Today's conversation shines a spotlight on the transformative power of educational leadership through the lens of Dr. James Lane, a visionary who has significantly influenced education at various levels. We delve into his inspiring journey, beginning with his unexpected transition from a musician to an educational leader, where he discovered his passion for making a difference in students' lives. Dr. Lane emphasizes the critical importance of equity in education and shares his ambitious vision for the future, including addressing the pressing teacher shortage and enhancing the quality of education nationwide. Our dialogue navigates the intricate balance between policy-making and real-world classroom realities, shedding light on how engaged communities can advocate for better resources and conditions for teachers. As we explore Dr. Lane's insights and experiences, it's clear that the path to meaningful change in education lies in building strong connections among teachers, parents, and community leaders, all united by a common goal: creating an environment where every child can thrive.

In an inspiring dialogue that traverses the nuances of educational leadership, Dr. James Lane shares his transformative journey from a full-time musician to a prominent figure in the educational landscape. With a career spanning local school districts to the U.S. Department of Education, Lane reflects on the pivotal moments that have shaped his leadership philosophy. He emphasizes the importance of being exceptional in one’s current role as a precursor to future opportunities—a sentiment he and his mentor echo. This principle, ‘be great where you are,’ serves as a cornerstone for Lane, who believes that respect for one’s work fosters future opportunities.

As the conversation unfolds, Lane provides a candid analysis of the current challenges facing education, particularly the teacher shortage and the pressing need for systemic change. He underscores the importance of teacher support, competitive pay, and positive working conditions as essential elements in attracting and retaining quality educators. By sharing his new initiatives and the focus of his upcoming role at University Instructors, Lane not only breaks news but also underscores the urgency of addressing the teacher crisis. His insights serve as a rallying cry for those invested in the future of education, urging them to advocate for meaningful change and to recognize their agency in fostering a supportive educational ecosystem.

Takeaways:

1. Dr. James Lane's journey from musician to educational leader highlights the importance of adaptability and following one's passion.
2. The key to effective leadership in education lies in inspiring and empowering teachers, not just managing them.
3. Engagement between parents and teachers is crucial, as better communication leads to improved student outcomes and community support.
4. Addressing the teacher shortage requires understanding the root causes, such as pay and working conditions, to attract and retain quality educators.
5. Successful educational reform must balance policy with the realities teachers face in the classroom, requiring practitioners to guide decision-making.
6. Dr. Lane emphasizes the need for a systemic approach to education that includes collaboration among all stakeholders for the benefit of students.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. leadingwithlaserfocus.com
2. pdkinternational.org
3. universityinstructors.com

The podcast where we explore the stories of leaders, change makers and visionaries who are building bridges across divides to create a better, more connected world. I am your host, Keith Haney. Today I'm honored to welcome a guest whose work has transformed education at every level, Dr. James Lane.

Dr. Lane is a nationally acclaimed educated educational leader with a career that spans local school districts, state departments of Education, and U.S. department of Education.

He served on several key leadership roles in ets, PDK International, and Educators Rising, organizations dedicated to strengthening the educators pipeline and improving student outcomes nationwide. Dave will explore his journey, his passion for equity, and his vision for the future of education. So let's dive in. Dr. Kane, welcome.

Dr. Lane, welcome to the podcast. How you doing today?

Yeah, thanks, Keith. So excited to be with you today and look forward to the conversation.

I'm looking forward as well. I'm gonna ask you my favorite question to get us started. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Best piece of advice I ever received. Be great where you are.

I like that.

Yeah. I can remember when I was a lot younger, I had aspirations to do some of the cool things I've been able to do.

And I remember talking to a mentor that I had at the time, and I said, what do I got to do if I want to be the next principal, the next superintendent, next state superintendent? He said, the most important thing that you can do is be great at the job that you have.

And don't forget, you got to be great there before you can be great somewhere else. And that's something I've always thought about that.

Yeah, there's a lot of networking that goes on in this world and there's a lot of meeting people and conferences and sales opportunities and all that. But the key to success that I have found is when people respect the work that you're doing, the opportunities will come.

Yeah. Someone gave me similar advice. Flourish where you're planted. I guess what they said. So, yeah, I like that. So let's talk about your career.

What inspired you to pursue a career in education?

Well, at first, I don't. Education wasn't my first thought.

I was a full time musician playing in beach bands in North Carolina, and I played jazz and I played salsa and I was playing with a band that was signed on a label and. And I mean, I was having a good time. And, you know, eventually I met the woman that is now my wife and she was also playing music in a ska band.

And she came off the road first. And as we started thinking about getting married, you know, it became clear I wasn't gonna be on the road full time and have a family.

And, and then frankly, the other thing I learned is that the musicians don't make the money. The, the people around the musicians tend to get all the money. And so I wanted a stable life.

