Ethics in the superintendency: the actions of malfeasance by a few superintendents undermine the credibility of honest, hard-working educators.

A superintendent in Maryland accepts as a top honor in a national recognition program a $25,000 cash prize from a textbook vendor doing millions of dollars worth of business with his school district.

The wife of an elected superintendent delivers her husband's campaign literature to the schools in his Alabama district and asks principals to distribute the material in the mailboxes of school staff.

School board members in an Indiana district spend $4,100 of the money earmarked for public relations on an engraved Rolex watch for the district's retiring superintendent.

What's wrong with these pictures?

Perhaps nothing as appalling as the U.S. military atrocities in Iraqi prisons or the sexual abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church of late. Or as financially self-serving as Martha Stewart's lies to an investigator about a personal stock sale or as morally outrageous as Bill Clinton's personal conduct in the White House.

Yet, say the experts who study ethics in public life, one need look no further than the newspaper headlines to discover school officials in legal trouble. During just a four-week period at the end of the school year, the news media reported on a Long Island superintendent accused of embezzling more than $1 million from his school district, a North Dakota superintendent sentenced to probation for stealing a school district Jeep and securing reduced-price lunches for his children, a Colorado superintendent sentenced to six years in prison for padding his annual salary by up to $44,000 a year, a Nebraska superintendent arrested on a misdemeanor public indecency charge, an Arkansas superintendent who resigned after engaging in a fight with a local broadcaster, a Nebraska superintendent faced with losing his certification after using school district technology to distribute pornography and sexual jokes, and a Louisiana superintendent suspended for three days for plagiarizing a California superintendent's letter to the community.

While still quite tare among school system leaders, experts suggest these moral and ethical lapses are undermining public trust in schools and their leaders--institutions and individuals long held to a higher standard of behavior than their peers in corporate and political arenas. Incidents of financial kickbacks, nepotism and conflicts of interest may grab the news media's attention. Yet potentially even more problematic are the seemingly routine administrative decisions school leaders make every day that can have a negative, long-term impact on a school or school district's moral compass.

To be sure, Ron Rebore, a professor of educational leadership and higher education at St. Louis University, says educators are "by far, the least [ethically] problematic" of our institutional leaders. What's more, the issue of principled leadership is being increasingly addressed through university-level courses and professional development programs for school leaders that focus on ethics. Consider, too, new legislation on ethical behavior that raises the standards of ethical behavior for all public employees.

Still Rebore remains concerned. "We are certainly tainted by what happens in society in general," he says. "Every institution--the church, business, government, and we're part of government--is under suspicion. People don't trust us." In fact, Rebore says today's moral climate has generated a "loss of innocence" reminiscent of the 1960s.

Thomas Sobol, who teaches ethics to aspiring school system leaders at Columbia University's Teachers College, gets the "sense that things are falling apart." Says Sobol: "All that's going on, socially, politically and economically, is part of, reflective of and in and of itself an unethical situation that screams for attention." And when it comes to his own field, says Sobol, a veteran school leader on the state and local levels in New York, "Education contains an important ethical dimension we've been neglecting."

A Sad State

Research on the subject, some of which stretches back 36 years, suggests school superintendents confronted with ethical dilemmas can be expected to make decisions consistent with the AASA Code of Ethics less than 50 percent of the time. The first such study was conducted in 1968 by C. Roy Dexheimer, at the time superintendent of the Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga BOCES in Ithaca, N.Y. William C. Fenstermaker, an elementary school principal in Pennsylvania, replicated the study in 1994.

Both Dexheimer and Fenstermaker asked superintendents to choose one of several suggested responses to what they called "borderline ethical dilemmas" similar to those they might encounter on the job and then compared their answers to current AASA ethics codes. A total of 47.3 percent of those polled in 1968 and 48.1 percent in 1994 chose the responses considered "ethical."

"Sadly for the state of the profession," wrote Fenstermaker in 1996 for The School Administrator, "my findings, with few exceptions, nearly duplicated those obtained a quarter century earlier."

Both studies, the most significant conducted on the issue involving top school leaders, found less experienced superintendents and those working in larger school districts most likely to make decisions in line with the code adopted by association members in 1962. (A streamlined version of the AASA code was adopted in 1981.) Both researchers also found a correlation between ethics and salaries, with those paid the most generally scoring higher.

