Chicago Public Schools are among the worst in the country. Sorry but test scores and graduation rates don’t determine the quality of the school.
17
Exceptional administrators who can transform school culture are not only rare, but often short lived - victims of the inherent battle between intensity and duration. The vast majority of administrators spend their day putting out fires, just trying to keep the lid on; few I have encountered are true educational leaders. The best simply know which teachers to listen to and completely trust those same teachers. The worst are clueless, egotistical micro-managers that fall prey to every educational fad that comes along (How are those data walls working out for you?), they operate out of political fear, all the while driving staff morale into the ground. The absolute worst are just self-serving mercenaries, looking for the next move up a short ladder. And for reasons unknown, principals never take the political heat for the very small percent of teachers that are truly incompetent (harmful). Looking for Super-principal is not a hope that struggling public schools should pin their hopes on. The truth of the matter is, school culture is a direct reflection of family/community culture; the tail almost never wags the dog in any sustained way. Serious, well educated, engaged/concerned/involved parents and their children make just about any educator look like a genius.
19
"But we were wrong." Words not said, written or heard anywhere near often enough. When Betsy DeVos gets around to making this admission, I will feel 10,000 times better about the future path of our schools.
3
The American educational system?
When we consider the worth of a high school education only in America, the worth economically, politically, culturally, socially, it appears the first 18 years of a person's life is spent just rising to be worth being a member in the underclass of American society. In fact we can say a person is treated in the negative, taken as a negative numeral which must be raised by high school education to point of being considered a zero. This is similar to prison in that a person is considered in negative, does time, and comes out clean, equal to being in society.
After high school education, a person had better go to college, try to get in the positive numerically, and to do that one must start paying money, subordinate oneself to the higher members of society, must stick to the only route to success, because higher education increasingly dictates whether one will be anything at all in society. To not follow this route of education from high school to college is to be nothing--it's virtually unheard of to be an autodidact today, next to impossible for example, to have someone without a college degree challenge a Harvard graduate on any subject.
This entire process would be justified, if still unfair, hierarchical, if it was a surefire route to producing genius in society, if it was a system of production of high quality product, in this case humans, but too often it appears just another business, and monopoly at that, producing shoddy product.
6
I’m all about being the change me need to see in our schools. Principal leadership makes all the difference. We must give our very best every day! So goes the leadership, so goes the school. Love this article! As a principal, myself I stand strong for leaders striving for excellence in all we say and do. Check out my 2 min testimony. It’s very timely and relevant. https://youtu.be/6w_r5jTry88
2
Brooks covers many good points. He omits the single factor that will forever preclude public schools from reaching their maximum potential: rules that inhibit the termination of under performing teachers, and work rules that prevent effective management. In any organization, public or private, it is safe to assume that five percent of employees are not suited for their job. This is particularly pernicious in schools because they are flat line organizations where each teacher is responsible for delivery of the educational product. There is no place to hide poor teachers. The process of terminating bad teachers is lengthily and expensive in supervisory time. School Superintendents and principals are Chief Executives Officers without the ability to fully manage their areas of responsibility. They need the ability to move teachers to different roles, to hire and fire, and to get rid of outdated work rules that limit day-to-day management. Students will be fertile ground for motivation by good teachers. We must get them.
16
I spoke with Harold Stevenson shortly before his death. He and James Stigler wrote The Learning Gap, an excellent comparison of education in the U.S., Japan, and China. He said Japanese principals create the educational climate teachers desire, far different than their American counter parts and the opposite of what Mr. Brooks describes. Like Mark Twain wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts." Americans would do well to abandon their fascination with "exceptionalism" and research educational success in other countries, too.
8
I'm thinking there are not enough of these quality individuals as principals to solve our educational problems, even if we actively recruited them, using a variety of incentives. If so, our students must be more resilient in the face of weak educators. Perhaps we need some inspiring stories about how students overcame the difficulties of a poor school system.
2
Would like to see Brooks actually teach for a year--and speak from experience rather than from a study--then teach for another year--and another, and another--show up every single day--be accountable to your students, the relationships, the content.
10
Most countries that have effective education systems (see Japan and many Scandinavian nations) share certain characteristics.
1) Teachers are respected and paid a decent wage. This means that good students are attracted to teaching because it offers a good career with respect and a decent income.
Many people in America sneer at teachers. Republicans devote themselves to destroying public education by cutting its funding and transferring money to private “education companies.” As long as only business people and particularly business owners are seen as justified in earning decent salaries, teachers and other “helping” profession will remain underpaid and without respect.
2) Money, time and effort is spent on practical ways of helping teaches become effective instructors. Teacher education focuses on effective techniques for transmission of subject matter knowledge, not vaporous poetry about “how students learn” or “levels of mastery.” Once they begin teaching, Teachers are mentored. Effective, practical ways of presenting material are shared. Good teachers often share their expertise with others. Read about Japan, where teachers meet and discuss lesson plans that help students learn and to identify techniques that actually add to student confusion, rather than minimize it.
American teachers want to do a good job, but many struggle alone to discover effective tools and techniques alone.
Once all this is in place, good administrators certainly help.
15
Couldn’t have said it better or written a more succinct piece. The research is out there - now if only the NYC DOE would stop harnessing the teachers with woefully poor leadership we too could make the welcoming, team approach our children & families need & deserve.
David Brooks, you made want to stand up & cheer!
No need for wishful thinking or magic wands- collaboration is the key. I speak for the many dedicated & caring school people I have worked beside over the years. The ones who open there doors & hearts every morning to quietly help the children in NYC become life long learners in a safe & secure environment. A place free from the politics, blame & finger pointing leadership. Harness our brain power not our souls.
2
"They build a culture."
Too many people want to destroy ours....starting at the top....
5
Mr. Brooks ignores another way to fix education: Outlaw Private Schools.
Like Heath Care, Education is too important to be run 'like a business'; Education, like health care, puts a money cost on things that are priceless, to their detriment.
Private schools deny Public Schooling the energy and excellence of those students, while also sapping tax for public education in the case of Charter schools. And Private Schools really only exist because parents are narrow-minded consumers who not only need their kids to get a good education but who need that education to be demonstrably better than someone else, an act of weaponized inequity and hubris. And if the children of the wealthy are in the same boat as everyone else, then there will be more interest in that boat's success.
Private schools made sense when we didn't have a public school system. But now we do, and they're archaic money-wasting temples to inequity and separation. Only when we end educational apartheid will we have the public school system that we deserve -- one that all parents and kids are invested in, and with no escape hatches for the wealthy.
Principals matter, to be sure. But so do principles. And if we respected our students, we wouldn't make the vast majority of them second-class students by default.
End private education for a better America.
12
It is so painful to see educated people continue not to understand that there is a critically important difference between association and causation. This is not a platitude: good students make good schools. These schools benefit all students if there are sufficient numbers of high-quality seats in classrooms (aka, high-quality learners). This makes good teachers and good school leaders. (Good leaders do count, but not as much as the right mix of students.) That conclusion is based on empirical results and suggests ways to improve failing learning environments.
11
David Brooks is a self-professed conservative. Yet in this lengthy article he can't spare a paragraph or three to mention the role that his party, the GOP, has played in destroying education in this country. It started with Reagan as Cali's governor slowly eliminating support for the public universities because those uppity librul students had the audacity to protest the unjust Vietnam War.
It's never stopped in the following half century. Witness Betsy DeVos, who knows as much about education as I do about speaking Mandarin. She couldn't answer the most basic questions yesterday in an interview this past Sunday on 60 Minutes. I'd say she seemed like a clueless blonde bimbo but that would be an insult to blondes and bimbos both.
So Brooks tiptoes around the subject and can't criticize his party's willing sabotage of our country's educational system. You want better schools and student performances? Throw good money at the problem instead of constantly defunding them. Money doesn't solve everything (tell that to the Pentagon!) but it sure makes it easier to solve a problem. Hint: that requires taxes. See Brownback and Kansas, under failed experiments. Look up ambassador for international religious freedom while you're at it.
13
I spent years consulting to the best and the worst hospitals in the US, and saw exactly the same effect. Both types of institutions have well educated professionals (some who feel valued and heard and some who don't) caring for rather powerless "clients", with peripheral but influential family.
The dynamics the author describes are true there too. Culture starts at the top. A collaborative leader who gets out of their office and circulates - daily - and is expected to drop by; who is enthusiastic and supportive instead of punitive; who truly values people and their ideas without regard to rank, including patients/students and their families; who is in the business of solving problems and making sure their people have the tools to solve the problems they face; and who runs a collaborative, flat organization - all the difference in the world. Better outcomes, superior satisfaction, better staff retention and engagement. Principals and hospital CEOs - step away from the numbers and engage with flesh and blood. That's the best investment of your time you could possibly make.
8
I watched my wife in her 30 year career as an elementary librarian and teacher in one medium sized public school district. 25 of those years was in one school. I saw the effect on the school staff when the school changed principals. Under good leadership the school and teachers performed well, with a poor principal the moral and cohesion of the staff suffered. An excellent performing school could be destroyed within a year. A good principal could restore the school to excellence in a year. My only question is how long to you give a starting principal to prove they should remain in the job - one I am thinking of took two years before she became a good principal - other would never make it.
13
Here we go again David. Anecdotal evidence being used to confirm some silver bullet fantasy that doesn't require a critical analysis for why certain schools perform well versus others. We have never truly had equal public education in America. We have community funded education. By continuing to rely on property taxes to be the lion share funder of our schools, we will continue to see low-income schools lag behind. This compounds the inequity of opportunity many of these students face in so many other facets of their lives. Testing is also a crude measure of school performance that tilts towards the privileged, requiring native English speakers and English learners to be tested by the same criteria irrespective of one's grasp of the language being used on the test. As wealthy Americans continue to flood into cities, as we've seen rapidly increase in the timeframe you mention, we'll continue to see test scores go up in these areas. A good leader is useful -- not the solution -- for a testing-obsessed-broken education system that demonizes teachers, forces educators and administrators into impossible expectations, and tilts the scale of achievement and resources towards the over-privileged.
10
Brooks refers to education reformers' favorite dog and pony show statistics: passing rates and graduation rates. It is possible to train students how to pass the tests without understanding the material. It was the likes of Duncan and Klein that drove the truly great principals out of school systems in the first place. They wanted the numbers up and the numbers became the criteria for judging whether the students were learning what society would want them to know. Now I see kids being coached on strategies and formulae to pass the exams rather than understanding how to write. They learn how to enter numbers into a calculator, but don't understand what half of something looks like or feels like. Just like the amazing Hans, the horse that inspired the phrase dog and pony show: It seems like education is taking place, but it is largely just a trick after all.
5
I've worked for 25 years in public schools as a speech-language pathologist. To create good schools, we need functioning communities. A large study demonstrated that giving necessary economic support, social services, and knowledge about how to navigate finance and jobs to parents produced a noticeable increase in children's success in school. In addition, children need respect and encouragement to explore. We need principals that listen and help teachers and parents. We need parents and educators to be educational partners. When all these factors are in place, we will have an educational system that is the envy of the world.
5
What a wonderful article! (So when are you going to realize you're really a Democrat, David Brooks! Or maybe it's better you go on providing a moral core for your party, anyways, three cheers for this.)
I would like to see this in government as well:
"coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination. We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation."
So we need this kind of ethics and transformation in the entire power base, starting from Trump and his cabinet, Congress, the courts, and local authorities (especially those who run elections. We could stop our military adventures and focus on being better examples.
1
The problem may be that there is a limited supply of the type of principal that Mr. Brooks praises. Further, the criteria and characteristics for principals or school leaders described in the article depend upon individual traits that are not easily replicable. Thus, while this approach may benefit some schools in some locations, due to its lack of replicability it is not a solution that can be implemented on a large scale.
2
A group of my colleagues and I have discussed this over lunch numerous times. Leadership is not only about educational competency, but positive people skills and encouragement. As you stated, Mr. Brooks, it is about workplace culture. A powerful indicator of an effective leader is whether those working with said leader are willing to shovel the snow off the school sidewalk because of school pride, if the maintenance staff is unable to do it.
8
The academic performance of children in New Orleans post- Katrina charter schools is not a “triumph.” It is not even a real success. When Katrina struck there were 65,000 students enrolled in New Orleans public school system. Today there are 45,000 students enrolled in what replaced that system. There is no reason to believe that the 31 percent who are missing are anything but the poorest of the impoverished pre-Katrina students and, therefore a concentration of the very least able students. Any urban district that were to shed the poorest 31 percent of its students would experience an instantaneous and enormous spike in the average academic performance of the remaining 69 percent without any change in the performance of any individual student. If the largest impoverished urban district in my home state (Omaha Public Schools) were to experience the loss of its 31 percent least able students, its reading proficiency rate would instantly jump from the current 63 percent to 91 percent, leaving the state average of 77 percent in the dust. This “improvement” would happen without any increase in any academic performance by any of the remaining students. Average academic “improvement” following the removal of the poorest of the poor is certainly not a "triumph" of social policy. It is more accurate to say that it is the natural result of scraping off the bottom 31 percent. It’s what always happens in arithmetic when you reduce the denominator without changing the numerator.
14
Want good schools? Schools at the top of international rankings? Simple! Just follow Finland's example and ban private schools!
18
If the features of my daughter's private school had been incorporated into my local public schools, that is were she would have gone to school. I'm not talking about great buildings, classrooms and integrated technology. The school didn't have them. But it did have a specific mission of developing articulate, thoughtful, hard working critical thinkers. My daughter is breezing through her college classes because of that education. Instead of banning private schools, take a look at which ones are truly educating its students.
3
Yes! Or at least make people pay a premium for private schools. They don't need public funds. Betsey DeVos is evil on this one. Universal quality public education is key to a successful society.
7
Finland pupils are all white, middle class, and they banned private schools. So which factor is it?
2
It is more than having good leaders to make good schools. If America really wants to do better for its students and for the future of the country then please take the time to look at those countries that consistently outperform the USA. One succinct article that highlights Finnish success is here:(http://www.toptenz.net/10-reasons-finland-worlds-best-school-system.php)
1
Good reading for Dept of Education leader Betsy DeVos, to set her priorities to something more in the interests of the students she is supposed to care for.
1
I don't know, David. I thought the teacher was the most important variable. I ask you: If you could select either the principal or the teacher for your own child, which would you prefer?
2
The moment Brooks mentioned Chicago I knew he has no clue what he's talking about. Just this past month Chicago has closed 4 schools, and this isn't the first time that Chicago has done this. Schools on the South Side, which are primarily black and low on the social economic ladder, have been closing. Rahm has been horrible for public education. He's just has bad as Devos but people unfamiliar with Chicago give him a pass because he promotes himself as a liberal. CPS is still not being funded. Should we have good competent principals? Of course. However, this isn't the magic bullet for schools that have been underfunded for years. We need resources and investment
5
Problem is Betsy DeVos is not a friend of public schools, as fully evidenced by the recent 60 Minutes interview. She came across as ignorant and ill-informed. No surprise--another unqualified ¨loyal¨ Trump appointee.
6
Brooks: You, by virtue of whatever research you did for this column, seem to know more about education than our current Secretary of Education.
Doesn’t bode well, does it?
4
Mr Brooks...Have you thought about sending this artist to the Secretary of Education? She appears not to know much about leadership.
5
And on the other hand to counter these advances we have Betsy DeVos.
