What Can Educational Leadership Learn from the 2008 Election?

What can educational leadership learn from the 2008 election?

That is the question I plan to base a upcoming paper on. I am going to wait until after the general to publish it (not even sure where yet) but I think there are a lot of valuable lessons that educational leadership can draw from this election and articulating those is worth something. Given the popularity of the 2008 election, I think it is a good way to get educational leaders and others to reflect on their own practice.

So, here is a working list. I didn't include everything I am thinking about, just sort of a top 5 on my list. I really would love feedback on this list, or other ideas that you may have. You don't have to post them here, but if you write them at your own blogs, be sure to put a link in the comments so I can find them and consider them and link back.

So, in no particular order:

1. 24/7 media. Gaffes, gaffes, gaffes and more gaffes. You can't even fix your hair (somewhat repeatedly). There is even one today. There are even analysis over the importance of gaffes. Anyway, educational leaders should get a sense that cameras and recording devices ... are becoming ubiquitous. Scott McLeod's and my posts on hidden cameras in schools is more evidence of this. But, this is not just going to be limited to hidden cel phone cameras in classrooms. Given the ease of recording equipment, places where educational leaders might have felt safe to speak freely in the past, such as board meetings, will increasingly be subject to cameras. Say the wrong thing and you are not just likely to see a story on it in the morning paper, but you are also going to find video of yourself saying it over, and over, and over again.
   
2. Data. This is the first election in my memory that has relied so heavily on data. Not just polling and exit polling, but demographic data,  multiple regression analysis, delegate allocations, superdelegate counts, and much more. And this election has made stars out of the people that can deal with the numbers and use the numbers to make accurate projections. Chuck Todd went from being a back office political director for NBC to one of the most authoritative voices on the election. Nate Silver, a baseball statistics analyst, used his data skills to out-project the pollsters and in the meantime made his blog FiveThirtyEight the data resource for the 2008 election. He is such a great story that Newsweek ran a story on him. As I wrote earlier, data (and the people that can make sense of it) are becoming an important resource in all areas of life, but especially when people are a little confused. Where there are not traditional ideas that carry the day or in tumultuous times people are now increasingly putting their trust in the analysis of data analysts to clarify the picture. While all the speculators were speculating on the democratic primary ... people who knew the numbers knew it was over in February.
   
3. Inevitability. Yeah, ask Hillary Clinton about her thoughts on inevitability. It is just not as good a position to take anymore. Educational leaders who hold a idea they think is inevitable that everyone will eventually get on board with are taking an increasingly risky position. In this age, people want to be convinced. They want to see the argument. They don't want to just be told what to do because it is inevitable, they want to feel like they are involved in changing things.
   
4. Change is in. In the beginning, some candidates were actually trying to run on experience. Now, they are all running on change, even the 71 year old guy. Even the guy that explicitly ran on "experience AND change" couldn't get any traction. The country is in the mood to try something new, whether or not that something has been previously tested in practice. I think this mood applies to both politics and education. Educational leaders that have new ideas, even "inexperienced" educational leaders, should be encouraged to give those ideas a shot while the country and perhaps their district is in the mood for new things. 
   
5. The Power of the Net. Barack Obama would not be the Democratic nominee without harnessing the inherent power of the net, period. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder even called the Net, HisSpace. In this excellent read, that Atlantic documents how Obama turned Silicon Valley loose on Washington politics and the result was more campaign contributions than anyone in history ... by a long, long shot. He has almost a million Facebook Friends. His internet videos have been viewed tens of millions of times. The will.i.am, Yes We Can music video itself has been viewed over 8 million times. You can't even make a political ad with stock footage without the Net getting involved. And, just in the last couple of days we learn there is an Obama Internet war room to fight slurs. I could go on and on about how the Net has changed American politics. If the Net is having this kind of impact on politics ... shouldn't it be having that kind of effect on education? The Net is changing the way the world operates and schools are slow to catch up.
   

Anyway, those are 5 things I think educational leadership can learn. I am sure you have more ideas and/or comments about these and I would love to know them.