I wanted to raise a family, I wanted to own a home, all of those things. I wanted health insurance, you know, which musicians don't have. And, and so I took my first job teaching band in Durham, North Carolina.

And I, @ the time, I still wanted to play music a little bit on the weekends and tour, you know, on the weekends. And so I went to my first principal and I said, what do I have to do to become a teacher at your school?

But know that sometimes I might have to be gone on Fridays and Mondays and all that. And she said, well, this is the perfect job for you because this is a year round school. So you can do your tours every nine weeks.

We're off for three weeks and we got a long summer still and you know, as long as you don't miss work, you can do whatever you want to on the weekends. And so I took that year round teaching job and ultimately what got me into education was the first day I walked in that class.

I just love teaching kids. From the first time I stood with my baton in front of the band and took a program that was 25 kids to over 50% of the school, over 300 kids in band.

We ended up touring the nation. I took the middle school kids to Disney World that had never left Durham.

And I immediately saw that in what was otherwise a challenging school, they had basically closed that school down and reopened it as a year round school and replaced all the staff. And I saw that the quality of the people that we had in the building was what made the difference for the kids in our community.

And I started thinking, gosh, if I can make a difference for every classroom in my school like I think I'm making in mind, maybe I can really make a difference. And that's what led me to the principalship.

Then I took over a principalship and in one year I took a school that had pass rates in the 50s to pass rates in the 90s. And I started thinking, what if I could have every school in my community as impactful as the school that I'm leading?

That led me to the superintendency and then it happened again. Led an amazing three school districts in Virginia, divisions, as we call them there.

And I started thinking, what if every district and division in Virginia could be highly impactful, and that's what led me to the state superintensity. Then that same focus on impact is what took me to the federal government and now my. My position in, you know, national business leadership.

But for me, everything has been about the kids and about making a difference and just seeing how far I could take this impact and reach as many people as.

Possible. So I love that story. I love your journey.

I'm curious, you know, every time we look at our journey, there's always some kind of a pivotal moment or maybe a challenge that really either pushes us or inspires us to dig deeper in our leadership. Is there some moment in your career that defines your leadership.

Style? My style? Well, yeah.

I mean, you know, I was joking with somebody the other day that until this last position I've been in, I really hadn't interviewed for a job since I became principal. And, you know, when you become principal, you do a good job. The board eventually tapped me to be the superintendent. There's more to that story.

And, you know, state superintendent's appointed by the governor, so I was tapped by the governor. Federal level. You're appointed by the White House and the secretary, So I was tapped there. But I was.

It was principal where I got my first job that, you know, I interviewed for and was selected for. And. But it was also the first time where I was the boss. You know, when you're an assistant principal teacher, you're not the boss.

I remember walking in there, first day, and you got to keep in mind there are a lot of teachers in that building teaching 25, 30, 40 years in some cases. And here I was, you know, maybe 28, 29 years old. I know I wasn't 30 yet. And I'm everybody's boss in the building. And I.

And I remember I was doing my first teacher evaluation, and I sat in the teacher, you know, been teaching 30, 40 years, she. She's forgotten more about teaching than I'm ever going to know. And I remember thinking to myself, how am I going to lead these amazing educators?

And I don't have the same experiences that they've had. And that was pivotal for me because I realized my job was partially to teach folks that needed to learn how to teach, how to teach better.

Sure, that's what principals should do.

But my job really was to inspire people to maximize their own potential and that it didn't matter if I didn't know teaching English as much as this teacher. It didn't matter if I didn't know math as much as this. This teacher. Because I was a band director.

What mattered is I knew what was best for kids, and I knew what. And I knew how to motivate and inspire people. And that. That first principal job was it.

I realized that even if I didn't always have the deep subject matter expertise of every single person that worked for me, that's okay. It wasn't my job to micromanage and be in their weeds.

My job was to make sure that we were strategically going where we needed to go, get everybody on board with that and give them the resources and the tools to be successful. And.

And that becoming a principal at that young age, I think helped me to kind of stay out of that micromanagement world, but instead to be a true leader and an inspirer. And I've carried that all throughout my.

Career. So a lot of people think they understand education because they been in school.

What are some common misconceptions that you dealt with in your educational.

Roles? Well. Misconceptions. Well, you know, I don't always think about it the way.

I mean, I appreciate what you're saying because we talk about that all the time, that everyone went through school, so everyone thinks they know what school should look like. You know, I get that. But at the same time, I always lead from a perspective of everyone's always trying to do the right thing.

You know, having gotten into the more the political side of education when I was an appointee of governors and the president and all of that, I also learned that you don't assume that everybody's politics are the same because of the person they work for.

And then that filtered down into the classroom as well, where don't assume that just because a parent disagrees with you that they're not doing it for the right reasons.

And that's more how I think about it than the misconceptions is every time I had a parent who disagreed with a decision we made, whether it was suspending their child or a school board policy or something. What I knew is, at the end of the day, they were fighting what was best for their kids. And then everybody has a perspective that they're coming from.

