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December 12, 2012

Cultivating The Next Generation Of School Leaders

by Shael Polakow-Suransky, at 11:57 am

One of the Bloomberg administration’s first big education policy moves was to create a fast-track principal training program that in its early years recruited heavily from outside the school system. Now, in the administration’s final year, that program — which drew fierce criticism and produced mixed results — is smaller and the Department of Education is investing in programs to develop potential principals from within the city’s teaching corps. Here, the department’s chief academic officer explains why the department is looking inside itself for future school leaders.

On a Wednesday afternoon late last month, Serapha Cruz, the principal of the Bronx School of Young Leaders, was in her building on Tremont Avenue, meeting with teacher teams and preparing for the following day.

And yet, in a way, she was also at West Prep Academy, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; Bronx Park Middle School, in Bronxwood; and the Urban Assembly School of Civic Engagement, in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. The leaders of these three other schools all served as staff members or principals-in-training under Cruz — a dynamic principal who has worked relentlessly with her team to turn around her school — before becoming principals themselves.

Throughout New York City’s public schools, many more prospective principals are in the leadership pipeline. They come from Cruz’s school — she has an aspiring principal interning this year with her, and I met two of Cruz’s current teachers that Wednesday afternoon at the kick-off event for the inaugural cohort of the Teacher Leadership Program — and from schools across the city.

In recognition of the critical role the school leader plays in determining a school’s success, the department has long offered potential school leaders several options for principal preparation programs, which typically provide intensive support in the year immediately before an apprentice becomes a principal. More recently, in order to increase the supply of high-quality candidates for the roughly 150 principal positions we must fill each year, the department has launched several initiatives aimed at developing the leadership capacity of our most effective teachers. By engaging strong educators early in their careers, we can cultivate their leadership skills as they take their first steps toward school leadership.

Take TLP as an example. The program is targeted at teachers already serving in leadership roles — such as department chair — and convening them regularly through a series of workshops led by strong principals and other leaders. Between sessions, back in their schools, teacher leaders will practice observing classrooms and providing feedback to improve their colleagues’ practice. They will evaluate instructional materials for alignment to the Common Core standards. And they will lead teams of fellow teachers to examine their students’ work, guiding discussions about how to adjust teaching in response to student needs.

The fact that the 250 teachers in TLP this year represent just a quarter of our nearly 1,000 applicants is a testament to our teachers’ widespread interest in developing these leadership skills.

We know that many TLP participants may decide to continue in their teacher leadership roles, now strengthened by the skills they have gained in the program, for years to come. But our hope is that some successful graduates will go on to become the next generation of excellent New York City school leaders by moving on to one of our key principal preparation programs next year or in the future. This year, with support from the Wallace Foundation, our expanding group of partner programs includes not just the Leadership Academy, LEAP (the Leaders in Education Apprenticeship Program), and New Leaders’ Aspiring Principal Program, but also three university-based education leadership programs — Bank Street Principals Institute, Teachers College Summer Principals Academy, and CUNY’s Baruch College — whose leaders have committed to grounding their work in partnerships with our schools. Across all of these partner programs, this year nearly 150 assistant principals and teacher leaders are in training to become New York City principals.

Our work to develop a strong leadership pipeline dates to 2003, when the NYC Leadership Academy launched and began to lay the foundation to address the city’s longstanding need to better recruit, prepare, and support principals. The Leadership Academy created that foundation, particularly for the system’s highest-need schools; today, nearly one in six principals in the city is a graduate of the academy’s Aspiring Principals Program, which now serves as a national model for school leader preparation and has been replicated in a number of other districts. It also continues to serve as a critical partner in our leadership work providing training to teacher leaders, aspiring principals and sitting principals across the system.

While principals are never eager to see some of their strongest educators leave their school, they understand that these leadership development programs can be mutually beneficial and ultimately serve the greater good. Principal Cruz says that her current staff members have been inspired by the development of their former colleagues, and many educators are now discussing possible leadership roles during their regular goal-setting conversations. Plus, Cruz is in touch often with Dillon Prime, the new principal at Bronx Park, and Roberto Padilla, the principal at West Prep. For the Nov. 6 professional development day, the three principals shared resources on providing quality feedback to students and collecting assessment data.

“I believe in developing people to work in other places, and it ends up making all of our jobs easier if we’re putting quality people in these positions,” Cruz told me. “Dillon and Roberto are getting fresh ideas from other people and other places and bringing them back to our conversations, so their development benefits me, too.”

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  • Clay

    Shael, you failed to place deserving educators into principal positions. The Leadership Academy had poor results. You’ve failed students, you blame teachers.

    The administration you work for gets an “F”.

  • BloombergMustGo

    This article is very fundamentally disturbing for two reasons:
    1) It serves to reinforce the idea that Gotham Schools exhibits a bias in favor of Bloomberg’s Bunglers and against teachers on NYC.

