areas and causes of conflict between teachers and principals in the implementation of administrative decisions

I’m not sure how you’d classify this (as an area of conflict), but when I was a teacher, I once had a principal who told me to “drop it” when I busted some kids for plagiarizing.

He obviously didn’t feel like dealing with the parents, who would have complained that their cheerleader daugher & football player son had just failed Theatre Arts.

At a school I used to work at, discipline policies and application of consequences was a major cause of conflict. I heard from many students that if they were referred to the principal’s office, the principal ripped up the referral and threw it away in front of the student and/or made a joke of it. I suspect this was true since there were several referrals that I never got my carbon copy returned, and since I heard the report from several different students. It made it hard to maintain discipline in my classroom because all the students knew I had no backing from the administration.

Another administrative decision that teachers didn’t like was the decision not to issue textbooks to students. I had several parents complain that they couldn’t help their children with their homework (I teach math) because they didn’t have a book with examples.

In our evaluations, we were graded more on our adherence to minor policies (like having a social contract on the wall and shaking every student’s hand every day) than on major goals (like students actually learning the material). The administration was trying to micro-manage our classrooms and didn’t understand that each teacher has a different style and as long as students are learning and no major rules are broken, teachers should be left alone to do their jobs.

Needless to say, I didn’t stay at that school for very long. I found one in a neighboring town where I don’t have to deal with any of that, and I am much happier.

Administrative dictates are usually developed remotely from the bulk of people that have to eventually implement them. You see in the answers already a gulf between those who teach and those who administer schools. This is also replicated in most of the business world. I firmly believe it is based in our societal acceptance that those who are educated (meaning those with advanced degrees) just know more than the rest of the workforce.

I work for a large international company, and until very recently, the idea of including the average worker in a decision about how they ought to go about doing their job was totally foreign to our management structure. (Only the advent of Lean concepts has really opened the door to ground level employees assisting in the development of their own policies for how they do their work.) It is likely the same in school administration, and from dealing with high school administrators over a period of several years now, I would also venture that they would tend to be even more likely to believe they know best in most every situation.

In my experience, those who are doing the job are always in the best position to improve the process, and make decisions on the day to day workings for their job. This is no different with teachers. They generally have a good understanding of what their job is, and how to best go about doing it, but there are always administrators, parents and others that are not in the classroom that believe they actually have more ability and better ideas. In addition, school board members are pressured by their constituents; usually special interests are the most vocal, and that fact alone may allow their point of view to be mandated with little consideration of the long term impacts.

I am aware that there are focus groups, or committees that help guide administrative policy on school boards, but in general, those bodies are formed of people that, if not complete sycophants, at least are leaning towards the desired outcome. This is also mirrored in private business…decision makers surround themselves by people that think like they do, and will support them. They make decisions and, with nobody there to actually offer a contrary opinion, those decisions are easily validated. This is a dangerous course of action, though, as many businesses have found out over the last decade or so. Many companies absorb huge costs for poorly thought out ideas that came from the top down.

So, when you have a perfect storm of policy makers that do not listen to those who must implement the policy, you will nearly always miss the mark, and usually in a particularly significant way. Autocratic decision making has its place, but when it comes to classroom policy, teachers really need a strong voice. Administrators really need to focus on long term policy on how an overall district operates, with the guidance and input from their employees.

the same conflicts occur in every industry. for some reason there is always an abyss of confused comprehension between the administrative level of a business and the people that are in there “getting their hands dirty”. i don’t know what it is, maybe the administrative types don’t understand the way things really work down here at ground level.

Overstepping boundaries.

Teachers need to run their classrooms in the ways they see fit; often, it seems, they aren’t allowed to make the rules they need to make their classrooms friendly to kids.

I had a teacher that allowed us to chew gum (she trusted us to act like adults with it,) however, the school policy was no gum. Same for hats and water bottles.