California superintendents surveyed in 1999 by Karen Sue Walker, at the time a doctoral candidate at the University of La Verne in California, scored somewhat higher. Walker concluded in her dissertation, "Decision Making and Ethics: A Study of California Superintendents," that the superintendents made ethical choices consistent with the statement of ethics adopted by the Association of California School Administrators the vast majority of the time. According to Walker's research, "most school superintendents make decisions that he or she believes to be right even when it is difficult."

Anecdotal evidence tells its own story. Two high-profile cases surfaced recently. In Roslyn, N.Y., former superintendent Frank Tassone and Pamela Gluckin, the district's former assistant superintendent for business and finance, were charged in early summer with felonies for allegedly embezzling more than $1 million each in school district money. The superintendent of nearby William Floyd school district, also on Long Island, asked the district attorney to open investigations of its two business officials. One was subsequently arrested.

Superintendents across the state "reacted with outrage," according to Tom Rogers, executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. "Stealing from a school system steals from children. That's despicable." Revelations of such alleged gross misconduct, he adds, threaten to unjustly undermine the public's trust in all schools and fuel the ire of public education opponents. "Fairly or not, the actions of a few will reflect on all," Rogers says.

Ethical Dilemmas

Lynn G. Beck, dean of the school of education at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., did her doctoral research on the ethics of school administrators and has published two books on ethics training in educational administration. She says there is much more to being an ethical school superintendent than deciding not to hire your brother-in-law as director of transportation or submitting inflated reimbursement requests for out-of-town travel. She makes a distinction between principle- or problem-focused ethics and narrative ethics.

Beck describes the former as the way one responds to specific ethical dilemmas--listening to the voice in your head, for example, that tells you not to accept the junket to Florida sponsored by the textbook company that wants your district's business. It also means making decisions to "allocate your resources in order to create the greatest good for the greatest number," says Beck. Or not. "You could make an alternative decision to use a lot of your resources to meet a critical need, such as special education even though it benefits a smaller group."

Other examples she cites: Deciding between the public's right to know and an individual teacher's right to privacy, or between a lucrative district contract with a soft drink company and more healthful, if less popular, vending machine offerings.

Beck says such decisions, to some extent, are judgment calls based on any number of factors, including both a superintendent's personal commitments and his or her need to be accountable to a school board. "It's usually a matter of weighing one set of policies, beliefs, values and sometimes even laws against another," she says.

For example, while courts have given school officials the right to search student lockers, "How far do you go?" asks Beck. "How do you decide whose lockers to search?"

The process of making such decisions is complex. Superintendents need a forum in which they can "work with their colleagues and think through some of this in a thoughtful and safe way," she says. Beck is heartened by her belief that most school leaders really do want to do what's best for their students. "The challenge is," adds Beck, "what exactly does that mean?"

Narrative Ethics

Of even greater interest to Beck, however, is narrative ethics, which she broadly defines as one's orientation toward life. "It's a matter of seeing who you are, all you do, all your relationships as having ethical importance," she says.

Beck says narrative ethics focuses more on making decisions than on solving dilemmas. It's the thinking process that goes into, say, deciding where to build a new school, or which students get which teachers, or whether to track students. It focuses on a school district's structures, says Beck, with an eye on avoiding and eliminating major inequities and rooting out unfairness.

Take, for example, a districtwide discipline policy that requires students expelled for disobeying certain rules to remain out of school until their parents come to school and meet with officials. "It may be a well-intentioned and effective policy," says Beck. "But if it's being implemented in a low-income community where parents work hourly jobs, it forces parents to put their jobs or their children's schooling at risk." Far better to have thought through that potential ramification before putting the policy in place than being forced to deal with related dilemmas after the fact, says Beck.

Joseph F. Murphy, who has co-authored work with Beck on the subject, agrees that "a lot of what principals and superintendents do is value-based." Even setting up a school schedule, which at first glance might be considered a purely objective or organizational task, is "laden in values," and administrators need to be aware of that, says Murphy, professor of education at Vanderbilt University. "It affects which kids go to which teachers, which kids go to which classes.... For years and years, low-track kids got bad teachers. That's a value issue."