The teachers in the teacher unit want to push for what's best for teachers, and the principals want what's best for the principals, and superintendents want what's best for superintendents sometimes. Yet we all want what's best for the kids.

And so I always felt like my job was to make the decision that I thought was best for the students in spite of all of those things. That or any misconceptions anybody had or something like that.

And, but I also tried to lead from a perspective of knowing why someone was disagreeing with me. And at the end of the day, when, when I make a decision that's not best for your student, I'll use suspension as an example.

I want you to fight as a parent because that means lets me know you're going to make a difference in that kid's life when he gets home and you're going to make sure that we don't have this issue at school anymore. The ones I worry about are not the ones that argue with me. It's the one that don't even return the phone call.

And then, you know, how engaged are they in their kids lives? Because we know engagement in their lives is essential to the success of them in school.

And so I don't really worry about misconceptions, but what I do think about is how can I take this parent who cares so much about their kid and leverage that to help our school community or our school district community or our state be the best it can.

Be. So in your current role as CEO of PDK International Education Rising, how are you developing future.

Educators? So, Keith, I might be breaking news on your podcast today. I'm taking a new job starting.

Tomorrow. Oh, you are breaking news, all.

Right. Well, yeah, so I left PDK and I've been leading assessment at ETS for a minute.

But starting tomorrow, I will be the new CEO at a company called University Instructors.

And University Instructors is a, is very similar to what I did at pdk, which is why I felt like even though nobody knows this yet, by the time this releases, it'll be public. I thought I'd go on and say something.

PDK was very focused on the teacher shortage and they run a program called Educators Rising that worked with high school students that wanted to become teachers and got them on the pathway to becoming a teacher.

And in my new world, where I'm going tomorrow, at University Instructors, I will lead one of the premier staffing firms in the nation where we take, we work with school districts and if they have a teacher vacancy and they can't find anybody through no, you know, through all the efforts they try through their human resources department, you know, we've got on the ground recruiters around the nation. We'll help them find a teacher and then we really try to fill any vacancy. But, but we, you know, we're not just a staffing firm.

When we bring a teacher to a school district, our intent is to get that teacher certified and then let that teacher become a permanent part of the district. And then we'll move on and help recruit the next vacancy that they have. But we do that with tutors as well.

We're one of the largest tutoring firms in America, one of the largest staffing firms in America. But we don't just do traditional staffing.

Our work is all about delivering you someone that will become a high quality teacher in your school district.

And the reason I decided to take that job and the reason I was at PDK and the reason I did the ETS roles in my post government life is I know that the number one pain point for superintendents and principals is not having high quality teacher in every classroom. And you know, often that's called the teacher shortage, which means in a lot of cases they have no teacher in the classroom.

But I just felt like in this phase of my career, after I got out of government service, if I can help school districts with their biggest pain point, and that is making sure that they not only have a body in the classroom, but an amazing teacher in every classroom, then I know I'm still continuing to do the work to make a difference. And so that's what I'm going to wake up start tomorrow. Big news that here on the podcast.

I'm going to wake up starting tomorrow and I'm going to do my work to get a great teacher in every classroom in.

America. Wow, that's really cool. I'm glad you broke news on the podcast. I had to make sure we highlight that.

But I served in churches and we always had a school, every single church I served. And we had that same problem of trying to find quality teachers.

And we have some horror stories of not finding quality teachers and how that impacted our school. So tell me about what is leading to this shortage in.

Education. Yeah, Well, I mean, let's start off with the most obvious answer and then I'll share some of the other things that we know.

But the most obvious answer is teacher pay. I mean, we do not pay teachers enough. I think it was a Forbes article. I've quoted this a few times on podcasts, but I'll share it with you.

It's not as though we don't have enough humans to teach. Right? There are enough humans in this world to teach. What we have a shortage of is people willing to teach for the conditions that we offer.

And so teacher pay is obviously top of that list. And I live in the South. I live in Virginia. And you know, parts of Virginia are uniquely low.

You get into the northeast and salaries can get pretty high, but then cost of living tends to mirror that and so it becomes the same issue. So you know, we've got to get to a world where we're incentivizing our college graduates to think of teaching as a career.

And the only way we're going to do that is if we make it competitive with other market and job opportunities that they have.

So, you know, knowing that there's not an unlimited budget in our government and teacher pay is not going to jump, you know, and I will tell you like every year that I was a superintendent or state superintendent, I tried to always do a pay increase.

We gave 10 and we're not even scratching the surface. And I can remember standing on the steps of the Capitol and cheering for our, you know, 3 and 5 and you know, higher percent pay increases.

But what we got to realize is that's not going to be enough to stem the tide of this shortage. It, you know, we've got to get where.

