Teachers Should Be Principals

I wrote this about a year ago as a guest post at Dangerously Irrelevant. I think it deserves a fresh look!

What Do Teachers Need From Administrators?

What do I need from administrators? It seems to be a huge question, and I am not sure why. Administration, in my experience in elementary schools in California's Bay Area, seems to be a tool of policy makers, not defenders of good, wholesome educational practices--they are the purveyors of fads. Or maybe they are simply trying to stay employed.

I have had principals who never taught in an elementary classroom. I've had principals who have been out of a classroom for 20 years, yet still think they are current. My district has gone through 3 superintendents in 10 years, each with his/her own "bee in the bonnet" about something that has more to do with money than educating kids. It's a sorry state of affairs.

Administration/principals in a school, IMHO, should be made up of current teachers. Actually, administrator should be a non-education based job--administrators should not be principals. At big hospitals there a managers who manage the business side, leaving medical personnel to do medicine. Sure there is a chief medical person, but that person is chiefly medical and only meets with the MBAs when money versus best practices is at issue, not to decide on medical procedures, ideally.

I want this for schools. Principals are too busy dealing with budgets--being the tools of the board and superintendent. School districts spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with money--cutting programs, overworking staff, eliminating positions--because America has chosen war over children, or something similar. Principals, who started as teachers, are not best used as OMB-type employees. They started out as educators, and should remain leaders of education in schools, not budget cutting consultants who come in fresh, ready to cut and slash.

I would like to see an administration separate the double role principals play into 2 distinct roles: the money role (administrator) and the educational leader role (principal). I propose to do it like this:

Let's assume a district with 12 elementary schools--a 1-high school town. In this town there would be an MBA type administrator (or 2) who would deal with the money for all schools--budgets would be prepared and analyzed by this MBA's staff and then presented to the educational leaders at each school. I call them educational leaders because they would be teachers. Let me explain, because here is where I go nuts:

The principal of an elementary school should be working with parents, teachers and children, not budgets and money management. In order to have an educator (teacher) as principal we would need to do something very different in terms of credentialing. Imagine if all teachers were not just credentialed as a teacher, but also as an administrator (principal)? The administrator classes one needs to take to get an administration credential are few, making them an easy addition to a regular credential program. By combining a regular credential with an administrator supplement, making a new, more robust single credential, there is suddenly a large number of those who could be principal.

In my scenario, teachers with the new credential would rotate from year to year as principal. Sure, it is similar to a teacher-led school, but my idea changes credentialing and traditional administration of schools. If I am a classroom teacher this year, I might be principal next year, then my buddy teacher the year after that with me returning to the classroom. This puts educators and colleagues in charge of the school--with no worries about finances because they are taken care of by the "money-man."

I like the idea because my experience with administration has been an adversarial one with money pitted against what's best for kids. What would this new principal/teacher be able to do? Freed from an Excel spreadsheet a principal would have time to help with the actual teaching of students and professional development of teachers. Staff meetings would take on an air of a team working toward more cohesion and attentiveness to the needs of students as opposed to the constant strum and drang of management-speak.

A principal should be a classroom expert, especially in elementary school.  They should be part of the school team, not part of the management adversariat.

Teachers should run schools.  Schools are not businesses.

Do Principals Create Bad Teachers?

What if a Principal Allows Teachers to be "Bad"?

The rhetoric about "bad teachers" may never go away -- in part some teachers will always perform poorly, act irresponsibly, and so on (just as there are poor performers and irresponsible people in all professions and fields). That said, what bothers me most about the rhetoric is that it continually oversimplifies the problem. Too many commentators seem to assume that bad people magically pop up in schools to torture principals and belittle children. But reality is more complex.

One situation that has arisen in numerous anecdotes I've heard from teachers is that a Principal will allow selected teachers (often their friends) to behave irresponsibly or worse. Examples include showing up late, parking illegally, dressing inappropriately, eating meals with the Principal instead of teaching, leaving other people in charge of their class while they run errands, and, in at least one instance, abusing children.

Are "bad teachers" a problem in these schools? Absolutely -- and they should be dealt with -- but not following the script we normally read (teacher is bad, principal wants to fire him/her, union steps in). In these cases, the story I hear is that a "bad" principal allows a few teachers to do as they please while the rest of the teachers stew in outrage and cower in fear.

Did the Principal in these situations make these teachers bad? It's not quite that simple. But these Principals have certainly negatively impacted the performance of a few teachers while subsequently damaging the climate and performance of the school as a whole.

Situations like these are why I worry more about the extent of the damage done by irresponsible Principals than I do about the damage done by irresponsible teachers.

