, and student conferences, ask: Where is this student going? not What did they get on the last benchmark?

Leadership is not about predicting the end of the story…it’s about helping students write it.

Collaboration V. Coordination

Everything I am about to share with you is based on the work Dr. Hobart Harmon and Dr. Jerry Johnson are doing about this topic in rural schools and communities. In other words, the idea is not originally mine, although I have put my spin on it.

When we think about “collaborating” as school leaders, what image comes to mind? Is the first image in your brain a meeting?  Maybe you think of a partnership agreement. 

As you read the rest of this post, it is important to consider what your first thought of collaboration is. 

I suspect that most of us mistake coordination for collaboration. We spend a good part of our day either organizing or participating in meetings, which can be confused with collaboration. After all, you are getting people together to discuss a topic or make a plan to get things done. 

Coordination does have its place in our work life…but let’s not confuse it for collaboration.

According to Drs. Harmon and Johnson, true collaboration occurs when individuals (or organizations) work together toward a goal that is mutually beneficial for all involved. 

Mutual benefit is a key part of collaboration. If you (or your organization) do not feel you are benefiting from working together, you are just coordinating actions. 

The next important piece of collaboration is what each party contributes to the effort. Each party in the collaboration must contribute:
1. Time
2. Talent
3. Resources
4. Relationships

To start, collaboration requires time and talent. You must dedicate meaningful time to it and give the gift of your (or your organization’s) talent. Come to the table with something significant to offer!

Offering resources and relationships are aspects we sometimes don;t consider as important. Dr. Pat Crawford talks a lot about building your “value network.” The members of your value network can be key resources when collavborating with other people or organizations. 

So, what do you think? Does your school or organization truly collaborate or do you trend more toward coordination?

I published a book in 2021 entitled School Leadership: Learner-centered leadership in times of crisis. At the time I wrote the book, the COVID crisis was in full swing, and the book was my humble attempt to help school leaders not only navigate the crisis but thrive in it.

The book tells the story of a school leadership team navigating the challenges of the pandemic. Along the way (hopefully), there are lessons about how to lead a school district that are relevant beyond the pandemic.

As public education figures out how to make it through another crisis right now, I think the book’s lessons are timely.

I create a chatbot loaded with the book. I asked the bot to create a summary of the book as well as practical lessons and actions based on each chapter.

Here are the results.

Book summary...(FYI, to use chatbots correctly, you must spend a lot of time thinking about and refining the prompt. This particular book summary took me 10 minutes to create.)

School Leadership: Learner-Centered Leadership in Times of Crisis is a powerful, practical guide for K-12 leaders committed to transforming schools through uncertainty. Originally inspired by the global upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, this work calls for schools to become radically learner-centered—where every decision, structure, and system is reimagined through the lens of individual student needs.

Grounded in real-world leadership scenarios, Tom Butler offers an actionable framework for leading with clarity, empathy, and courage during times of disruption. The book equips today’s school leaders to thrive in a post-pandemic, AI-accelerated, and equity-driven educational environment.

Key concepts such as the New Learning Ecosystem, New VUCA leadership, and Results by Design planning provide leaders with the tools to address evolving challenges—from digital transformation to teacher capacity and community trust.

Whether you are a superintendent, principal, or aspiring leader, this book is both a compass and a toolkit for building the learner-centered schools our future demands.

Chapter breakdown

Chapter 1: Stay True to Your Learners – The New Learning Ecosystem

Key Ideas:

• Distinguishes between crisis management (reactive) and crisis leadership (vision-driven).
• Calls for dismantling the “command and control” structures that prioritize adult convenience over learner needs.
• Introduces a New Learning Ecosystem: flexible, personalized, and tech-integrated.

Action Steps for 2025 Leaders:

1. Audit your current instructional models to identify elements that still prioritize control over customization.
2. Implement a blended learning ecosystem: leverage digital tools to offer performance-based, student-paced instruction.
3. Empower teachers as co-designers of learning, shifting them from content deliverers to experience architects.

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Chapter 2: Stay True to Yourself – The New Leadership Reality

Key Ideas:

• Leaders must replace “magical thinking” with realistic strategic planning under VUCA conditions.
• Introduces a new VUCA: Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility.
• Warns against “paralysis by analysis” and encourages forward movement despite uncertainty.

Action Steps for 2025 Leaders:

1. Conduct an environmental scan with staff to assess readiness for continued disruption and innovation.
2. Use the SAMR model (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) to assess how well tech is being integrated meaningfully.
3. Design decision protocols using the New VUCA lens—ground all leadership actions in clarity and agility.

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Chapter 3: Stay True to Yourself – Crisis Decision Making

Key Ideas:

• Introduces the Urgency Matrix to distinguish between what’s urgent and important.
• Advocates for developing personal leadership philosophies and non-negotiable value statements.

