Why Should I Trust Your School?

I recently read an op-ed piece in the New York Times with a surprising thesis: amidst the polarization of the left and the right, there is a coalescence around a common (if depressing) belief. Both sides are rapidly losing faith and trust in organizations, institutions, and professions that both sides once saw as credible. The lack of faith in large corporations, medicine, the military, and the media is growing on both sides of the political divide.

While the author of the piece, relatively perversely, argues that it is good to see the partisan divide narrow in one area, I must disagree. Society only operates effectively when the pillars—government, economic players, and media—are trusted to provide unbiased and accurate information. Otherwise, anarchy threatens.

Another pillar for any society is its educational institutions. These are also losing trust on both sides of the aisle.

Most importantly for most of my readers is the loss of trust in our independent K-12 schools. Teachers are besieged by parents convinced that their child is being treated unfairly. Schools deal with parents complaining about curriculum and demanding books be included or excluded from libraries. Students feel unsafe and unsupported. Teachers feel overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated.

As a school leader, one of your main jobs is to build a trustworthy school. A school is worthy of trust if it articulates a coherent approach to education, follows that approach, and is good at it. These three items seem easy on the surface but are surprisingly challenging in practice.

For most independent schools, the biggest disconnect is between what they articulate about their practice and what actually occurs within their walls. We talk about being student-centered, yet most classes still feature a teacher up front dispersing knowledge. We talk about being places of equity and belonging, yet many of our students do not feel at home in our schools. We talk about honoring the whole child, yet we emphasize academic achievement and grades or athletic achievement.

It is hard to see these discrepancies unless we look with clear eyes. We easily fall prey to confirmatory bias, wanting to believe our school is doing a great job. Put those biases aside and really look at your school’s experience. Have frank conversations with students; they will tell you what they observe about the school.

We need to fix those discrepancies if we hope to be trusted. A school that is trusted runs much more smoothly than one in which people feel they are being sold a bill of goods. And if we show our students what a trustworthy school looks like, maybe, just maybe, they can build trustworthy institutions when they become the leaders we are training them to be.