The politics of "Cage-Busting" Leadership

Policymakers and educational reformers alike view the principalship as a crucial level for public school improvement, and the professional and academic literatures on school site leadership are thus full of recommendations on how to lead (and how to learn to lead) more effectively. In this essay length review I closely examine one such publication, Frederick Hess's 2013 Harvard Education Press book Cage-Busting Leadership. According to Hess, principals have consented for too long to "caged" leadership, focusing their efforts on "coaching and culture" instead of "statutory, bureaucratic, contractual, or organizational obstacles." The book's call to "break the cage" is fully consistent with prevailing trends in the politics of education in the United States which view union collective agreements as obstacles to reform at best and lament public schools' supposed reluctance to embrace business world efficiency and accountability goals. Hess lays out a range of strategies for micropolitical leadership and in the process makes clear that principals' micropolitical expertise is not per se a tool for social justice. Absent a clear vision of equitable public schooling, principals' micropolitical acumen is little more than a technocratic tool to sustain an unjust status quo.