    2) It also serves to demonstrate the fact that anyone emplyed by the Bloomberg team wears very big blinders and has very selective sight.  They see what they want to see.  In what universe could anyone claim that the current crop of administrators in NYC exceles in any way shape or form?  The mere idea is ludicrous.  The lack of qualifications, especially among the “fast tracked” disciples of Blombergism, is mind booggling.  Never in the history of NYC schools has their been ineptitude of this magnitude.

    This is blatant propaganda.  A fact that goes mostly unnoticed since learning history and social studies in NYC schools is but an afterthought.

  • Ellen

    I have seen too many principals come to a school that is working well and impose changes  without rhyme or reason. I’ll use Edward R Murrow as an example.
     
    In opening Murrow there was a pact made allowing two programs, one for blind or visually impaired students and another for deaf or hearing impaired students.  It worked for years, even as the school grew and became crowded.  When the founding principal retired, the new principal forced a change by eliminating the program for the deaf and hard of hearing.  All of the experience that staff members had developed working with deaf or hard of hearing students evaporated.  All of the students disappeared.  What a waste of experience and what a loss for students
     
    As a parent (I am not a teacher or a DOE staff member) I do not believe that principals take into consideration the affect their wish to make a mark on a school will have on the consumers, i.e., parents and students.  I have seen too many principals go into a school to make a mark or prove their mettle.  What I want is to see successful programs or partnerships replicated .  What I have seen are principals isolated and looking ahead to the next promotion.  It’s a corporate thing.  Two years and I move, two years and I move, tow years and I move again. 
     
    Before folks get riled up, I do not believe principals are bad, but I do believe that the inordinate pressure on them and the lack of support from both the DOE and CSA leaves many principals without guidance or role models. 

    What  I really can’t figure out though, is why the author uses a failed model to praise the new one.  “The Leadership Academy laid the foundation to address the city’s
    longstanding need to better prepare and support excellent school
    leaders,” Maybe I am missing something in the logic.

  • JJ

    Man, I miss the good old days when somebody who wanted to be a principal spent 10 or so years teaching, then became an assistant principal, and then finally earned the right to be called, “principal”. The new corporate model of education does not give a darn about real experience but rather believes that some kind of “academy” or “training program” can fast track any Tom, Dick, or Harry to a principal job overnight. However, I have worked under one, and I mean ONE outstanding graduate of the Leadership Academy. This person is a great principal, but that person is without a doubt the exception, not the rule. 

  • I noticed that…

    Dear Shael,

    Would it be possible for someone to run a school, understand the needs of those in the school, and to create programs that will be provided in the school if that person has never taught or does not understand pedagogy? 

    My best friend’s principal retired last year from a very popular, well-known elementary school in the Bronx.  This principal, an educator, was in the classroom for 27 years, YES, 27 YEARS before taking on the challenges of being an Assistant principal.  She was an AP for 5 years before the Superintendent approached her to become a principal.  When she became a principal, before retiring with 41 years in the system, she created and funded programs that were essential.  Why?  She understood the needs of the kids; she understood the community especially she was in the community for over 30 years.  She helped teachers grow and glow because she understood methodology and pedagogy.

    Do you see the difference between the next generation of school leaders and the prior, extremely experienced school leaders of that generation?

  • http://twitter.com/leoniehaimson leonie haimson

    I would have more respect for the author if he admitted that the Leadership Academy was a failure, that they had learned from that expensive (how many millions wasted) Jack Welch-inspired fiasco, and now realized that they had to move in a different direction.  But as usual, DOE admits doing nothing wrong even when reversing course and loses credibility in the process.

  • Stop

    Ms. Dwarka from W.C. Bryant High has alienated more than half the staff, has reated unsatisfactory many good experienced veteran teachers and has harrassed many more.

  • A.S.Neill

     

    Selecting the great leaders has always been a challenge to
    any organization. One major source of difficulty is that there are really two
    broad categories of what makes a great leader – the tangibles and intangibles.
    The tangibles may be easily identified (energy, basic knowledge, commitment,
    etc) while the intangibles are not easily measured (people skills, basic
    honesty-integrity, maturity, ability to inspire, etc). One danger of fast
    tracking leaders is that they tend to be younger in which the tangible
    characteristics may be known, but the intangibles are not.

    Years of teaching allow me to observe that principals
    usually fall short because of the latter intangible categories, often in a very
    gross manner. One reason why it’s a good idea to wait to select principals only
    after they have been teachers for at least 10 years, is not only because it
    usually takes that long to become a really good well rounded teacher, but
    because it allows time to observe the many intangible qualities of leadership.