School leaders need to practice both principle-focused and narrative ethics, though Beck and Murphy worry more about the latter. "administrators' training focuses a lot on outcomes," Beck says, "but I want them to always be thinking of the ethical implications of the actions they take as they pursue those outcomes."

New Challenges

School leaders have long confronted and continue to confront dozens of big issues teeming with ethical and moral implications. Among them: school segregation, the separation of church and state, special education, sex education, gender equality, the sexual orientation of students, racial and ethnic diversity, school safety, school choice, drug and alcohol prevention education and freedom of speech.

One of the newest, the commercialization of public education, is particularly troubling, says Clarence G. Oliver, dean emeritus of the school of education at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. He describes this as a policy area "where officials are beginning to fall into a trap." A strong opponent of commercialization in public schools, Oliver likens it to a school "selling its soul."

To be sure, it may not be illegal to enter into a contract with, say, a soft drink or fast food company that wants exclusive rights to sell its product in the school cafeteria. "But is it unethical?" asks Oliver, who teaches a course titled "Legal, Political and Ethical Issues in Educational Administration" to graduate students. "That's a judgment call. If it causes undue influence [on] and potential damage to students, I'd say it is."

Oliver knows plenty of school leaders disagree with him. In their opinion, these leaders feel vindicated by the good they can do with the money that flows from such contracts. "For them, the money becomes the value, rather than the health of the students," says Oliver, author of "Ethical Behavior--An Administrator's Guide: Ethics and Values in School Administration," a publication he wrote in 2002 for the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration.

Still, advances in technology have ushered in other ethical challenges. School administrators are getting in trouble for the private use of school district cell phones or for using e-mail with school board members to circumvent open meeting laws. "They may seem like very minor issues and may not ever be detected ... but it's still unethical," says Oliver.

NCLB Pressure

As the university experts on ethics point out, with school administrators being held accountable for better student performance, it is student outcomes, as measured by standardized test scores, that are increasingly testing the ethical mettle of today's educators. "For the first time ever, the federal government has mandated that people achieve," says Rebore, the St. Louis University professor. "When you want it badly enough, maybe you're faced with the ethical decision of whether or not to cook the test scores."

In Washington, the state school superintendent's office is investigating nearly two dozen reports of improperly administered standardized tests, according to The News Tribune of Tacoma. The newspaper, noting that some state legislators want closer monitoring of the state's testing program, quoted one elected representative, Gigi Talcott, as saying, "I would like to believe that every classroom teacher, every politician and every car salesman is honest. But I know that's not the case."

A study by the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin determined schools that increased their accountability ratings by the Texas Education Agency between 1998 and 1999 tended to exempt more special education students from state standardized tests than schools with no rating changes or a decline in ratings. Although the report did not draw a causal relationship between the exemption rates and accountability scores, it concluded "only a careful examination of the situation at each school can give a clearer picture of how appropriate exemptions are for individual students."

Then there's the case Beck cites of a low-performing urban school where officials decided to assign a group of students with the potential to do well on a standardized math test to a strong, certified teacher. "Their thinking was if they could get the scores of those 75 kids up, the whole school would look better," says Beck. "But in the process they wrote off 80 other kids."

To be sure, the plan worked. Almost half the students reached the desired standard. But Beck points out that while officials solved their immediate need--how to meet adequate yearly progress as defined by No Child Left Behind--success came at a high price.

"They justified their actions by saying 'Someone has to have the uncertified teacher,'" says Beck. On the other hand, had officials been practicing the kind of narrative ethics Beck espouses, the situation might never have arisen. "They would have concluded that it was not OK for any kid to have an unqualified teacher," she says. "They would have asked, 'What are we going to do about this? It is not acceptable.'"

Chrys Dougherty, director of research at the Center for Educational Accountability at the University of Texas at Austin, says the move toward greater reliance on publicly reported test score data has spawned a new wave of fraud.

"Anytime you have any kind of performance information that people are paying attention to there is the potential for unethical behavior," says Dougherty. "When the audit system in business broke down, you got Enron. In education, it's even worse because in most cases you don't even have a functional audit system in place to begin with."