6
Why no mention of the mass exodus out of Chicago, mostly low-income families? Those moving into Chicago are high-SES yuppies, gentrifying and pushing out low-income kids. Does Mr. Brooks believe 100,000 low-income students nudged out of a school district over 10 years had no impact of test scores? Gimme a break.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-black-population-de...
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/as-chicagos-black-population-plunges-w...
7
"When you learn about successful principals, you keep coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination."
These are traits sorely lacking at the national level. Ms. Devos said that she has "intentionally" not visited under performing schools.
There is not leadership her only explanation as to under performance is that "schools are made up of students". Perhaps she doesn't want to sully her hands with the education system if that system is not part of her zelous evangelical bent.
2
David's column illustrates one aspect of the education dilemma facing our schools. It is cannot be denied that good leaders and principals are a necessary but not sufficient condition for improving educational outcomes. I have seen that at play here in the DC and Maryland public schools. We have seen improvements where there is seriousness of purpose at the top. Needless to say that is not enough. Teachers need to have the resources and incentives to stay on and build on their professional skills. Far too often, I see experienced teachers leaving their jobs for more rewarding pursuits because they cannot afford to live in our rapidly gentrifying cities and suburbs.
3
You want good schools, America? Demand them. And that means backing up your demands by putting money where your mouths are.
When the military warns of national security crisis, when they say their failure to protect US on 9/11/01 was due to a lack of preparedness, and claim it was a wake-up call to arms, why do the American people without question agree with this nonsense? And when told that a huge increase in DOD is needed, do they go along on blind faith?
Why don't they tell the DOD the same thing they tell our school administrators? You've got enough. Make do with what you have. Your wasting too much money. When it come to education, there exists a lack of foresight. Americans suffer from such a short-term attention span they cannot see the tunnel let alone the light at the end of it indicating the progress a student makes over the course of a couple decades.
Money for guns, money for guns in school, money for teachers to attend shooting galleries, bring their guns to school, money for gun manufacturers. No money for books, school supplies, teachers. That's the harsh reality of the American education system. Just like health care, the American people could have all these things and more, but they don't demand them. They believe the poppycock politicians spread, telling them there's no money for schools, health care, only more ships, planes, weapons of war. Stupid.
DD
Manhattan
12
wait, I thought it was school teachers and their unions who are destroying this country. These uppity people are always demanding a living wage and insist on being treated as professionals. Sheesh...
I mean come on, teaching Reading and Riting is OK, and we need a few losers who couldnt get real jobs become teachers. But lets not get carried away!
Unfortunately, Betsy DeVos our secretary of education, would not even qualify to be a school principal.
2
Agree with him in many ways but the universal full-day kindergarten and longer school day probably have a good effect also. Living in France when I was a kid, the local school didn't get out until about 5 pm and they started school at age 3. Very unlike American kids. And so many kids without a kindergarten start first grade without even knowing the alphabet. I would like to see a day care next to most elementary schools and teachers in them teaching basics, or even just playing Sesame Street episodes. My kids were starting to read words at age 3 and full books in kindergarten and playing puzzles and games that I believe leads to later smarts.
3
Thank you for this. Sometimes what's happening in our country seems hopeless. One of the positive things coming out of this disastrous presidency is that moderates on both sides are stepping beyond the rhetoric and looking for solutions to our problems. Hopefully in the near future the successes here can be replicated nationwide.
I appreciate that Mr. Brooks keeps raising awareness on the importance of our education system and that he builds his argument on facts and evidence. Improving our school system requires that we leverage the best practices of many fields, including education, management and market based dynamics.
I would offer a few additional contextual considerations. Consistent with all management theories, organizational leadership is invaluable, as Mr. Books suggests. Leaders are however often limited by the environment in which they operate - regulatory, organizational structure, available resources, competitive landscape, etc. So great leaders can still fail and weak leaders can succeed - given the right conditions.
That's why it is important to keep working on creating the system and the environment that will maximize the chances of success. Admittedly, that is what these states have done - training the principals, providing them the incentives and flexibility they need to do what's important, and keeping them in place long enough so that they can make a bigger difference. Moreover, they continue to measure their progress and favor what works. Is there a better place than the education system to embrace the concepts of a "learning organization"?
Principals are the main driving force for creating the culture for delivering great education, that is very true.
Main question however, is how do you pick a principal?
If it becomes a political appointment based on loyalty and not based on experience, leadership, and academic credentials we are not going to get good leaders.
It should not be a totally top down decision, but a collaborative one with input from teachers for example as to who they would like to lead them, if the position is filled from the same school system.
Focus should be targeted towards competence, not loyalty or being a unquestioning team player.
3
Good principals create a culture of dignity.
7
Looking for good schools? Look to schools with good students from wealtier families.
4
The numbers:
Take a moment to think about just how many people for whom a principal is responsible. Say, 400 HS students+ 800 parents + 70 teachers and staff members. Let's now add some hours - 8 hour school day, 6 hours pre & post school day emails, sporting events, meetings, planning. 5 hours weekend events. Now some years: 4 undergraduate degree, 2 masters degree, 3, perhaps, PhD. Average student loan debt: 50K.
Median salary: $97,000. These people are saints.
4
You're exaggerating the requirements of an average principal. Most just have bachelors and masters degrees from diploma mill directionals.
4
Speaking of "good leaders," it's a shame that Tillerson had to get the axe today instead of Betsey DeVos. Her "leadership" is only hurting students and student borrowers.
5
This piece made me recall John McPhee’s great book "The Headmaster" about Frank Boyden the long-time head at Deerfield.
3
Would the columnist like to address the atrocious college dropout rate and student loan default rate of Chicago high school grads or out of sight, out of mind? Defaulted non-dischargeable student loans on a credit report kills job prospects, insurance rates, ability to buy a car, rent an apartment, buy a house.
Why hype kids "going to college" if literally 80-90% fail out? Not a single mention of skilled trades - where kids who lack the preparation (or interest) to finish a college degree are paid to train and will go onto to secure $50,000+ salaries, insurance, retirement, paid vacations.
7
I have to agree with Mr. Brooks, from my own experience in a chaotic minority school district. For one year, we had a principal, a former social studies teacher, who turned the school around. He stood outside every morning greeting students and staff as they arrived. He walked the halls, he played classical music during class changes. He eliminated some of the egregious rituals of the school, such as " grade-level" assemblies. At these assemblies teachers/ counselors tried to chastise and cajole students into better behavior and academic performance. Not only did this pull students out of class unnecessarily , but they regularly turned into mob-disciplinary disasters. When this principal retired ( he had taken the job as a favor ), the teachers gave him a standing ovation.The assemblies and general chaos returned. I wouldn't have believed that one person could make such a difference, If I hadn't experienced it myself.
11
And a Great Country requires a president who has "character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination." Alas, the United States no longer has such a leader.
3
"When you learn about successful principals, you keep coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination."
Did Brooks write this article wearing staring at a rainbow in the sky ? Here's his main point:
"A lot of teachers want to be left alone and a lot of principals don’t want to give away power, but successful schools are truly collaborative."
My response - Maybe. It's instructive to look at the relationship between a principal and her teachers in a charter school vs the same relationship in a district school. Sure, everyone wants to be praised and feel like they are part of the solution. But at the end of the day, the teacher in a unionized district school knows that the principal provides very little input on their promotion and pay raise (which are seniority based). Likewise, any principal who wants to fire a unionized teacher faces a huge and costly battle. Even teachers who are charged with sexual abuse often retain their positions in a "rubber room".
Contrast that with the principal in a charter like Success. In that case, the principal is like a manger for a factory and is empowered with doing what is needed to demonstrate success to management. Some are collegial while others are task masters. But the teachers have a far greater incentive to meet the principal's objectives since the principal has greater input in pay raises and dismissals.
2
Yes, administrators in a unionized school, as you label it, do need to put in the time and energy to supervise and evaluate their staff. There is a process with steps and documentation, a process intended to improve performance. To say these principals have little impact on staff performance or retention in these schools is to overlook these processes.
1
Yes, character, leadership, moral and ethical spirit used to mean something. Actually doing work and educating oneself about the problems in our schools. Remember the days, not so long back, when research was sought after and respected? Not anymore.
Your party, Mr. Brooks, has no respect for any of the above. Research and personal observation mean nothing. Your party's leader placed a vacuous cipher as head of education in this country, someone who has never visited a failing school, who, deer in headlights, can't answer basic questions, yet would privatize our schools out of existence.
And you write about good leaders making good schools you are just filling column space.
7
There is another sure fire way to improve our schools. Start to fund them at the rate they need to be funded.
We shovel money into the black hole that is the Defense Department, like now budgeting more money than they asked for.
Our military has been used only 4 times to protect our citizens from enemies on our own soil. The Revolution; The War of 1812, The Civil War; and our war on the Indian tribes in the West. (Each time we were killing each other.)
In the last 70 years our military has seen action in Korea, Vietnam, Africa, the Middle East, and Grenada. All wars of choice. None of them very wise.
Our schools will determine the future of our Nation in much better ways than our military.
If De Vos really wants to help students she and here billionaire friends could just start paying taxes on their extreme wealth and the problem is on its way to being solved.
5
Strong principals is such an important idea for good schools.
I spent a day last week listening to a relative who, like DeVos and the Republicans, wants public school money transferred to private, especially parochial schools like those that educated his children. His claim: public schools waste so much money. How, I asked? They pay administrators $100K or more in his New England state, he complained.
For a moment, forget all the arguments about educators needing to be paid as the professionals we want them to be. Think instead about the sheer vicious selfishness of our relative's "Give me the money" demand.
Republicans have created a drastically shrinking public revenue pie that generates these very tribal fights over what's left. Look at the states whose schools are closing or unable to hire qualified teachers. Here in Arizona, the Republicans keep telling us that money doesn't matter as the state drops to near the bottom in every school measurement. These same Republicans have cut the corporate and personal income tax rates over and over.
There can be no discussion of how to make strong schools anywhere until those in power are willing to pay for the public services required to make a democracy function.
3
Yes, leadership!
It’s easy to find effective principals, you just look for effective schools. What’s really hard, is putting district and state policies in place that make it much more likely that schools have good leaders. Those policies make leadership more than good fortune, and improve the opportunities for many more students.
I spent most of my career in just such a district, as both a teacher and administrator, and I experienced what made the difference. Conventional wisdom tends to suggest that to improve schools you need to get rid of lousy teachers. This wisdom, however overlooks a number of challenges, not the least of which is where to locate the untapped reservoir of high quality teachers waiting to be found.
A district with strong leadership likely takes a different approach. In such a district, it isn’t teachers who should be afraid of losing their jobs, but administrators.
Strong leaders find ways to make their teachers better. They don’t do this by threatening to fire them, but by giving them the tools they need to succeed. Yes, sometimes a teacher needs to be let go for the good of everyone involved. This, however, should be the exception not the rule.
Replacing teachers isn’t the path toward improvement. That pressure should be felt by administrators instead.
3
"We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong."
We weren't wrong. Where institutions act punitively, with suspicion, for fear of being taken advantage of, they do damage, foreclose opportunity, label and demean people they were created to serve.
These things must change.
Where institutions operate on assumptions driving our current lust for "objective" statistical data and ignore the lives of those they serve, they need to change.
Where institutions are thought, consider themselves, to know better how to address problems than the people who live them every day, institutions have to change before personal improvement.
The best change is concurrent, organic, incremental and responsive to both serious need and reasonable expectations.
In my state, Ohio, there have been excellent programs addressing educational issues for children in dire need. Some succeed better than any in the nation, sterling examples of institutions ceasing self-regard and listening to their clients.
The biggest institution, the State itself, the legislature, felt there was not the kind of glitzy success they wanted. They cut the funding and killed the programs.
Not because they were not successful, because they were universally recognized as being so, but because they helped the wrong kids with the wrong problems and did not make excellent campaign fodder.
That institution must change.
My daughter is a great principal in a school in the downtown area of a big city. She is in her first year at this school. She is very much like the principal in this article.
The idea that “Good Leaders Make Good Schools” is intuitively very appealing nonsense. The only way to make a good (that is, academically successful) school is to fill it with able students. Excellent educators – including excellent principals – are no substitute for able students no matter how many anecdotes suggest otherwise. Excellent educators cannot convert incapable students into able students no matter how much magical thinking is employed in the effort. If excellent educators could consistently transform incapable students into able students, we would conduct medical school enrollment by random lottery.
6
Success should not be measured by graduation rates or by the percentage who go to college. That's a recipe for gaming the system, and that's a big problem with the current U.S. education system. (Anecdote: last summer we hired a college student--a junior with a 3.5 GPA, as an intern. She had to learn about the spot and forward markets for ethylene and she was having trouble, so I asked her to read me a paragraph from her training manual to me. She read the paragraph about as well as my first grade son. I'm not kidding. She was dismissed.)
Tell me if high school graduates can read, write and do math at even the 9th grade level. Tell me they can reason and know the difference between fact and opinion. Tell me they are equipped to be trained at decent paying jobs. But do not tell me about graduation rates and matriculation rates.
5
I contrast this data with the tactics of NJ's former Governor CJ Christie. CJC decided that his best route to higher national office was to pick a fight with the teachers union. His big initiative also included capping what school administrators could earn. This precipitated an exodus of talented leaders to bordering states or into consulting jobs. The results were almost immediate, NJ's schools suffered.
All of these great ideas and intentions don't mean much if the monies are being taken away from our public schools and given to charter of religious (or home-schooling?). The current pretender-Secretary of Education is busy doing just that and yet you don't even mention her name, much less the destruction she and the administration are so smoothly accomplishing. Excellent effort to avoid the obvious obstacle to everything you wrote and thus undercuts everything you wrote. I am disappointed in you - again.
5
David, I taught for 37 years. Teachers have to feel valued
as professionals, their ideas sought ought and acted upon
in collaboration. Salaries aren't the only way of valuing them.
Less paperwork, smaller classes, to enhance individual
attention to students, supplies....all increase a teacher's
ability to improve student learning. Teachers can talk with
parents when they don't have admin meetings to attend and
too many "creative conferences," and too much worry about
behavior of students. The latter, which takes up so much
classroom time, can be reduced by smaller classrooms and
the chance of actually getting to know and encourage students in good directions. Walmart U and Betsy DeVos
treat education as commodity. Profit and product through
cheap labor and close watch on budget. Who will wind up
"owning" the public school system under her kind of leadership, so antithetical to what David and I want.
Chicago school success seems mainly among Blacks.
I may be wrong, but a look at public schools in Alabama
of West Virginia might help with seeing the big picture.
In terms of values. Math or Bible? Football or art and music?
Teacher pay levels? Are teachers still "public servants?"
Or real professionals? How are they trained in Education
departments at the college level. To be mediocre with subject
matter but obedient to the "system." All questions for the
future, for David, too, since he's ventured out.
2
Congratulations, Chicago public schools for increasing graduation rate since 2011 from 56.9 to 77.5 percent.
Mr Brooks has espoused that those of suspect character made weak principals. He implies that principals were the main driver of poor student performance.
Rahm Emanuel closed many public schools that did need renovated / replaced. What occurred was MAJOR DISPLACEMENT of the students' ACCESS! Those who could get into charters remained, but the process of neighborhood gentrification and DIFFICULT ACCESS forced families to move away.
I think schools lacking funds for basics, like HEAT! (Baltimore), MIGHT just be a driver for poor student performance.
However, I would like TO HEAR Mr Brooks' principals of strong character RESPOND TO EVERY demeaning, negative-stereotyping ATTACK upon our crucial democratic institution (public schools) by the anger-mongering POLITICIANS and the MEDIA serving special interests (charters, busting teachers' unions).