    The key mistake is the “engaging teachers early in their
    careers”. Too often, I see new teachers come into the profession with the clear
    idea they are not intending to stay teachers. Three years to get tenure, two
    years to get an administrative license. The have incredible energy, and sign on
    to every voluntary school committee or coordinator position, and are indeed
    often bright, so they look from the outside like the ideal teacher, ready for
    the next promotion to AP. At least on paper or to the existing principal. Which
    appears of course, to be their goal.

    The problem is that the intangibles to those who look
    closely are not good. They are ambitious and bright, which later easily turns
    into arrogance. Although on the surface, they seem to get along with everyone
    and are polite, in fact, they lack interest in or skill with people (except
    close friends on the same fast track they are), and for that matter, do not
    appear to be interested all that much in students personally, except as an
    object to improve on a test in their upward career path. They are easily
    overconfident but make basic mistakes often with people. One could go on here,
    but the basic idea is that they are a disaster waiting to happen.

    The military does not promote captains to
    colonels or majors to generals in one step. They want to see a full picture of
    someone in many different capacities with input from many people before they
    are ready to be promoted to high leadership. This takes time which means
    usually an older, mature, well rounded person. I strongly urge the DOE to
    consider these leadership qualities in selecting future principals, which as
    far as I can see, is quite lacking, or at best hit or miss.

    Fast tracking doesn’t
    work especially where leadership is so heavily tied to people skills and
    maturity. It is the intangibles that are critical.

  • mg

    This sounds like the principal of my last school. She was a first-year principal and in her mid-30s. Turns out that she was a sociopath and absolutely horrible at reading body language. She also easily bought into ideas with enthusiasm and expected all of us to do the same.

  • Adrgam1950

    The fast track was created because anyone with experience and deserving of the job got out when they could because they didn’t believe in what they were told to do by the Bloomberg (no Education background) Administration of puppets.

  • Citizen X

    How could the author notice? He too is a product of that fast track, data obsessed system. He must justify his meteoric rise (Did he teacher 10 years? How long was he an AP? ,etc.) . He could never embrace or understand the 27 year classroom teacher who became a school leader. Nor could he admit to the “inconvenien truth” that maturity and people skills creates excellence in leaders. 

  • bee

    Kind of ironic that the title is about “cultivating school leaders,” when the DOE regime under the auspices of Bloomberg and his appointed instruments of destruction, is all about slash and burn crops of teachers and principals.

  • Deputy Chancellors have FAILED

    The fast track with hiring these new inexperienced principals is a total FAILURE.  It is a total embarrassment.  When you see the difference amongst principals now to principals prior to the Bloomberg era, there actually is a clear pattern of lower standards, lower brain capacity, and overall lower management skills.  The older teachers laugh and laugh and laugh because the difference is tremendous.  What a pathetic mess and Mr. Suransky is backing it?  So pathetic but then again, I’m making my 6 figure salary so hey, whatever!!!

  • Janetmayer,teacher and author

    What arrogance to think that nothing was known about training of successful principals before Bloomberg and his ilk came along. The fast track doesn’t work and never will. Having untrained non-master teachers train either new teachers or principals  is absolutely ridiculousWhat has happened to common sense ?

  • ak

    With the increase in the number of schools due to the small school movement, the demand for strong administrators is high and the supply seems rather low, causing the shift in mentality described by the author.  If that is the case, maybe it is time to think outside the box in a way that does not compromise the quality of instructional leadership.

    Many successful, non-DOE schools have a Principal serve as the instructional leader of the school while also having an operations leader (a non-pedagogue) who handles much of the administrative and even disciplinary issues so that two the leaders work in tandem effectively.  In some DOE schools, that operations person is the Assistant Principal of Organization.  Perhaps this model would work more effectively in some of the small, struggling DOE schools.
    Now I suppose the networks are supposed to handle a lot of the operations work, but a lot of DOE Principals say that the work done by the networks is minimal or of little use.  Perhaps some of those people can be trained to do the operations work at the school site and, if not, perhaps those operations people need not have an education degree.  The whole idea is the allow the instructional leader to be the final decision-maker at the school and still dedicate most of the time to providing pedagogical support to teachers.

    Of course, much of this is useless if the culture of the school is one focused on anything other than seeking academic success.  School culture trumps everything because if students are able to get away with doing what they want even if it is not what they should do, then even strong instruction won’t lead to the quality and quantity of learning we all want our students to have.  Therefore, the pre-requisite for this organizational model to work is a true commitment and unity among all of the administrators, faculty, and staff members to maintain a high level of school culture. 

  • Through The Cracks

    First and foremost, rigorous psychological testing needs to be included in your leadership program. We are all aware of the School for Sociopathic Leaders (SSL). It has graduated more destructive personalities than Rikers has in a single wing. Weakness and insecurity seem to be the preferred skillset for program admissions. What a joke all of this is. Get some cojones and tell the poodle what you really think of him

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