School, system, and state leaders can do much more than they often realize but tend to be hindered by a “culture of can’t” in which urban legends, misinformation, and undue caution stop them from doing what they think will be best for students. What are some of these myths . . . and what’s the real story?

By encouraging a single-minded focus on instructional leadership, the training, socializing, and mentoring of school leaders has unwittingly fostered a culture of caged leadership.

Our schools can do a lot better. But to avoid lamenting unfulfilled expectations three more decades hence, it’s imperative that we get the leaders we need and then equip them to succeed. This doesn’t require superheroes, just smarts.

“Cage-Busting Leadership” (Harvard Education Press, February 2013) is a new book and consequently, a small, growing movement for educators trying to take a machete to administrative red tape and contracts that tend to paralyze district leaders from doing what’s best and right for the students.

Cage-busting helps create the conditions in which you can be the leader you want to be. The reward? The chance to create schools equal to your aspirations.

I want to be clear about two things. First, I’m suggesting that almost the entire education leadership canon suffers from a giant blind spot. Second, I am not in any way, shape, or form dismissing the works that encourage instructional leadership. It has valuable things to say, but it only speaks to one half of the leadership equation. In ignoring the cage, leaders trap themselves within it.

A practical and entertaining volume, Cage-Busting Leadership will be of profound interest and value to school and district leaders — and to everyone with a stake in school improvement.

American school leaders have far more freedom to transform, reimagine, and invigorate teaching, learning, and schooling than is widely believed. Understanding teachers' contracts, hiring reform-minded lawyers, and engaging the advocacy, business, and philanthropic communities can help leaders combat the pervasive "culture of can't."

Data can be a powerful tool. But we must recognize that collecting data is not using data; that data are an input into judgment rather than a replacement for it; that data can inform but not resolve difficult questions of politics and values; and that we need better ways to measure what matters, rather than valuing those things we can measure.

When it comes to reforming American education, today’s would-be-reformers get it half right. They correctly argue that statutes, rules, regulations, and contracts make it hard for school and school-system leaders to drive improvement and, well, lead. They are wrong, however, to ignore a second truth: school officials have far more freedom to transform schooling than is widely believed.