Connecting all the pieces of the mission.

Every four years, as a presidential campaign approaches, the rhetoric about what leadership is best for the nation reaches a fever pitch. What kind of leader do we need for these times, for these challenges? What is required to inspire confidence and hope at home and respect and cooperation in the global community? What leadership qualities are needed to bring the best people to public service and to encourage people to fully engage and participate in their democracy?

As we each answer these questions for ourselves in this election season, it occurs to me that these same questions can be translated to the education arena. What are the critical qualities of mind and heart that are necessary for leading school systems in 2004 and beyond? What do superintendents and their teams do to sustain quality public education in their communities and to tell that story effectively?

Just as the president is the elected leader of the nation, he is also a global leader. A superintendent is the selected education leader of the school system and the education leader in the larger community by persuasion, advocacy and collaboration.

How do we show young people that teaching and leading is more than a temporary job on the way to something better but can be a lifelong calling with rich rewards?

These questions don't have simple answers, but they're the right questions to ask, and we need to find time to step back from the daily issues every now and then and think about them. Put aside the urgent for the important and consider what leadership is required to transform our schools in the next years to accomplish what is demanded--a system that allows each student to achieve her potential.

Most of us completed our formal education at least 20 years ago. If your program was like mine, you didn't spend much time thinking about how to navigate political pressures or how to develop the communitywide report cards to explain what the test scores say and, just as important, what they don't. We learned to manage the school system, not necessarily to lead it, and certainly not to transform it.

AASA is embarking on an exciting venture that will do just that. We are planning to create a Center for System Leadership that will focus on the leadership needs of superintendents as they lead school systems to the goal of improved learning for each student. School systems are more than a collection of buildings or a curriculum or a staff. They are a system, and each part is linked to all the others. Push on the bus schedule and the academic program feels the pressure. Change the middle school language arts program and the impact ripples up to senior high and down to the elementary grades.

And yet all too often we adopt a series of discrete fixes without fully exploring their impact on the whole. We need to think differently.

We also need to recognize that our school system is one of many connected systems within a community. Health care, social services, cultural and recreational systems all provide services and resources to young people and their families. We need to better negotiate these systems on behalf of our kids.

AASA's center will provide training, research and advocacy for superintendents both as leaders of their education system and as advocates and ambassadors to the broader community.

This is an approach to leadership that is important. AASA, whose mission is to "support and develop effective school system leaders," is the right organization to do this work.