Persistently Low-Achieving Knight Middle school recommended for principal, SBDM change

Superintendent Sheldon Berman clueless

The latest audit of a Persistently Low-Achieving School is out. This time the Knight Middle School from Jefferson County is in the spotlight, and the glare is pretty harsh. A few comments from the Audit:

• “The principal and school council have not demonstrated leadership that provides guidance and engages stakeholders within the school to meet challenges of struggling students in reading and math that address goals of No Child Left Behind.”

• “The principal has not ensured that teachers deliver student centered, rigorous, and differentiated instruction that meets the learning needs of all students.”

• “The principal has not fostered a culture of mutual respect between all staff members and students.” (My added comment: this is a guaranteed recipe for student failure. It fosters student violence and staff apathy)

• “The principal and school council have not established an organizational structure that promotes high student achievement and staff performance.”

• “The principal has not held all staff members accountable for their roles in improving student academic and behavioral performances to sustain continuous improvement.”

• “The principal has not engaged all stakeholders in decision making to develop a common ownership in the success of all students.”

As recently happened with the audit for Newport High School in Newport Kentucky the audit team is recommending that both the school’s principal and School Based Decision Making (SBDM) authority at the school need to be transferred. Given the comments above, the auditors really had no other choice.

Now, here’s the really sad part. Jefferson County Schools superintendent Sheldon Berman told the Courier-Journal:

“I was surprised at the deficiencies in how negative the audit was about leadership.”

Surprised? How can that possibly be?

Clearly, either the audit is totally fouled up, or Berman has not been paying attention.

Berman, of course, is on the way out. If the Jefferson County Board of Education wants to do the right thing in hiring his replacement, they need to spend some time looking over the audits for their Low-Achieving Schools. In fact, the board might want to invite members of the audit team to brief on what good schools look like. That way, the board can ask intelligent questions of the new superintendent applicants to see if those applicants know what a good school really looks like and how to not be surprised when a school isn’t measuring up.

Kentucky’s Ed schools resisting US News & World Report plan to rank teacher preparation institutions nationwide

Education Week reports (subscription?) that the education school complexes in Kentucky and several other states are resisting a partnership between the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and US News & World Report magazine to rank the performance of education schools around the country.

Per EdWeek, Kentucky’s Ed school crowd says the USN&WR/NCTQ proposal lacks transparency.

Perhaps.

But, it is our public Ed schools that are refusing to voluntarily provide information the NCTQ wants to evaluate. To be honest, that seems rather foolish, because the NCTQ is just going to open records request the information, anyway.

I am still looking at information on what the USN&WR/NCTQ evaluation will examine, so I don’t know if this particular ranking effort will be worthwhile. However, I strongly suspect the evaluations will be conducted and published because the NCTQ people I talked to are VERY motivated, with good reason. When you cut through all the noise, the facts are that the US has slipped on international testing, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that after many years of focusing on education reform, K to 12 student performance across the nation still lags what we all would like to see.

By the way, the NCTQ also has some interesting arguments to support their side of the story. You can find some of that here.

Also, the NCTQ is very familiar with some stunning comments made by Arthur Levine, past president of Columbia Teachers College.

In his report, “Educating Researchers,” Levine writes about his interviews with education school personnel responsible for training the research community. Says Levine:

“It quickly became apparent that in today’s highly charged environment, those interviewed for this study had less interest in ‘truth telling’ than in defending their positions.”

That comment, from the former head of one of the nation’s oldest, most competitive and best-known teacher preparation institutions, raises concerns about Ed school protests against the USN&W report.

So, is USN&WR off track with their planned evaluation, or are Ed schools just trying to hide serious problems?

Stay tuned for more on this one.

Is education failing to truly remove unsuccessful principals?

There has been a lot of hue and cry in the press over the past year as public school accountability measures required by the federal government have been kicking in across the nation.

Here in Kentucky, for example, we have seen a number of school principals removed from the current schools of assignment under the Persistently Low-Achieving Schools program created by House Bill 176 from the 2010 Regular Legislative Session.

But, the Associated Press is now raising a question – where are the ousted principals going?

It turns out most are quickly finding jobs – right back in education administration. In some cases, they are serving again as principals.

It’s an awfully strange way to make changes that might really boost student learning.