When Doing the Right Thing for Students Isn’t the Political Thing

Four years ago, I walked into a rural, underperforming district ranked in the bottom tier of our state for post-secndary achievement. Today, that same district is a national model, recognized by DA Magazine as a District of Distinction, honored by our state school board association, and featured twice in The Seattle Times for innovation and student results. We did it without extra funding, without “miracle” grants, and without lowering standards.

You’d think that kind of success would be the political dream for any superintendent. But here’s the hard truth: doing the right thing for students isn’t always the political thing. In fact, it often puts you directly in the crosshairs.

This one’s for the leaders who came into the work to actually change something,

and keep wondering why, the harder you push for students, the shorter your tenure becomes.

You’re not imagining it.

The system isn’t built to reward performance, trust, or character.

It’s built to reward likeability, personality, and political safety.

The Crossroads We Wasted

The pandemic didn’t create new problems in education—it just exposed the ones we’ve been living with for decades. And for a brief moment, we stood at a crossroads:

• Path 1: Use the disruption to finally rebuild for equity, permeability, and purpose.

• Path 2: Rush back to the comfort of “normal,” even if “normal” wasn’t working for too many kids.

In most places, the decision was swift: get back to normal.

Why? Because in a politically driven system, stability of perception always outranks improvement of reality.

The Restaurant With Yelp Review Politics

Think about it this way: running a school district is like running a restaurant where your revenue comes from Yelp reviews written by people who’ve never eaten there.

It doesn’t matter if the food is healthy, creative, or even edible, what matters is that it feels right to the reviewers.

In this model, “doing the right thing” might mean changing the menu to serve the real nutritional needs of your community. But change the menu, and the reviewers revolt—because their job isn’t to taste the food, it’s to protect their idea of the restaurant.

For too many districts, perception is the product.

Why the Politics Reward Personality Over Character

Stephen Covey drew a line between the Personality Ethic, surface-level charm, image, and quick wins, and the Character Ethic, deep integrity, trustworthiness, and sustained effectiveness.

In school leadership, the Personality Ethic wins every time.

Why? Because building true trust—the kind anchored in character—takes longer than:

• The superintendent interview process.

• The honeymoon phase of a new hire.

• The tenure of most superintendents.

You can’t show the fruits of deep trust in a two-year contract window. And the average superintendent in the U.S. lasts barely 3–5 years. The political clock runs out long before the leadership impact shows up.

Which means… in this system, high-character leaders often get shown the door before their work has the chance to prove itself.

The Trust Framework Lens

In my work with the TRUST Framework, sustainable improvement in education requires three interdependent pillars:

• Benevolence — We believe our partners’ motives center on students.

• Competence — We have the capacity and systems to deliver on what we promise.

• Integrity — Our public commitments match our internal decisions and actions.

Here’s the political problem:

• In perception-driven districts, benevolence gets recast as self-preservation.

• Competence gets confused with optics (test scores, graduation rates).

• Integrity is traded for narrative alignment.

When the political incentive is to keep everyone comfortable, trust-building is not just undervalued—it’s seen as risky.

Why High-Character Leaders Keep Getting Pushed Out

If you’re a leader who insists on asking hard questions

Who benefits from this program? Who’s excluded from this pathway?

your focus is on performance and equity.

But when politics drives the agenda, those questions are interpreted as threats to stability. Stability keeps people in power. And so, high-character leaders, the ones who play the long game, find themselves pushed out in favor of leaders who can play the short game well.

The Invitation to the Long Game

This doesn’t mean you stop fighting for trust. It means you see the board for what it is:

• Name the political incentives, and decide which ones you will or won’t play into.

• Anchor your work in a trust framework, even if the payoff comes after you’re gone.

• Document your wins so others can keep building after you.

Build alliances across sectors, because political cycles are shorter than cross-sector commitments.

True trust-building in education is generational work. Most of us won’t see the full payoff in our own tenure. But if we don’t plant now, the next generation of leaders will still be playing the same short game.

The political thing is to protect perception.

The right thing is to build trust.

And you already know which one will matter in the long run.