1
Silly me. I thought it was actively involved parents, healthy children, great teachers, and a caring community.
2
In urban districts, most principals now teach for a couple of years are move into "leadership".
They move onto a career ladder where it is in their best interest to embrace whatever ineffective swill is peddled by whatever profiteer, regardless of the impact on students. They do so with relish.
If a principal has taught less than 10 years, chances are they are corporate shills.
Look at the sad state of urban public schools and tell me otherwise. The difference between what poor kids endure and what affluent kids in nice suburbs or privates experience is immoral.
Also, schools have kids fill out enrollment forms for community colleges so the school can tout the number of "college-bound" kids. Serious journalists look past the spin--they expose it.
5
One wants to be fair to Mr. Brooks, but exasperation is the reigning emotion, column after column.
If he isn't ignoring the issues of the day to pen what he thinks are high-minded disquisitions, he's engaged in loopy logic.
Solutions are out there but we're not "circulating" them?
Mr. Brooks, we know darn well that solutions to our national issues exist. It is your so-called Republican Party that is now firmly in the service of those with enormous amounts of money that buy influence and the result is "policy" -- if you can call trashing the country "policy" -- that is completely at odds with the views of the majority of Americans.
Quit deluding yourself and actually use your mind and your pen to advocate for the common sense solutions that your "president" and your "Congress" refuse to enact.
4
You know, don't you, when you start a David Brooks column, he's going to wind up with some conservative platitude.
If you've read enough of his columns, you can skim quickly through most of them and go right to the final (or sometimes penultimate) paragraph.
Voila: We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation.
Look, I understand. I was once having a conversation with a confirmed Marxist about personal vs societal transformation. he was rigidly bent on proving that societal transformation is fundamental.
So I offered him a little parable:
Say you're given a magic wand. With the first wave of the wand, all wars cease, all constitutions are re-written for optimal fairness, justice, etc. All people are provided with sufficient food, clothing, housing, education, healthcare, etc. How many days - or even hours - would it be before people begin to fight, to seek power over others, to increase inequality, etc."
Second wave of the wand - every institution/law/etc stays the same, but everyone's hearts and minds are filled with wisdom, love, compassion, kindness, etc. How many days - hours even - before all humanity bands together to bring about universal justice, peace, etc.
He got it (to my amazement)
But why oppose the two? Go beyond Left/Right - you need the right institutions to support personal change.
1
No doubt good school principals enhance student performance. However, for Brooks, good principals are just the vehicle du jour to advance his unending quixotic campaign that social transformation would magically happen if we all join hands and act like Mr. Rogers.
Brooks disingenuously cherry picks his education evidence. “Chicago has... a tradition of excellent leadership from school heads,” Really? How about back-to-back Emanuel education chiefs Barbara Byrd-Bennett, in prison for taking kickbacks, and Forrest Claypool who resigned in disgrace for ethics violations?
Nor does Brooks note a favorite Emanuel tactic for driving up test scores: closing poor performing schools, typically in poor neighborhoods. Emanuel also robs Chicago students by using TIF funds to divert school funds to his pet projects, typically large corporations. This shell game takes $500 million annually in taxpayer dollars that would otherwise be available to schools and parks, and shifts them to a special fund controlled by Emanuel. He doles out those funds to private developers to “incentivize” development in areas that are deemed blighted.
In other words, these funds are used to gentrify (whiten) neighborhoods and to drive out the poor. Chicago's black population is down nearly 240,000 since 2000 due to high property taxes, poor schools, violence, and gentrification of their neighborhoods.
Is this is the “community building” Brooks touts? Who do those improved test scores reflect?
3
" 63 percent in 2015 from 50 percent in 2006."
Interesting fact but both are below the national average. And its not clear it has anything to do with the quality of schools, much less their leadership. It may simply be the result of gentrification and other demographic changes. What has been universally acknowledged for a long time is that it is parental involvement, aka leadership, that makes the biggest difference. On the other hand, our actual policies have done little to build relationships with parents since it requires small schools which don't offer the opportunities for professional staff development that a larger school can offer. Or the salaries for individual "leaders".
2
There have always been three equally critical pillars necessary in the development of a successful student. In no particular order they are; family support, the school and the student. Each pillar may show cracks and weaken but if one should collapse entirely, the remaining two pillars must bear more weight. In today's environment, students with three strong pillars are increasingly rare and the remaining pillars are carrying too much weight for far too long. This results in lives collapsing.
4
Brooks is right. However, there is a crisis going on that no one has examined. Fewer and fewer qualified people are going into school administration. It is very difficult to find good principals, superintendents, especially in rural areas. Please have someone look into this.
1
In my experience as a parent and spouse of a teacher, those who can’t teach lead. Secondary school principals in our area—and elsewhere too, I suspect—are overwhelmingly male, and few have teaching credentials in core academic subjects. Coaching seems to be considered strong preparation for academic “leadership.” Male teachers without any particular expertise or commitment to education see administration as a way out of the classroom and into a higher income bracket. The divide between teachers and management is absolute; teachers have no say in policy. Principals rule through patronage and intimidation. Good, dedicated principals are rare. Schools might be better off adopting some form of faculty governance, with teachers rotating through administrative positions for fixed terms. At a minimum, gender equity is sorely needed. And principals should have a long record of excellent teaching in core academic subjects in order to qualify for administration.
7
I think Mr. Brooks view that dynamic leaders are transformative is correct. That’s true for all organizations & institutions. It is powerful for schools — no doubt.
My own view, looking at schools specifically, is that we are asking them to do too much with too little and that is not creating environments that are sustainable in terms of performing at a high level. I’m not saying money is the answer; no question it takes more than money — it takes the right scope (for schools it’s too big), right priorities (we have too many and they are not clear) and the right leaders (the pool of transformative leaders in education is too small - low pay and long hours in high-stress environments isn’t helping!).
The latest “let’s have schools do it all” endeavor involves training teachers and administrators to be lay-policeman because we don’t have the political will nor power to counter the NRA.
So I agree — transforming the system can only happen with strong, transformative leaders. Our challenge as citizens, is helping those leaders, once found, work and stay and be successful in education. The “be a hero and do it all with less” approach isn’t working.
I wish I had ideas on how to get schools back to their roots. It’s easier said than done. But that’s where they need to go, in my view. Do that and add transformational leaders — and teachers — and things will change. Chicago and others are showing it’s possible; we need to make it not just possible, but probable.
1
Yes, we can try to find superman principals or improve the quality of home life for students. Home life is the number one predictor of school success - supportive and present parents who care about education and support the education process and demands. Much harder to legislate that.
4
School, the office, the military. A good leader is no better than the people under his leadership allow him to be. A good staff will cover for a so-so administrator, but only for so long. You can't command a group of teachers and expect to stay in your job. You lead by your example, treat everybody fairly and hope they follow. Classroom experience helps. In a school environment, respect leads, fear destroys. A good school is a family style operation. Those muscling their way as a leader, you won't be invited to Thanksgiving dinner. The principal is important, but there is a whole lot more to a good school than an administrator.
4
I am the daughter and wife of public school teachers, and you are absolutely right about principals. They make all the difference in teacher satisfaction and engagement, which in turn affects parents and students. One quick story: a principal at an inner-city high school where my mom taught in the 1960s begged and borrowed formal wear so that every single senior could go to the prom (some of them in waiters' tuxedos). He believed every kid deserved the experience of attending a formal event. My mom, now in her 80s, still thinks of him as the best boss she ever had.
6
As a school principal, here's what I see as a recipe for success:
1) Create a school culture where children feel safe, comfortable and known by adults.
2) Build a culture of reading - not a culture of answering reading comprehension questions, but a culture around a love for learning and books. There is too much emphasis on what technology can do, but technology can be a HUGE distraction in schools.
3) Understand that some children have lives outside school that are horrible, but that does not mean standards for their academic excellence should be lowered. It just means they need to know item number 1 even more: You are loved. You are respected. You are safe.
20
This is a wonderful article. I did my doctoral research studying five successful principals. Indeed the results came down to the personal traits of each principal. The leader is so very important in building positive school culture for student and teacher growth. If hiring principals, an excellent tool is the Administrator Perceiver, developed by Selection Research, which is now Gallup. It is an interview that discerns the qualities of a successful principal. After working for thirty seven years as a principal, I have seen positive character traits in my colleague principals play out as success in their student growth.
4
"Research suggests that it takes five to seven years for a principal to have full impact on a school, but most principals burn out and leave in four years or less."
I lasted 3 years due to the stress of singlehandedly needing to be a middle manager, instructional leader, culture reformer, facilities director and disciplinarian all at once. With no VP and only a half time guidance counselor, the amount of time I spent supporting students with social emotional and behavioral needs was psychically unsustainable and interfered with instructional leadership.
Kudos to anyone who persists.
3
I am in education and I agree that principals are key to great schools, but success still starts with families. Without the principal's discipline and vision, the school is nothing. but what Hensley did was great. The principal has to be part of the community and help the community. Ultimately, schools cannot do anything if there is not buy-in from the community and if parents are not doing their part.
4
As a retired Minneapolis Public School teacher I would first like to compliment Mr. Brooks for bringing to national view the ongoing and great improvement in the Chicago Public Schools. This bodes well for Chicago’s future and points out the essential value and importance of our continued commitment to public education.
Having spent a career as a teacher I saw many, many principals come and go. While I agree that good principals are connected to students, parents, and community and are central to creating a healthy school environment these qualities can not exist by themselves. The most common difficulty most administrators seem to share is not understanding their correct constituency. As a teacher it was always clear to me that my constituency was my students, individually and collectively. I tried to adapt group goals to meet individual needs. A principal’s constituency should be the faculty; how to help each individual teacher to be really effective in helping students. In order to do that a good principal Builds on the strengths of individual teachers one at a time. This approach almost automatically creates connections, community, and creativity. Unfortunately most administrators, from building principals on up the ladder, see their constituency as the individual or individuals above them in the administrative or political hierarchy. This is where the real disconnect occurs. In the end it is really about values.
10
"Research suggests" and "studies have shown" phraseology can be used to support whatever point you are trying to make. Looking at the actual "research" or "studies," if they are even cited properly, can reveal an awful lot about the strength of any conclusions that might be drawn. Many times, these are so narrow as to be just a small step above "anecdotal." That's why I am so suspicious of the very loose metrics in this piece about "strong" school principals and the " good" things they do that result in "quality" schools.
7
Your overuse of scare quotes is cynical. The data cited in Brooks' article is pretty specific. Of course, Mr. Brooks is trying to make a point and using data to support his argument. But what is your point?
2
John--you are exactly right.
The spin in urban schools is unbelievable.
If these schools are so amazing, why do parents flee from them?
Parents flee because parents see what really goes on in 99% of urban schools.
2
"We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them."
Who ever said or thought that in this country or Western European countries?
2
To base improvement on graduation rate is a joke, students have not gotten any smarter, truth is they are more distracted than ever before. Teachers have not gotten any better, truth is finding good people for this profession has gotten difficult due to the poor state of the profession. So how have these rates climbed? Simple, lower standards, lower discipline and cater to the lowest common denominator....standardized testing. In the last 25 years I have witnessed a sea change, from teaching with standards to teaching to
a test. Basic pedagogy, has been replaced with customer service.
6
As someone who feels the lack of really great education in this country is one of our most serious problems in this county, this was an absolutely fabulous article to read.
Many years ago I was disheartened to read that 30% of the black men in this country are in prison. And I thought WHY? With little investigation I found that too many black children, especially boys were dropping out of school, leaving them with almost the impossible odds of ever getting a well paying job. Add this to the fact that many fathers are in prison and mothers frequently also lacking sufficient education are barely holding it all together.
Throw in some discrimination that people of color have to deal, and you end up with a hopeless situation.
At the time I as spending the winters in FL as a snowbird and was led to become a volunteer tutoring black children. These children were wonderful, so eager to learn, but soon realized there were way behind in their reading & math skills. We had a retired teacher from Miami who was working with them with phonics, and one could see the results. I concentrated on math basics and saw these children respond eagerly. Once in a while you would get a 5th grade boy whose mother brought him in for help. This would be an attractive, seemingly nice kid, but he could barely read a first grade book and didn't know his addition facts. Without help his life script was already written.
Thank God there are schools that are addressing this very serious problem
6
Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but this column is patriarchal. If a team doesn't have the players, it doesn't matter how good the coach is. Similarly, a school is only as good as the quality of its faculty. If we want better teachers -- and, by extension, better schools -- we as a society need to invest in the teaching profession. Tinkering with charter schools and vouchers is going to create more problems -- lack of financial accountability, corruption, and teaching what parents want and not what students need. Keep it simple: support your local public school teachers instead.
8
To bad we can't do that with our politicians. They do nothing for the people because there to busy lining there pockets and setting up disruption.
3
How can you leave Trauma Informed Schools out of this discussion?
Take a look at the film "Paper Tigers." (Available online).
The real reason schools are failing is the amount of early life trauma in those communities. Kids can't learn if they are scared, hungry, anticipating abuse,
worried about their mom's mean boyfriend, etc. hen kids are made to feel safe, they can learn.
1
We could use some good leadership in Texas, which before Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick got into power had a very good ranking. Now we're near the bottom. The Texas Supreme Court has held that the legislature is under-funding public education. Texas school children have a constitutional right to a free public education. But because nine Republicans sit on the Texas Supreme Court, they didn't do anything about it. They don't care. 43rd's good enough for them. Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott care more about bathrooms and kickbacks than they do about children.
7
If "social transformation follows personal transformation" is right, we are in deep trouble with Trump at the head of our country.
3
Good parenting makes good schools, too. I went to a rubbish school. It was closed a few years after I left it. Half the school was a rundown piece of Dickensian England with outside, roofless toilets. But as kids we didn't care a hoot about poor infrastructure. We neither had to care about security or discipline because the kids, even the poorer kids, had parents who knew how to parent. These days, teachers have to fill the roles of parents as well as teachers (and soon to be security guards, too, apparently). It wasn't the teachers who made my school rubbish, nor the crumbling architecture, it was a poor government that experimented with the curriculum just prior to us taking our first major exams. Exams that would be important for the rest of our lives, playing a major part in what we would be able to do forever afterwards. That was when I first learned that experts are not so expert as a large swath of the kids then left school at 15. School did little for me. It actually hindered me from age 11, when I failed an important, one-off chance exam because I had chickenpox. That zero result followed me everywhere afterwards, and was the sole reason I had to travel an hour both ways to go to a rubbish school, run by rubbish administrators. I now see those same administrators in an utterly clueless Betsy DeVos. The difference between many of the kids today and me, is that I was fortunate in having parents and grandparents who stepped into the role of teachers when needed.
3
This column could have been written by Confucius. It comes directly from the Analects. Bring the person of character to a situation and everything flows with the Tao.
The problem is that the school system leaders praised by Brooks were those who bought into the Gates-Broad-Obama consensus that pretty much destroyed their cities' schools.
3
Standing ovation from Dallas.
Those 3 men, plus Bush, ruined urban public schools across this country.
Higher grad rates. What a joke. If you have a heartbeat, you will graduate.
2
I'm an NYC public high school teacher. I agree with Mr. Brooks' premise. I'd also add the most effective skill a principal must have is communication. Furthermore, regardless of who you have at the top, if you don't trust your teachers to help lead, you will have internal dissension and a fractured community.
