LA Schools Hire Former Admiral as Super!

The inestimable Joanne Jacobs points to recent news in Los Angeles that the school board there had hired Vice Adm. David Brewer (USN, ret.) as superintendant. The lead to this article is great:

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. John Fryer uses an earthy metaphor to explain why the Los Angeles Unified School District hired a military man as its next superintendent: Walk around in a cow pasture long enough, he says, and you lose the ability to smell it.

Translation: Career educators can become oblivious to the flaws in their schools.

Wihle the LA Times story points out mixed success of former military officers succeeding as supers, it also fairly points out that people with decades of experience in education don't always succeed either.

But education politics are not Pentagon politics, with a President at the top who will issue orders and see admirals and generals scurrying to obey.

Those who have made the transition say there is no reason to believe Brewer can't succeed. But they say he faces a steep learning curve — especially when it comes to the most treacherous part of the job, local politics.

"Not that he hasn't seen politics — he certainly has — but local politics are nastier and much more intense than anything he's experienced at the national level," said Fryer, who won plaudits for his stewardship of the Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Fla., from 1998 to 2005. He now runs the Washington-based National Institute for School Leadership, which trains principals.

Romer has said that, even as a former governor of Colorado and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he was unprepared for the politics in Los Angeles, with their cross-cutting ethnic currents and hidden shoals of personal rivalries. Brewer is stepping into an even more volatile situation, given the confrontation between the school board, which hired him, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is set to claim a share of the board's power.

Still, I believe that Brewer, like many who come to education without the baggage of having spent their careers in education may be just what is needed. For sure, he will have to bear the slings and arrows of the LA Teachers' Union and a bureacracy not know to warm up to new superintendants, but at the same time--, one does not make Vice Admiral (that's three star admiral) without some political skills.

As a former Navy enlisted man, I tend to respect Admirals because they are Admirals. But by the same token, leading large organizations is a particularly rare skill. Note that I said leading, not managing. In my mind, too many superintendants and other school officers spend too much time managing not leading. Managing involves keeping thinks running, greasing the squeaky wheel and trying to get all the pieces of the machinery running. Leading is setting our a vision and then getting everyone working, in their own best way, to achieving that vsision. Sometimes leading means convincing, other times it means ordering.

Good Luck Admiral.