Dysfunctional deference: administration hurts learning.

Education is about teaching and learning. In and out of the classroom, it unfolds between teachers and students.

Educational administrators have a different set of responsibilities, like keeping the budget in the black, donors happy, buildings safe and the school out of legal and political trouble.

Both teachers and administrators have essential missions--teachers to provide education and administrators to support it. Learning suffers when teachers defer to administrators instead of the other way around, said Dr. Kelly McKerrow, associate professor in educational administration and higher education at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In her talk "Doctor, Heal Thyself," at the University of Nebraska's Women in Educational Leadership conference in Lincoln in October 2005, she raised ethical issues for education, especially programs in educational leadership.

Teachers know more than administrators about how to teach; they interact with students every day. Professors, researchers and consultants in educational leadership are further removed but command even more deference than field-level administrators.

"So many of our professors don't have any credibility because they haven't seen the inside of a classroom for years," she told WIHE.