As an indication that the state may actually be serious about taking over chronically under performing schools, the IDE has chosen Marian College, in Indianapolis to train new principals as turnaround specialists and experts in teacher evaluation, including the use of statistics like test scores. The justification is that 60% of student achievement is tied to the abilities of principals and teachers (how they came up with that number was not explained). Naturally the state's teacher training universities who gave us our current crop of educators call this an unnecessary duplication of effort. But according to Andrea Neal's column in today's Sentinel and Indy Star the whole idea is to turn out principals who will operate differently than the ones we have now. And perhaps the IDE realizes that playing musical chairs with principals (and teachers) of failing schools a la FWCS won't fix anything.
Of course there are a lot of unanswered questions about the overall strategy. Where these new principals will come from and what their backgrounds are has not been revealed. And if they can identify bad teachers but can't improve them, what can they do to remove them? It's also unclear how well a new high school principal can succeed, if he has no control over social promotion in the middle schools feeding his school. It seems unlikely that taking over a small number of schools in a system which is systemically failing like FWCS is going to work unless the whole system is taken over.
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My question is who is going to train these new and better principals? Maybe we should look at society as a whole and try to turn it around before we change something as inconsequential as the training of new principals. When I was in school I did not even know who the principal was, but I knew if I got in trouble at school I would be punished twice as much when I got home. Today the real problem centers around the belief held by some parents that once their children begin school that their job is done. The government helps them with this belief by providing free breakfasts and lunches to a rapildly increasing percentage of students.
Maybe people ought to have a license to be a parent. It is my belief that the job of parenting is, and always will be, the most important job a person will hold in the course of their lifetime. It is a shame that not enough people now believe this and until we address this problem society will continue to go to hell no matter who the principal is or where he or she was trained.
I have always thought it would be interesting to have a school system set up where there is one HS per system and the principal of the HS was ultimately responsible for the education of the children through the entire system. Over time the principal (maybe superintendent would be more apt) would get to know the students and classes.
Anyone have thoughts on this?
Brad S.-
When Thomas Smith was principal at South Side I told him on a couple of occasions that he had virtually no chance of improving his scores because he could not control what was coming out of the middle schools. He agreed but had no influence over the middle schools, or elementary schools for that matter, feeding into his high school. What you suggest might work in a small district with one manageable high school (like SAC or NAC although Homestead and Carroll are big schools) but not in FWCS unless it's broken up. Which may not be a bad idea.
But even now that should be done by Wendy and her three area administrators. Right now their policy is blanket social promotion which sets the high schools up for failure and promotes a culture that rewards failure in the kids. I certainly agree that somehow the high school principals should carry the most clout.
Indianapolis Public Schools took upon the notion that some of their middle schools where incredibly subpar, and didn't help those at the high school level. Thus, they developed community schools 7th - 12th, which seemed to boost ISTEP scores.
That's a way to give a high school principal more control of his destiny.
Another variation of that approach, which was being used at Keystone before they went out of business, was to do away with grade levels. Students progressed to higher courses after they mastered the prerequisites. That's really what happens in our high schools now (and many colleges where the traditional four year degree have stretched into five or more years). Half the kids have to repeat courses, sometimes more than once, so the traditional classifications don't mean much anymore. I've taught juniors and seniors in "freshman" algebra course and they don't appear to be stigmatized.
What you say Indy has done would extend that approach down into the middle schools.
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