AJC.com > Blogs > Get Schooled > Archives > 2006 > October > 16 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USThe Turnaround Specialist Who Wasn’t
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As Alexander Russo, an education writer whose blog I peruse, says, it IS hard to delight in Principal Parker Land’s downfall. But at the same time I’d have to confess it’s hard not to. I don’t mean I’m glad the principal chosen to turn around a failing Virginia school based on his success in a high performing school didn’t perform a miracle. I wish he had. But is anyone surprised?
I’m glad his story is being told on PBS, because it points to the obvious faulty logic in appointing principals with good track records at schools with favorable demographics to schools with challenges and expecting better results.
Scores at Land’s school went down, and he is off - after just one year - to be principal somewhere else.
Asked if he failed, he says he doesn’t see it that way. He adds: “I’ve learned that our kids, a significant number of those kids are in crisis. And there’s a level of support that’s needed that we just haven’t realized yet.”
Of the 21 principals in Virginia’s “Turnaround Specialist” program, 14 fell short of testing goals, reports John Merrow, the correspondent behind the intriguing series, which ran on the Newshour. More than half the principals changed schools or left the program, Merrow said.
There is a similar program in Georgia, but I don’t know if any high-performing principals took the plunge in lower performing schools. I’ll ask. Meanwhile, those of you with experience in lower performing schools, would you want a principal like Land to come in? Have you had a principal with a track record at high performing schools come in and take charge? Did it work out?
Comments
By decaturparent
October 16, 2006 04:59 PM | Link to this
I watched the streaming video from this news story on PBS. Here is the link for those who want it…
http://www.thisweekineducation.com/
Wow, I have a lot of thoughts in my head about this situation. Mostly I am just really ticked off.
I am ticked off because Land should have the super’s job, and the super should be fired. She is a complete idiot, and it is beaurocrats like her that are the reason education is failing in this country. I experienced a super like her several years ago, and she single handedly nearly brought down an excellent school system.
I am ticked off because many of the kids at Boushall Middle apparently have very little stability in their lives. They finally get a principal that is turning around the culture of Boushall and making some of them feel human and even enjoy school. Then he is whisked off to another school after only a year when he promised the staff and kids that he would be there for three years at least. (Note that he was transfered well BEFORE Boushall’s scores came out).
The super just says that it’s not a problem because the kids are “resilient,” and Land is just a principal. “He’s not their father.” Well, GUESS WHAT honey… most of these kids don’t have a father, and they need all their resiliency for the chaos that they go home to every day - they shouldn’t have to be resilient at school too. Thanks to you Ms. Superintendent, Land has just become another man who has abandoned them. If the school system doesn’t provide consistency… most of these kids don’t have consistency anywhere.
I am ticked off because in a wealthier school district, this would not have happened because parents would have raised ungodly H_ and that super would have been fired. Unfortunately, the kids at Boushall apparently don’t have a bunch of overeducated, overprotective parents watching out for them so they just have to be “resilient.”
I am ticked off because Land apparently made real progress at Boushall, but No Child Left Educated doesn’t recognize all of the changes that he made in school culture because all that matters is that da_ned bubble sheet. You can’t raise scores until you change school culture, a 9 month school year is not enough time to make that change.
I am ticked off because I have lots of suspicions about why he was really transferred that I’m not going to go into on this blog.
By SET
October 16, 2006 05:39 PM | Link to this
I think decaturparent has the idea.
Anyway, I rather suspect that getting rid of the female executives of these school systems and replacing them with alpha males (not liberal males) is the first and only way to turn around the underperforming kids.
Public secondary schools have been femininized excessively since the early 1960’s. Female dominated schools in the primary years we can tolerate.
And it’s not just the fatherless boys who need the experience - it’s the fatherless girls also. Replace the supers, the principals, and the Deans with men - preferably retired military or retired law enforcement. Charge them with restoring order and compliance with school deportment rules. Allow the teachers to teach and not have to beg the kids to sit down and shut up. The teachers should not have to deal with defiant or non-performing students of either sex - that’s administration’s job.
It doesn’t matter if we hire Black Coach Carters or White Southern Bubbas. As long as they are alpha males and are expected to maintain order. If the kids learn something about respecting authority in the process, so much the better. A decidedly manly woman might work also.
By jim d
October 17, 2006 08:04 AM | Link to this
I guess I have a problem understanding how we could honestly expect one person to make that large of a difference.
We live in a society that has made many of the students that attend these failing schools totally dependent upon society to fill all their needs. We then have the audacity to ask why they won’t help themselves? How can we honestly expect a student that has been handed everything in life to develop any sense of personal responsibility? How can we expect their parents, or in most cases parent, to assume a level of accountability?
