The second report in a series by education correspondent John Merrow tracks one principal’s efforts to reform a troubled inner-city school in Richmond, Virginia on the state’s warning list.
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Wow, did you all read that report? A lot of people who are not in the education system will not believe that that describes what it is really like. It really does happen to, that you have outside “hired guns” who will try to come in and claim that the entire problem is that “instruction is not up to par” and it is something that the teachers themselves can change if they actually put some effort into it. It is NOT just instruction, and it certainly does not lie just with the teachers to fix it. And putting tougher rules, straighter lines, and immediate consequences into place doesn’t do it either if people literally cannot afford to stick around after school every day and run 90-minute dettnion periods. When you don’t make enough money as a teacher to keep your family fed and clothed, and you have to have a second job, you simply can;t just stay after if the district isn’t going to pay you to do it. And the new guy’s “supervisors” going after him in November because he was “just” dealing with behavioral/discipline issues still, and “hadn’t done anything” to address academic shortcomings in the school’s performance? How do they think you address academic issues when you have only 15 minutes of real instruction time out of a 70-minute period, because of behavioral crises?
Some people think this is only in the most extreme cases; that all you have to do to “fix” the worst schools is to get the “good” principals who have had good schools in the past to come in and take over and whip it into shape. Not true. And this shows some of why. You can’t assume someone who has been a good principal in a suburban school with involved parents and the best teachers can just cruise in and fix an inner-city school because they are good principals. Circumstances mean more than a lot of administrators who are NOT on the front line realize at times.