Public education in the United States has been in a steady decline by almost any measure for the last 29 years -- since 1980. Losses in placement on international comparisons in science, math and problem solving test scores, equality of education opportunity, teacher supply graduation rates, and rampant leadership turnover, are but a few of the afflictions affecting public education in the United States. These trends, cycling downward, are searching for a bottom (Buchman, 2006; Goldin & Katz, 2008; Heckman & LaFontaine, 2007; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2008).

With the release of the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, by National Commission on Excellence in Education, policy makers, not necessarily educational practioners, have tried their hand at stabilizing our failing educational system. The results: wobbly and uncoordinated attempts at changes that cause inter education sector conflict as various professional and union education organizations oppose what is legislatively proposed. Consequently, Federal education funding is very likely to falter, as the response to the sub-prime financial and banking crises drains our tax revenues to pay for the growing governmental costs to prop up failing institutions. States, too, will likely experience a period of reduced tax income as property taxes plunge, business activity turns downward due to tightening credit availability, and unemployment continues to rise. Concurrently, fewer children are being born, wealth distribution discrepancies are widening and more parents are opting for private or non-public assigned school (Goldwin & Katz, 2008; Tice, Chapman, Princiotta & Bielick, 2006). Facing a frustrated public, policy makers reacted and opened options for parents though voucher plans and charters schools. Times have changed. With change comes a new concept for transforming and developing educational leaders – the Eduerati Leadership. This “paper/roundtable discussion” provides a review of extant literature and a new conceptual framework in support of our contention that "New Eduerati" leadership will initiate the transformation. Driven by an ego that does not need entitlement, Eduerati are futuristic, looking back at the present. Eduerati are the intellectually excited architects of the educational system who, like the Literati and Technerati, are deeply knowledgeable and committed to improving their field with new ways of thinking.

The Federal government passed landmark accountability legislation No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Private foundations added billions of dollars (Zellner, 2006) in new resources. Courts struggled to balance ongoing financial inequities, (CEPM, 2002). Major urban school districts including New York, Chicago, Cleveland and to some degree Los Angeles have eliminated school boards in favor of municipal organization for student learning systems and/or have selected chief executives who lack any training in educational administration. Furthermore, we can expect a shortage of education leaders (Byrd, Drews & Johnson, 2006), as the boomer generation of principals and superintendents, born between 1946 and 1964, retire. The result: the general public continues to favor educational reform, with a preference for alternative school options, and is losing hope in No Child Left Behind (Rose & Gallup, 2007). In addition, there is a decline in employers and college level educators beliefs that public education is as good as it needs to be for students (Weiss, 1999) while the public as a whole continues to give low marks to schools on a national basis (Rose & Gallup, 2007).

Educational leaders face a choice: continue to rely on state and federal policy makers confused reform agenda or seize the leadership role to achieve systemic change to revitalize our public education system at the grass roots level. The decentralized education system built for a localized agrarian community now confronts a confluence of a highly networked global economy, instantaneous communication systems, vast wealth inequities, unstoppable human migrations, impending ecological disasters, ethnic/ religious violence and questionable ethnic conclusions. Can human intelligence and adaptability be summoned from a drooping education system to produce the social and intellectual strength fit to address these escalating challenges? Clearly, effective educational leaders are the key to redesigning a learning system able to prepare the next generation to address, cope with and reverse the major negative trends affecting our world culture.

Education can develop young learners who will emerge to be wise adults, ready to vigorously confront these daunting global trends if the educational system changes at its core. Or, educational systems can continue to wither, victims of their own blind spots. Educators failure to envision and implement needed change has left us blinded to the examples of better systems in other nations. Educational leaders will either continue to be reactive by committing to low level cosmetic change or change the system from which they came--a courageous task by any standard.

New learning designs are essential. Today’s programs built on state or political credentialing from outside the learning system are not sustainable. Existing accountability of credentialing a failed system merely documents, albeit in an improved manner, the continued decay of our educational system. Disgruntled and disenchanted policy makers from outside the learning system have only added to the chaos. University professors with a vision can generate new leadership learning systems for the Eduerati. How will this be accomplished?

As with all change, it begins with dialogue. Professors must begin to talk about changing the curriculum to include succinct studies of the sciences that impact learning and the future: chemistry, biology, technology, and the environmental sciences. Professors must begin to think through the intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of effective leadership and career success, studying the psychological center of decision-making, ethical structuring, intuitive and creative studies. Eduerati leadership is intended to integrate new leadership development programs that rise to the challenge and meet the needs of school districts to develop competent leaders and redefine educational leadership. Eduerati professors intent upon change will coalesce a variety of learning connected fields, creating a synchronism of leadership thought that will aid the leadership candidate in the Eduerati discipline to change the K-12 system. Professors will simultaneously span boundaries between academic disciplines thus helping assess new ways that a wide variety of research and might be more effectively integrated. In many ways, the Edueratic could be part of an educational reform effort to develop comprehensive and integrated plans, involving changes in strategy, leadership, management, relationships, and programming to prepare the next generation of leaders. Such discourse provides an opportunity for renewed discussion and expansion of the role of education leadership development programs as a potential center of interdisciplinary scholarship.  This pertains to the necessary shift “in language, thought and mental models about leadership preparation” (Silverberg & Kottkamp, 2006, p. 2) operating at both the ground-level of the faculty who are charged with facilitating and teaching leadership, and at the program-level of design and implementation involving interdisciplinary partnerships between those who prepare leaders and those who employ them.

Finally, educational professors will need to reach out to other disciplines (i.e., business, social work, anthropology, sociology, etc) and International schools and link related cross disciplines that range from system comparisons to accounting, from social justice to wealth distribution from economics to language acquisition. The inclusion of diverse voices and interdisciplinary perspectives can contribute widely to the improvement of educational leadership, policy and practice. There is much to connect as professors build stronger systems of leadership development. Will professors reach out to begin this process? The parents of our nations children and the leaders of our governments are asking for astonishing improvement in our educational system. They are unwilling to wait for educators to improve the system from within. Clearly, we need change. Our educators need to take charge. Learning creates leadership. Leadership creates change. It is time for the universities to act.

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