The Ryan Leaf Syndrome

What do leaders in other industries do when they aren't certain about which credentials matter for success? If the markets for football quarterbacks and financial advisers are any indication, as Malcolm Gladwell argues they should be, education leaders must be willing to interview and try out many candidates for teaching jobs.

Making professional sports predictions based on collegiate (and sometimes high school) success is notoriously difficult. Gladwell uses the especially difficult case of NFL quarterbacks to make his point: NFL teams, despite watching hours of live game films and testing players' speed, agility, strength, and intelligence, still are pretty bad at predicting which quarterbacks will eventually be successful in the pros. They make horrible decisions based on their faulty decision-making that have real consequences for their franchise.

Take the case of Ryan Leaf, a wildly successful college quarterback for the Washington State Cougars. The San Diego Chargers traded three draft picks, a reserve linebacker, and a Pro-Bowl running back to move up one space, from second to third, just to have the right to draft Leaf in 1998. The Indianapolis Colts were drafting #1, and there was serious debate about whether they should opt for Leaf or the other top quarterback in the draft, a guy by the name of Peyton Manning. The Colts took Manning, the Chargers Leaf, and one became a household name. But before we knew which one it would be, the Chargers believed they had a franchise quarterback. They lavished Leaf with a four-year, $31 million contract and an $11 million signing bonus. Before beginning his first season, Leaf said he was, "looking forward to a 15 year career, a couple of trips to the Super Bowl, and a parade through downtown San Diego."

Leaf started the 1999 season well, becoming only the third rookie quarterback in history to lead his team to a 2-0 (preseason) start. But by his third game, Leaf managed to complete just one of his 15 passes. It went for only four yards, and he fumbled three times. He was benched after nine games in which he threw 13 interceptions compared to only two touchdowns. After bouncing around the league, Leaf was forced to retire in disgrace at the age of 26.

This is what happens when an organization bases their personnel decisions completely on what happened in the past. Leaf had all the tools--he threw the ball with speed and precision, had succeeded in major college sports, and had the body to withstand the demands of the National Football League--but he couldn't cut it, and his team suffered the consequences.

Contract that experience with how financial advisers are recruited. As anyone who's seen The Pursuit of Happyness or read Gladwell's piece understands, financial advisers have few input requirements. Instead, they're chosen through a highly competitive process. A wide open field of candidates--the guy highlighted in Gladwell's article regularly interviews at least 20 candidates per job opening--are whittled down based on work habits, not necessarily on their education credentials. Then, after an intensive review period, they are given an apprentice role. After another three or four years, the firm is finally in possession of what it considers high-quality financial advisers. This is a lengthy and expensive process, and it requires extensive human capital development and a comprehensive system for sorting high- and low-achievers.

If we apply these lessons to human capital development in education, we start to understand that the traditional teacher professionalization model is backward. We shouldn't even try to sort out the difference between the Ryan Leafs and the Peyton Mannings of the teaching world. Instead, we should break down barriers to entry, encourage high-quality applicants from diverse backgrounds, and use some initial criteria to sort applicants based on work ethic and intelligence, but then focus most of of our attention on what happens on the job. Until school districts have the data and political courage to do so, they'll be like NFL teams choosing between Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy, Graham Harrell, or Chase Daniel. They're all fine, but which one will be great and which one will be Ryan Leaf?