When you became a teacher, you know, when my parents weren't teachers, but in my parents era, a two family household where both people were teaching, they could own a home and raise a family. Right now on a two teacher salary, it'd be very difficult to buy a home. It would be extremely difficult to buy a home and raise multiple kids.

And frankly, I mean I live in a neighborhood, several teachers in my neighborhood, I cannot think of a single teacher that doesn't have a side job. It might be coaching, sure. At the school, it might be club sponsoring.

But I can tell you, I know teachers that are, you know, photographers, uber drivers, doordash, instacart. I mean all of that going on, that you can't work a job as hard as teaching and have to go do a second job just to make ends meet.

We got to figure that out. So that's number one. Number two is what I would call working conditions. And you know, the job of a teacher is becoming more and more difficult.

They have a lot of mental health issues with students to deal with. There's a lot more paperwork and bureaucracy and requirements and extra duties.

And so we've got to make sure that we're not piling on top of what's already a very difficult job. The third thing I'd say is the research would say that it's actually number one is teachers have to feel the support of the principal. And.

And you know, people don't usually quit jobs. They quit working for people, you know, so if there's someone they don't want to work for, they're going to move on.

And if you have a uniquely tough principal or, you know, principal you didn't care for, that might lead someone, considering the pay and working conditions. Conditions issues to leave the field. So how do we combat those things? Well, you know, raising pay is 1.

Training up our principals and teaching them how to support teachers into teacher shortage. It's not like there's a million bodies behind that teacher that are going to come behind.

So you got to learn to support the people you have and help grow them. And then frankly, you know, we got to work on those working conditions. We got to make it where we're lifting up the profession.

We got to make it where teachers feel safe at school. I mean, let's be honest, there's some of that going on. We got to reduce the discipline issues.

We got to reduce the bullying issues so that they're not dealing with that and they can teach and. And we got to give them time to prepare.

They got to have their lesson plans ready, and you can't expect them to take a million other meetings and then show up and be the best teacher that they can be. People like working when they feel like they're able to do what they know they can be great at.

And if we don't even give people the time to perfect their craft, then they're not going to love it like they could have. And that's how I think we address the teacher.

Shortage. I love all those points you made.

And I'm curious because I kind of do a little bit of what you do for the church side, working with churches that are calling a pastor. And I did some what I would call HR in terms of working with that church.

But during that search process, it was really a good opportunity for me to kind of highlight some of the things you talked about.

You know, your pay is too low for the next pastor you're going to call, you know, that your conditions with maybe your leadership, it needs to be improved. And these are tough discussions. How do you do that in the work that you do when you're helping someone do a job search?

Because they're just looking for a body, they may not want to fix their Infrastructure. But how do you maybe start those conversations in the middle of that search process? Or do.

You? Yeah, well, I think you do. So there's an author I really like to read named Jim Collins. He's a Stanford professor.

And the book that everybody knows him for is called Good to Great.

And, you know, almost any leader I know has read Good to Great, but he's got several other books, and one of his others that I really like is called how the Mighty Fall. And he, you know, he basically, in Good to Great, he tells the story of all these companies that became Great.

Well, one of them actually based in my hometown here in Richmond, Circuit City, ended up failing between his first book and his second book. And he basically tells the story of how that happened to Circuit City. Um, and there's a variety of things in that book, but.

But one of the lessons that came out of it is he said, you know, he said, I. I don't remember exactly how he said it, but this is how I remember it. You know, essentially that you should hire slow and fire fast. And. And basically the point that he makes and.

And, you know, I don't want people to be scared like you're gonna get fired quickly or whatever. But. But. But the point that he's trying to make there really is, you know, you are.

You ought to be really rigorous in your approach to hiring because, you know, especially in a shortage situation, you know, unless you only have one candidate. But, you know, I can remember interviewing for 50 teachers, and now you're lucky to get two.

But if you're interviewing between two, you know, how do you know if you don't wait a few more days, you might just get that perfect person.

And so, you know, don't settle for someone you know isn't going to work out, because if you go into a hiring situation knowing they're not the right fit, then you're going to be dealing with a headache for months before you can get them out of the door. And there is no magic interviewing technique either.

That's what he talks about in the book, is like, you don't really know someone until you work with them. And so if you start working with someone and you immediately realize you have to micromanaging, you're having to micromanage them.

You've already made a hiring mistake, and you immediately got to start that process. You got to be quick and rigorous once you get them in and get to know them. But you need. Need to be slow and methodical.

Make sure you're choosing the best person on the front End and that's the type of advice I try to give to my leaders when they're hiring, is take your time. That I would rather you have a vacancy for another week than to have a headache for another year. And that's, that's how I tend to think of.

It.

I love that I'm going to dive into your time at US Education because I got a part of my doctoral work, we got a chance to go down to the Department of Education and sit at the, in a room with some of the educators, some of the people on the U.S. education Committee, and learn how they make policy. And so one of my classes was policy. And so we learned it in Washington. I'm curious, how do you balance policy with the reality of the.

