May 28, 2009--What Doesn't Work

First they messed up my Times Square, now my public schools.

I remember a time when the public schools in New York City were among the worlds best. And in spite of the myth that we were the children of immigrants who were wiling to sacrifice anything to enable us to wind up eventually and inevitably in medical school, this was far from universally true and further had little to do with the potential of the students who were my classmates.

We represented the full range of intelligence, potential, willingness to behave ourselves, and work hard as today’s youngsters. And about the same percentage of us were equally interested in screwing up—the streets and our peers beckoned just as some do today. College loomed for about half of us, the poolroom for others, and Sing Sing was literally waiting up the river for still more.

So the fact that the schools in the Big Apple are failing so many now has nothing to do with who attends and what life is like back in the neighborhood. For those from the poorest backgrounds, then and now, it was and is grim.

But in spite of economic inequality and often-rundown schools and classrooms, many of us beat the odds because we had excellent teachers and school leaders. Our principals particularly were frequently fine educators who ran tight ships. They held their teachers and us equally accountable. Even those who were arbitrary and on occasion tyrannical. They were in the education business and weeded out those teachers who weren’t getting the job done. Yes, because women had few other professional options at that time, schools were able to attract many who were talented and dedicated. But make no mistake, if it weren’t for the rigor that the principals required of them, what we experienced in the classrooms would not have worked as well as it did for so many of us.

This is more than anecdotal. Dozens of well-designed studies indisputably show that principals who are strong and effective educational leaders are perhaps the most significant factor that contributes to a school’s success—ones where students make demonstrably academic progress. Thus, all the attention paid to who is put in charge of schools and how to prepare them to be effective.

To meet this need, leadership academies for principals have been established around the country and here in New York. The New York City Leadership Academy was founded in 2003 when the mayor was given control of the public schools by the state legislature. He and his new chancellor, citing those studies, raised the more than $80 million to get it started and keep it running. Funders such as the Gates and Ford Foundation rushed to contribute to what was needed.

Local colleges of education raised questions about its potential efficacy—how could something not set in a university where there was a long tradition of preparing teachers and principals work? Some saw this as professional jealousy—if such an independent entity, directed mainly by corporate CEOs, could demonstrate that it could do a better job than say, Columbia University’s Teachers College, wouldn’t that then call into question traditional approaches?

Now, some years later, thanks to a recent independent analysis by the New York Times of the results of the city’s approach to identifying and preparing principals, there is gathering evidence that it isn’t working.

To quote:

An analysis by the New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that the schools run by graduates of the celebrated Leadership Academy . . . have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes. (Full article linked below.)

The schools chancellor did more than stream most new principals through the Academy. He also arranged to boost their salaries by more than 43 percent after adjusting for inflation. This, because it had been claimed, New York would not be able to recruit excellent candidates unless we did something about salaries. Further, he claimed, we needed to get rid of as much dead wood as principals’ contract with the city would allow and replace them with bright young graduates of the nation’s most selective colleges and graduates schools.

Now we know that neither the higher salaries nor the academic resumes of the principals hired since 2003 made a difference in the performance of their schools. Again, students in those schools did worse than those in schools led by traditionally-selected and trained principals.

What is especially maddening about this is that the chancellor, his education team, and the elite funders who provided the cash to yet again experiment with the children of the poor (while sending their own kids to private schools) should have known better.

There was evidence before they began that principals academies do not work, effective school leadership is not correlated with salaries, experience does in fact count, and just the fact of having gone to Yale or Princeton doesn’t make it more likely that graduates of these kinds of places would more effective leaders or educators than those who attended Brooklyn College.

Actually, from the evidence of the results it looks that if there are any correlations to be made, all of the assumptions that are at the heart of these kinds of approaches are false. More’s the shame.