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Principals Air Their
Grievances
Defining Accountability More than 1,300 educators attended the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators' annual leadership conference as controversy swirled citywide about some of Mayor Bloomberg's latest school reforms. They attended workshops aimed at helping them improve their schools, heard CSA President Ernest Logan rip into school systems that rely too heavily on standardized test scores, and got some candid answers from one of the Department of Education's top officials. "I'm a firm believer in accountability," said Mr. Logan in his own speech to the members assembled. "But it's not just the data from a machine and from a test." Both the union president and his members appreciated Mr. Cerf's visit, but they seemed considerably less respectful of Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein. "The purpose of having leadership above you is to help you move in the right direction," Mr. Logan told the administrators, who were munching on salad and roasted vegetables. "Joel thinks that Teachers play no role, parents play no role, the community plays no role, but we cannot do this alone." The room nodded and "um-hmm'ed" back. At the end of his talk, most members were clapping and on their feet. But the day was not filled entirely with friendly responses and encouragement. Mr. Cerf was the keynote speaker, and educators packed the ballroom at the midtown New York Hilton to listen and ask pointed questions when he was finished. "Make Life Harder'
"We at Tweed come to this with a lot of humility," the Deputy Chancellor commented, pausing. "We understand that we make your life harder sometimes." The line got a chuckle out of the room. But another statement received a different kind of laughter. "Here's the best news," he said. "There's nothing new around the corner." The response included some disbelieving rolled eyes from the administrators, who are coping with the third school re-organization in the last four years. Mr. Cerf was undeterred, and laid out several ways he believed the school system would develop over the next five years, although several administrators noted that the Bloomberg administration would be gone within two. Calling "inner city education" the country's "number one moral imperative," he predicted that city schools would be more "customer-centric" and have much more control over their staff. Principals would become much more entrepreneurial. And he personally looked forward to a meaningful collaboration with CSA. "I hope school leaders, and Teachers too, will make much more money," he added. After he was done, about a dozen administrators asked questions. Vivian Rodgers Hill, an Assistant Principal at M.S. 192 in Queens, wanted to know why administrators weren't surveyed about their opinions on the state of the schools. Parents, students and Teachers all filled out questionnaires on that subject, and the results are part of schools' final grades. Mr. Cerf paused only briefly. "You know, that's a really good idea," he said. "Why don't we do that?" He added that Ms. Hill should be sure to e-mail and remind him. Will Grade 'Charters' When he was asked why charter schools did not receive progress reports, as all public schools did, Mr. Cerf was similarly to the point. "I believe every single charter school should get a progress report," he said. "We took a bit of a false start and now we are correcting that. We can't close a charter school down, but the state can." Many educators have expressed concern that the severe consequences for low test scores were pushing extra-curriculars and subjects like music and art aside in favor of test prep. But on the issue of whether high-stakes testing hurt schools' ability to give students a well-rounded education, the former Associate Counsel to President Clinton took exception. Mr. Cerf argued that if a child fell a year or two behind in basic skills, there was a high probability that the student would never catch up. And he asserted that the tests were excellent predictors of a child's future, including physical health, incarceration chances and earnings. "I believe very unapologetically that it's appropriate to identify a body of skills that children should have," he said. "But schools that do that to the exclusion of everything else will not have a high-performing school in the long run. It's just not true that you have to choose." Tests Overemphasized But some administrators said that, in addition to their objection to the increasing amount of testing and its importance, they still objected to the heavy weighting of test scores when evaluating and grading their schools and performances. Lauren Wilkins, the Principal at M.S. 313 in The Bronx, said that her school had received dozens of new students over the past several weeks, even though the school put in for class-size reduction. M.S. 313 got 13 new students in the week preceding the conference alone. "There are things, like more students, that you don't have control over," she said. "We could do better if the playing field was flat." Mr. Logan agreed with many of the educators that schools should not become "testing factories." He reminded members that the union's demand had been that the progress reports be fair, transparent, accurate and "something you can explain to somebody else." The room erupted in laughter. "Dr. Data believes his system is foolproof and the best thing going," said the union president. "If you meet with [DOE's Chief Accountability Officer] Jim Liebman, he understands it. That's nice, but he's the only one." Union officers have been talking with DOE officials about how to align the newly implemented progress reports with the Principals Performance Review, which is the contractually agreed-upon rating tool for school-based supervisors. CSA agreed in the spring to discuss the weighting of different components of the reports and then incorporate them into the PPR, but the two sides are deadlocked and the union has declared an impasse. 'Not Clear Enough' Raymond Warmsley, the Principal at Business Computer and Applications and Entrepreneurship High School in Queens, articulated what several administrators expressed throughout the day. They appreciated the data included in the new computer system called ARIS, but weren't entirely clear on how final grades were calculated. "The biggest problem is that they are not really transparent enough," said Mr. Warmsley. "The ARIS system is useful. The final grade - not so much." Outside of the debates, many of the educators spent hours in workshops during the morning learning from consultants and fellow administrators how to raise graduation rates, better supervise Teachers, and improve school leadership teams. Benjamin Shuldiner, the Principal at the High School for Public Service, which launched in 2003 and boasts a 97-percent graduation rate, was convinced that every other school could repeat his success. His detailed presentation of how his mostly-Caribbean-American student body of about 400 had beaten the odds got administrators taking notes and talking afterwards about how to use some of the school's e-learning ideas and testing practices. Must Find Motivators But Mr. Shuldiner stressed that only focusing on test prep would doom a school. "Just because you need tests scores to graduate doesn't mean you can't focus on other things," he argued. "Music can get the kids in the door. Once the child is in my school, it's my job to make sure they graduate."
Mr. Logan, however, was firm about being careful
regarding how the data from tests was utilized. He told members to think about
the vagaries of the testing and grading systembefore jumping to
conclusionsaboutwhetheraDorFreally indicated that a school's leadership was so
deficient. "Be very careful how you judge your colleagues," he said, "because
today's A ..." Several hundred hands clapping finished his sentence for him.
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