Classroom? Yeah, it's a great question. And so my role was I was the acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Science Secondary Ed.

So I was essentially responsible for all of the K12 policy for the U.S. department of Ed and, you know, the White House for that matter. And, and then there was another team that did higher ed and a couple other, you know, teams. Their special special education had their own team.

Career and technical education had their own team. But, you know, essentially the core of K12 education was in my team.

And for first, let me say, before I talk about how I balance policy with what goes in the classroom, the way the sausage is made is not like anyone thinks. It is very fascinating. And if you ever work with anyone in the federal level, they'll tell you about this clearance process.

And I thought, you know, here I am, I'm, you know, essentially the assistant Secretary. I'm going to be able to make all these great policy decisions. That is not how your government operates.

I, you know, I had a team of people who would recommend the policy to me. There, There was a policy office. So my team would write the draft of the policy, then the policy office would approve it.

Then the budget officer would have to approve it and make sure it actually the new policy didn't cost more.

And then eventually it would filter up to me and let's say anywhere along the way I didn't like something, it would go back through the clearance policy and have that part rewritten. You'd have to go back through all those steps. So then it clears me. Then it goes to the Domestic Policy Council and they start that all over.

And if they have comments, then it goes all the way back to the bottom and then all the way back up through me to Domestic Policy Council. Then once it clears the Domestic Policy Council goes to omb, there's Office of Management and Budget.

If you don't know about your federal government, OMB runs your government. I mean, that is just a fact.

And you know, the rest of us are just, you know, moving the things along necessary to be moving now with the cuts that they've made. You know, whether you disagree or disagree with those, the one thing I hope is they've made that process easier because there's less people in it.

Because when there's a lot of people in it, that took forever.

And you know, we would, we would lament like, oh my gosh, I just hope we don't have to do a third round of clearance because we, you know, that's going to cost this many days. We can't get this stuff out. And you know, so when I was there, I was like, we've got to work faster.

You know, you may remember we had some significant school shootings during my four years. So we passed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The president signed that. And I wanted to get that money out right away.

I didn't want anyone to say that federal government was moving slow because if this money could actually help save kids lives, we want to get out quick. And so I learned eventually how to navigate the system and get that stuff out quick.

But so the one thing I'd say is, as you're now I'll answer your question. How do you navigate, now that you know how this is made, how do you navigate policy with the realities of what I know that kids need?

Well, I felt like that's why it was essential that people like me were there. Because I can tell you there were times where I would sit in rooms and I'd be like, well, that's not really how schools work.

And this is how they'll think about it. And you should write the policy this way.

And if there weren't practitioners actually working in the US Department of ed, they would have just cleared that.

And you know, when it got out to the field, it would have been a headache and it would have been wrong and it wouldn't have had the solutions that they want. So one of the things that I always tried to do was balance hiring. You know, back to our previous topic in that I tried to have like the best policy.

And that's the one cool thing about working for the White House and the Federal Government, the U.S. department of ED, is I can hire the very best policy people in the world because they want to work for the President that we've had in America. And so you know, so I tried to hire the best policy people I could, but I also tried to hire the best practitioners that I could.

And then as they're going through that clearance process together, sure there might have been some tension, but the idea is that we get that balance of policy and practice.

And then of course, in my role and the person even in the current president's administration that's in my role, they were also a practitioner from the field, also a state superintendent like I was.

And so I think that, you know, our White Houses have made smart decisions about making sure that the key roles had folks that really know what parents and families and superintendents and principals and teachers need on a day to day basis. And that's how I tried to balance it.

And you know, I joke with some people sometimes that I spent more of my time sending things back down clearance that I thought were wrong for practitioners than I did pushing things up that were right for policy. And I felt like that was my job, is to make sure we didn't hurt the field with the decisions we were.

Making. So as we're hearing this, who people who are not in that, in that role, but we're in the, in the communities.

What can the average parent, local community do to better support their local schools and.

Teachers? Well, the first thing I would say is be engaged.

So I have incredible longitudinal data about what parents thought about schools over, you know, nearly 60 years.

And you know, an interesting stat that came out of that one is that for the first time in history, now a majority of folks don't want their kids to become teachers. You know, it used to be like 70% wanted their kids to become teachers. Now it's, it's under 50%.

But the other interesting data point that came out of that is that when we ask parents, are you engaged in school? And then we ask them how you're engaged in school, unfortunately a much smaller percentage than you would think are actually engaged in school.

But even of those that are engaged, the ways that they're engaged is just by going to their kids events. And you know, I think this is true of me as a parent.

A little bit like the most engagement I get from my son is when I go to his football games or his band concerts or his volleyball game and my son plays volleyball and my daughter dance and all these things and music and Choral and everything else. And I stay engaged in their education at home.