What's Wrong With Public Schools? Principals!

This memo, from my principal a year ago, shows just how the process works for diagnosing and getting services (assessment; the other kind) for a student who may be in need. I have redacted (like the government) the principal's name and initials, as well as some other identifying material.

Note how the principal makes sure to include the instruction to teachers: "It is not appropriate to say, "I think...""

Well, I do think, so that's going to be a bit difficult, no?

My hand-written question was merely rhetorical.

No, she never established an online anything.

Teacher Evaluations: A Crock

Teacher evaluations are dubious for a couple reasons. The first is the fact that principals, in my district at least, evaluate based on 3 observations in the classroom. These observations do not really provide enough evidence of teaching or not-teaching, unless the principal is predisposed to evaluate you in a certain way--positively or negatively. In that case, they can point to just about anything they want, and leave out anything want, to make the evaluation appear any way they want.

The second problem, related to the first, is the fact that the principal does this alone. There is no other person there, observing the same thing, to compare notes with. Perception is not always reality, and 2 people looking at something may just see things very differently.

Because of the way teacher evaluations are performed, teachers, unless they are on good personal terms with the principal, must live in fear of the baseless negative evaluation for which there is no recourse because it is the principal's word over the teacher's. As we know, management tends to win these battles.

I have many, many letters of appreciation from parents of students, and have had master teachers and principals tell me I am a fantastic teacher. I have been asked--by my current principal!--to be math leader (I said no), disaster coordinator (I am currently), tech leader (was until we got a new teacher who used to be tech guy for his district--he knows way more than me!), and am in charge of whole-school outings. Yet, because I push back, my principal gives me negative evaluations. This year is the first year I have ever received a negative evaluation. My teaching has not changed; indeed I feel I have gotten better having been left in the same grade for 4 years in a row (something I have written about before).

I would like to see teacher evaluations done by fellow teachers in conjunction with principals, and I would like the written notes of all evaluators to be included, with equal weight, in any final evaluation. This would be more informative and much more fair than the way it is done now.

For all you "unions protect the bad teachers" folks out there, the union can do nothing about a principal hell bent on firing a teacher; we teachers don't have any mechanism to expose the nonsense; union negotiations see to that (we lose, always).

Teachers Get Sicker Than You!

This is happening here in California as well. In fact, after a couple surgeries and some extra sick days to recover, after losing lots of money to being out of work during recovery, my principal decided I was abusing sick leave. When I die, will that also be abuse of my sick leave?

DOE Lays Down the Law to Microbes and Broken Bones

Filed under: Education by Ron Isaac @ 4:22 pm

If you are an appointed teacher and get sick, the contract allows you to be absent from school for a total of 10 days during the school year. If you have days in your “bank” of unused sick days accumulated from past years, you may take those days off for verifiable illness beyond those 10 days. There is also a provision for “borrowing” sick days if necessary. Of course nobody should apply for any benefit under false pretenses.

This “sick day” allowance is realistic and makes common sense. It is fair though not generous.

Research has shown that adults who work with children have a far greater than average exposure to common infections. It has been statistically demonstrated that they are even more at risk than are doctors, nurses and hospital workers. Many schools are overheated and poorly ventilated in winter because windows can’t be opened and the furnace is on full blast.

Kids often cough and sneeze openly while jammed in narrow hallways during change of classes or are confined in the close quarters of a trailer or classroom. A percentage of these kids may come from countries from which there is added risk of proliferation of disease because poverty and the lack of available quality medical care may have precluded children from being properly immunized.

Good people get sick or hurt. It is not “unprofessional” or insubordinate to get the flu or to require surgery. And it is not for the principal to judge whether a person claiming sickness is sick enough to be absent.

But some principals are now sending letters to staff members warning them of the consequences of future absence after those educators have been out 5 or 6 days over many months. The letters are not for file, but they are outrageously provocative. Principals have been known to give “U” ratings for poor attendance based on a few extra days during which the staff member was critically ill.

Grim statistics indicate that these ratings are among the most difficult to overturn regardless of the merits of the case and even if the educator has no history of attendance abuse. The rating can threaten their livelihood, or at least cost them significant income because of frozen salary steps or ineligibility for per session employment.

By showing callousness, some principals feel they are simply fulfilling the DOE’s implicit mandate for being a strong leader who makes tough decisions.

Our contracts are legal documents and the hard-fought rights and protections that are built into them are integral to the dignity of our workplace. There can be no consent to their abrogation.

Passivity and acquiescence are inexcusable. If they are adopted as optional responses, then countless other clauses of the contract will eventually be targeted. In some schools, certain rules for programming and other areas are already being eroded by lack of enforcement.

