A couple of years into my tenure as superintendent, a principal came to me with a concern. A parent had circulated a document to other families at her school. The numbers looked credible. The formatting looked like ours. But the source, buried in a footnote, didn't exist. The document had not come from our district. What stayed with me wasn't that it happened. It was how long it took us to catch it.
That experience has remained with me as the information landscape has become more sophisticated, and therefore more complex and challenging to navigate. For educational leaders, this is not a peripheral issue; it is central to effective leadership.
This issue addresses critical discernment: the skills, habits, and institutional practices that enable educators and leaders to evaluate information rigorously. This competency is fundamental to curriculum decisions, policy development, professional growth, and the intellectual culture within our schools.
What the research says about digital literacy
The challenge isn’t simply that bad information exists. It always has. The challenge is that the mechanisms for its spread have outpaced our ability to identify it. Lankshear and Knobel (2006) make this plain in their framework for critical digital literacy: technical fluency alone doesn’t prepare students or leaders to assess the ideological assumptions embedded in what they read online. Knowing how to use a search engine is not the same as knowing how to evaluate what it returns.
Pennycook and Rand (2019) found that susceptibility to misinformation is driven more by a lack of deliberation than by political bias or intelligence. Individuals who think analytically are better at identifying accurate information, regardless of their views. Educational leaders should recognize that experience and credentials do not guarantee immunity from misinformation.
Knowing how to use a search engine is not the same as knowing how to evaluate what it returns. For leaders trained to read deeply and trust authoritative texts, that distinction now has professional consequences.
Wineburg and McGrew (2019) identified a significant difference between professional fact-checkers and academic experts: fact-checkers use lateral reading, quickly consulting other credible sources, while academics often read a single source in depth and are more easily misled. For school leaders, the habit of thorough reading of a single source can be a disadvantage in the digital environment.
Building Cultures of Calibrated Judgment
That last piece has institutional implications. This isn’t only about individual leaders getting sharper at evaluating sources. It’s about building cultures where skeptical inquiry is the norm, not the exception. When a leadership team interrogates the research base behind a curriculum adoption, or questions the provenance of a district-wide data claim, that’s information literacy at work. It’s also good governance.
The goal isn’t chronic suspicion. It’s a calibrated judgment. The same rigor we apply to student achievement data, budget projections, and program evaluation should also apply to how we handle information more broadly. Our students are watching how we do it.
Let's Talk
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When was the last time you questioned the source behind data handed to you as fact — and actually took the time to check it? This Week At your next leadership meeting or department check-in, bring one recent piece of circulated information — a news item, a policy brief, a research claim. Spend ten minutes evaluating it together using lateral reading: don’t go deep into the source itself. Open other tabs, search who’s behind it, and see what other credible outlets say. Keep it low-stakes. Lead by going first. You’re not just building a skill. You’re setting a standard. Please share in the comments. I will respond. |
DISTRICT LEADER PODCAST | FROM THE ARCHIVES
Cindy Zurchin, Ed.D. — Whale Done! Building trust and transforming culture from the inside out
"My immediate thought was that nobody was going to die on my watch. I certainly had no plans to die that day, and I didn't have any plans that any of my students were going to be hurt or injured." - Cindy Zurchin, Ed.D.
Zurchin's Whale Done! initiative was built on three elements: build trust, accentuate the positive, and redirect errors when they occur. This episode is worth revisiting for any leader working on culture under pressure. A national model that started in a challenging environment.
EDUPRENEURS NETWORK • DEEP DIVE
From Hammer to Swiss Army Knife - Enhancing Your Unique Value Proposition. As an edupreneur, identifying and leveraging your unique value proposition (UVP) is crucial for differentiating yourself in the competitive landscape of educational ventures. Your UVP is essentially your "hammer" – a powerful tool that encapsulates your strengths, skills, and the unique solutions you bring to the table.
This Week’s Spark Video • Staying True
"In a world designed to pull your attention in every direction, staying true to what you know — and honest about what you don't — is itself a form of leadership."
From the Bookshelf
Thought Leadership in Education: A Comprehensive Exploration of Transformative Educational Ideas Chapter 3 of examines what it means to lead with intellectual rigor — how research functions not as a ceiling but as a foundation, and how the most credible leaders distinguish evidence from noise, frameworks from buzzwords, and meaningful inquiry from mere appearance. The habits this newsletter asks you to build individually are situated within the broader responsibility of leading as a scholar. That distinction matters.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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Article |
Why people of all ages fall for misinformation — and what educators are doing about it A thorough examination from the American Psychological Association covering research on media literacy at the classroom and policy level. Read more → |
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Webinar |
Why Do We Fall for Misinformation? — UW Center for an Informed Public Unpacks the cognitive and environmental factors that make everyone vulnerable, with practical strategies educators can apply with staff and communities. Read more → |
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Website |
The News Literacy Project — Checkology Free platform with interactive lessons, lesson plans, and professional development tools built specifically for news and information literacy education. Read more → |
References
Lankshear, C., & Knobel, M. (2006). New literacies: Everyday practices and classroom learning (2nd ed.). Open University Press.
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50.
Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121, 1–40.
