Educational Policy

K-12 Leadership The leadership of K-12 education is a decision-making process with moral, ethical, and legal implications. Each decision of the leader has an impact on dignity, equity, and rights of students, and also determines the trust and integrity of school population. This presentation will analyze the moral, ethical and legal aspects of leadership decision making and how these three aspects shape educational policy at the local, state and the federal level. Leadership Decision Making Consequences The K-12 education leaders should understand that the decision-making process has moral, ethical and legal consequences. Notably, the moral implication in the decision-making stems from the primary role that the decision leader plays in the development of the life of a child and the school community in general. In Proverbs 22: 6, the bible guides that adults should ensure that they build a strong moral foundation for children that the children can depend on as they grow. Every leader decision in K-12 education must respect the intrinsic value of a student and promote fairness and equity to the neediest (Khalifa, Gooden, & Davis, 2016). The moral aspect of leadership requires leaders to put aside efficiency or convenience and use compassion, courage, and pursuit of common good as the basis of their choices. Lack of moral integrity on the part of leaders means that they may continue to propagate institutional injustices and undermine the trust needed to support healthy learning processes. The ethical weight of decision-making process forces leaders to make sure that eventual choices are based on professional ethical norms that shape a practice of education. In this respect, the leaders should ensure that the final decision is professionally justifiable considering the demands educators bear towards students, colleagues, and community at large. K-12 education leaders should make sure that their communication with stakeholders is open, disciplinary measures are not biased, and that sensitive data about the students is not compromised. Ethical weight of decision making require a leader to establish institutionalized school settings characterized by the presence of ethical norms which are communicated and implemented. Ethical decision making builds and sustains the stakeholders’ trust in the leader since the integrity, fairness and openness in can be easily discerned from the final decisions (Bon, 2012). The leaders should make students, families, staff and community at large feel that he is acting in accordance with some guiding principles that respect their dignity, safeguard their rights and ensure that their well-being is the prime priority. It is important to note that the culturally responsive standards of Virginia recognize the ethical imperative that the K-12 leaders should possess since they are obliged to respect and support the cultural identities of their students. In this respect, the state needs leaders to initiate proactive strategies that break the ties of systemic inequities and establish non-discriminative environments where st...