Dougherty's center analyzes student achievement data in an attempt to identify successful schools. "Of course, if the data is corrupted, that is a real problem for us," he says. Solving such problems involves more than simply relying on the ethics of superintendents. "Some percentage of the population is not ethical," he says, "and that's true in any business that involves human beings. No occupation has figured out a way to screen people so that everyone they hire is ethical. Look at Catholic priests."

Lacking Experience

Oliver, with Oral Roberts University, traces the problem of unethical behavior among some school leaders, in part, to the lack of experience he sees in those being hired today by school boards to fill superintendencies. Educators who entered the field in the 1960s and '70s and rose through the ranks to become superintendents are retiring in waves. The vacancies they create are not drawing the quantity and quality of experienced administrators eager to assume the top berth, where they must deal with the stress of facing school board members, the teachers' union, parents, taxpayers and those with vested interests, over budget shortfalls and unprecedented demands for accountability.

At a time when the stakes never have been higher for superintendents, Oliver contends, "many were pushed into the position. They haven't been adequately prepared. Some have just barely completed their certification. They may not have the training, experience or strength to stand up to the pressures being forced on them."

Those entering without much experience in key decision-making roles are "more likely to fall into the trap of what appears to be an innocent proposal without considering the underlying ethical issues," Oliver says. "You're more inclined to go with the first decision that comes to mind ... [and] less likely to look at the consequences of unethical behavior."

Murphy, considered one of the premier scholars in educational administration, cites inadequate ethics training for school administrators as part of the problem. He says both college-level and staff development programs traditionally have focused on topics deemed more "objective" or research-based. "Issues related to values or morals didn't even get on stage," says Murphy. As a result, "you have a profession that didn't pay much attention to values ... and what people began to do basically showed that."

Legislating Ethics

Murphy credits Beck's research with generating a significant increase in attention to the importance of ethics in educational leadership training programs. "The social justice rubric has become one of [its] central pillars," he says.

But can ethics actually be taught? Although Oliver concedes that individuals cannot be forced to embrace a particular value system, he says they can be made aware of ethics concepts and learn how to make decisions aligned with those concepts.

In his educational administration classes, Michael Arnold, an associate professor at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo., focuses on the ethical side of school leadership by using case studies or researching the work of historical figures considered to be ethical. "We use problem-based learning activities and analysis," he says. "Students hear me ask that all the time. 'Why did you make that decision? Whom did it impact? Is what you did moral, legal, ethical and good for kids?'"

As president of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration, Arnold was instrumental in choosing ethical decision making as one of three major themes highlighted at the organization's national conference in August in Branson, Mo.

The Association of California School Administrators addressed the ethics issue at a seminar in January. Titled "Leading With Credibility: The Role of Ethics and Integrity in the Superintendency," the program drew about 40 superintendents willing to discuss ethical challenges and how to deal best with them.

Laraine Roberts, senior research associate at WestEd, which helped to run the seminar, says the idea to focus on ethics grew out of the superintendents' concerns over unethical behavior in the corporate sector. Participants studied the literature on ethics with an eye on ensuring their own ethical behavior and helping others in their districts act appropriately. They discussed at length an ethical dilemma faced by a superintendent in the state. The conversations focused on "how to translate personal values into leadership action," Roberts says.

One participant, Rich Fischer, superintendent of the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District in Mountain View, Calif., describes the seminar as a "very powerful" experience. "When you hear respected colleagues talk about their own ethical challenges, you realize you need to pay attention to your own and to make sure you're always doing things from a kids-first, ethical perspective."

Fischer believes all superintendents face the same kinds of ethical dilemmas--"variations on a theme," he says. "We need to create trusting and safe environments [in which] to share and examine difficult issues." Yet superintendents seldom, if ever, have done so. Says Fischer, "It doesn't happen at your typical regional meeting."

Professional codes of ethics and legislation on what Oliver calls potential ethical "potholes"--for example, political activity or gift acceptance--also can make a difference. But experts say such documents must be widely and repeatedly disseminated and publicized in order to be effective. To that end, the Illinois Association of School Administrators earlier this year routed to all its members information on the provisions of the state's new Ethics Act and Gift Ban Act, which apply to all school district employees.

