Seattle Public Schools, when it comes to reassigning effective principals, should consider the results of recent research.
The February issue of "The Atlantic" magazine features a fascinating article by Amanda Ripley that reinforces what we already know: Teachers matter.
It's what else is in the article that grabbed our attention.
In Ripley's 5,687-word piece, she followed the research of Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that had spent the last 10 years figuring out what makes teachers great. Researchers followed the test scores of thousands of students, looking for those who made the most notable strides. Some, in the space of a year, were jumping three grade levels in their understanding of math and reading comprehension. Researchers then examined the habits of the teachers of those students to find out what they were doing differently.
They found that great teachers constantly reevaluated what they are doing and avidly recruited students and their families into the educational process. They maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning. They planned exhaustively and purposefully by working backward from the desired outcome. They never gave up on their students no matter how weighted down the students may have been by poverty or the school by bureaucracy or budgetary shortfalls.
While the data was selective and not peer-reviewed, it was extensive. Teach for America took these research results and replicated them after recruiting and instructing future teachers graduating from college (out of 35,000 candidates 4,100 were selected) who then went out to meet their new classrooms with good habits and hungry hearts.
Replicating sound fundamental teaching and leadership skills: This is what Seattle Public Schools should be doing more of with its principals. To some degree the district already does. As part of their professional development, principals visit other district schools to exchange ideas. There is also the recently funded Initiative for Leadership Development that principals can take part in. Program outcomes include skill sets to grapple with change and the ability to effectively move issues forward.
Great. The problem comes when a successful principal is uprooted.
Some principals have quickly gained the reputation as leaders. Dan Warren of John Hay Elementary School is one, but he has been reassigned to Sand Point Elementary School. David Elliott of Coe Elementary School is another. Elliott was reassigned to the new Queen Anne Elementary School (formerly Old John Hay). There's also Center School Principal Lisa Escobar, with her amazing people skills, who has been re-assigned as co-principal at Rainier Beach High School. These schools were in need of excellent leadership and now they have it.
But the changes leave their former schools without the leadership parents and students have grown accustomed to, an unfortunate circumstance and incongruent with the philosophy of the district's student assignment plan. Parents have complained.
A principal's success, it seems to us, would argue that the principal stay at the school where a desirable difference is being made. Dealing with a less-than-successful principal should not mean interrupting success elsewhere.[[In-content Ad]]
