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Hahaha can’t find the right people to take these jobs. Wanna know why? You would have to be crazy to take these positions. There is no future with no job security. Why would you take a job without tenure when all you have to do is take a job in the suburbs where it is given freely. The city administrators gave their job security away for more money and then this mayor brought in people without experience to take up the slack. Guess what it didn’t work and now look at what’s happening. You get what you pay for. It’s not about better training it’s about having a secure job in a very insecure profession. The best administrators grew up in the systems they worked in. Experience does matter and having some sort of life is important.
Another great example of the Bloomberg administration digging themselves into a hole that they created. Nice job
Those who can teach, teach, those who can’t become administrators. Great administrators never stop teaching.

Hey Leonie, I think the consensus from the charter center, so far, is that they haven’t collected enough information to answer the question. Merriman and Co. haven’t exactly denied that ”burnout” is a strong contributor though. But he also said today that not enough information is known about which ones leave (are they from networks? Where do they go after? Are they new to the school? Is the school itself new?). He suggested that burn out rates might slow based on certain breakdowns of those questions.

I wonder if the Leadership Academy offers a seminar on how to twist the arms of teachers to pass at least 70 to 80 percent of their students. Now that Regents are relatively scrub- proof and credit revovery has been contained, pass rates are riper than ever for job-saving manipulation. Not every dishonest principal is dishonest in the same way. Some are blunt about their quotas, others get the message across by hounding teachers with low but authenic pass rates. If Regents and credit recovery were corrupted, what’s to stop course grades  from being inflated? What is the DOE doing to prevent another 65 bulge? The same thing it did to prevent Regents tampering–NOTHING.       

First it should take at least 5 years just to be an Assistant Principal and another 5 to be a Principal if you want stability and quality. But thats not why we have incompetent Principals. We have them because the Administration wanted puppets and not Educators so they could “reform” the system–hmmm

““Obviously, it’s common sense that for leaders who are well-equipped and trained, the job is something that they can stay in and do for longer,” Merriman said.”

It would seem that Merriman would like for school leaders to stay longer in their positions.  Yet, he has never seemed concerned about the short-lived teaching career of many TFA teachers who eventually leave the classroom for positions in administration.  He can’t expect principals, who came through the TFA program, to establish roots in a charter school or any type of school when many are accustomed to short-lived teaching careers.  In fact, I have read where they prefer to move up to the superintendent level, which seems to be their modus operandi of not having to put roots in those schools.  You cannot expect “well-equipped and trained” principals to have longevity in schools if their training in the field of education is as short as their stay in that position.  It would be interesting to see how many of those former principals had less than 10 years in the classroom and how many came from the TFA program.  Longevity as a principal in a school will be based on the number of years as an assistant principal and as a classroom teacher.

Sociopaths? I love your poetry.

Insulting a judge on a radio show is not a basis for a contempt finding, thank God.

The problem for many of people who make hiring decisions are that they think a high performing teacher always translates into a high performing principal. A principal is like a coach and the best coaches were not all great players they were middling players who lasted because they mastered their craft and the techniques os how to prepare and develop your game. These are things that do not show up in numbers just as a future star principal who has great people skills and the ability to identify problems and better yet to get everyone to see the problem will never get a shot in a statistical world of Bloombergs Laxonomy

Oh. Well, in that case, toss him in jail.

Goals and quotas are different concepts. The 70 and 80 percent principal-directed quotas came from teachers at different schools. When I ATR-ed at Rachel Carson High in Brooklyn last year I saw a teacher hand back failing tests to her class and give them the period to correct wrong answers with an open book. The teacher promised to count only the corrected tests. When I gently inquired as to the wisdom of her malpractice, she rolled her eyes and murmured something about the need to pass students. 

This admin has no clue how to assess anything in education, hence the outlandishly heavy focus on data regardless of its nature or validity, or even relevance for that matter.
And, given the relentlessly top-down fashion of this admin, guess what happens to their intrinsic inabilities?

I’m wondering how many charter principals and teachers you’ve actually met.  You might feel differently and be less incendiary if you took the time to actually ask about their motives.

Kitchen Sink,

I’ll assume you misread my comment, rather than intended to misrepresent it.

First, I nowhere mentioned teachers, as the topic of discussion was school leaders, so you can take that red herring away from the podium.

Second, I was was clearly not referring to all charter school principals, but rather those who are identified, plucked and advanced for their “leadership skills,” as narrowly defined by the oligarchs who have purchased education policy in recent years. After all, there’s no continuity, loyalty or commitment to teaching in the business model of education, so it’s to be expected that while all teachers and most principals are fungible, a few are to chosen and groomed to climb the administrative ladder of privatization and public school devolution. It’s of a piece with Wendy Kopp saying she’s more interested in developing leadership cadre, rather than teachers, something she’s very open about.

Finally, the term “sociopath.” Wikipedia links it to Anti-Social Personality Disorder (APSD), which is characterized by “… A pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others.”

It is also characterized by ” … callous unconcern for the feelings of others… low tolerance of frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression… irritability…aggressiveness… lack of remorse…” Dishonesty and narcissism are also typical qualities.

For Exhibit A, see Rhee, Michelle.

According to this definition, it is not hyperbole to describe the entire corporate ed reform project as sociopathic, and one that would give ample incentives and opportunities for the advancement of people with these traits, whether in charter or public schools. Indeed, Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy apparently makes them a requirement for admission.

Our entire society is dominated by people like this, and they’ve set their sights on the schools for years now: is it really so shocking that they are too often the ones who advance?

Sir F.,

You seem to be taking this matter quite seriously, spending quite a bit of time on what you call partisan noise and its reverberations.

The thing about Bloomy is he backs up his disgusting rhetoric with equally repugnant action. So, not taking it seriously, and ignoring the fact that it does reverberate on both sides, is not really much of an option.

Going on and on about this one thing, yes we’ve reached that end of diminishing and even negative returns.