Yet Dougherty, with the Center for Educational Accountability in Texas, says ethical behavior is ultimately the result of a strong internal motivation to do the right thing, coupled with the knowledge that unethical behavior could result in loss of respect from one's peers and legal and/or administrative sanctions. "You really need all three components in place," he says, calling for codes of ethics backed up by a system of audits that immediately flags suspicious data or behavior.

A Wider Vision

When it comes to ethical acts and decisions, Sobol, of Columbia University, believes educators have a special obligation that transcends that of, say, a corporate leader. He believes schools and school leaders have a responsibility to make sure the education they provide is expansive, embracing not only diligence and accuracy but also imagination and creativity and an "ethical dimension" that addresses moral obligations and decision making.

Yet the former superintendent in Scarsdale, N.Y., fears the standards movement has "narrowed the scope and vision" of education to a body of knowledge and information that can be measured on standardized exams, reducing the role of school leaders to that of technicians. "Yes, you have to be smart, to know how to balance the budget. And you have to be political to know how to get along with the board," says Sobol. "But those are tools and attributes to use in pursuing the mission, not the mission itself."

He believes most educators accept positions in school system leadership with a desire to do good work for many others. "Ethics and morality are very much involved in their motivation for entering the profession to begin with," he says. "But once there, they don't tap it, encourage it or give it the scope it needs in order to flourish." He challenges school leaders to express their values "in the way you treat people, in how you allocate time and money, in the kind of things you talk about and read, and in the quality of your interactions with people in the organization."

Sobol is pessimistic about the current state of ethical decision making in education, but he is more hopeful as he looks to the future. He sees any number of younger superintendents and those aspiring to be superintendents "looking at what's happening in corporations, the church and the army, and saying, 'We have to do better than that.'"

RELATED ARTICLE: State codes adorn walls, but few have bite.

Codes of professional ethics are surprisingly controversial in education. They are hailed as useful significant by some and disregarded by others as meaningless.

On one side, critics contend that "relying on a code of ethics is to confuse ethics with law," according to the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Professionals, the naysayers add, "have no special rights or duties separate from their rights and duties as moral persons," making such codes pointless.

Others, however, say adopting a code significant for the professionalization of an occupation because it represents "one of the external hallmarks testifying to the claim that the group recognizes an obligation to society that transcends mere economic self-interest."

Clarence G. Oliver, author of "Ethical Behavior--An Administrator's Guide: Ethics and Values in School Administration," believes ethics codes serve a good purpose.

"Whether the code becomes a framed document on an office wall or a type of conscience-compass which is internalized," Oliver writes. "it serves as a guide or reminder in specific situations and can indicate to others that the profession is seriously concerned with responsible, professional conduct."

The AASA Executive Committee adopted its current code of ethics in 1981 (see page 14). Many AASA state affiliates have adopted their own codes, while other school system leaders are expected to follow codes of conduct established legislatively at the state level.

Lacking Consequences

Chrys Dougherty, director of research at the Center for Educational Accountability at the University of Texas at Austin, believes the enforcement of an ethics code is what makes a difference. "You have to take steps to make sure everyone knows about it and that it is taken seriously," he says, Codes need to be backed up by laws or administrative regulations and by an audit system that includes consequences for infractions, he says.

While some large school districts now use their own investigators to look into alleged ethics violations, most such issues still are addressed at the state level, where the handling of complaints by ethics boards varies widely.

Tom Rogers, executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, is frustrated and discouraged by the way the way the process works there. "The code of ethics is itself fine; says Rogers, There s nothing in it you or I or anyone would object to."

To be sure, the code, which applies to all K-12 educators, calls on them to nurture student potential; support challenging learning environments; collaborate with colleagues and parents; and advance the intellectual and ethical foundation of the learning community, The problem, says Rogers, is a qualifier--inserted in the code at the insistence of the teachers who comprise the 'majority of the board's members--stating that violations of the code cannot constitute grounds for discipline or job termination.

Language then incorporated at the insistence of the board's two superintendent members states that the code cannot be used to "diminish the authority of any public school employer to evaluate or discipline any employee under provisions of law, regulation or collective bargaining agreement."