It is imperative that the school chapter thwart any principal who tries to create contractual “loop holes” where there are none. If you indulge in appeasement, then those “loop holes” will eventually rip our contractual garment to shreds.

It takes inordinate courage to assert basic freedoms under the Klein era. But it is absolutely vital to the survival and prestige of our profession for us to stand firm and never give in to brute intimidation.

Is your staff united? Do they stick together against invidious attempts to divide and conquer? Do they practice a “one for all/all for one” philosophy? Some individuals may, for either idealistic or cynical reasons, choose to “go it alone” and work out a secret personalized deal to advance themselves even at the expense of their professional colleagues. That danger must be met head-on.

Never seek conflict. Always pursue harmony in all your dealings at school. Be a force for conciliation and partnership. But if you are forced to fight, then do so with all the tenacity and cunning that your collective discernment and passion demands.

Your school is the home front. That is where your defense begins. The whole union will fight with you as you fight for yourselves.

Principal Problems

Boy, I could have written this post. Principals are not the saviors of schools. In fact, they can ruin one, as mine is doing daily.

In the Spirit and To the Letter

by Ron Isaac @ 10:42 am

A letter in the current New York Teacher has both struck my fancy and hit a nerve so I shall respond to it speaking only for myself.

Rosie Canty makes some superb observations about the difficulties that qualified teachers encounter in their efforts to get hired, the nature of what constitutes qualifications that truly prepare prospective teachers for the realities they will face, and the arguments favoring experienced versus novice teachers on the job. She also notes the concerns of teachers seeking transfers on the basis of hardship and the dangers of cronyism outweighing merit as the determinating factor of who gets hired for a specific position. There’s a lot of insight and wise counsel in this short letter.

But one statement incites me. It is “I understand that giving principals the power to hire does make sense—after all, it is their building.”

In my opinion, this resignation and acceptance is at the root and heart of what is ailing, directly and indirectly, the whole school system.

The school building is equally the property of the educators, parents and students.[emphasis mine] It is a cooperative. The surrender of total authority to principal has done a lot of damage. For instance, the principal’s educational philosophy has been allowed to choke out the creative teaching style of staff members who in many cases have vastly more knowledge and experience than has the principal, yet face career-threatening charges of insubordination if they buck their supervisor.

Contractual enforcement is made more difficult over a host of issues and may require extraordinary courage when chapter leaders must deal with autocratic, patronizing principals who feel they are Plantagenet monarchs.

Principals dominate School Leadership Teams and need only consult, or go through the motions and give lip service as they deem fit, about budget priorities, etc.

There is no reason why total reality must be under the principal’s control. As teachers can we choose or eliminate from our rosters every student by our decree? We must find strategies to cope and so should principals.

The principal may be the lord and master of the school’s masonry. But its humanity is the common property, legacy, and vision of all stakeholders.

And the best principals understand that.

Public School And Special Needs Students

Do you have a child with special needs? If you do, you may want to think about how your child will be served in a public school setting. Here are the caveats:

First, public schools (in California at least) were mandated by law to serve these kids. Not that passing the law was a bad idea, but abiding it is not easy. Remember Prohibition?

Second, depending on the severity of your child's needs, they are likely to be considered an item in a schedule rather than a child. See, when figuring out how to share resources, schools look at severity. If your child has a physical limitation, they are likely to get an aid, because a physical limitation is easy to see, easy to deal with, and easy to show compliance. But, if your child has a different issue, like, say, mild autism (they can communicate, serve themselves food, be sweet) they will likely be ignored, or passed from one aid to another (not the aid's fault). Resource teachers who coordinate aid schedules are under the gun, short-staffed, and often spread a bit thin. That's no excuse, however, for the shortfalls.

Third, money is scant, and that makes many of the problems intractable.

Fourth, when schools are charged with serving a student with certain issues, paperwork and meetings are mandatory. They are required for compliance. Rarely are the meetings to help the child--they are CYA sessions for the administrators and specialists (often to the specialist's chagrin). Teachers are given short shrift at these meetings, even though WE are the ones who will have 99% of the responsibility for your child, and we will get 99% of the credit, or blame, for any outcome regardless the percentage of responsibility the resource folks SHOULD have.

Now, I am not saying that you should not consider public school for your child with special needs. If you are available to be there to be your child's aid, things should be okay. But, if you are like most parents, and have a job, you won't be able to do that. And considering the shuiffling around of your child from one specialist to another, or from one aid to another, or from one situation with a grownup who doesn't know your child to another, your child will not get what s/he deserves. Okay, maybe I am saying you shouldn't consider public school for your child.