Aggravating an already difficult situation is the "Progressive Ladder of Support and Disciplinary Consequences," otherwise known as "how to coddle misbehaving children instead of doling out old fashioned discipline and consequences." This well-meaning but wholly misguided policy has done nothing but create chaos on the day to day level of running a classroom in any school. Principals have been forced to implement this policy by the Chancellor which has created much more harm than the good it intended. Try having a circle or a "restorative conference" with a 16 year-old who knows he can get away with anything short of physical assault and you've created an entitled monster.
7
"The solutions to the nation’s problems already exist somewhere out in the country; we just do a terrible job of circulating them."
Here's the solution: staff and fund "failing schools" the same way we staff and fund affluent suburban schools. Circulate that solution! Oh, wait, that sounds like "throwing money at the problem"... and we all know that ISN'T the solution.
4
Nice work David. Reading your piece made me hopeful. But then on reflection I was hit by the fact that the party and policies you've supported so eloquently over the years have culminated in a destructive, apish clown show.
Personal responsibility and character are important, but the conservative attempt to divert funding from public schools by various DeVossian means will continue to wreak havoc on school systems desperate for funding. When quality, consistency, affordability and access to public education, prerequisite to an informed electorate, are subsumed by the elevation of choice as the preeminent principle, without adequate oversight or quality control, the outcome will be poorly educated students. The efforts and character of educators have far less impact when schools are not heated, textbooks are out of date, unavailable, or grossly contorted to fit political or religious agendas, there is not enough incentive to attract and retain quality teachers and staff, etc. Look to predominantly Red states that have implemented the policies you've championed over the years for examples of disfunction.
Educators without resources regardless of culture and character are hard pressed to succeed in the most important calling, the education of our youth. I'll bet a dollar you still think Betsy's voucher initiatives are a good idea, and that in and of itself make your words empty.
3
It's well known locally the mass exodus of poor moving to inner-ring Chicago suburbs and out of state is moving this needle. Over 100,000 low-income kids in the last decade have left Chicago proper. If this was a charter school, we'd say they're juking their test scores by kicking out low-achieving students.
And high school graduation rates and "college attendance" (read: most fail out) are easily juked and mean nothing. Anyone with access to Pell Grants and Stafford Loans can sign up for college. I love ya David, but this is malpractice to hype this up as something it's not.
3
Giving the power to individual principals and decentralizing education is a brilliant move. A good principal knows their school's individual needs and problems. I have thought for years that school boards have become too politicized and have little real knowledge of education. As shown in Golden, Colorado, where the school board became a right wing propaganda organization. The school board tried to take the AP out of AP history by removing historical facts in favor of American exceptionalism! Luckily, they were recalled.
1
I apologize to David Brooks. First off: David always finds the good in America. Those whose passion and character and intellect result in successful change in all types of institutions and industries. These education leaders are very, very satisfied with laying the foundation for bringing about positive change for as many people as possible. They aren't looking beyond the borders of their school district. Or to a higher calling And their passion is infectious. These mentors exude greatness others are attracted to and want to become a part of. As I read this article I was immediately drawn to the conclusion that the leadership in these schools is palpable. And then I looked to politics. And how the leaders of this country are so unlike these educators. They divide, scapegoat, pit one group against another, and are so beholden to money and power. They despise unity and the pursuit of knowledge based problem solving. They would make absolutely horrible educators. And then I think back to the educators David describes. It's funny. The people David describes always seem to do the seemingly impossible effortlessly. They never take any credit for their huge accomplishment. They are incredibly humble people. While poor leaders like those in the White House and Congress spend a lot of their time touting their accomplishments and seeking approval. And are incredibly arrogant people. There's a lesson in there.
3
Every other week the Tribune and Sun Times writes about the mass exodus of poor moving to inner-ring Chicago suburbs and out of state. Over 100,000 low-income kids in the last decade have left Chicago proper. If this was a charter school, we'd say they're juking their test scores by kicking out low-achieving students.
And high school graduation rates and "college attendance" (read: most fail out) are easily juked and mean nothing, respectively. Anyone with access to Pell Grants and Stafford Loans (or dad's checkbook) can sign up for college. Stop hyping this up as something it's not.
1
David Brooks isn't trying to say that a good principal is the only route to school success, but it is huge. In the past 40 years, we've watched administrators come and go in the school where my husband has taught, and the morale and ability of teachers to do their best job is very much related to the quality of the administrator.
Ultimately, the principal is a manager who gets things done through other people and their relationships with them. A good leader knows when to lead, when to listen and when to push and when to follow. Being a principal is a thankless job, and it's hard to attract good ones. Inevitably, it frequently attracts ego-centric people who look down on teachers. Instead of collaboration with teachers, which the public often views as a weakness, they ignore the mass of professional experience sitting right before them. Ironically, teachers are often viewed as the enemy ( in no small part thanks to all the union- bashing that goes on in this country). Thankfully, most parents recognize the hard work being done by teachers.
If the principal at your kid's school is out in the hallway talking to the kids and parents, and really knows their teachers and what's going on, consider yourself lucky. The information in the article hits the nail on the head and should be forwarded to all school board members.
2
"Good leadership" -- but not a word about the absurdly ignorant DeVos?
How about our complete devaluation of the classroom leader, the teacher, who Congress now says can have bullets and guns but want to deny pay raises and school supplies (or even school supply tax deductions for teachers who buy their own school supplies).
We are demanding A LOT from schools and teachers and offer very little in return: we devalue our teachers, who render an enormous service to society, but we lionize those who make a killing in financial services and offer nothing of value to society (except 1 % of the society). We can't have it both ways.
And if we now require teachers to be sharp shooter action heroes as well, as a society we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
5
Yes, good principals are worth their weight in gold, just like the teachers who work with them. Together and in harmony they lay the foundation for a superior school with superior education.
But they need support from their districts, states, and federal government. And it is here that I will focus on public education. Too much emphasis, particularly from this present administration, is put on private education whether it be religious or secular. That is not how it is supposed to be. It promotes cultural, economic, and social segregation. It tells our kids that we are an elite country where only the more affluent is deserving of top-notch learning.
We are watching a tilting toward an educational caste system under Trump and DeVos. This is so unfair to our principals, teachers, and most of all, our kids. Parents need not look further than their own regions to see the inequity pervasive because of our present DC paradigm.
5
Another PR piece for Rahm who appointed some of the worst people to lead Chicago schools. When you use metrics that are a result to teaching to the test mandates, real education suffers. Principals do matter, and many times the worst are put in these positions. Principals who create a professional relationship with teachers and parents have better outcomes. First with the culture of the school, caring about student needs first and scores later make for better outcomes in the long run. Unfortunately test scores mean more than a school’s overall improvement.
3
Public school districts around the country have been beset with budget cuts thanks to the Republicans' short-sighted, self-absorbed drive to lower taxes, especially property taxes, the usual source of funding for public schools.
For example, California public schools once had one of the highest ratings worldwide. Then, the real estate developers needed another hook to increase sales while lining their own pockets as owners of large properties. Proposition 13 and the Gann Act, stripped the critical funding needed by local school districts. To persuade Californians used to high-quality public education, Prop. 13 also rolled back property taxes on homeowners drowning in property taxes based on higher assessments during a real estate boom in the 1970s. Too many homeowners, like my mother, were on fixed-income pensions with little left at the end of the month for food after property taxes were paid.
So, in order to recruit and train great school leaders, there will have to be rollbacks in the tax cuts to pay for rebuilding those schools suffering from a lack of leadership, a lack of qualified teachers, and repairs to school infrastructure. That's going to be a huge tab to pay for but, if educating our children really matters in America, sacrifices will have to be made.
2
Actually, social transformation and personal transformation feed each other in a virtuous (or sometimes vicious) cycle. Conservatives prefer to focus exclusively on the personal because it lets institutions off the hook. But when you have social/institutional systems that drive the people with "energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination" out of education--or don't attract them in the first place--they will never have the chance to exert their transforming virtues.
Brooks implicitly acknowledges a piece of this when he writes: "Research also suggests a collaborative power structure is the key. A lot of teachers want to be left alone and a lot of principals don’t want to give away power, but successful schools are truly collaborative." Then he forgets about it two paragraphs later, in his rush to harp on his favorite theme of individual accountability.
Three things needed for success of schools:
Excellent, well paid teachers with the skills, independence and support to do their job.
Excellent, well paid administrators to administer the school, to serve as liason to the community, and support the twtudents and teachers.
A supportive informed community.
1
I've talked with school superintendents in two places who said the same things you did about the importance of principals. In Arlington, Texas, a big bustling city with a multitude of people from different backgrounds, the business community had no faith in the ability of local schools to deliver, because of demographics, but the superintendent pushed up school achievement by himself getting out and supporting the principals. He spends the better part of every day touring different schools and visiting with and observing the principals. In tiny Port Townsend, at the far northwest corner of the country opposite Victoria, BC, a new superintendent was brought in there to turn around failing schools. How did he do it? By expecting his principals to spend 60 percent or more of their time in the classroom, observing and coaching teachers, and by revamping the curriculum to make it more relevant with local subject matter. In both cases, these superintendents were practicing "management by walking around", getting out of meetings and from behind their desks to observe and coach the people around them. Isn't that what education is really about, coaching and mentoring people on how to learn?
1
From the reading I have done, I would suggest that free daycare, kindergarten for every child, and a robust after school program are the things which help a great deal. Of course, having sufficient resources in a school system help a lot, too.
My son-in-law is a dedicated school principal, and he works massive hours every week. It helps.
1
Having taught for over 30 years, allow me to make some observations. The citing of test scores and graduation rates as proof of improvement or the quality of a school is virtually worthless. These metrics are too easily influenced by administrations that pressure teachers to pass students, particularly seniors. As for test scores, having taught AP courses, which culminate in what are considered challenging exams, it is not hard to get great results if a teacher devotes an inordinate amount of time prepping for the tests.
I agree that effective administration is very important to a successful school. I wonder if there are any examples of schools where teachers shared the principal's duties, rather than having one person do the job. Alternatively, principals could be required to teach at least one class The division of roles between teacher and administrator could be replaced with a merging of the roles. From my experience, this would make for a better school.
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Kudos Brian, I have always advocated everyone in the school system teach at least one class. This includes Superintendents, building level admin, and PPS Staff. This would get everyone on the same page in improving the learning experience for students. As. a former union leader I often proposed this in negotiations. It was a no cost item. I enjoyed listening to the excuses before management ultimately rejected the proposal
Where are the parents in this equation? Don't parents have some responsibilities for their child's education? After all, parents are the ones who have objected to their children having to read certain books, sit through lessons on certain topics, participate in school activities? They are as responsible for the quality of education as anyone else. As long as parents have it both ways with education you will continue to see principals, teachers, and superintendents leaving before they make an impact or burning out, or both.
We need a national curriculum in America. We need to agree upon the importance of teaching all students the basics and seeing to it that they graduate from high school ready and able to earn a living or on track to earn a decent living. We need to wake up to the fact that not every child belongs in college, that average is not a bad thing to be, and that teachers should not be put in the position of playing parent only to be chastised when they are forced to play parent.
Teachers play a large role in children's lives. Yet Americans ridicule teachers as if it's an easy job. If you can read, write, do math, understand basic science it's because of teacher. Thank the teachers who cared enough to stand in front of the classroom day after day, who read and graded your essays, who stayed late to help you, and who are continuing to do it today with other students.
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As my school experiences proved, and those of my wife and kids, you can have great teachers without a great principals, but you cannot have a great principal without great teachers. In the best of worlds you can have a great leader empower great workers to do their jobs better. A bad leader will tend to greatly undermine the efforts of a few great workers. I had few great teachers, thank heaven, and I am eternally in their debt. As for principals, meh.
You will always be able to find a few cases (statistical outliers) where a great leader pulled everybody's performance up. But the real key overall is to raise the level of the workforce. Pay teachers properly and provide the benefits they need to focus on their jobs. Support teachers with proper facilities and staff. Then it will be easy for good principals to become great.
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Thanks for this piece.
In my own high school, aside from football games, the principal was almost never seen outside of his office. Wasn't a bad school, Imagine how much better it could have been with an engaged principal.
Amen! The more authority the principal has to collaboratively create the school culture and the accompanying community, the better the school will be. This means some say in who teaches at that school, as opposed to a central office type of hiring system all too common today. The daily routine described is one of unchaining one's self from the desk and the office and becoming a recognized person in the community every single day. Teaching a class can also help the principal in understanding the daily ebb and flow of the life of the teachers in the school. The principal must be someone who realizes that his or her influence on each and every child is nowhere nearly as important or significant as that of the classroom teacher who sees those children every day. If the principal is the right person for the job, he/she already knows that and sees to it that he/she hires accordingly. Get the best possible people in those classrooms, help them succeed, and then get out of their way and let them do their job.
The point has actually always been social change through personal change. The founders of the nation had an ideal that they first internalized as did the participants in the Montgomery bus boycott. The social to personal transformation can be guided however. I paraphrase the great theologian William Sloane Coffin, one cannot not legislate changes in human transformation but you can legislate to make laws to guide human transformation. Either way requires the two great virtues of courage and love.
You forgot to mention that your fellow Republicans want principals to carry guns in order to develop a culture and to display school values.
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Thank you David. This is inspirational.
The kids spend way too much time taking tests for no good reason. Learning has taken a back seat to useless and stress inducing testing. But thanks for saying positive things about the great city of Chicago. This is a nice counter to the unbalanced bully who does nothing but denigrate and separate.
Great... BUT they don't make money (and after all WHO (?) wants all these smart kids hanging around (taking jobs from OUR kids)
The quality of Chicago Public Schools has it's beginnings in the legendary educator the late Dr. Barbara Ann Sizemore whose deep insights included local community involvement and school control along with the importance of empowering principals and teachers coupled with the power of believing in, encouraging and expecting black educational achievement and excellence.
That is the antithesis of the debilitating and devastating outlook of Betsy DeVos. It also conflicts with Arne Duncan and Rahm Emanuel who focus on charter schools and diminishing teacher innovation.
Dr. Sizemore began her career as a Chicago Public School teacher then moved on to become a principal at the elementary and high school level. But her most singular achievement was the Woodlawn Experimental School Project where she had an opportunity to implement her educational philosophical insights in one of the toughest and poorest Chicago neighborhoods. She received her doctorate from the nearby University of Chicago based upon her educational research.
Dr. Sizemore went on to become the Superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools. After leaving the D.C. school systems she moved to the University of Pittsburgh where she taught and continued her research. Dr. Sizemore ended her illustrious career as Dean of the College of Education at DePaul University in Chicago. She is an icon among those who believe in the need for quality public schools and black educational success.
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Once again, David Brooks utilizes his writing skills to obfuscate and elide. Trump's secretary of education is in the process of cutting funding to public schools, while pushing subsidies to religious schools. Her policies led to a steep decline in educational achievement in her native Michigan. Yet David Brooks ignores those cuts and the Trumpists' attacks on public education in general, choosing instead to pretend that funding means nothing. It's all about "successful principals," as if those principals operated outside of any funding framework.
Mr. Brooks needs to stop fronting for the outrageous policies of the Trump regime, and start sounding the alarm. The very concept of public education is being attacked. We need people of courage and good faith to defend against that attack; we do not need pundits to divert our attention from that crisis.
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Our principal-in-chief, Betsy De Vos, has made 0 to 0 spontaneous classroom visits and observations per lifetime. Just sayin.