"What we've done is basically cancel each other out," says Rogers. "We've gone to great lengths to make it absolutely clear that there are no consequences" for violating the code.

State Sanctions

Taking a decidedly different approach is the New Jersey State Ethics Commission, which rules on ethics complaints brought against school board members and school district administrators. The commission's complaint process says Mark Finkelstein, president-elect of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators and a commission member, "certainly has some teeth to it."

If the commission finds probable cause to believe the state ethics code has been violated it can recommend the state education commissioner reprimand censure, suspend or expel a board member or administrator.

The vast majority of questions and cases before the commission deal' with school board members, says Finkelstein, who is superintendent of the Middlesex County Educational Services Commission in Piscataway, N,J. He also previously served for 17 years on the school board in nearby New Brunswick and served as president of the New Jersey School Boards Association.

Recent cases heard by the commission involved breaches of confidentiality, confrontations between board members and superintendents, and attempts by school board members to take on the day-to-day administrative work of the district. The commission deals with seven to 10 ethics cases a month, the highest volume in its history, Finkelstein says.

The longer he serves on the commission, says Finkelstein, who has been a superintendent for nine years, "the more I realize how important our work is. There needs to be a watchdog entity out there."

Rogers agrees. "We may be able to learn from New Jersey.--Priscilla Pardini

Several AASA state affiliates have developed codes of ethics or helped to shape others' codes. Here are the web addresses for a few that have been published electronically.

Arkansas: www.aaea.kl2.ar.us/AAEA/AAEA_21AAEA_Code_of_Ethics.html

California: www.acsa.org/hot_topics/hot_toplc_detail.cfm?id=13

Georgia: www.gapsc.com/ProfessionalPractices/Rules/505-6-.01.pdf

Illinois: www.iasaedu.org/about/code.htm

Minnesota: www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/arule/3512/5200.html

New York: www.highered.nysed.gov/tcert/resteachers/codeofethics.htm

South Dakota: www.state.sd.us/deca/OPA/Professional%20Practices/ PAPSC/ethicsadm.htm

Washington: www.wasa-oly.org/associat/code.htm

Wisconsin: www.wasda.org/about/CodeOfEthics.asp

RELATED ARTICLE: AASA's code of ethics.

AASA's Statement of Ethics for School Administrators, adopted by the Executive Committee in 1981, remains the association s code of ethics today.

The code asks educational administrators to subscribe to the following statements of standards:

1. Makes the well-being of students the fundamental value of all decision making and actions.

2. Fulfills professional responsibilities with honesty and integrity.

3. Supports the principle of due process and protects the civil and human rights of all individuals.

4. Obeys local, state, and national laws and does not knowingly join or support organizations that advocate, directly or indirectly, the overthrow of the government.

5. Implements the governing board of education's policies and administrative rules and regulations.

6. Pursues appropriate measures to correct those laws, policies and regulations that are not consistent with sound educational goals.

7. Avoids using positions for personal gain through political, social, religious, economic or other influences.

8. Accepts academic degrees or professional certification only from duly accredited institutions.

9. Maintains the standards and seeks to improve the effectiveness of the profession through research and continuing professional development.

10. Honors all contracts until fulfillment, release or dissolution mutually agreed upon by all parties to contract.

RELATED ARTICLE: If the Phone Don't Ring ...

BY MILES E. TURNER

Country and western songs have some great titles. One of my favorites is Gordon Cormier's "If the Phone Don't Ring, It's Me." As you can guess, the singer tells his ex that their relationship is over. The message is clear: I won't be calling. I am out of here. Don't call me. I am history.

It is too bad more retiring superintendents do not send this same unequivocal message to their boards of education when they leave the school district.

As the executive director of a state superintendents association. I am witnessing a disturbing number of cases in which retired superintendents are creating major headaches for their successors. Some superintendents retire and cannot resist meddling in the district's business. This behavior is unethical.

When I became a superintendent, I replaced an educator who had served the district for 22 years. Yet he was fired when the majority of the elected board turned over. He could have been bitter and taken out his frustrations on me. He could have used his contacts in the school district to make me, the rookie, look bad. He could have fed his own ego by pointing out my first mistakes. Instead he came to my office and said he would not talk to anyone but me about school business. He said he wanted co see me succeed because it would be best for the children of the district.