I mean, we sit down at the dinner table and we talk about their homework and what they, they got going on in school and how their day was. And, and you know, and I recognize that not every family has the ability to have those conversations every day.

And, and so, you know, we're unique in that aspect.

But what we know is if you can take that parent engagement from either the parent having to initiate it at the dinner table or it being only event based and you actually get them involved as stakeholders in the decision making of the church of the school. I mean, you know, this is true of any organization you run. Then you're going to make better decisions.

And it's a belief I've had as a leader that the best decisions about kids are made closest to that kid. Best decisions about kids are going to be made by parents and teachers.

And so if we can get our teachers and our parents to work together, which is what the PTA was set up to do, Parent Teacher association, right. If we can get them really engaged with each other and the parent knows what's going on in the classroom.

The teacher, the teacher knows what's going on at home and they're working together on solutions and it doesn't matter if the kid's a straight A student, they still get that same level of engagement from the parent. Just like the kid who's struggling or causing behavior issues or whatever it may be.

If we can really get our parents engaged, that's when we're going to make the biggest difference we can in kids lives. And so the number one thing that I would offer as advice to someone that wants to be involved in their schools is just do it. Call your teacher.

Ask for the parent teacher conference. Don't assume that everything's okay. Don't, don't. You know, as parents, no news is good news. Right, but that's not true. Right?

Like the teachers are busy and they don't have time for every nitpicking question or whatever it is. Right.

But, but, but at the, but at the end of the day, if you, if you take the time and, and just get to know the teacher and ask him how it's going to, in the end it'll be appreciated because then when the teacher has an issue with your kid, they know they can trust you because you've built that trusting relationship between the parent and the.

Teacher.

I want to go back to something you said that kind of stuck in my mind because I've served in underserved under resourced communities and never really thought about there was something I could do as a local person to improve teacher climate, teacher experience. Do you have any suggestions for people who've maybe served in poorer communities, how they can really demand?

I guess I would say that their teachers get fair pay, better resources, better.

Schools. Yeah, I mean, two or three things there.

I mean, ultimately, the people that are deciding how much your teachers make, you vote for those people quite directly, that's true. You know, whether it's a county commission, county board of supervisors, school board, you know, you have a lot of voice.

And I'll tell you, each person's vote matters a lot. I mean, I can tell you I've seen school board elections where the winner got 400 votes.

I mean, we're not talking about, like, president where it's 80 million people deciding, you know, your vote in 400 people is a big vote. And, and, you know, so the first thing I would say is get to know your elected officials.

I mean, you know, just like with major national elections, incumbency matters, the people that have been in the seat are probably going to be with the people that stay in the seat unless they've done something wrong.

And, you know, but, but an incumbent knows that each subsequent election is more difficult because there's, you know, people are always distrusting of their government, you know, or not, not, not everyone, but some people are. And so you're always facing those challenges. And so get to know your member and see what they care about.

And, and, you know, if, if I were a school board member in a community that only 400 people decided my vote, I'd have copy with everybody every year. You know what I mean?

And, yeah, tell me what you want to know and, and, and demand that they vote with what people want, because I tell you, most of them. Sit on that, Daisy. And they're voting with what they think the majority of people believe.

And what I'll tell you is the people that end up having the influence aren't always what, in schools especially, it's not always what the majority wants. It's the loudest voices that they're hearing.

And then they're thinking, okay, I need to make sure that I address this issue in my community or I might be in trouble in my next election. Well, you know, I have found that that usually is about 10% of people that are that loud.

And I don't really know what the other 90% think, but in the absence of not knowing what they think, I'm going to go with what I'm hearing. And that's the type of influence. And so it doesn't take a lot to really get to know your local elected officials.

And when you're talking about higher poverty communities, you know, a lot of times rural, I mean, it can be a hundred people deciding on your school board member and your board of supervisor, county commissioner, whatever, you know, city council, you know, all of that. Now, you know, there's some big cities where those numbers are higher for sure, but.

But the most local politics you have the most influence over, and that's where I'd spend your time. A lot of people want to get involved and advocate, and they advocate to governors and do events for the White House or whatever it may be.

But actually, the most influence you have is on your school board and your local taxing authority. And so that would be the first thing that I would say.

And then the second thing I'd say is if you really want to make a difference, go run for one of those and, you know, go be that person.

And yeah, it's either low or no paid and, you know, sometimes thankless, but we need people that really care about kids in those roles and people that know their community's values and can align to their community values. And then the third thing that I'd say is, you know, if you can't get traction on what you're thinking, then, you know, form coalitions.

Because if one vote in 400 matters, imagine how folks will think about 25, 30 or 100 of 400 people in that community stepping up. And the last thing I would say is volunteer.

In my school districts, we had a policy committee, would love to have a parent on the policy committee, we had a budget and finance committee, would love to have a parent on the budget and finance committee helping us think through that, or a community member, church leader. In fact, when I was superintendent, I actually had a convening of the church leaders, and I got their feedback every year.