1
I used to think this too. In fact, when finishing my M.Ed., I was tasked by my advisor to write an essay on the inputs that matter most for student achievement. Naively, I believed that school leadership mattered the most: Who set the tone in the school. Who set the agenda. Who set the budget. But in reality, exactly the opposite is true. Sure, leadership matters. But the leading indicator of school and student performance is the aggregate quality and experience of teachers in the classroom. See, principals and policies come and go, funding waxes and wanes, but teachers with experience (more than 3 years in the classroom), high levels of professional development (as evidenced by enrichment programs and continuing education), and a qualified commitment to student achievement, have BY FAR the most impact on a student's ability to learn and achieve. Believe it.
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Good leaders make good countries. When you learn about successful presidents, you keep coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination.
None of these character traits are held by our current president, except the determination to elevate himself while destroying our norms and our democracy.
Absolutely! And this has been clear for ever! I would like to add that principals should have classroom experience. The leaders of whatever the institution set the tone - one of the few examples where trickle down actually works! Think principal, CEO, captain, and president. In the case of the latter the tone being set is one of discord, prejudice, intolerance, division, lack of integrity and lack of respect for intellect. Not good for our future. Perhaps with enough great principals our young people can get the education they deserve and get our country back on track as a leader and role model for the good of humanity.
It's more than a strong principal. It's a strong community, impartial school board, and superintendent too. In my county in New Jersey where Governor Phil Murphy's own children don't attend local public school, leadership is hired by the school board which is controlled by mostly PTA active parents with little to no professional experience in education. Try running against a powerful PTA. The result? Ever weakening state mandated test scores and a revolving door of teachers and administrators. Every couple years, a new principal or superintendent arrives and its rinse and repeat. All the money and time wasted on unproven parent directed initiatives and turnover of staff and related recruitment and they never arrive at curriculum enhancement or improved fundamentals. The parents even fight to allow kids to sit out state mandated tests, pulling down scores for kids who do perform! How is that for preparing them for life? In states where improvements have occurred, its largely because of the integration of stricter standardized testing. Get rid of our conflicted and politically motivated administrators and parents before you get rid of PARCC.
Good students make good schools.
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The first sentence of Mr. Brooks' piece says everything we need to know about nearly every seemingly intractable problem in America. "The solutions to the nation’s problems already exist somewhere out in the country; we just do a terrible job of circulating them."
Is the United States too big to govern? We want to believe we are a single nation with common goals for all of our people. But, are we? Can we be exceptional with so many conflicting ideologies? Like the tearing of muscle in body building, our differences used to make us stronger. Only now, we seem to have reached a fatigue where we want to give up and sit out the rigors of progress with those who are most like ourselves.
Tomorrow, on the national news, we will see yet another little pocket of success in a town or city school. Why can't the United States bring its exceptionalism to bear and implement these feel-good stories to the rest of the country? Why do we do such a "terrible job of circulating them?" The answer seems to lie in the fact that we don't think as one nation. United we stand, divided we fall.
Statistics don't always tell the truth. Graduation rates soared in my school district too. It was a result of dropping the requirement to pass proficiency exams. The school district even encouraged people who did not pass the proficiency exams in prior years but attended the requisite number of days to apply to get their diploma. At the same time the ACT scores for the district were plummeting.
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How is any educator on his/her way up the ladder supposed to stay positive and affect change when they are under paid and under funded? There will always be a few bright lights that shine even under severe pressure but most people need support and resources to be their best.
Our country is not willing to support or properly fund education for all.
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For any educational reform to be effective it must start with the premise that parents are at the most important; then administrators, at all levels should be teaching one class per day in their area of expertise too often administrators have been out of the classroom 5, 10, or 15 years and often, as a result, they are functionally unaware of the changes which have taken place (how else will they be made aware that the decisions made are educationally sound) ; classroom teachers at all levels must be given the opportunity to work with one another, too often they are delegated to nonacademic responsibilities (monitoring bathrooms, cafeterias, doorways, etc, jobs that could be done with parent involvement) which distracts from their jobs. In short teachers must be treated as the professionals they are; and should be encouraged to do the academic research which would sharpen their both knowledge and teaching skills.
I retired from teaching public school after 30 years, and while I agree with the premise in the article as to how principals can build a culture that supports student learning, what was missing is the impact of successful principals on the teaching staff. Excellent principals both attract and hold on to talented teachers, no matter the school's location or demographics. Teachers are on the front line in education and savvy principals are always mindful of this resource.
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As a career educator, which included experience with wonderful and not-so-wonderful principals, my professionalism, concern for students, and teaching style did not waver...although it's more pleasant to have a supportive, optimistic leader, the real work/effort/improvement in education is due to the classroom teacher...
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We do too much "assessing a student's talents, desires and needs....." and too little making sure that all of our children have a wide range of talents that will give him or her access to any profession that he or she finally decides on.
I myself was placed in all the science and math classes in high school, but no foreign languages classes. After I graduated from engineering school (Cooper Union) I joined the Peace Corps tasked with "school construction" in Ecuador.
I hated building schools but discovered that I LOVED Spanish and the Peace Corps.
After I returned home I studied Japanese, Russian and (Mandarin) Chinese. I've been a teacher of Chinese and a translator or modern Chinese literature since 1952. I regret the fact that I was never introduced to foreign languages in high school.
Isn't this just MBWA (management by walking around), which was pioneered in corporations in the 1970s? The idea that leadership would be more effective on the factory floor and in the workers' lunch room rubbing shoulders with the very people who are doing the work, and seeing the problems up close. Flash forward to today, and the private sector now has open office design where presidents and ceos are often in cubicles with alongside their fellow employees. Why? Collaboration and the innovation and problem solving that comes with collaboration from taking down the office walls (and turf). Its nice to know that some of the public sector like Chicago Public Schools is catching up to the management innovation of the private sector albeit the private sector circa 1977. Sadly, if you want to look at what corporate America looked like in 1965, just go down to City Hall.
Educators, principals and teachers alike are expected to do the increasingly adversarial bidding of parents and community. Adversarial relationships are a sign of mistrust and inability to work together for the good of the students which should always be first in everyone's mind. How can educational professionals do their job when they are required to meet unrealistic test score standards, get constant flak from parents who believe their child is the only one and must be perfect and fight societal battles such as the need for scientific enquiry that is antithetical to creationism. Constant battles such as these spell the doom of good education.
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Excellent advice for any organization, not only schools. Leadership and culture matter.
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Having been a H.S. principal in a Chicago suburb for 17 years and the author of several books on strong instructional leadership (
https://www.amazon.com/associate-professor.-Alan-C.-Jones/e/B00DWKZ2KI?r... I would offer several caveats to strong leadership theory. First, no doubt the traits outlined in this piece are necessary to change a school culture, but they are not sufficient. In addition to these traits, a principal must, through what I call a personal journey, enter schools with an instructional worldview--a coherent response to the fundamental questions of schooling: how to children learn, what knowledge is of most worth, how should knowledge be organized, how should we assess what students understand, how should we TEACH. All instructional systems (employment, training, curriculum development, performance evaluation) are built around this worldview. Also, so many pundits who write about education fall into great man/women trap---the answer to poor performing schools are heroic principals (or heroic teachers)..Again, not to deny the power of great leadership, but, it ignores other powerful social, economic, and political forces that when working in concert towards quality schooling provide the resources and social capital that are the foundations of a great school. Strong instructional leadership can make a school good, but, without strong community support, it will not be a great school.
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Yep it’s all about administrators! Teachers are unimportant and they are obstacles to excellence. What a crock. Mr. Brooks nasty “teachers see themselves a victims” comment is part of the problem. Teachers are denigrated, underpaid and blamed for everything from low test scores to schools shootings. They are easy targets for demagogues.
By all means let’s have good principals but let’s not kid ourselves when you starve public education to feed for profit charters that teach to biased, corporate drummers you kill the very system that produced many of America’s greatest advances.
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Nice to hear some words of praise for Chicago from a Republican.
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Now, if only Betsy DeVos would read this column...
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Would or even could. She has none of the qualities mentioned. She’s is just less informed, but loyal to Trump.
"Social transformation follows personal transformation."
No. It doesn’t . You pass a law requiring seat belts. Everyone complains. People comply with the law, deaths go down. Pretty soon, you are seen as a pariah for resisting the law. Your children nag you to buckle up. You accept the rule as a pretty good idea after all and incorporate it into your set of routine responsibilities. You’ve been personally transformed.
You see women everywhere telling their “me too” stories. Your sisters and women friends identify a set of behaviors (ogling, grabbing a waitress’s derrière, bothering a co-worker for dates. Laws are passed defining sexual harassment in the workplace, and your HR department conducts a workshop. You find that one of your bosses has been fired for pressuring his assistant into a relationship. You “clean up your act” and expect your direct reports and colleagues to restrain themselves. You’ve been personally transformed.
The laws we pass and the rules we live by, and those who show moral leadership and the status conferred upon those who follow their role models make for personal transformation. In any population the percentage of outstanding moral leaders is small; there will always be great individuals who act heroically. Without the overlay of a reinforcing culture, laws that restrict bad behavior( and the pressure that ostracizes it) personal transformation is a St. Paul fantasy.
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Who, Mr. Brooks? Who is doing a terrible job of circulating good educational ideas? Am I doing a terrible job of it? Are you? We are not even in the education business.
And, David Brooks does not even have to look beyond the borders of NYC to see good educational ideas dying of loneliness. Why isn't every middle school patterned after the astonishing Mark Twain Middle School in Cony Island? Why isn't every high school patterned after the astonishing Stuyvesant High School?
Who is not getting the job done, Mr. Brooks? Name them! Without those names, your article is worthless.
Let me help you, on that point. For at least the past 60 years, American public education has been "planned, plotted, and programmed" in the schools of education. Professors of education write the textbooks, write the syllabi, and train the teachers. And, their program is implemented by the teachers unions.
They, the ed school professoriate and the teachers unions, control the schools.
They are responsible. Fix them and you fix the schools. Otherwise, you are just whistling past the graveyard.
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Be careful if you're referring to Washington, D.C. in that first paragraph...... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/report-calls-into-questio...
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For awhile many of us NY Times readers thought that slowly but surely, Brooks was becoming a progressive.
We were wrong. He has become a New Ager. I'll bet money that one day soon he's going to quote Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" in a column.
Mr. Brooks:
How dare you mention the words "Chicago" and "good" together in the same sentence? You obviously haven't been keeping up with your reading ofr FoxNews and the Conservative press. To hear them tell it, Chicago is the sina qua non of every evil that Libruls are using to destroy this country, ande its citizens are all lawless murderers busy shooting each other. And Rahm Emanuel is the devil incarnate, a keystone of the Deep State conspiracy.
"The rituals for welcoming members into the community."
That's what praying in schools is for! After all, we all know that the only way to be accepted into American culture is to be a Christian.
"The way you decorate walls to display school values."
You surely can't be referring to those Socialist multi-culti posters that they make the kids draw! You must mean things like corporate banners of generous companies that support our sports teams, and those posters from the NRA that instruct students and teachers how to use their concealed weapons.
Oh, and where are we going to get the money to recruit and retain talented teachers and principles? Doesn't that require money; which means raising taxes?
Traitor!
Misdirection is the goal here. Principals? How about paying them in the good old capitalist way? And pay teachers too? And pay for safe modern schools and first rate technology. How about feeding kids, many of whom come to school unfed? Stories about great principals is an inspiration when the fact that they are great DESPITE underfunded schools and understaffed schools, and despite the efforts to privatize schools by sucking funds from public schools. As a retired teacher, I am appalled to see any energy siphoned from our education policies by anyone who cannot recognize that Federal funding is missing and local funding is a joke when the community is poor.
Leadership is important but the very best leader cannot make progress when they are sabotaged by greedy selfish politicians who hate public anything and do not care a whit for the children who are being neglected or for the future beyond the next quarter. Creating a narrative about success in the midst of collapse when the Secretary of Education, the “leader” is a fool out of her depth and utterly unfit to lead a Girl Scout troup is a transparent distraction with the intention of misdirecting the public. It sounds so reasonable until it hits the reality it masks. Attacks on education, healthcare, science, and regulation is an attack on democracy and is undermining our way of life in favor of squalor, spectacle, and growing inequality. This is “tribal”. It is class warfare. Public education is a stark example.
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Guess Dave missed the cheating scandal in DC (pointed them out as a success story) where the kids are being graduated out even though they don't show up to class. But hey, that's Dave, write the narrative to fit what exists in his brain, not on the street. He's a fake, a fraud, a poseur, or let's just say it, a hack.
American schools are being destroyed by DeVos, NRA, and Trump.
If people worry about their children,
they should first get rid of these three entities.
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Improving faster from an abysmally low base is not a measure of success - it is the daydreams of liberals who love to obfuscate failure by rigging the metrics.
"How do students feel about their schooling? How do they understand motivation? "
Let me suggest that student motivation depends on how much students share with other students. I call it the "Golden Rule of School." That is, when students love their fellow students, as themselves. They focus on cooperation, more than on competition. It's teamwork and mutual support.
When students help other students, they are motivated to learn more, so they can share more. Why not encourage a "Golden Rule of School" everywhere?
===========================================================
www.SavingSchools.org
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Duly noted in this piece headed "Good Leaders Make Good Schools": no mention of or reference to Betsy DeVos.
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Good principals don't just appear. They must be identified, selected, and mentored. And they must be replaced if they don't work out. Just as in every aspect of life, someone who looks great on paper, or who performs well at a lower level of responsibility, may not work out in practice.
In other words, there must be vision, passion, knowledge, commitment, and professionalism at the next level of leadership. And in most reasonably-sized school districts, that would be the Superintendent. It's not going to be the mayor, or members of the school board, or the hotshot who talks a good game but is just passing through on the way to their next promotion.
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Mr. Brooks, thanks for an elaboration of the same obvious principles everyone has known for at least as long as I’ve been involved in higher education, twenty five years, if not more. The dervish is in the details, not in the abstract theories you trot out week after week.
What purpose are you serving on these pages? I’m sorry. I used to like your columns’ slightly broader perspective. But I can’t forgive your shallow cowardice for not honestly owning the mistakes you’ve made that have directly contributed to our current situation. If and until you do, I will see everything you write through the lens of your betrayal of our society,
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There is nothing wrong with our schools. It is the low IQ students who are messing up our achievement scores. There is no way to improve IQ as it is mostly genetic but that does not mean we cannot help the less capable students find something they can do and enjoy. As we have seen time and time again, building expensive schools, holding our teachers' feet to the fire, bringing in all sorts of "experts" to reorganize school districts, spending billions of dollars, etc. has had no effect whatsoever. Get a clue, friends. It is all about IQ.
Principals need to sure that teachers are locked and loaded.
In a phrase, you get it! Thanks (from someone who has often been critical of your failure to acknowledge the direct equivalence and connection between the Trump of today (whom you loath) and the Rush Limbaugh (and his ilk) of the last 10 years (whom you endorsed as "a good Republican who just wants to win"). But this column is redemptive! One note: Please send do a copy to Betsy DeVos.
Great principals
Great math teachers
Great social workers
Active, engaged parents
Consistent attendance
Longer school day
Access to tutoring/homework help
1
If good leaders make good schools and Betsy DeVos is the leader in chief, so to speak, where does that leave us, Mr. Brooks?
1
And where, exactly, does this fit in with Betsy Cruella DeVos, and her learned opinion that Public Schools are junk??? Public schools, they take, and teach, Everyone. No cherry picking, no fudging, no nonsense.
Along with National Parks, America's BEST idea. Seriously.
3
A column about our nation's problems with education and nothing about dumb Secretary of Education Betsy De Vos and her boss dumber President Trump, who loves the poorly educated? She wants to privatize public education; he wants to arm teachers and principals.