This was my introduction to the ethics of a departing school system leader. Over the years this seemed to be the common understanding of the appropriate and proper transition of the office of the superintendency.

Sideline Critics

The vast majority of superintendents demonstrate a high level of professionalism and act ethically when dealing with the person who replaces them. Most retired superintendents are excellent mentors who provide support for their successors. Retired superintendents have much to give back to the profession and many do so by dedicating themselves to work for the positive benefit of their previous district. I know of one retired superintendent in Wisconsin who runs the district's educational foundation and contributes heavily to the scholarship fund.

However, some retired superintendents cause tremendous problems for their successor by taking cheap shots from the sidelines. The very people who should be empathetic to the challenges facing the current office holder can mislead communities by using their name and reputation to attack their successor and the school board.

I have read letters to the editor of newspapers in which retired administrators criticize the superintendent for difficult decisions made in executive session. Usually the retired administrator has been out of the loop for some time and does not have all the facts considered in the decision. I'm also aware of former superintendents meeting with staff in secret to hear their complaints and then spreading the gossip they learned with no chance for the current superintendent to rebut the rumors.

I consider this to be extremely unprofessional. The best thing a retiring administrator can do is to support the new administrator and board. The retired superintendent should distance himself or herself from the school district's business and withhold negative public comments. Retirees who find ego satisfaction in attacking the superintendent and board should consider how they might feel had this happened when they were a new superintendent.

Certainly there are rare exceptions. If a past administrator has specific knowledge of illegal or immoral activity on the part of a successor, these activities must be reported for the protection of children. Another exception would be if the board and superintendent asked the retired administrator to serve on a district committee where his or her knowledge of the past could be invaluable.

Finger Pointing

As some of my retired members are quick to note, new administrators sometimes blame their predecessor for problems they have inherited in their new district. This, too, is an ethical issue.

When moving into a new job, it is generally bad practice to blame the previous superintendent for problems one finds. Without all of the facts on how an issue developed, it is difficult to place blame. An incoming administrator should always look forward rather than back. The newcomer ought to minimize mistakes of the past, at least in public.

In my experience, when an incoming administrator is vocal about the poor performance of a predecessor, it makes the new leader look small and petty. The true professional will focus on the remedy to a problem rather than pointing a finger at the past administrator. As a general practice, I strongly recommend finding the best in a predecessor's performance instead of placing blame for the current state of affairs.

Again, there are some obvious exceptions where blatant malfeasance cannot be ignored. But even in these cases the professional does not dwell on the guilty party but focuses on correcting the problem and building a stronger district.

One of my favorite sayings is, "The wise man questions himself and the fool questions others." Always look at your own shortcomings and avoid publicly discussing others' shortcomings. This will make your board community and staff see you in the most positive professional light.

With thousands of retirements likely in the next few years, superintendents have an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the highest ethical practices during the changing of the guard. Those new to the job should look to their predecessors with respect and praise. And those retiring may want to consider saying to their boards and staff: "If the phone don't ring ...

Miles Turner is executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, 4797 Hayes Road, Madison, WI 53704. E-mail: [e-mail]

RELATED ARTICLE: Ethical judgments in public service: simplicity and transparency.

BY THOMAS W. PAYZANT

One of the great advantages to being a superintendent in a major American city is that the job itself almost always resolves any questions about ethics: the decisions and actions of superintendents are so closely scrutinized by news media and a wide array of civic groups that the best way, indeed the only way, to make judgments about ethical issues is to assume that every decision will appear in the next morning's newspaper. In small communities without a daily paper, the news will spread in other ways.

For most public school leaders, ethical questions usually deal with the appropriateness of accepting small gifts offered as a routine part of the job. Some states put a legal cap on the value of a gift that a public official can receive, but the amount varies considerably from state to state.

Probably the most common form of gift to public officials is free entertainment in one form or another. Tickets to theater, professional sports or other entertainment events are common gifts. Travel expenses are also common, a company hosts a meeting or conference, presumably in some attractive locale, because it wants to generate attendance and is willing to pay for it. Most school districts have limited funds, if any, for school leaders to travel. How do we decide whether to accept?