And, you know, so the faith community weighed in to my thinking a lot. And all faiths, right? And not just any faith. And so all of that, there are numerous ways.

But when you're talking about your local schools, that is as close to home as your government can get. And you have a right to share your voice with those people, and I encourage you to do.

It. Great. So what are you most excited about in education as you look forward for the.

Future? Well, I'm excited for this new role I'm starting tomorrow, and I'm excited that I'm going to be on the Front lines of ending this teacher shortage.

But, you know, all jokes aside, Keith, I wrote a book recently and it's called Leading with Laser Focus the seven Steps to School Success. I'll just put a plug in for that. If anyone's interested, you can find it on Amazon or you can go to leadingwithlaserfocus.com and find it.

And frankly, you can chat with me there. I'm always available to people, but I wrote that book about what it was like as a school leader.

And what I realized is a lot of principals know the right things to do, but they don't know how to systematize the process to ensure success for every kid. And so I wrote a book to essentially teach them, you know, these seven or steps that I put in place.

Every school does some version of those seven steps, but they don't tie it all together to build a systemic focus on kids. And so what I try to.

One of the sub thoughts that I, I have on my seven steps is, and, and if you read anything about my book, you'll see this phrase over and over again is that everyone in the school community, from the church leader to the custodian to the teacher to the parent to the superintendent to the principal, everyone in the school community should know what happens with a kid when they begin showing failure in our schools. And so when you ask me, what I'm most excited about is we know the right things to do now. We just got to do it now.

You know, the American rescue plan and the COVID relief dollars are gone. So this is going to be a very tight budget time.

So the things that I talk about are things you can do in spite of of the budget challenges that schools are going to face in the next couple years. And so where I turn to where I'm excited about it is I'm excited that we have enough research and enough know how to know what we got to do.

But I'm also excited because there is going to be a unique focus on education this four years. There's times in the political world where education gets set to the side.

And there were some times over the last four years where it was about the politics of education. But I feel like it's kind of turning from that to now.

It's about, okay, we're a few years out of COVID American test scores are the lowest we've seen in two decades. We've got to do something about it. And what I know is America tends to step up when there's a crisis.

And it feels like we're getting to a crisis in student performance. We got to get back to the basics with reading and math.

And I think because of that, I hope that people look at my book and think about ways to do this work, because I believe that there's going to be the motivation, the willpower, and the knowledge to get that done in these next few.

Years. So much will be talked about your book covers, and I love that we got a chance to kind of dig into it. Who is your book written for?

Is it written for educators? Is it written for parents? Who are you targeting with your.

Book? Yeah, so I think. I think my book is accessible to anyone but the key audience, you know, so I think parents could glean some stuff from it.

I think community members, I think, you know, folks that lead schools that are private or in churches, all of them can glean from it. But the book was intentionally written for school leaders in our more traditional public schools.

And, you know, I tell stories, like I mentioned to you before, of how I got scores from in the 50s and into the 90s and some of the tactics and techniques that we used. I talk about how you should think about hiring. I talk about how you should. Should think about leveraging technology.

And so a lot of this could be applicable to anyone. But I certainly was primarily focused on. You heard me say that, you know, I'm huge into the teacher shortage.

Raising pay is one thing, lifting up the profession is another. Better working conditions, but the other is this support of the principal.

Part of what I was trying to do with this book is like, if I'm going to spend the rest of my life solving this teacher shortage, I want to make sure principals know their role in it and how they can make a difference. And so it's certainly written towards that school leadership, that district leadership, that superintendent or principal. But, you know, as a.

As a community leader, as a parent, as a, frankly, a student, There's a lot that you can glean from these lessons, because I tell the school story, but I also just tell some of my leadership parables that I think are applicable anywhere, including in.

Business. Every time you write a book, you learn something. What was your biggest takeaway from writing? Leading with laser.

Focus. My biggest takeaway was I. I didn't realize how much people were longing for solutions to fix our schools.

You know, I wrote this book, I'll be honest. And, you know, now I'm at it ended up being an Amazon number one bestseller, all of those kind of things.

And I wrote it, you know, you know, kind of for my kids. Where it was like, I wanted to be able to, like, leave a legacy to my children. Like, like, I did these things, and I wanted my kids know about it.

Man, I thought I was gonna sell one or two books, you know, And, And. And. And both of my kids would be the. The. The buyers, right? And.

And so when the book took off and hit this bestseller status and all of that, what I realized is that, you know, this. This moment that we're in with, like, test scores declining in America and teacher pay being too low and the teacher shortage of the.

People want to see our schools get better. And so I feel like I've built a roadmap that resonates with people.

You know, maybe it's, you know, I came from humble beginnings in Kentucky and all that, and I, you know, just don't think of myself as this prolific author or anything like that, and still don't think of myself as a prolific author. But that's what I didn't expect is, you know, how much people would gravitate to the book.

