Congratulations on the Promotion

Money, value, proof, and the weird math of impact

When I posted that I was moving from a central office role into an assistant principal role, about fifty people on LinkedIn congratulated me on the promotion.

Which made me laugh.

I am almost positive at least some of them clicked the automatic LinkedIn button because the AI robot told them to be proud of me.

Thank you, robot.

But the best part is that those AI messages gave me real joy. Perhaps I needed people to validate the move. I am still a person with an ego, a nervous system, and a “brand” to manage now, which is a terrible combination.

Burn the Ladder

But these little AI messages also sent a signal I think I needed. This is a promotion because it is closer to impact.

This got me thinking about the weird math we use to decide what counts as valuable in education.

Years ago, a friend of mine got a job at a nonprofit making around $90,000. At the time, I thought that was an absurd amount of money for the job she did. And yes, I now recognize that this was judgmental, unfair, and wildly underinformed.

Growth is embarrassing. Highly recommend it.

But some of the rationale given for this overly “inflated” salary concerned the number of students she impacted.

This left me with a number of questions I have been pondering for years:

• Does the number of students determine how much someone earns?

• Does proximity determine value?

• Does scale determine impact?

• Can we really quantify someone’s contribution from three organizational layers away? And if we try, are we measuring impact or just counting shadows on the wall?

When I did my dissertation, I made a very intentional methodological choice. I studied impact within one degree of separation because it was easier to prove. Don’t get me wrong…indirect impact is real. But proof gets slippery the farther you move from the actual change.

Money.

Value.

Proof.

Impact.

We talk about these things like they line up neatly. They do not.

Some of the highest-impact people in education are underpaid to the point of exhaustion. Some people with enormous salaries are doing work that is hard to measure but deeply necessary. Some people are very close to students and still not very effective. Some people are several layers away from classrooms and are building conditions that help thousands of children unnoticed.

And some people — let’s be honest — have impressive titles, large salaries, and impact claims that would not survive contact with evidence.

This is where I have to be careful. Because I have absolutely been the person who hears someone’s salary and immediately starts doing moral math. There is no way that person creates that much impact.

But I was trying to use salary as a proxy for worth because I did not have a better way to understand value. And education does this all the time.

We confuse compensation with contribution.

We confuse title with influence.

We confuse scale with significance.

We confuse visibility with value.

And then we wonder why people build careers around looking important instead of staying useful.

That is why those LinkedIn “congratulations on your promotion” comments hit me differently. Not every promotion moves upward. Sometimes that promotion is simply increased alignment and moving toward the problem you are uniquely positioned to solve.

My promotion meant choosing a place where my skills, my story, my relationships, my scar tissue, and my stubborn little belief in kids can do the most good.

No, I do not think we should romanticize lower pay in the name of purpose. That is how education has exploited mostly women for generations. I also do not think every move closer to students is automatically more noble. I also do not think every systems-level role is bloated or disconnected.

And I definitely do not think impact is easy to count.

But I do know that the closer you are to the actual conditions of change, the harder it is to lie to yourself about whether your work is working. And I’m done lying.

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