This issue looms very large in society, and again, schools have been given the mandate to deal with it. We can't. It's that simple.

Advocate for your child. Make your demands to the PRINCIPAL, and require the principal follow-up with you. The teacher has little to say about how your child will be served. Most teachers are heartbroken by their special-needs kids because we see them flounder and there is so little we can do for them. We do all we can while not ignoring the other 20 kids in our class.

The next time you have an IEP (or whatever letters your district uses to call these mettings) bring a picture of your child. Lay that picture on the table and remind everyone why you all are there. When they decide to read you their report(s), you know, the one(s) they just gave you a copy of, remind them you can read, and you would rather have gotten the report prior to the meeting so when you were at the meeting you could discuss the report, not have it reported!

Come prepared with questions; who is with my child at lunch; who is with my child on the yard; do these people change willy-nilly, or is there a schedule; who is in charge of documenting progress or lack of it; what are my rights; what is the reality; why isn't the classroom teacher in this meeting; why is the principal talking--she doesn't know my kid; how will this meeting help; who will this meeting help; does my kid eat his lunch; where is he right now; why do you sound like a robot; why is the resource room always empty and the resource teacher on lunch duty; you get the picture.

I hope this was helpful, enlightening, and pisses you off!

Update: An enlightening anecdote here.

Quote Of The Day: Me

I wrote this a month ago about principals. It bears repeating:

This screed by principal Hitch should be looked at as part of the problem in education; professional teachers being reviewed, retained, or fired by folks whose mission it is to foster conformity to a norm not yet affirmed, in a desire to wrest control of education away from those who provide it--teachers!

A Note From A Principal

Teacher,

I noticed that you used your library time to work on other things [the library is not yet open, so the librarian stopped by with a book to read to my students. she is wonderful]. While there are needs in the first 2 weeks of school (eg- sorting emergency cards, setting up grade book), I expect you to actively participate in specials, including library[sic] you should link classroom/library instruction for your students. This book had some interesting sounds/ideas/language.

Well, what can I say. The librarian came into my classroom to read a story. I took that time, since for the first time the librarian was in my room and we were not in the library, to take care of the never ending business. So, I was at my desk, doing stuff. The librarian did not need me, indeed, it is her time! In fact, I do not know how I am to integrate my teaching with the random book the librarian chooses (it's fucking random, and I don't know what it will be till I see it!). The comment in the note seems pretty forced and useless, lacking any pedagogy. It's just a way to nitpick and make the principal think she is of some use.

This note is an example of a principal realizing there is nothing the new adoptions, or the "no" interventions, or robotizing of teaching can do to help close the achievement gap. So, they snipe on the littlest of things to show that they are doing something.

This is what is wrong with education.

Principal Certification: For What?

The following post is not about the district where I work, but it might as well be!

Principals used to be experts, former educators, and had to fight for the privilege of becoming principal. Now, well, not so much. I can tell you this from personal experience, as could many, many folks who are in on the hiring of principals (it's always the superintendent's choice!

“Take This Certification And…”

Filed under: Education by Ron Isaac @ 8:39 pm

One fine day a few years ago my principal summoned me for a good-natured chat about a piece I had written that some brownie-point seeker or other well-wisher had retrieved from the Internet and forwarded to her. My piece was about the “reformed” view of what currently passes as qualifications to be a school leader and how it falls short of the admittedly flawed principal-selection process of the past. Basically I lamented the actual (not merely perceived) de-legitimization of credentials that characterize the present chancellor’s presumed rehabilitation of the school leadership concept.

This principal, who although not pristine, was on the whole superior to most (we need to rate and educate the “whole” principal just as we do the “whole” child). She had, to her credit, come up through the ranks and left a track record of achievement. She showed by example that applying administrative skills and displaying humanity are not contradictory.

The principal, sounding more hurt than indignant, asked plaintively, “You don’t think I’m a competent principal? I read what you wrote about new principals.”

Well, most of the time this principal realized that she was neither the center of the universe nor of my articles, but she had been egged on into thinking that she was my target. Heck, she wasn’t even my case in point.

“Yes, you are, competent,” I replied, adding “but your qualifications were incidental to your getting this job. You didn’t get placed here because of them and if you hadn’t had them you’d be here on the throne just the same. Your appointment was a fait accompli. The first time that anyone in this building ever saw or heard of you was when the superintendent popped by to announce his decision to put you here.”

I was glad he did, but that wasn’t the point. It was a fortuitous imposition but an imposition nonetheless. I was accurate and sincere. It was one of those rare times that truth’s levees could not be blown away by the gale of skepticism.