And I've now been able to go talk to school districts, and there's entire school districts doing book studies on the book. And I. I'm. I'm just really excited about that.

The other thing that I would say that I learned from writing the book is that because when you write a book, you have the opportunity to talk about the book. I've learned that there's so many people that care about our kids and care about our schools.

And, you know, if I'm not writing another book, but if I was going to write another book, it would be all about this kind of question you asked me a little bit ago. How do we get everyone on the same page and engaged and working together to make a difference for our.

Schools? I love it. So I'm going to ask you my other favorite question as we bookend this great conversation. What do you want your legacy to.

Be? Well, I mean, I kind of hinted at it in my last answer.

Even with the way I wrote the book, I want my kids to know that their dad did everything they could to make this world a better place. And, you know, there's all kinds of legacy things that people think about with the jobs that they had and all that.

And, you know, I joke with people all the time. I mean, I. I certainly know I'll be remembered for some of the work that I do.

But, you know, think about your home district, school district, name your last five superintendents. You're probably going to fail that test, right? And so the Legacy is. I'll even go a step further.

Name the five last state superintendents that you had. Right. Who. Supposedly, that's a bigger job. Or maybe name the last five secretaries of education.

Now, there might be a few more that could do that, but there's going to be a lot of people that don't know the answer to that. And so the legacy in my mind is not about the work that you have done or the jobs that you've had.

The work is how you've impacted people and made a difference in their lives.

And so, number one, I want my kids to know that you can live a life of service and you can live a life that's focused on making other people's lives better.

The second legacy that I hope to leave behind is with my former students, that even though I was a principal, superintendent, state superintendent, citizen secretary, CEO, all of those things, I still think of myself as a teacher who got to do these other cool things.

And, you know, I have a. I have a rule with my former students that, you know, I don't follow them back or follow them on social media in any way until they're in a career. I said, I don't want you in a job because you can get a job. I want to see you in a career.

When you're in a career, then, you know, I want to engage with you in social media. And so it's. What's really been cool for me is as a former band director, how many of my kids are working in music? I've got as professors in colleges.

I got trumpet professors in colleges. I got professional bass players. I got DJs. I got kids that just play the radio. But. But at the. Or is radio still a thing? I don't know.

But anyway, yeah, the strict music. But. But in any event, the other legacy that I hope is that in the.

In the time that I was leading schools, that I left people as lifelong learners, like with my former band students and their love of music all throughout their life. Hopefully.

I. I hope that those that had those other education experiences with me, more in my leadership journey are leaving with a better education and hoping that they're supporting our schools afterwards. And so I don't want anything to be about my legacy. I want to know that I made people's lives.

Better. Mr. Holland's op was kind of a thing, which is kind of.

Cool.

Yeah. So on season six, we have a new thing, a surprise question. Pick a number between one and ten for your surprise.

Question. Ooh, okay.

Two. Oh, here we go. What is your most unusual.

Talent? Well, I kind of hinted at this. You know this because I said it earlier in the podcast. But not everybody knows that I'm a professional musician also.

But I don't know that that's unusual. I've run a couple marathons, which is unusual. I wish I ran more these days, to be honest.

But you know what I'll go with is since my son was in kindergarten and now he's a 10th grader, we have basically kept the same team of basketball kids together through AAU and everything else.

And to this day now, in our 10th or 11th season, even when I was at the White House, when I was the state superintendent, I was traveling all over the world, I was still at home to coach my kids basketball. And that's one of my talents is being that I went to UNC Chapel Hill, the University of National Championships. I mean, University of North Carolina.

I still am a huge lover of basketball and I still coach kids to this day.

Myself. So, Dr. Lane, thank you for sharing your insights, your passion and your powerful vision for the future of education.

Before we wrap up, give people what it can find you on social media and where they can find your book. Leading with Laser.

Focus. Yeah, thanks. And I know I said some of it, but I'll just hit it again on the socials. I'm generally at, at @ Dr. James Lane.

You know that's X, that's Instagram on LinkedIn. You know, you can pretty much pretty easily look me up, but it's, you know, all that LinkedIn backslash. James F. Lane.

But the book is on Amazon again, Leading with Laser Focus the seven Steps to School Success. And we have a website up for that.

And that's where you can learn more about some of the other services we provide, which is leadingwithlaserfocus.com and then because we broke the news here, check out our new university instructors website here in the coming weeks where you can learn about my.

New role.

Well, thank you, Dr. Lane, for your work as a true example of what it means to be a bridge builder, connecting policy to practice, leaders to learners and vision attraction to our listeners.

If you found today's podcast of any value, please subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with someone who cares about the future of education. Until next time, keep building bridges and keep making a difference. Thank you. This is Keith Haney. You've been listening to Becoming.