Dr. Lindsay Whorton

ABOUT THE BOOK

Create the schools our students deserve with a new model for school leadership.

In A New School Leadership Architecture, Dr. Lindsay Whorton outlines how critical challenges facing education leaders, such as underprepared teachers, growing educator burnout, and increasing complexities of school operations, have pushed traditional leadership models to their limits.

To remedy these systemic issues, Dr. Whorton introduces a bold new strategy to reimagine school leadership by shifting from lone-hero narratives to collaborative, well-defined roles that empower leaders at every level of the system.

Drawing on more than a decade of educational research, Dr. Whorton’s book lays out a four-level model—Team Members, Team Leaders, Bridge Leaders, and School Leaders. The goal of this model is to equip schools with the tools to redesign leadership roles to better meet the evolving needs of schools and students.

Whether you’re a classroom teacher, aspiring leader, or school administrator, this book equips educators to:

• Redesign how leadership roles are structured to meet evolving school needs
• Implement change effectively using practical exercises, planning templates, and real-life examples
• Grow into new leadership roles with step-by-step guidance on shifting skills, time applications, and professional identities

Every student deserves access to an exceptional education, and every school requires a dynamic leadership structure to make that possible.

A New School Leadership Architecture delivers a revolutionary – and necessary – framework that supports teachers, empowers future leaders, and prioritizes student success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Lindsay Whorton is proud to be a founding member of The Holdsworth Center. She helped design the Center’s programming and has served as president since 2019.

Under Lindsay’s leadership, Holdsworth has grown from serving seven public school districts through its initial offering – the Holdsworth Partnership – to serving more than 1,900 leaders in 89 public school districts across several programs, all designed to build a bench of stronger superintendents and principals for Texas public schools.

Lindsay’s story with Holdsworth began in 2015, when Charles Butt, Chairman of H-E-B, tapped her to work with an organizing board designing the center’s first programs. At the time, Lindsay was working as a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Washington D.C. She officially joined The Holdsworth Center team shortly after its launch in January 2017.

In her role as managing director of district support, Lindsay helped create and evolve Holdsworth’s model for supporting partner districts to develop aspiring leaders, place them in leadership roles and support them as they progress along their leadership journey.

Lindsay’s dive into education research began in 2009, when she was named a Rhodes Scholar and went on to earn a master’s degree in comparative social policy and a doctorate in social policy from Oxford University. During her time at Oxford, Lindsay spent a year at the University of Helsinki, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She visited schools and classrooms to understand Finland’s world-renowned teacher education system. In 2016, Routledge published her book Teachers Unions and Education Reform in Comparative Contexts, which examined the impact of teachers’ unions on performance-related pay reform in Finland, Switzerland, Texas and Florida.

A native of Independence, Missouri, Lindsay earned bachelor’s degree in secondary education and English from Drake University in Iowa, where she served as a captain of the women’s basketball team. Lindsay helped lead the underdog team to a Cinderella finish in 2007 by winning the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship and was named the tournament’s outstanding player and a First-Team Academic All-American.

TALKING POINTS

TEACHERS

• Why teachers are leaving public education and what we can do to help them stay.
• Teachers need a lot more support than they’re getting: What is the solution? 
• The amount of time US teachers spend in the classroom vs. other countries and why this matters 

PRINCIPALS 

• What happens when principals view themselves as the primary person responsible for teachers’ development?
• Why schools should replace the principal-centric leadership structure with a new leadership model.
• Principals need more help leading schools. Give it to them with a new leadership structure.
• Why your kid’s principal matters to their education. And why the school’s leadership team matters even more.
• Principals and teachers aren’t lone superheroes. We must stop asking them to lead like they are.

LEADERSHIP

• Common gaps in school leadership 
• Why schools don’t need a lone superhero to save them; it needs to be a team approach 
• How the principal’s job has changed over the years to be an “undoable” job 
• What are the different leadership roles every school should have in place? 
• In schools, leadership should be a team sport. How do we build that framework?