Ethical Responsibilities and Challenges of a Special Education Administrator

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Ethical Responsibilities and Challenges of a Special Education Administrator

Resolving Ethical Challenges

Leaders can examine dilemmas from different perspectives.

3. Follow the Golden Rule of treating others the way we would want to be treated in similar circumstances.

2. Use moral rules and assume all people should follow accepted standards and social norms.

1. Anticipate the consequences of each choice and attempt to identify who will be affected.

Look at challenges from a third perspective, rather than "either-or thinking."

Ethical Challenges

Traditional ethics are constantly competing with conflicting state and federal standards, legislation signed into laws, landmark state and federal supreme court cases, community/ student interests, and special interests groups for decision making.

For a Special Education Administrator, an "ethical dilemma" is not a choice between right and wrong, but a choice between two rights.

Leaders are ethically challenged to make difficult decisions while coping with high stakes pressures from political leaders, public, and school accountability legislation.

School leaders have obligations to many people who often have competing values or interests. It becomes very difficult to please everyone.

It is often difficult to decide what is right or wrong, what one should to do, or which perspective is right in moral terms.

Ethical Responsibilities

The ISSLC Ethical Standards emphasize three major areas for school leader accountability: knowledge, dispositions, and performances to utilize.

Special Education Administrators have a moral obligation to society, the profession, their staff, school board, and to students.

This responsibility requires a leader to maintain standards of exemplary professional conduct while recognizing that his or her actions will be viewed and appraised by the community, professionals and students.

A school leader must promote the success of all students by acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner.

Leaders must exercise authority in an ethical way with teaching staff.

Teachers must be convinced that the principal's point of view reflects values they support.

Special Education Leaders must behave responsibly as an individual, as well as create and nurture an ethical institution and awareness that is respected by parents, staff, and students.

A truly effective schools are those with a shared vision pertaining the school's core values and providing a standard by which actions will be judged. Leaders must not only take the lead in formulating this vision, but actively support and enforce it.

Create ethical committees that raise awareness of ethical issues, formulate ethical codes, and advise educators confronted with ethical dilemmas.

A leader's conduct "must be deliberately moral."

Moral philosophers going back to Aristotle have emphasized that ethical behavior must become a habit. It is not something that can be reserved for spur of the moment issues; it must be a constant.

A leader's moral responsibilities must be expected in day-to-day ethical dilemmas, as well as the policies and laws that have hidden ethical implications.

Howard Gardner (1995) says of great leaders that they embody the message they advocate; they teach, not just through words, but through actions.