Solutions? Well perhaps basing their subsidies on their children’s grades would have a positive affect. Perhaps reducing subsidies substantially for parents that just keep reproducing children they expect the state to support financially, for the next 18 years, would slow the trend.
In either case, I don’t foresee our schools “turning around” until we break the cycles of dependency, poverty and ignorance.
And that my friends is not a job for one man.
By KA
October 17, 2006 09:54 AM | Link to this
SET, Schools and districts, urban and suburban, are not one size fits all. And it’s not the gender of the superintendent or principal that determines the progress of schools! The limiting factors are the school district’s PC policies, rules and restrictions on teachers, which are formulated and approved by elected school boards, who appoint the superintendents. Wise supervision and intelligent management traits are not limited to males or as you say manly women !!!!
By OldSchool
October 17, 2006 11:40 AM | Link to this
Maybe they ought to do unto administrators what administrators do unto us teachers: put them in workshops under high performing admins and teach them the techniques that work.
Or…they could just let us teach.
I’m real tired of legislators who have all the answers and make new rules to prove it.
By V for Vendetta
October 17, 2006 12:18 PM | Link to this
Funny, everyone on here seems to have pretty much the same idea. Then again, if it’s so obvious to all of us why there are problems in our schools, why the heck isn’t it obvious to anyone else!?
Am I giving people too much credit here? I mean, the general population cant be THAT stupid, can they? Anyone? Hello?
I guess we will find out in about, oh, two years or so…
By jim d
October 17, 2006 12:26 PM | Link to this
“general population cant be THAT stupid, can they?”
Unfortunately V, we can be. We continue to re-elect the same old butt heads that keep pushing this garbage.
By SET
October 17, 2006 12:46 PM | Link to this
KA: I hear you - but it still seems to me that getting the public school students under control requires Alpha Male behavior and thought processes which normal women absolutely don’t have - especially those women already drawn to social services and school work.
Additionally there is the problem of how women are perceived by the teenagers. The reason we have behavior issues is that adolescents are seeking pack position in the world and will test everyone’s authority. Women do not raise men well as a rule. Men do not respond to female authority as a rule. Women are not alpha males and an alpha male is required to control a pack of males. Basic Anthropology.
All these things are doubly true for low IQ adolescents. Low IQs (both male and female) do not appreciate future consequences. Women are usually not acclimated to imposing instantaneous penalties for defiance. They want to talk it over first.
Unless you have a manly woman - say, like a barn boss at a Women’s Prison. She could maintain order at an Urban High School. One of the reasons we have this instability in the public high schools is discipline on a feminine model rather than an alpha male model.
By V for Vendetta
October 17, 2006 01:13 PM | Link to this
LOL Jim,
Yeah, that’s why I’m counting down the next two years. Maybe my vote wont make a difference, but at least I will have tried!
By catlady
October 17, 2006 06:21 PM | Link to this
It seems like to me there are 2 points here: We need leaders (perhaps alpha-type) who CAN be stern like that. Right now few principals have the support they need to make the tough, demanding, local decisions that could make a difference actually stick— they are undermined by local, state, and national supervisors and policy-makers.
Second, it bugs the stew out of me to think that someone believes that “all we need” is this person or that person to come in and magically all things will be better. The hell in a handbasket we are in did not happen all in one day, or all in one year, but has been a result of years of poor decisions, poor policy, etc at every level.
By Jeff
October 17, 2006 07:38 PM | Link to this
The FIRST politician to publicly announce that they want to reduce teacher paperwork MORE THAN LIKELY has my vote right there….
By KA
October 18, 2006 08:27 AM | Link to this
SET, I am all for strict discipline and accountability. And I agree that a few school schools may be totally out of control and need your alpha male principal. However, IMO most schools in Georgia do not fit your west coast urban jungle model. The school system my kids went through has a zero tolerance policy that you may applaud, and works to address the bad actors, but also works to punish some students too harshly and without due process. I prefer that schools educate our students about responsibility and consequences, and when faced with a violation the admins should use common sense and investigate the student’s intent, consider the totality of circumstances, and make the punishment fit the crime. Sometimes the punishment only encourages more bad behavior, and don’t we want to rehabilitate these kids instead of dooming them? Let’s teach and discipline our kids in accordance with real world standards.
By SET
October 18, 2006 05:58 PM | Link to this
KA: I tend to agree with nearly all you said.
But real world standards of disipline is pretty draconian nowadays. That’s the problem. Light discipline in the high schools sets these kids up for a 3 strikes life in prison term later. - Or worse, a lifetime on the Internet as a registered sex offender because of one bad night.
So I’m not so worried about severe school discipline. I admit it’s unpleasant. I wish it wasn’t needed. But at this point I’d support paddling in high school. That’s how bad I feel things are, now.
I look forward to learning more about any differences between California Urban High Schools and GA - Maybe your system works better than ours.