Action Steps for 2025 Leaders:

1. Develop a five-slide presentation outlining your core values and how they impact your decisions and expectations of others.
2. Map current tasks into the Urgency Matrix and actively shift focus toward Quadrant II (important but not urgent).
3. Involve your team in refining and communicating shared values through consistent storytelling and practice.

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Chapter 4: Stay True to Your Staff – Leadership, Vision, Skills

Key Ideas:

• Lays out six principles of crisis leadership.
• Emphasizes building shared vision and aligned skill development.
• Introduces the Skill/Purpose Matrix to align teacher capabilities with strategic goals.

Action Steps for 2025 Leaders:

1. Use the Skill/Purpose Matrix to identify your “rock stars” (high skill/high alignment) and engage them in leading innovation.
2. Create a professional learning culture focused on agility and future-centric practice, not compliance.
3. Facilitate system-wide design thinking sessions to co-create the school’s learning vision.

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Chapter 5: Stay True to Your Staff – Resources, Motivation, Strategy

Key Ideas:

• Challenges leaders to provide real support—material and strategic—to their staff.
• Encourages use of the Results by Design and Design Thinking frameworks to plan and implement change.

Action Steps for 2025 Leaders:

1. Conduct a resource audit: What do teachers need to fulfill your vision? Address both tech and non-tech gaps.
2. Recognize and manage the Implementation Dip—be transparent about change fatigue and provide supports.
3. Use Results by Design to build a strategic roadmap with clear feedback loops, timelines, and accountability systems.
    

I hope this is useful and will help you decide whether the book is good for your leadership growth. If you need help in creating a book study with your team, please let me know!

By clicking on the book, you will be taken to Amazon where you can purchase it.

In the past few months, I’ve found myself advising several superintendents whose contracts were suddenly not renewed. This, despite leading districts with vision, professionalism, and deep community engagement. These weren’t struggling leaders. They were, by any fair measure, doing excellent work. They were learner-centered, collaborative, and committed to instructional leadership. Despite this, they were not renewed.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that something deeper is happening beneath the surface of these decisions. School leaders are no longer being evaluated primarily on performance or outcomes.

The question haunting them (and me) is why did they not get renewed? What is happening in society that is fundamentally different than in the past?

The issue, as I see it, is a widening “governance gap” between two competing visions of American governance that have been in contention in America since the founding of our government.

The Governance Gap

America has always wrestled with two competing visions of governance. One is epitomized by Thomas Jefferson and the other is personified by Alexander Hamilton. The Jeffersonian model is a governing philosophy rooted in trust of the people, local control, minimal centralized authority, and a deep skepticism of institutional power, especially when it becomes distant or technocratic. At the opposite end of the scale is the Hamiltonian vision which is a governing philosophy rooted in trust of institutions, centralized systems, professional expertise, and the belief that order and national coherence require structured power.


As you can see from the graphic above, over the course of American history, there has been a push and pull between these two competing visions of governance. In the graphic, as a Hamiltonian increase in bureaucracy for the Federal Goverment usually corresponded to a decrease in Jeffersonian ideals.

For example, the institutions making up the Federal government have increased in size and scope almost unabated since the Civil War. Meanwhile, there has always been a strong Jeffersonian undercurrent in American political thought, but the undercurrent, especially in the last 90 years, has not led to a corresponding reduction of governmental institutions.

In fact, today we find governmental institutions are more prevalent (and strong) than ever, while the people and political leaders are the most Jeffersonian as at any point in American history. The gap created by this phenomenon is called the governance gap, and is now playing out in full force in public education.

School leaders aren’t failing because they lack skill or vision. They’re struggling because they’re trapped between a political philosophy that distrusts systems and a governance model that depends entirely on them efficiently operating the system.

Public schools are one of the most visible, sprawling examples of Hamiltonian governance. They rely on funding formulas, standardized systems, credentialed authority, and institutional legitimacy. They were designed to serve the common good.

Even when leaders are working to innovate by expanding student voice, reimagining learning pathways, forming partnerships with the community, they are still seen by many as representatives of a bureaucratic apparatus that can’t be trusted.

This mismatch between the leader’s intention and the public’s perception is more than just frustrating; it’s destabilizing. It erodes trust. It leads to hostile board meetings, skeptical parent groups, and burned-out leadership teams. Most dangerously, it paralyzes bold action. Leaders stop considering bold action and start managing risk. They retreat into compliance, into keeping the peace, into keeping their job. A downward spiral of mediocrity ensues.
The result is a less resilient, more brittle public education system.

This is why the governance gap matters now. School leaders are trying to lead through a structure the public is more skeptical of, using tools that no longer inspire, under scrutiny that no longer distinguishes between trust and authority. And unless we name this tension for what it is, we’ll keep misdiagnosing the problem and missing the chance to lead differently.

What you can do

There is a way to lead through the governance gap.

The first step is to recognize, and name, the problem. The governance gap is real and must be acknowledged. When the governance gap is as wide as it is today, a bridge must be built to reconcile the two competing visions.

