Down in Janesville, there’s been a debate about whether to adopt a more detailed dress code. They’ve spent more than one school board meeting on the subject.
Just about any other discussion within that district, in that struggling city, would be more useful than an over-analysis of what teachers, administrators, and other employees should wear to work.
The amount of time and contention that Janesville has seen over this concern – peripheral to the substantive teaching of students in that school system – is a cautionary tale: the Whitewater Schools can and should do better than spending time on picayune matters.
It’s worth considering, contention by contention, the defense of an elaborate dress code that Janesville’s superintendent, Karen Schulte, offers. I’ll reproduce her recent remarks of 11.29.12 below, with my replies following thereafter, paragraph by paragraph.
Her remarks in appear bold, mine in a regular font:
As state and national policies in education continue to be examined, many issues are coming to the forefront. This is evident in statewide achievement testing, national common-core standards, global literacy and teacher effectiveness. Included in this reexamination of education in America are standards of professional behavior. Within these standards is an increased focus on staff dress codes. We are no different than other leading school districts across the country that are raising standards of professionalism.
It’s telling that of all the ‘state and national policies in education’ that ‘continue to be examined,’ Schulte doesn’t rank them in any particular order. State & federal, but all in common: a mishmash, a cook’s stew of trending topics.
Setting aside the passive construction (‘policies in education continue to be examined’), one wonders when policies aren’t being examined. There’s also no real explanation of priorities. Does Schulte see a difference in priority between core standards of substantive learning and a teacher dress code? One would hope so, but if she does, then she’s neglected or is unable to describe that priority succinctly.
The Janesville School District has a jointly developed “Standards of Professional Behavior” document, though the Janesville Education Association has not endorsed it. It is a guiding document and calls us to be our best at all times. However, it is vague regarding dress code. The Standards of Professional Behavior is the only document in the district that addresses employee dress by stating “I will wear appropriate attire.”
We are not alone in our focus on dress code. Other leading school systems are defining dress codes for their employees. Here are two samples:
“The Wichita School District is just one of a growing number in the nation cracking down on teacher apparel, and jeans are banned in at least one elementary school in New York City. … Several Arizona schools are strictly defining business casual,” USA Today reported July 30.
“The policies on professional attire adopted recently by districts such as Nicolet, New Berlin and Hamilton outlaw jeans and define the acceptable dress as ‘business casual.’ Most employees working under new dress codes said they thought it was acceptable to expect staff to dress nicely and that it was probably good for their district’s image overall,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Oct. 1, 2011.
First things first. Schulte quotes from a JS story by reporter Erin Richards, but anyone reading the story would see that Richards’s assessment is a casual observation, and almost certainly not the result of a comprehensive survey of teachers in one of the story’s schools, let alone all employees in one of the story’s districts.
Schulte’s whole contention that leading districts are advancing stricter dress codes is too funny: Wichita, at least one elementary school in New York City, and some schools in Arizona. Over three-hundred million people, in fifty states, but the supporting evidence Janesville’s superintendent musters is a few motley anecdotes. An average student, from any of her high schools, should be expected to offer better supporting evidence than Schulte does in this essay.
Even if it should be true that employees elsewhere favor these codes, the kerfuffle in which Janesville finds itself only confirms that Schulte is unable to produce as smooth and agreeable a result as other districts’ leaders.
As we reflect on appropriate attire for all of our employees, it is important to examine the course the district is on in its Journey to Excellence.
One now learns the truth: Janesville is not on a journey to good work, or even a journey to excellence, but a Journey to Excellence. Whitewater needs none of this. We need substantive academic, athletic, and artistic accomplishment, responsibly funded. These accomplishments should be the true priorities of our community.
We’ll not find it by traveling somewhere, and certainly not by crafting bad slogans about metaphorical trips to places of supposed excellence.
Yet, if Schulte wished to travel somewhere, she might consider nearby Elkhorn. (It’s closer than Wichita, after all.) That district’s established a simple, one-page code, with none of the fuss that’s swirling in Janesville.
The district has chosen an evidence-based leadership model. This model embraces standardization of workplace practices to promote efficiency, alignment and quality. Part of the standardization of practices is having uniform policies. It is also about communicating clear messages and defining expectations.
Are you not reassured that our neighbors in Janesville have an evidence-based leadership model? What leadership would not have such a model? What leadership would expect credit for having one? There are, after all, very few places that tout evidence-free or wholly indiscriminate methods of leadership.
I believe all employees have a right to know what appropriate dress looks like, but that’s a difficult target to hit, so writing a dress code policy as a portion of the employee handbook is an attempt to define “appropriate” for all of us. This is no small task because we have 1,300 employees.
This is truly an admission of administrative failure. Schulte and her principals should have been able to create a consensus through coaching and dialogue. Her pleas for greater detail are only an admission of her lesser coaching. It’s not her fault, you see – she has too many employees in her charge.
On the contrary, it’s a more economical and likely explanation to say that the fault is in one superintendent rather than 1,300 employees.
Without a common understanding of “appropriate dress,” we might define it differently. This conflicts with our evidence-based leadership practices that we have defined as a foundation for the district.
Janesville’s superintendent asks for a common understanding, but her essay assumes – falsely – that a common understanding will come only from a detailed document. That’s not true at all. Other districts have not needed such documents or have simple ones, as Elkhorn now does.
I’d ask Superintendent Schulte a question: does she think a society can have law, and a consensus about the law, without a written constitution?
If she answers that it can, then she’ll have to explain why she can’t do for a small district what whole nations do for themselves: achieve consensus without always reducing fundamental principles to a single writing.
If she answers no, then she’ll have to explain the example of a nation like Britain, that is a free and orderly society without a written constitution. Schulte’s goal of a common understanding erroneously assumes it can come only from a detailed, written document.
It’s safer for others to assume that she and her principals have failed at a consensus, and now seek the crutch of a detailed document to support their hobbled leadership.
An employee handbook is an important document to codify and standardize our beliefs and a critical communication tool to share those beliefs with all of us. We are on the path to excellence. We are aligning our efforts, defining our beliefs, and raising the achievement bar for all of us—students and staff alike.
Here’s the unpersuasive conflation of an employee handbook with a detailed dress code. They’re not the same thing. One could have an employee handbook without wasting time on a fussy dress code.
Janesville is free to spend money for leaders who cannot manage to consensus.
No one in Whitewater, however, should make the mistake of thinking that a similar approach for this community would be anything other than needlessly wasteful. If leaders in our schools or school board waste time on a dress code, they’ll deserve not the slightest sympathy. There are better things to do with the limited time that public officials have.
A fuss over something like this is simply an exercise in wrangling & time-wasting.