Leadership Practices and Managerial Accountability in Italy

The changes that are affecting public education imply the need to incorporate into principal’s leadership practices two opposing forces: on the one hand, the accountability systems, which require responsibility for centrally managed achievement testing, compli­ ance with standard procedures of self-evaluation, planning teaching improvement, and re­ porting of the results; and on the other hand, the expectations that come from within the school, namely those of teachers, students, families, and other stakeholders. This presents the challenge of coproducing authentic learning (problem solving, soft skills, civic knowledge, and citizenship) that is not easily measurable and therefore difficult to bring to light, rationalize, systematize, and report. Principals react differently to the demands of centralized policy-making initiatives. Some see them as opportunities for growth and only formally adopt them, whereas others en­ trench themselves into particular practices aimed at focusing on the immediate, on being conservative and minimizing risk taking and setting less ambitious goals that can take their schools forward. Managerial accountability can end up “colonizing” the organiza­ tions (and those who lead them), with the consequence that time and attention is devoted to what is being measured or observed by the central administrative systems. The “colo­ nized” leaders develop or bend their managerial practices primarily in response to the ex­ pectations of accountability systems. On the opposite side, accountability systems can produce the effect of “decoupling”: the actual activities are separated from the rituals of accountability requested by the central or local government. In this case, school princi­ pals conform only formally to the demands of accountability systems. Other school lead­ ers can capture opportunities from an accountability system, integrating it into a compre­ hensive management approach that balances opposing requests and organizational prin­ ciples into a “systemic” model.