What else was left out of the column was the encouragement, cooperation, and participation of the parents!
3
I teach in NYC and have yet to work with a competent, engaged principal. I have found many that work at covering their behinds so that the superintendent doesn't look their way. The seven principals I have worked with all went through the Leadership Academy and were good at criticizing but poor at supporting quality teaching and teachers.
In New York, there is so much pressure on high poverty schools to appear to be successful that teachers are made to jump through hoops to meet whatever eduspeak happens to be in vogue at that time.
It would be great if the standard was to move kids forward and teachers were allowed to fail kids to show that those children were in need of help, not pass them to show how successful our schools appear to be.
3
Timely article about education objectives, teach students to feel comfortable in their own skin, while the teacher feels vindicated by true progress in her/his cooperative effort to convert potential talent in a real one. Enthusiasm is of the essence, so a student may readily adopt his/her teacher as a mentor (implying that the teacher has student's best interests in mind, always). Happy students make happy teachers, best achieved in a cooperative environment (instead of a hostile competition). And here comes the Principal's function, to coordinate the best possible way to allow a free student-teacher interaction where the best possible success is encouraged and supported in a loving ambience (and Finland's system could teach America a thing or two). This, in addition to getting parental involvement inasmuch as possible. One thing I still 'resent', and that is the lack of recognition of teacher's 'calling' as one of the noblest professions (along with Nurses)...with the lowest pay for their efforts. Do we, a rich country, have to be this stingy, while allocating huge amounts to a 'military' that contribute little, if any, to the well being of promoting the best a country has, it's talent.
1
Another safe, generic, forgettable column by Mr. Brooks.
Talk about what makes good schools work, but don’t mention our current Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, a right-wing Republican whose clownish incompetence sometimes masks the enormous damage she is inflicting on American public education. Talk about good fire safety practices while the house is burning.
Mr. Brooks wants to talk about anything other than the disastrous Trump Administration, which represents the culmination of his own political work for the last 30 years.
3
Nice column. Now watch the Betsy DeVos interview on 60 Minutes and you will realize that an army of dedicated principals and brilliant teachers is no match for one arrogant fool with all the power and money.
2
A culture of knowledge seeking would do wonders for our schools.
Once upon a time it was considered normal to be almost obsessed with learning.
Now unless it’s the preappoved straight and narrow pablum, one risks censure from either left or right.
Well Mr. Brooks, I'd like to know what you think of fellow republican Betsy DeVos as far as leadership in education goes. If you believe what you wrote, then what say you about the woman who told us that Wyoming schools have guns in them to deal with "grizzly bears".
Compare the MMPI results of the worst students against those of the best and proof shows that good peer pressure breeds success.
Betsy DeVos captained some terrible schools,
and got paid anyway.
Proft motive and captured "consumers", students,
will ruin america's future.
1
More than decades of mayor control for our public schools. Look at the disaster in DC. Parents have seen scandal after scandal involving public and charter schools in urban areas. Right now we have DC the reform diamond reeling from 10 years of fake numbers. The scandals go on and on, before it was the super principles, it was the super teacher, the super Broad candidate.
How about putting more money in public education, how about treating teachers, parents, communities with respect. With qualified college students no longer going into education because of the negativity surrounding the classroom experience ,the pressure to achieve high test scores and really non longer seeing children as children but pawns in the made up game of making money. Now we want teachers to carry guns and shoot when necessary and we have Betsy DeVos who has no understanding of what actually goes on in a classroom nor does she care.
So David, stop preaching nonsense and go to a real school that doesn't have working technology children are homeless or a school that the parents are very involved . You put the hours in and then tell us about the super administrators.
We have children who cannot read nor write because they had Teach for American uncertified teachers ,Broad Superintendents . We have plenty of data people and surprising nothing changes but the data people make a great deal of money
Two bits of good news in one day! Something seems to be working right. Home visits to the most disruptive kids, maybe that's helping too! But an 85% retention rate for principals means you lose 50% of your principals every five years. So how big an impact is that having? Great principals are awesome, but maybe just focus on getting rid of terrible ones?
Although test scores are rising for all students in Chicago, the gap between Asian/white v Black/Latinx remains constant in Chicago.
And - every conclusion you can possibly reach in education is backed by 'research.' But good news in any case!
Stanford study linked below.
"In sum, Chicago schools seem to have produced a real and sustained pattern of above average learning rates and performance improvement from 2008-09 through 2013-14."
https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/chicago%20public%20school%...
David Brooks "Good Leader" column should
read and include Michelle Goldberg's "Devos Disaster" column and included excerpts into his text. Ms Devos is NOT a leader. Shows no interest or ability to understand or even visit those public schools that need her help .. And has no interest in improving those schools.
Ms Goldbergs column should be required reading for David before he joins a discussion on the public school systems in our country.
I have been in education my whole life. David Brooks has nailed it!. Many in education have that principals are the key to student achievement. This essay helps get the word to everyone.
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Leave it to Brooks to trumpet a simplistic answer to a complex systemic problem. He will always choose a solution that ignores the consequences of rampant and deep economic inequality. Educational leadership is great, but alone it will prove ineffective in the face of conditions that make our schools, and towns and neighborhoods, separate and unequal.
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Time to apply it to Washington. Let’s start with Republicans.
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With this column Brooks has perhaps set the stage for 2020.
Dem's will have to contend with " ..the obsessive, energetic drive of Mayor Rahm Emanuel." who would be a good counter to Trump and could perhaps eat his lunch.
I wouldn't mind President Emanuel and perhaps he could get Geoffrey Canada for secretary of education.
Bootstraps, personal responsibility -- check. Thanks, this makes me not worry so much about Betsy DeVos!
Can we expect more feel-good columns about capable do-it-yourselfers making up for abdication of EPA and State Department?
Go to a large urban high school instead of a "feel-good" elementary school and you will see chaos.
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Excellent top-down leadership is also excellent bottom-up leadership. The two are synonymous. The moral and ethical spirit of any work unit is set at the top where the space is created to generate creative production from the ranks.
It is well known that innovation emerges more effectively from pooled talent than from mutually suspicious silos. Good leadership envisions, enables, shapes and fosters collaboration; it does not control arbitrarily or vindictively. It listens and decides rather than dictating from high, isolated towers.
We have known this for a very long time which renders mysterious why effective leadership seems to be in such rapid global retreat. Perhaps our ego-driven lust for human domination is simply too powerful to tolerate established knowledge and common sense. We may suspect this, but we cannot accept it.
Democratic governance depends on good leadership for its survival. We worker bees need to recapture it from our temporary swerve toward mad dysfunction.
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Correct. Most of the most successful schools have a leadership more horizontal than vertical with educational "leaders" that are more omnipresent than omnipotent. Vertical leadership stymies creativity and input, while, often, having the unintended effect of inhibiting channels of communication. When staffed with competent individuals, well defined goals, evaluative procedures, and clear commitment, the school's credo should be that "no one of us is smarter than all of us".
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Right, and the leader of the country is....
Thank you Charles. You have put it better than I.
Ironic that you give a shout-out to Rahm Emanuel and Arne Duncan - Obama’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of Education respectively - at the same time that your colleague, Michelle Goldberg, is highlighting the counterproductive efforts of the current SoE, Betsy DeVos...
And who would have thought that anything positive or productive could arise out of the post-apocalyptic hellscape that President Trump knows Chicago to be?
Could it be, David, that you’re finally ready to come out of the closet and acknowledge what and who you are, a centrist Democrat?
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“Good Leaders Make Good Schools”
This may be what David Brooks believes, but Trump, Betsy DeVos and the rest of the GOP have a better idea - “God and Guns Make Better Schools.”
How can you talk of leadership at a time like this?
The column drives home two truthful adages: 1) Programs don't drive positive change, leader do! and 2) More gets "caught" than taught"!
I would add one thing to the equation: Good Teachers.
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Yes. He completely ignores the people who actually do the work with students in favor of praising management. So typical of writers who are lost. Principals manage; teachers teach. Who is doing the actual work? Not the manager (principal). In 31 years of teaching I found very few principals who knew much about teaching or leading. The best ones left me alone after realizing I knew what I was doing.
You don’t know how correct you are: “Social transformation follows personal transformation.“ This is true across the spectrum of what we mean by society, whether of a country or of a city or of a workplace or of a family.
I'm not sure with everything going on why Brooks would write this. I work as a teacher in Chicago and this is complete balderdash. It's almost as if Brooks was facing a deadline and so he went on the internet and squeezed something out. School test scores aren't reliable data. You would have to dig a little deeper if you wanted to write a meaningful column on American education. We do have a couple of airports, a bus station and a train station here so if Brooks wants to add some depth he could visit.It would be a commitment. Something like the principal with the rolling desk.If not, Stormy Daniels is out there and wants to give the $130,000 back.
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As teacher for 39 years with multiple offers but little interest in becoming a principal I have found that most principals are career educators more interested in power (consolidation and advancement) than in the quality of teaching. My experience has taught me that school boards in particular, are the cancer of public education. The best teachers have a difficult time because power flows from the top down – with career educators telling experienced teachers – what it’s all about. At the end of their journey ask the kids who made the biggest difference in their learning, it’s not the principal, it’s the teacher. Power needs to be redistributed so that the best teachers are recognized and not denigrated. I was told by my superintendent that she should never have hired me. I still get letters from my students.
“You taught me so much more than biology at QHS. Your knack & sense of humour for questioning authority and love of philosophy has inspired me and I’ve passed that onto my daughters. Your ripple effect gets only stronger with each generation. You’ve made such a huge difference you’ll never know its full extent!” Dr. T. D. 1980
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Pairs well with: unfortunately, a crucial quality for a successful teacher to have is charisma.
If only the Times had someone who knows education writing about education on the Op-Ed page. . . .sigh.
Washington, New Orleans and Chicago are primarily the sites of scandal. Test score manipulation makes the reports of "improvement" meaningless. New Orleans experienced a "miracle," which was the wholesale dismantling of traditional public schools in favor of charter chains that cream students, further segregate schools, and employ absurd, often abusive "no excuses" disciplinary practices.
The things Brooks cites like, "the rituals for welcoming members into the community; the way you decorate walls to display school values; the distribution of power across the community; the celebrations of accomplishment and the quality of trusting relationships" are trite bits of PR, that fill schools with colorful slogans and call students "scholars." They are useful only for impressing visitors like Brooks or the fully incompetent Betsy DeVos.
It is true that leaders are important, but the gimmicks of education reform are not what improve schools or nourish students. Overall, education reform is decimating public education and growing an unaccountable system of charter chains and for-profit scams.
Excellent leadership in Chicago from Arne Duncan, Janice Jackson and Rahm Emanuel???? Duncan was a short-term carpetbagger and went from doing nothing in Chicago to doing damage in Washington. Rahm is a political opportunist who has advanced the worst of "education reform."
These are the most important jobs in for America's future - principals and teachers. Let's pay these people......
Like Betsy DeVos.
Trump is taking his joke-show to every part of American governance and Republicans either don't care or love it.
Talk all you will about one school or one teacher. America is getting taught a lesson alright.
I thought the key to success in public schools was stealing their budgets and transferring them to charter schools with lighter-skinned students?
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"A lot of teachers want to be left alone and a lot of principals don’t want to give away power, but successful schools are truly collaborative."
Brooks' columns are beginning to read like Hallmark cards, oddly detached from reality and context, filled with sentiment.
Mr. Brook's, are you referring to Washington DC? If so, you haven't been paying attention to the latest news coverage of the very troubled school system. While DC has always seemed to under-perform in public schools, the root of the latest disaster was created when right-wing darling Michelle Rhee decided that all that would measured are test scores and graduation rates, and teachers and principals would be rewarded or fired based on those results. It does not take a lot of insight to predict that this was a recipe for cheating, fraud, and cover-ups in order to meet goals.
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DC schools were performing prior to her arrival? You must have the wrong DCPS. The schools were and are a disaster. You may disagree with what Michell Rhee did but do not suggest the schools performed well prior to her arrival.
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Did you read the part where I said "always seemed to under-perform"
I look forward to sending this column on to several of my friends who are now retired principles. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
But I would like to emphasize two thoughts. First is the importance of the vice-principle. Not only should she/he have experience and leadership qualities but she also needs to maintain a continued working rapport with the principle, and vice versa. Together they serve the students and their valued educators. They are a team.
The second thought is our support for public education. It is time tested, and one of the finest assets in a vibrant democracy. Our students will soar under the guidance of school districts and states which promote and financially assist both the entity itself and its public servants. So much is made of "private" education and even home schooling nowadays. But it can not surpass the education of cultural diversity.
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The importance of strong leadership and management to the success of an organization will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes reading the multitude of books on the subject. It is in the logical extension of that message, however, where the necessary action takes place: to be successful, an organization must actively recruit, hire, train, and retain the best people.
In a "multitude of books" neo-classical economics makes sense, as well. In practice, it works only to provide a nice, tight framework for the study of something that doesn't exist.
Mr Brooks presents a thoughtful and optimistic analysis of public education. I don’t disagree with any of the suggestions. But he has omitted a crucial component for success: public support for education. I don’t care how talented the principal or enlightened the administration — she could be Socrates, John Dewey, and Clark Kerr in one package — without public support principals will work with one arm tied behind their backs and burn out before they can achieve their vision for their schools. When the state’s legislature cuts appropriations for public education by 20% over 5 years, when as a result teachers you have invested in leave your school for a better position elsewhere, when you are forced to reduce school weeks from five to four days, when class sizes begin to approach 35, the best principal will find herself spending more and more time keeping the lights on, rather than strategizing about improving educational outcomes. And when principals see the parents of their students consistently voting for legislators who think they can progress by cutting more and more from public education, even the most high-energy principal’s motivation will begin to flag. Creative, talented and energetic leaders have to be married to progressive, supportive publics to achieve success.
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As a public school teacher in the New Orleans area, I couldn't agree more with this analysis on the importance of leadership. This idea of building culture from the top down cannot be understated. As teachers, we wholly expect the kids to act like kids, but we become quickly disillusioned when the administration and central office don't rise to their roles. This becomes painfully obvious when you notice that the principal's car is the last to arrive and the first to leave for the day or when you try to deal with the incompetence that pervades in our district human resources or technology departments.
Back to administration though, I would add that the most necessary element of competent leadership is the ability to observe and listen before formulating strategy. A theme that tends to run across "bad leadership" is a crisis of confirmational bias when the administration comes in with ideas and cherry picks the evidence to support it according to the newest and latest trend in education. I can remember specifically our first day back after last summer listening to my administration use data to extoll the importance of building relationships as key to student achievement (which I wholly agree with) while telling us that class size has no bearing. When I pointed out the irony of trying to build trust and social capital in a room with 37 students, I was only met with a disapproving blank stare and told to look at the data. My observation did not confirm what they wanted.
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I saw this happen at my daughter's elementary with a succession of principals.
Most of the time when you heard her first principal speak, it was through a megaphone (including in the hallways and cafeteria). Let's just say this was not a two-way listening device. "That megaphone!" the teachers used to say, in sufficient summary, when he was gone.
The second principal was inexperienced and haughty—when they had the annual open house at the start of the year, she seemed to recoil from parents coming up to say hello and welcome her, as if she didn't know why they were there. She got another job offer and left without bothering to preside over the annual end-of-year awards ceremony.
