Education is a business. Let’s stop pretending it isn’t.
From De Facto Leaders by Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan
March 4, 2026 · 27 min · Episode 253
About this episode
Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan discusses the reality of education as a business and the implications for school clinicians and leadership.
“Education isn’t a business” is a thing people say when they’re upset about how the school systems are being run. But education actually IS a business. Saying otherwise isn't going to change reality. If you’re frustrated about how the school systems work, you can continue to wish this wasn’t the case… Or you can accept how things actually are and learn what to do about it. In this podcast episode, I share how that looks for school clinicians supporting language and cognition. In the episode, I share: Why people who have no classroom experience get hired into educational leadership positions. Why good teachers or clinicians struggle when they get into school leadership, even if they were amazing at working with students. The “business” skill you can learn that will boost generalization beyond your language therapy sessions If you’re getting good results with students inside sessions but seeing little carryover, being good at “business” and leadership isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s a must have. ~Dr. Karen In this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school…
People in this episode
Host: Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan
Topics covered
- education as a business
- school leadership
- language therapy
- clinicians in education
- business skills in education
Keywords
- education
- school systems
- leadership
- language therapy
- business skills
Sponsors
Playworks, IXL, Renaissance
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Language Therapy Advance Foundations
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