But how has the principal selection process been degraded under the current DOE, with its penchant for self-congratulation? “Let’s “compare and contrast,” as we English teacher dinosaurs used to say.

Before “Children First” (which doesn’t mean what it says. People can make up any slogan just as they can sue anybody for anything or call a dictatorship a “People’s Republic”), principals were invariably veteran educators who had logged at least a decade as teachers and assistant principals before they applied for their first supervisory position. Without training, knowledge, and experience, you could still dream about being the boss of others who had the expertise that you totally lacked, but you wouldn’t have the nerve to think you belonged in that position. If you still put in for the job you’d not only be rejected; you’d be laughed out of town.

Until the present era you couldn’t become a principal practically straight out of college exclusively because of your social networking prowess or DNA links. Naturally there was always an element of “who you know…not what you know,” but rising to the top with nothing substantive to recommend you became an art form only in recent years. Of course, among the “old-school” principals there was a fair (and unfair) share of autocrats, but at least that species knew something about curriculum, methodology, educational philosophy and programming.

A “desirable” school would typically receive two hundred resumes for a vacancy. Representatives from the PTA, UFT, and CSA would separately sift through them and later collaborate to pick finalists among candidates who had met the mutually determined criteria for selection. The finalists were ranked and interviewed in an open and orderly way. There was consultation among the groups doing the selection and their feedback was not only tolerated but mandated. The discussions were frank, sometimes cantankerous, but almost always fruitful and unifying in the end.

The tradition was corrupted intermittently by some incorrigible insiders. The collective will was sometimes suspiciously overruled and a candidate out of the blue got the nod. But rarely did the successful applicant feel they had a right and indeed a holy obligation to barge into a school and like gangbusters impose their ego and redefine a flourishing school culture. Before the corporate children’s takeover, a new school leader usually showed a trace element of humility when introduced to a staff of many dozens of professionals with hundreds of years of total experience. This is often lacking among the new breed of school leaders who though they take the title and ape the role, mock the profession to which they are strangers.

Disclaimers have become the “in” genre for critics, so let me concede that the old system was not all good and the present malpractice is not all bad.

Having said that, let’s suppose that the surgeon doing your transplant is a newbie from the Stomach and Liver Leadership Academy whose prior “operations” were with hedge fund management. Or that NASA’s project manager in charge of rescuing astronauts stranded on the space station was trained to command nothing but investment portfolios before his first gig at Cape Canaveral’s controls. Would your prayers not take on a more urgent ring?

And that is why, with helter-skelter cronyism and nepotism in place and in force, our schools need buckets of worldly activism and divine intercession.

More Proof They Don't Know What They're Doing

Last year I was evaluated. My students' state scores were not taken into account, but why would they be? In a teacher evaluation, the teacher, as well as the principal, set vapid, purely lip-service-to-the-man "goals" for the teacher, because as we all know, teachers need improving and the best way to do that is to point out what they don't do well.

Anyhoo, one of the goals was to have the second grade classes work toward a system where the teacher that felt most comfortable with, and was most successful at, a certain subject would teach that subject to the 3 second grade classes. For background, because my students did well on math assessments, and the principal was impressed with a math lesson she witnessed in my class, she wanted to get me to as many kids as she could, and this was a way to do that. I had mentioned it as a possibility in a conference or something during a brainstorm, and never thought about it again. She did, and suggested it as a goal. There are problems with the idea from the gitgo:

1. The other teachers have to want to teach science and literacy. What if they don't? Do I fail in my goal?

2. Parents might not want the lack of continuity for their children.

3. Kids may not like the lack of continuity.

4. I may get sick of teaching math all day every day (you upper school teachers have it rough!)

And who knows what other issues could come up?

So, that is the background and setup for what I realized after the meeting, tonight, when I got home, regarding my post below, about today's meeting, before I wrote it:

If we are to align our instructional blocks (literacy at 10am, math at 1pm, etc) so all second grade teachers teach the same thing at the same time, my goal (above) would be impossible. Not only would it be impossible, it seems to be antithetical to the pedagogy revealed by the new alignment of instructional blocks. Which pedagogy, or curricular delivery system, is best? Clearly the principal has no fucking idea.

I always blow off the goals, so my forgetting about it makes sense. But for the principal to espouse one way to deliver curriculum to kids as a worthy goal, then to tell us we are to do this aligning thing--which is the complete opposite--not only smacks of stupidity, but a bifurcated and incompatible-with-itself pedagogical view(s?). She is not compartmentalizing. She is confused. Sunni? Shia?