This was a not-large school "out in the county," as we say here, where many children were attending the same elementary their parents had. The third principal recognized this as a strength, encouraged pride and tradition, always made time to chat with parents, and most of all respected teachers and encouraged them to collaborate as a team. The school became a lively, supportive community again. The results were truly remarkable. Our test scores soon ranked in our school system second only to the two schools attended by the rich kids and the children of university profs. And this was accomplished while making it a place that felt fun and welcoming. I'm sure he had faults and I don't know how his tenure ended, but he was the right principal at the time. Humane leadership matters more than "process."
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Having taught 30 years in socially, economically deprived schools, the most important factor to success was an excellent principal.
I was with you until the end. Yes, social transformation follows personal transformation, but when talking about society in general, not just schools, in the absence of a laws and institutions that allow for personal growth, personal transformation is not as likely to happen.
Anecdotally, my own child went to one school where pulling down the pants of students during recess was quite common, and when the principal was asked to address the problem, she said something to the effect that it's a hard world out there and they should get used to it early on. When my son went on to middle school, the principal (a former nun) created a strong school culture, was energetic, trustworthy, honest, optimistic, and determined to make sure that the students were not only knowledgeable, but prepared to move on to high school, having acquired superb organizational skills and good attitudes. Leadership does make a huge difference.
It is too easy, however, for the idea that individuals alone are what makes a difference to morph into a belief that individuals, not institutions, are what make great societies. The danger is that that belief can then morph into an every-man-for-himself mindset. Yes, leaders make a huge difference, but without policies in place to make sure all our children are healthy, well-fed, and well-educated, too many potential good leaders will never be able to realize that potential.
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Free preschool and mandatory kindergarten probably had more to do with the success of test scores than principals. However, I do not disagree that a principal who models behavior for students and who is supportive of teachers and the learning environment will make a difference. Principals who come up through the ranks understand the challenges of the classroom. Remember teachers are also leaders, and they can not function as leaders in their own classroom if they are not supported by management who is focused on success. So, while I agree with Mr. Brooks about the importance of leadership, I believe free public preschool and mandatory kindergarten are critical factors in improving test scores and, ultimately, preparedness for post secondary education (college or not). The leadership in education also has to come from state legislatures supporting these programs. Sad to say Indiana and other states lag behind in both of these areas.
A key research observation is that the more hands on, engaged the principals are, the more effective they are. This theme also applies to teachers and students as well. Truly collaborative educational institutions engage people at all levels in the organization.
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Not to quibble with the notion that "Good Leaders Make Good Schools", but I am of the opinion that it's the other way around; that namely, Good Schools Make Good Leaders.
And anyone familiar with the concept of 'Separate but Equal' and aware of the differences found between the educational standards in schools located in poorer districts and those in wealthier ones, knows this to be true.
In fact, that's exactly what brought about BROWN vs. BOARD of EDUCATION.
And it's also not by chance that this also happens to apply along strictly racially divided lines.
While the restructuring of a school and the rebuilding a school-culture conducive to learning might be one thing, the core of the problem still needs to be recognized if the problem is to be eliminated. And as long as wealth defines where the best principals, teachers, leaders and school budgets go, no amount of wall decorations will make a real difference -- and no amount of research will either.
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There is no secret to this - it's really always been the case. Good schools have good principals, and a culture that develops good teachers. We don't value the work that either the principals do, nor the teachers.
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Hear, hear!
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Developing character has not been high on anyone's list for 40 years. Cultivating personal virtues, the same. Yet, both seem to have a serious effect on leadership ability, just as competence does, in any organization. I'm not sure why we have neglected that. It seems to be common sense from any experience in an organization. Is it fair to say that sociologists and psychologists have no common sense? Surely that conclusion would be wrong. What would the correct answer be?
Rather good schools make good leaders, which requires education to be placed high on the national policy agenda with enough fund allocation, community support, and the regular monitoring mechanism that ensures the quality of school education both in terms of teaching standards and the learning outcomes.
This is exactly right.
Years ago, I worked for a time as an artist-in-residence with Urban Gateways, a Chicago organization that sent young painters and poets into various elementary and middle-schools to present one-week workshops. I taught fiction writing, briefly, in Cabrini-Green and on the South Side.
And after a few weeks it became clear that the principal of each school determined whether or not the teachers would welcome upstarts like me into their classrooms for a week. If a principal spoke to me when I first arrived and was curious and offered suggestions, the teachers were also engaged and helpful, and their students were lively. If I arrived and it became clear the principal found me a nuisance, an imposition, most of the teachers were also unfriendly, distant, impatient. In one of the most unhappy, grim grade schools, a teacher actually snarled at me. This was the same guy who marched small groups of boys outdoors, once in a while, if they’d misbehaved, and struck them. All the other teachers knew of this habit. The principal didn't care.
It took me a while to recognize this pattern since I was inclined to believe that real power flowed from the bottom up, from The People to The Boss, not from the top down, and I’d never given a thought to the significance of A Boss, an administrator, and his or her attitude. But there it was.
Boy oh boy, it’s a pleasure to read good news about Chicago.
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This reminds me of letting MBA's run manufacturing facilities. Manufacturing is now down to 11% of GDP. The "workers" may not have all the answers but they do see reality.
Sure, good educators and governmental support make good schools. There's nothing surprising about this except to Betsy DeVos
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It really is simple:
Support public education wholeheartedly instead of demonizing educators and schools for profit and politics.
The mere fact that self-made heiress Betsy DeVos is allowed to pretend to care about education says everything we need to know about current policy makers' respect for public education and its role in that abandoned form of government called democracy.
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"self-made heiress" is an oxymoron.
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Read some of the comments from the obvious teachers and other education professionals. Nothing, especially this, is simple.
Don’t conflate graduation rates with education. The millennial generation is the “most educated” but half of them have degrees in alternative dance painting therapy from what I can see.
Just because the school gives you the paper doesn’t mean you actually learned, it might mean they passed you along until you were off their stats book.
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"When you learn about successful principals, you keep coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination. We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation."
And then think about the group of grifters and incompetents in the White House and our secretary of education -A mindless political hack!
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Brooks writes that: "energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination." are the needed qualities of leadership. True enough but his point would be better if he noted those qualities are lacking at the highest levels of national leadership. DeVos and Trump are the faces of federal education and combine ignorance and arrogance in equal measure, thus disdaining the very idea that knowledge gained through education is worthwhile. Just inherit a lot of money and follow your "gut' and you "don't need no education".
"Good leaders make good schools."
Then how do you explain Betsy DeVos? Yes, the Secretary of Education! Let's give blame where blame is due -- Trump. First of all, it's yet another of way too many examples that shatter Trump's self-promoted image of being a "successful businessman" who hires only the "best people."
And it's Trump's toxic mixture of pathological liar and delusional mess that allows him to shamelessly insist that his Administration is running like a "fine-tuned machine."
Betsy DeVos, Educational Leader. Any questions?
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I have known two superior school principals from my children's years in school. Both knew every student in their school. Both spent more time welcoming all the parents--the poor ones, too--than they did trying to please the various constituencies who advocate for their own children and their own agendas and don't worry about anyone else. One was an elementary school principal and the other a high school principal who greeted students every morning as they came into the building. At the time each was a principal, those were the best schools in our county and perhaps the region. Remember when we used to consider education not just a profession but a calling (and teachers were revered and not treated like dirt)? This is what I love about David Brooks even when I disagree with him: he is at heart an idealist. He may even remember when evangelical meant "spreading the GOOD news."
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New York City spends close to a million dollars a year to educate one class of 33 students. The results are pitiful. Thirty billion dollars divided by one million students.
If you see graduation rates climbing quickly, the cause is the schools lowered standards for graduation. If they say they raised standards and graduation rates increase, it simply isn't true.
Selection of administrators is based on nepotism, cronyism, and old boy networks everywhere in the USA from the biggest cities to the smallest counties. Some highly qualified people are chosen but it is not because they are the most qualified but because they are in one the networks and qualified. Teachers are often selected because of family relationships. If you don't believe it is true in your school, go and investigate.
There is no perfect solution but if we were to try and utilize Adam Smiths invisible hand and reward success it might improve. Allow teachers to choose their own principals and give them autonomy. Allow parents to choose which schools they send their children to. Reward teachers by how successful they are at attracting students.
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Take the time to read the research. Every teacher doing whatever the heck they want is exactly the problem. This creates a complete lack of education continuity for students. And I think that somehow in your analysis you forget about the kids.
Check out the decades of research from CCSR to understand the importance of school leadership in creating the conditions for driving student achievement. In no way are teachers left out of the equation.
"New York City spends close to a million dollars a year to educate one class of 33 students."
The problem with schools is in that sentence-- a single class should not have 33 students! After over a decade spent teaching in both independent and public schools, and being the product of a public school education myself, I can tell you that absolutely no class should have more than 16 students. Having a favorable student-teacher ratio is, in my opinion, the single biggest factor that leads to success for schools-- principals, teachers, and students alike.
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"... Allow parents to choose which schools they send their children to. Reward teachers by how successful they are at attracting students. ..."
A significant number of parents are choosing home schooling or christian madrasas. Not good.
The correlation between good teachers and charismatic teachers has not been established, and I would speculate is weak.
I recall 1 or 2 charismatic teachers in the catholic parochial school I spent 8 years at back in the 50's and 60's, but any time spent with rote memorization of the Baltimore catechism was a total waste of time, time that should have been spent learner 'real' and useful things such as critical thinking skills.
It is true that good leaders make good schools but it is true that good anything blank makes good blank. The DANGER with this statement is when a "good leader" that has never taught a classroom gets hired as a leader just because they are good. And that is not good for Education which has been proven over and over again!
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Yes, good leaders make good schools. Which is why having Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary is so disastrous for schools. An avowed enemy of public education, woefully unprepared and unfit for the job, her cringeworthy interview on 60 minutes would be instant grounds for dismissal in any other First World country. But in what is rapidly becoming our banana republic, she is one of Trump's "best people." Sad.
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DeVos and Trump are not the issue here, as much as the left would like them to be. The issue is and has always been what a principal is supposed to be and that is the principal teacher, not a good "buddy" to the staff or a union negotiator, or a data driven educator, but someone who can transmit the best methodology, who knows what teachers have to deal with every day, and who can encourage them to do their best, who can develop a climate of the best expectations and then help teachers and students and parents reach those goals. And in the end, the principal has to be able to evaluate teachers and separate the "wheat from the chaff" and be willing to take the heat and steer those who cannot or will not teach effectively to find other employment. DeVos and Trump can't do a thing to select good principals.
I have been observing the implosion of the second worst school district in the state for the last two years. It began when a bad school board passed over an administrator who had been an outstanding principal, for a sociopath from out of town.
His secret to success was never being in;the office, always in classrooms, 400 home visits a year, and an absolute focus on improving standards.
Principals are the number one key to improving performance.
The rest, is all tertiary.
Brooks writes as if the nation’s problems are soluble by tweaking conditions here and there. OK, good leadership is more than a tweak. But leadership for what? Schools are about a lot more than "performance." Americans seem to be dominated by metrics: they're everywhere, from baseball averages to GDP, unemployment, and all kinds of measures of performance and volatility. Obsession with metrics gave America the Edsel and the tragic farce of Vietnam.
Schools? Is there not a difference between (a) a really charismatic, inspiring leader who makes creationism seem like a holy grail and (b) one equally inspiring but who sees beauty not only in nature but in the quest to discover how nature works? The first insists on taking refuge in the past. The second accepts uncertainty and makes an adventure of it. We hear over and over that it's for parents to decide how their children shall be educated. Skipping over the hidden implications, let’s just ask: does Betsy Devos represent all the parents of America? Does Trump?
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"These improvements are proof that demography is not destiny, that bad things happening in a neighborhood do not have to determine student outcomes."
Who ever said either of those things, as baldly and as badly as that?
Who would ever say that a child traumatized by violence in his neighborhood, whose building is full of gangs, drugs, and prostitution, could never possibly rise above it and prevail?
Who would say that growing up in impoverished, blighted, neighborhoods, among anxiety about rent, utilities, food, and the specter of homelessness, makes it impossible to do well?
Who ever said that excellence and ingenuity have no positive impact?
"We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation."
Who is out there saying that social transformation follows personal stagnation and sloth?
Is the intention of publishing this revelation to shame the millions of illiterate children who leave school each year? Should they, their parents, their community, and their teachers know they all fell short of something, that privileged children in well funded schools don't much need to think about?
Is it impossible to say that gifted, proactive, determined, leaders in schools can make a big difference without his favorite polemic: If such luck isn't on your side, you lack good character traits.
Many years ago, we were looking for a house. We visited two junior high schools. In the school district we chose, the principal walked us through the building. Kids were raising their hands, answering questions. One, seeing the principal, called out, "Hi, Mr. Wilson!" and other kids waved. Mr. Wilson died a few years later, but he's my model of a principal.
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Mr. Brooks fails to mention a few things in his high praise for urban schools. In Chicago and New Orleans there was a major exodus of poor people from these cities during the time frame mentioned. In Chicago much of the public housing was destroyed in the early 2000s and city lost over 200,000 people from 2000-2010. New Orleans lost a large percentage of its poor population in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005. This is a significant factor in the numbers mentioned.
Moreover, in his instinctive praise for Rahm Emanuel and his appointed school CEOs, because Chicago has an unelected school board, Mr. Brooks fails to mention that in Emanuel's 8 years in office the school system has had 4 CEOs, one of which was in legal trouble because of activities during her tenure as CEO of Chicago Public schools. Also during Arne Duncan's reign, due to his turnaround policies, violence in Chicago Public Schools spiked dramatically. If these schools systems have succeeded it is not because of many of the wrong headed policies fo the leaders mentioned in this article but because of the tremendous dedication of the teachers and faculty of these schools.
"Social transformation follows personal transformation."
What a shame that the present national leadership will not or cannot reinforce that sentiment.
“We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation.”
Enough said
A plague of inner city schools is chronic absenteeism. Missing from the article is what these Principals did to address this problem. Had it not been addressed, the results would not have been as positive.
In many NYC inner city public schools, more than a quarter of the students miss a month or more of school.
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We called him the "Buzzer". Our Principal would be buzzing around the school between classes, checking on all. With a smile. But make no mistake, discipline was rampant throughout. A public high school covering the 7th-12th grades. We achieved some of the highest SAT scores and numerous scholarships. Years 1950-1960, Massachusetts.
The best leaders I have had the pleasure to work with/under and over, where those that came up through the ranks. Not just 2-3yrs. and failing upwards. Decades in the trenches! On the job with those that do the work.
The manager that knows how each operation of the plant and the material and labor necessary to move said product along successfully will always be more respected and looked up-to than the bosses son who popped out with an MBA and now attempts to play boss without a clue as to the workings of said plant.
Whew...
Same goes for the school. The educator that has put in the time. Understands the needs for each grade. The need and ability to discipline and or, remove the constantly disruptive and or violent child. A principal that will work with the staff. Not lord over them. A principal that will stand up for, and back a fellow educator, instead of cow-towing to a parent and or school board. And yes, a leader that will instruct and or discipline a teacher that needs to be corrected.
End the latest fad curriculums. The renamed philosophy to spend $$$ upon.
This mass push for testing and data. Might as well as put the children into halters and factory farms. These are our future. NOT a business.
Support your local teachers.
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As an educator in the trenches for 17 years, your comments have hit the nail on the head!
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Thanks Ms. Eck.
I follow in a long line of educators.
A grandmother, two parents, my spouse and many friends.
(Doesn't explain my run-on sentences and poor grammar...)