Building the bridge starts by school leaders realizing narratives trump data. Storytelling is a powerful tool in a school leader’s toolbox. Data represents the Hamiltonian system that people do not trust. Stories speak to the Jeffersonian vision because it contextualizes the school into the local community.

Second, operating within the governance gap implies trust is more important than authority. Authority reeks of “the system” to the Jeffersonians who believe institutions are prone to overreach into personal freedom. Trust replaces authority as the new value for school leaders. Creating partnerships with community organizations, empowering all stakeholders to have a true voice in the school, and creating micro innovations that are responsive to your local context are the strategies to help govern through the governance gap.

So, what do you think of this idea? Talk it over with your team and let me know!

On a podcast I was listening to recently, the concept of a “noble lie” was discussed. Since I don’t remember being exposed to the concept of a noble lie, I did some research…and it is fascinating. Fascinating because of the origins, but also because it made me think of the noble lies we tell ourselves in public education.

In Plato’s Republic, the “noble lie” is a myth told not because it’s true, but because it serves a purpose. It’s a carefully crafted story meant to promote unity, preserve order, and help people make sense of their roles in society. Plato argued that sometimes, a well-intentioned falsehood might hold a community together better than a complicated truth. Education, like politics, has its own noble lies...ideas we uphold because they offer comfort, direction, or stability, even when they deserve a closer look. As leaders, we have to ask: when does a helpful story become a harmful illusion?

Some “Noble Lies” we live with in public education every day.
1.The School Safety Industrial Complex
The noble lie: “If schools invest in high-tech security systems, armed guards, and metal detectors, our schools will be safer.”

The real function: Alleviates public anxiety, offers visible signs of control, and creates a sense of doing something…even if that “something” has little or no empirical evidence that is makes schools safer.

The hidden cost:

• Reduces schools to semi-prison spaces
• Encourages compliance over relationship building with stduents
• Funnels millions of taxpayer money into private security vendors, often at the expense of programs that can actually help school safety (SEL, mental health supports)
• Hard to argue against because who wants to be against school safety?

2. Standardized testing as a proxy for learning
The noble lie:  “Standardized tests provide objective measures of student learning and school effectiveness, helping drive school improvement.”

The real function: Standardized testing supports a technocratic model of education that aligns with political priorities (accountability, comparison, efficiency), not necessarily with how children learn or what schools actually do well.

The hidden cost:

• Narrows the curriculum to what is tested
• Deprofessionalizes teachers
• Marginalizes student voice and the creativity of staff and students
• Hard to argue against because you will be seen as not wanting accountability

3. Grades reflect learning
The noble lie: “Grades are an accurate, fair, and motivating reflection of student learning.”

The real function: Simplifies evaluation, sorts students, and gives parents and colleges a way to compare.

The hidden cost:

• Grades often reflect compliance, punctuality, behavior, and socio-economic background more than actual understanding.
• They incentivize point chasing over deep learning.
• They discourage risk-taking for both the students and the staff.

4. Education is the great equalizer
The noble lie: “If we give every child a “good education” (see #2), then they can overcome any obstacle.”

The real function: It comforts society by suggesting that structural, societal problems can be solved in the schoolhouse.

The hidden cost: 

• Places the burden of social mobility on the schools.
• Blames students or schools when these societal ills are not “fixed.”
• masks the reality that larger societal problems need a mult-modal solution…not just in the schoolhouse.

Work for your leadership team

Reading this newsletter is not enough…you must interact with your team and staff to debate, argue, and digest these noble lies. In fact, you might come up with a list of your own “noble lies.”  To start, get your leadership team or staff members together and have them read this post. Then answer the following questions together.

1. Which “noble lies” might be operating in our own district or building, and what purposes do they serve?

2. What would it look like to replace a noble lie with a more honest, learning-centered practice?

3. How do we create a culture where questioning these narratives isn’t seen as disloyal, but as essential leadership work?

Charts like these either get one of two reactions from me: an eye roll or a vigorous shake of the head in agreement. Well, this one received both of those reactions!

The first time I looked at it, I eye-rolled. My immediate reaction was that there was a lot of hubris in trying to predict what future skills will be needed. 

The second time I looked at it (a few days later), I realized my first reaction was MY HUBRIS kicking in. As  a school leader, it is always useful to look at a chart like this and try to glean good information from it.

With that in mind…

There is a cluster in the upper right quadrant of creative thinking, curiosity, lifelong learning, Talent management, leadership, and social influence. As I have talked about before, these are skills that the system of education is not only not geared to impart on students, but (at times) work directly against these types of skills. 

Hmm..

As you review this chart with your team, ask them what surprises them. What skills are in the quadrants that they don’t agree with? What skills are missing entirely from the chart?  All of these questions can start a robust discussion about the skills needed IN YOUR CONTEXT FOR YOUR STUDENTS!