Every Executive-Director in the non-profit world is smart, articulate, compassionate. Each can describe ad nauseum the lamentable plight of a poster child, one whose life challenges well-told can easily cause a funder to be separated from his or her charitable money. Overall, nonetheless, success in aiding such young people is more random than systematic.

In contrast, those who are accomplishing ambitious, societally-important objectives at scale are attacked by the existing power structure – they must be doing something wrong, they must be making money off their scheme.

We believe the societal return on investment from a positive preschool is high. We underfund it.

Mental health services are a crying need in underserved areas. We give it lip service.

The slope of digitization of education is steep; the education results are a flat line.

Almost nobody talks in polite society about the destruction of the family unit as an input relevant to subsequent education challenges for the children involved.

The Silicon Valley techies who have brought us all those wondrous, addictive products are signing no-phone technology contracts with the nannies who are taking care of their kids.

The cumulative hard copy pages devoted to education reform analyses defy the description of environmentally friendly.

Howard Fuller said it right a quarter-century ago concerning the need for reform in K-12 education: “it ain’t about the research, it’s about the will.”

One must hunt to find in-depth analyses of college costs. Reports with the C word in the heading are rarely about deconstructing the why behind tuition/room and board/the long list of fees. Instead they are about finding money, from the student and from the rest of society, to pay for said costs, as if they were fixed for some reason.

When did the Federal Reserve become solely responsible for economic growth? When did the sole function of the Federal Reserve become managing economic growth?

What if the data analytics people discovered that the combination of single parent households, punitive drug laws, inadequate minimum wage levels, and disproportionately expensive daycare actually drove education outcomes more than any other quartet of factors.

Why does a person lead with, “to be honest.” It raises questions about everything else they say.

Why do so many people respond reflexively to a question by saying “that’s a good question.” Are they stalling for time to dream up an answer.

Writer: not sure when I wrote this, but it certainly was pre-lockout. How many of the questions and comments will still be relevant when the pandemic is behind us?

Perhaps it is useful to start with a series of non-negotiable beliefs pertinent to the charter schools of my experience; if an individual’s mindset does not match up, the question of leadership is moot.

*all young people can learn

*high academic standards are a must

*a commitment to data assessment leads to on-point and timely adjustments

*tightness in school culture does not restrain, but frees, creativity

*without great teachers, nothing else matters; hence, professional development is prioritized

*attentiveness to the balance of rigor and joy leads to superior results

*mission alignment must encompass all adults in the building

*character is a way of acting, not a course to be plugged into a curriculum

*diversity is both an end in itself and a means to an end, enhanced educational outcomes

*the education of minorities is, at heart, a civil rights issue, closing the achievement gap

*parents and the community are partners, as defined, in the education process

*success is never final

*transparency is essential to trust

On the more individual characteristic side of the question, these are some thoughts.

*the top person does not have to be charismatic in the conventional sense, but must be inspirational

*humility is necessary both within the school and attitudinally with respect to seeking out Best Practices          wherever they may be located, under whatever governance structure

*great health, high energy, and a disregard for the clock are part of the maniacal commitment to           superior accomplishments

*there is an understanding that a relatively young person managing others of similar age is challenging              and there will come a time when making somebody unhappy has to happen

*there has to be a trust that the board is comprised of individuals equally passionate about the school

*the instructional leader should consider the Operations person a thought partner, even with their     differing responsibilities

*both must understand every line item                of the budget and believe in complete financial integrity

*overall, they should want growth in both the school and in individuals to be as fast as possible, but as              slow as it must be for quality to be maintained.

*demanding with a smile as a demeanor is not a bad description of the leader

*candor in addressing issues of concern is an essential characteristic

*development of future leaders is essential to evaluating how the current top person is doing

Note: there is no attempt above to prioritize the different factors.

Written  11-20-19, relevant to a potential charter school leader

These succinct comments were written in 2019, in part reflecting my interest in the idea of a UBI. Recently, I asked myself “how are the observations below affected by COVID-19” and put my responses in brackets. The setting is the United States.

• DEMOGRAPHICS: There are major differences in median ages among the four major ethnicities. Hence, even though fertility rates of each are comparable to replacement rates, not only will population grow, but more importantly the nation is well on its way to being one of multiple minorities, i.e. no ethnic majority.

Which means: transfer of political power is inevitable. [Figuring the impact of COVID-19 on population, with all due respect to the related fatalities, would revolve around fertility rates; will women of child-bearing age be inclined toward larger or smaller families.]

• A Fact: INCOME and WEALTH DISPARITIES: record levels, with accretion happening daily.

Which means: the current verbal pushback will intensify. [If anything, interest in addressing this issue should rise, given the disparate impact of the virus lockdown.]

• A Fact: FINANCIAL DISPARITIES overlap with ethnicity.

Which means: race is always an issue. [No change there!]

• A Strongly-held (and not unique) Opinion: RACISM is the country’s cancer, with little evidence of remission.

Which means: racism is always relevant. [This is accentuated by COVID-19, as African American and Hispanic deaths from the virus exceed their respective percentages of the population.]

• A Fact: the MIDDLE CLASS earns no more, inflation-adjusted, than a decade ago, is shrinking, is angry, and skews white.

Which means its angst overlaps with every issue above. [COVID-19 “simply” piles on the frustration, particularly as small businesses are crushed by the lockdown.]

• A Fact: Americans have a propensity for individual violence; on average, everybody has a gun.

Which means: frustration + means = highly predictable bad outcomes. [There is no reason to change this viewpoint.]

• A Strongly-held Opinion: Western Europe is not substantially different from the United States in terms of having to struggle with an expected reduced secular rate of economic growth; stress related to the assimilation of an immigrant and refugee population while the native-born population is barely at a replacement rate; and the angst of lessened political stability. [COVID-19 for Western Europe is like throwing a drowning man an anchor!]

Which means: if one American is distraught, he or she can escape to a location elsewhere in the world but if millions are distraught, there is no logical escape. Thus, all the above sources of change and frustration have to be duked out. [Some superficial calmness exists now, when both travel and large gatherings are verboten; later, the underlying situations will become more evident.]

P.S. A must read for those interested in demographics is The Human Tide, by Paul Moreland.

The author weaves a fascinating story about how demographics has been and continues to be central to the evolution of countries and their participation in the world order. Here are a few highlights:

*Sizable population plus industrialization means participation in the arena of political power.

*Population growth is a combination of median age, fertility rate, infant mortality rate, and longevity, plus the net of emigration and immigration.

*Low income, young unemployed populations equal strife. Higher income, older population puts stress on the government social service budget. Shifts in working age to retiree ratio important.

*Rising per capita income, greater education, increased opportunities and independence (including contraceptives and abortions) for women, and urbanization connect to declining fertility rates.

*Future: greyer (multiple countries with advancing age cohorts, greener (more attention to renewable energy), and non-whiter (sub-Sahara Africa has higher fertility rates, even though declining).

*Median ages in the United States:  white, 44; Latino, 28; African American, 33; Asian, 36.

P.P.S. My data points, working backwards through the age spectrum in the United States:

                Above 65, over 75% of the population is white

                In less than 20 years, minorities will constitute over half of the working population

                By 2025, whites and minorities will be equal in terms of the number of high school graduates

                Of today’s newborns, less than 50% are white