We all know that no gifts or expenses can be accepted from organizations that do business with the school district. Gifts or expenses from vendors, either present, past or prospective, are almost always problematic. If a Company offers gifts or travel expenses, even to a public event of significance, it will raise the specter of conflict of interest. If the superintendent is the only person in the district being offered tickets, travel or a gift, then the appearance of the gift, whether from a vendor or another source, is that the giver may be looking for influence or favors.

Not all gifts are untouchable. In the case of travel, there are nonprofit groups, often funded by philanthropies, whose mission includes bringing public leaders together, and a part of their sponsorship is to help defray travel expenses for participants. Because these organizations are not seeking influence in a school district or looking to do business with district decision makers, no conflict exists.

Who Profits?

What is legal is not the only question. Ethics have as much to do with the appearance of something as with its legality. This does not mean that ethical judgments are superficial. Public officials are role models, like it or not. How we conduct ourselves in our offices is as important an aspect of the trust the public has placed in us as the decisions we make.

Even though a gift offer might meet the legal test--that is, it does not come from a vendor or is not significant in value--it may not meet the ethical test.

This test might be summed up simply as, "Who benefits?" In the case of travel expenses offered by non-profit groups enabling school leaders to come together, the school district can benefit from sharing ideas and showcasing the district to advantage. In the case of tickets to the theater, the benefit is personal, and this does not pass the test.

Gifts that raise ethical questions may come in other forms as well. These include favors both received and sought. In some cases it might be impossible to apply a gift limit to a favor. Someone voluntarily plows the superintendent's driveway every time it snows or offers a job to members of the superintendent's family, While these acts may be motivated by nothing more than neighborliness, they raise the question of whether favors will or have been sought in return.

School leaders are often sought to give favors. In the public eye, there is the perception that a favor implies a quid pro quo--just as it normally does in private life. When people do something for us, we feel an obligation to return the favor. In public life, the exchange of favors probably crosses the lines of good ethical practice. The litmus test, who benefits, almost always will rule out favors that might easily be construed as sweetheart deals.

Hide Nothing

Whatever the gift, wherever the meeting or whoever the opportunity comes from, the first rule of thumb is always public disclosure. A superintendent who agrees to come to a conference in Florida, expenses paid, always must publicly inform his school board of the conference, the sponsor and the cost. It is always best to do this well ahead of the travel date.

If the sponsoring organization is connected in any way to a for-profit venture, then the appearance of the gift may be an ethics violation, even if the district's lawyer says no actual legal conflict exists.

When I was U.S. assistant secretary of education during the Clinton administration, the prevailing rule on gift acceptance was straightforward--nothing over $50. On meals, the rule was always clear and simple: go Dutch Treat. For example, a few days after my first flight on Air Force One, I received a bill, on White House stationery, for less than $15 for a meal I had eaten on the flight. There is a simplicity and a transparency to this that actually makes it comforting. In matters of ethical questions, it is always better to avoid conflicts than be forced to defend against them.

Thomas Payzant is superintendent of the Boston Public Schools, 26 Court St., Boston, MA 02108. E-mail: [e-mail]

RELATED ARTICLE: Better to give than to receive?

When you're a superintendent being recognized for outstanding leadership, you may need to be careful about accepting anything more valuable than a hardy handshake and a solid pat on the back.

During the past year, one of AASA's corporate partners discovered just how treacherous the ethical landscape can be for school system leaders when it comes to accepting a gift of almost any value. The company sponsors a recognition program that honors superintendents for leadership in a particular field.

Company representatives, concerned about compliance with ethics laws, asked their legal staff to prepare a state-by-state summary of legal restrictions on gifts and sponsored travel.

In 20 states superintendents would not be allowed to receive a gift for personal use, although they could accept it if the gift was given cc the school district.

Under many of the states' guidelines, the monetary value and the source of the gift dictated whether a public school official could accept it lawfully. Some place the gift ceiling as low as $50, while one state set an annual aggregate limit on gifts of $100.

According to the lawyers' summary, accepting expense-paid travel and lodging to participate in a national seminar on educational leadership issues is not permitted for public school officials in 10 states.

Priscilla Pardini is a free-lance education writer in Shorewood, Wis. E-mail: [e-mail]