"Place the Right Principal."
How true that is. A few years ago I said at a family gathering that the principal was the key figure in the building, not the teachers, expecting pushback, but everyone agreed with me.
Your child's teacher is the second most important person at your school. A good principal makes mediocre teachers effective; an ineffective principal makes it impossible for great teachers to be great.
James Young makes an important point. Not all good principals are up to the turnaround job. It doesn't mean they are incompetent, but their skill set and temperament are not well matched to the dire and immediate needs of a school targeted for closure.
What does he think a turnaround principal needs?
"Common Sense:" He bemoans principals who put their best teachers into class assignments that do not factor into the school accountability classes. In other words, why would a principal assign their most effective teachers the calculus and statistics classes when the tested courses are Algebra 1 and Geometry? There is an answer to that, and ironically, Young himself gives it in a subsequent chapter: Because teachers should be assigned to the courses for which they have the content knowledge. A 6 - 12 certificate does not mean that a teacher is equally competent for all the courses that fall under that certification.
"Confidence:" Confidence is contagious, he claims. The principal should be cocky and exhibit the demeanor of Muhammed Ali, 'I'm the Greatest!' Have the attitude of a trash talker, not a tennis player. Tennis players believe they will win but will never claim victory before the match. Boxers boast of victory before the bout. This is a bad metaphor and could cause people to wonder if the School Board was duped in hiring Young. Is he good or merely braggadocious? Will he deliver? Can he deliver?
However, good leadership projects an attitude of confidence, of a certainty that things will work out, that people need not worry. This is very helpful in stressful situations. But it works better as a quiet certitude rather than as loud, obnoxious declarations of victory before the battle begins.
"Principles:" The principal has to be motivated to accomplish good things for children. This is about motivation: pass over anyone who will take on a school because the extra bump in pay is sweet, anyone who doesn't want to be there but they get pressganged into the location, and anyone without experience. A turnaround school should not be the first assignment for a rookie. We can all agree on these points.
"Innovative Risk Taker:" This basically means trying out ideas, discarding quickly what doesn't work and reinforcing what does. It means letting school personnel advance ideas and experiment. It means bucking 'the district knows best' and 'stop doing that, dammit, we didn't authorize it' attitudes of district personnel. Here I need to insert one of those applause emojis.
"Experienced." Here he directly criticizes the practice of promoting assistant principals and placing them in a turnaround school. Very true. In one of the three schools on the chopping block, the principal is in his second year of his very first principalship. He's a good man and has the experience and knowledge to run a school. However, he was tossed into an impossible situation. He was set up to fail, as Young indicates in his book, principals should not be assigned to such schools until they have a track record of success. When he was promoted, the teachers at his old school celebrated. I had twinges of sadness because the district was looking for a bagman--someone to hold the bag of blame when the school failed. This man is much better than that. Lately, the media have reported that he is among the people who were told that he would be out of a job if the schools are taken over by an outside entity.
DCPS demands absolute loyalty, but they feel no compunction to return it.
"Decisive:" The turnaround principal must move fast. There is no time to support struggling teachers who are not effective. He calls this 'unfortunate.' Hard decisions must be made. 'If a grade of C is mandatory, the school cannot take a chance of keeping an instructor wh can cause the school to stay in turnaround status.'
There is a certain truth to this, but it is very unfair to teachers who often have been in impossible situations with no support. How does he know who is ineffective because of a lack of expertise at their craft and who simply needs supports that previous ineffective principals have not provided? Seems like there will be a lot of collateral damage this month at the schools he has obtained.
Where is the union in all of this? Teri Brady, are you paying attention?
"Motivation." Young writes that working at a turnaround school is a tough job. 'Teachers question why they chose to work in a failing school and have a class full of low-performing students. The work tires them; they work late, work weekends, and get so little appreciation. The principal has to find a way to keep them motivated.'
Very true. Unfortunately, it is often the district staff that does the disrespecting of school-based personnel that provides the demotivation. It's funny that DCPS keeps citing surveys that show teachers are happier about what is going on at their schools. A lack of morale plagues the school system. It is not school leadership that is the problem; it is the district. Yet DCPS never surveys teachers about themselves. They must be afraid to ask the questions that would reveal their warts.
"Positive:" Well, yes. If the principal is down on the school, everyone else will be.
"Efficient Time Manager:" The principal needs a good staff and should delegate tasks to them so he/she can concentrate on improving student outcomes.
"Dedicated." Young reinforces his message that the only principal for a turnaround school is one who wants to be there.
Yes, you're saying, who doesn't know this? But Mr. Young does not have the luxury of picking his principals. The women and men in the buildings are who he must work with, the ones who must make it work ... that is the frustration of being a consultant. If they are not the right people, he must make them the right people. There is no time for a change.
Perhaps this will be his greatest challenge as he walks in the doors of the eight schools he has agreed to turn around.
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