I am in awe of those that can do the job.
Thanks for your service.
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I don't want to discount the affective measures you have illustrated in this article. But the by-the-way you gave to discipline was striking. I taught in an urban high school in a rough neighborhood for the first half of my teaching career, and our school's environment, unlike some of those in the district, was orderly and conducive to learning. The principal had been there for more than twenty-five years. Most of the staff spent their entire careers there. I can't say that student achievement was above average, but the school functioned as a school should. And why? The principal was strict. Instituted rules for punctuality. Supported teachers' disciplinary measures. Had a boys' dean and a girls' dean to deal with disruptive students. Used the now-disgraced measures of suspension and detention--mainly to get parents involved. Even closed the lunchroom (a notorious hotbed of disruption)... This principal's forte was discipline--he was legendary--and I'll tell you what: the school worked. When he retired, a young, affective fellow with a lot of good ideas for restructuring took over--and the school went sideways. I wouldn't give short shrift to discipline as a primary principal-talent.
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For anyone interested in this topic read Samuel Casey Carter’s book “ No Excuses : Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools” (2000). The message for school leadership has been out there for a long time and it people fail to see how important leadership of the top can make or break a school including its performance and culture. Thank you David Brooks for keeping this top of mind.
American education?
The first twelve years of education of the American child appear to be run on little more than the philosophy that the child must be fixed, repaired, primarily in impulse, grown straight, which is to say school is too similar to a prison for comfort, with best schools having the best principals (wardens) and with the best records of students "doing time" (least amount of delinquency, best grades) and this is supported in the fact that a high school education today only is worth nothing in society, it just means you were satisfactorily there, did your time.
And if you want to be something in society, you go on to higher education, which is a business monopoly on what it means to be one of the better humans in society, and it is premised on primarily that the autodidact is nothing in society, equivalent or less to the mere high school graduate, and that to become a quality member of society one must pay a vast amount of money for tuition, spend a number of years, and arrive at the degree which demonstrates that one is at the pinnacle of society, an expert in something.
It's all very tidy when you think of it, perfectly math/geometric: Your first twelve years are starting from nothing, working through largely a prison framework, to the mere average at best of being a high school graduate, and then the whole scheme is followed by higher education which is business/religious in framework, where you pay, work and are or are not deemed by others expert...
Washington, DC schools have been faking it. They have been graduating "students" who haven't been attending classes.
1
"We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong."
Yes, Republicans have always been wrong about this. See POTUS.
Public schools have themselves to blame for allowing individuals with little teaching experience to become principals. Fifteen years in an upper level classroom (9-12) should be a minimum hiring requirement, but sadly it isn't in many districts. What we have instead are people who entered the profession with one aim in mind: to get out of he classroom ASAP so they can boost their salary as administrators.
5
Redweather, I came here to say the same thing! In my experience, the best principals had been outstanding teachers first. The worst were people who took a few classes in “school administration” so they could get the certificate needed to become principals as soon as possible to get the salary boost but had no aptitude for the job. Unlike other professions, school administration is self-selected rather than being promoted up from the ranks based on merit, skill, and leadership ability.
3
"...if you want to learn how to improve city schools, look how Washington, New Orleans and Chicago are already doing it."
I think that the US should start looking outside its own borders for ideas. Look around the world at nations where schooling works well (based on measurable results) and copy that, not a few schools in Chicago.
The big question is whether schools should be public or private. What you will find is that what works is a good public system where parents have little choice.
And Strong Leaders Make Strong Systems, Inspire Young People, Graduate an Empowered Generation...
Dems, what is the PARTY MESSAGE? We need to get Education and many other systems back on track. But - we must win back seats in order to do so.
I agree Mr. Brooks. The only thing I would add is that, along with a good principal, the school needs to be supported by adequate funding. Even raise taxes if necessary.....
This is all quite nice, but please just do the math. At 365 days and 16 hours each day awake, there are 5840 waking hours in a year. A school year would be something close to 180 days at 8 hours a day or 1440 hours a year. This means that a student spends ca. 75% of their waking hours someplace else than school. [Add another 90 days of 6 hours and the student still is still over 60% away from school.]
Do the best you can on leadership, but 3 times the hours in school are in the hands of parents and neighborhoods.
The 75% have more to do with educational success than the 25%. I would recommend consideration of putting my money there.
Well it would be good to replace Betsy Devos with some of the leaders mentioned in the article. Even amongst the incredibly unqualified Trump candidate Betsy Devos stands out as being extra bad at her leadership job.
Fundamentally, ownership, integrity and accountability are the key. This is true to every operation. I think school should be run like a business and principles are CEOs. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about the typical American cooperations, which only care about share holders' short-term interests. I am talking about a responsible business which tries to build a mutually beneficial relationship with the community. Productivity measurements should be implemented but the outcomes should be measured by years but not quarters. Educational institutions are not efficient and they are lack of accountabilities. The problems are chronical. Unions are the problems. Salary increase should be based on merits and milestones. Most schools are not performing well so teachers should not get a raise. In fact, teachers with poor performance should be fired. The same thing is true to people in the administration including the principle. A better measurement is college graduation rate but not high school graduation rate. A school can play tricks to graduate as many students as possible but these students have no chance to succeed and many of them won't even go to college.
This country is spending so much money on education. But the outcomes are not great. Business-as-usual is not acceptable anymore. Accountability by objective measurements and milestones should be implemented. The education-industrial complex should be disrupted. Unions should be dismantled.
Totally agree. My son teaches high school science in one of the poorest districts in NYC. The school has a high graduation rate and the students are incredibly driven and motivated despite coming from poor and broken families. The Principal at this school has successfully set the tone and the teachers and students work tirelessly towards higher attendance, achievement, excellence and the goal to attend a good college. May their dreams come true.
4
The theme of Mr. Brooks' column seems to be that if we just had more Supermen principals, everything would be OK. I think we continue to place too much of a burden on our principals, and our schools in general.
Today we expect principals to be like CEOs, not educators.
They have to manage a P&L; juggle the needs of a host of "stakeholders" with different long and short term goals (students, parents, teachers, teachers unions, school board members, politicians, community leaders, police); run a full-fledged security operation; deal with not only the educational needs of their students, but also every other need--social, nutritional, psychological and medical; address ever-changing societal expectations, like understanding and welcoming LGBTQ students; provide after-school care for students; and now, if Trump has his way, oversee the training and arming of teachers to defend students from racist hate-mongers who have managed to procure weapons of war.
And yet, most of the principals in our schools still manage to display the characteristics Mr. Brooks lauds in his last paragraph.
We continue to expect our schools and the people who run them to solve too many societal problems, in large part because our politicians are too corrupt or incompetent to do so.
To return to my CEO analogy, Wall Street analysts would probably say that schools should focus on their core mission, which is education. Unfortunately, that is unlikely, at least anytime soon.
115
Actually, you are wrong. The best schools take the principal out of being the Chief Disciplinarian and has them as the Chief Teacher. All day long she/he are empowering the staff to empower students so that everyone is taking responsibility for the learning experience. This is what is good for people.
My sister works for Center for Educational Learning out of the University of Washington. She travels across the country training sups, principals, etc. of the most socioeconomic challenged schools on how to do exactly what David Brooks is writing about and everyone is appreciating the change.
2
I read Mr. Brooks as pointing out the importance of leadership. He does not say that a good leader is sufficient ("everything would be OK") but certainly necessary.
The core mission is education. The principals written about here clearly understand that to provide a quality education the environment must support it. Bravo.
(I taught public school in bed sty for 10 years and it was without question the hardest job I ever had.)
Too bad there wasn’t a Secretary of Education who knew what they were doing. Think how really great schools could be by getting all the support they should be getting.
1
Far too many principals nowadays have only a few years of classroom teaching experience under their belt before they start to work up the administrative ladder. Small wonder, then, that leadership and vision is lacking in such people.
2
Good leaders make good almost anything they lead. The problem is there aren't nearly enough good leaders. It's long been true and more so today, especially in K12 education where superintendents promise to make all students above average and the playing field level.
After 40 years in K12 education I'd say the best leaders are those who set realistic learning goals, provide the resources needed to make it happen, and then get out of the way. If the goals are reached,the best leaders praise those who did it.
What's needed most is more good students who want to learn more. It all starts at home, and then makes good schools.
5
A score of two bright and hopeful young students from inner-city minority families would visit us at Rock Plaza, accompanied by their counselor from Puerto Rico who would visit on occasion the homes of the parents. They gave him a warm welcome and above all, he had their trust and listened to their concerns.
An economist, whom I worked for at the time and his wife, adopted this class of Dreamers but they were wise and astute at recognizing that it was the choice of counselor who would hold the key in ensuring that these young minds would graduate from High School, and take us all to 'College' in a manner of speaking.
Before this took place, my boss was in an uproar about The State of our NYC School System and a Chancellor on the Board of Education was replaced. But reading what Mr. Brooks writes of how good schools are made, I am thinking of a father this early dawn, an American of Jewish ancestry, a friend of mine with a fine vision of the realities that were facing our young, who taught his son from his crib; his son, whose mother was African that he would be facing greater challenges.
He was dying at the time when he sent me "IF" and he asked that I read it. His son is now one of our fine scientists, and he pulled himself through on scholarship at High School in The Bronx.
The death of Chancellor Richard Green was to cause sorrow in 1989, the children liked him although he was stern. Giuliani took a pause in vying for the role of Mayor and New York City went dark.
As a former educator for over 30 years, I can assure you that classroom teachers are often observed and evaluated by program leaders, principals and sometimes their peers over the course of the school year. So who evaluates the principals and their "energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism and determination?" These qualities are only some of the ones teachers are expected to have on day 1. In the business world these are seen as "soft skills". Without attention to content, these skills will not hold up over time. I've been fortunate to work with principals who were former educators in the classroom often for several years. This background is vital in my opinion; far more than an administrative degree.
5
In business, we called it managing by walking around! It works because everyone knows you and what you want. Everyone knows you care for them and their results.
8
Concur with the column. Good principals, good teachers, a good school board and parental involvement is the recipe for success and there a lot of public schools out there that have succeeded. Too bad the current secretary of education doesn't understand this and thinks voucher and charter schools are the answer rather than reforming public schools using a known recipe.
6
There is a horrible flaw in Betsy DeVos' thinking about vouchers and charter schools. The family that has ambition and stability will make the "choice" for their child to leave a poor performing public school. What about the kids left behind in that school? Who cares about them? DeVos doesn't. She wants that smart kid to have a choice to go to a better school. To heck with those left behind? Why not pull all kids up by improving the school?
Although I think Mr. Brooks glosses over the importance of funding, fine teachers, and the incompetence of legislators treating education like a political football, his argument has merit. Speaking as a retired teacher who worked with several great principals and a few not so great, they do make a huge difference and it does not take eight years to make an impact.
Upon joining a new school district after fifteen in a previous one, I walked into my first teacher meeting with my new principal (Rick Jones), and was greeted by an energy and caring I found truly inspiring. As the year wore on I saw this same energy and caring projected across the spectrum with students, custodial staff, aides and the entire educational community. I watched as the demographics of our school changed and more inner city kids came into the fold, while Rick made adaptations to curriculum, staff and outreach which ultimately made a huge difference in student performance. Rick was loved by the students, community and staff alike and his famous quote of "let's go hard on the problems and easy on the people" still rings in my ears long after I have retired.
19
In a word, it's called DEDICATION. Dedication to the joy and challenges of learning. Dedication to meeting teacher and student needs as they evolve. Dedication to teacher enrichment. It also involves talent and experience, but dedication is more fundamental and essential.
How do we find dedicated teachers and principals? That, it would seem, is the nub of it.
6
Smart principals hire the best teachers and have the knowledge to identify the weak and the strength to advise the weak out of the profession.
Back in the days when talented women became teachers because of the lack of other opportunities, the principal was the principal teacher. Yes, leadership is important, but it's also true that the best principals build teams and unleash the power of their teachers.
I don't understand why it's not realized that great teachers are also great leaders. The principals' job is to lead the teachers and the teachers' job is to lead the students.
Even this piece, which correctly acknowledges the role of principals, doesn't give equal recognition to the role of teachers. Most school reform efforts have tried to bypass teachers. Big mistake.
13
Interesting that the formula for improvement is to take a page from the private school book. The Headmaster - Head, nowadays, often greeted students in the morning, shook hands with each student on their way home at the end of the day, and was a real presence through the school, and the school community. The more presence throughout the school day - with students, faculty, parents - the better. Leave the back office stuff to others to do with the principal's guidance and oversight.
4
Committed principals are a good part of successful schools, and teachers, and students. Too many of the principals that I worked under for my 25 year career were either at the end of their educational life and retired from teaching into administrative work, or they were climbing a career ladder into the educational stratosphere of superintendence.
Neither of these two classes of principal had real interest in their real work, but only in their own interests. The first wanted to get through the next hour, day, week, year without any lumps or bumps. The second wanted to prove what a great leader he/she was to follow. Neither the retiree or the striver had much interest in where they were, what they were doing, or who they were working with.
Find a principal who actually enjoys their job; knows people, and loves kids, and you will likely find a faculty that works together and kids that want to achieve in the classrooms. I have worked for all three types. The difference can be quite startling.
19
David, you wrote:
"Social transformation follows personal transformation."
I agree.
Society is nothing more than the logical extension of all of us.
If we wish to fundamentally change society, we merely have to summon the courage to change ourselves - and in certain cases, especially on the political right, to change the channel.
7
Who would have thunk that management is important? The process, not the title.
We are currently living in a time when we believe that every process can be managed and perfected through metrics - carefully designed numerical analysis which will drive the widget production and sales to perfection. The problem is that most of our high end processes don't use machines to produce widgets; they use people to produce creative output.
In schools both the capital equipment and the product are individual people, with individual talents and strengths. Metrics are less important than knowing and understanding those strengths and tilting the scale towards them. A good teacher can be cut off at the knees if told to teach to the workbook. And a bad teacher can get away with remaining bad.
So whatever secret sauce Chicago is using to find creative principals they need to share with other districts. And it wouldn't hurt if some of our corporations took a look too.
6
In my role at Mesa Community College leading a China Study Abroad program, I began working with Rhodes Junior High, which was just across the freeway from the college. I met Matt Devlin who was the principal. Energy and vision had taken a school that had declining enrollment and transformed it. They welcomed future teachers from WuYi University in China for a month. They participated in our Garbology program and students left with a plan that cut waste at the school. It was dynamic. Then with budget cuts and the need to close schools that all changed. The vision was scripted for Matt and the teachers at Rhodes. A wonderful example of how people are so important.
It also highlights how budgets can impact what was a school with dynamics. I have been convinced over the last decade that Republicans don't understand how the public school system is so valuable to our nation. I watched the cuts go deep in the largest community college system in the nation in Phoenix. I watched the UofA, NAU and ASU raise tuition and adjust. They did well despite the Arizona legislators efforts. They are all dynamic today despite the cuts because of leadership. I am watching Western Kentucky University currently laying off 150 people and making other changes. I am not sure the leadership realizes how cutting deep into the staff and faculty will potentially hurt the institution. They are raising tuition and elevating the standards for admission in the face of declining enrollment.
8
Here are some thoughts on this issue from my 50 plus years in teaching - here and in three other countries (mostly here).
ALL students must be able to read and WRITE at a high level. All good jobs require these skills. ALL students should learn an important foreign language - Mandarin, Spanish and Russian are valuable (and additional languages are also beneficial - the world is getting smaller and smaller). Math and science are a must for ALL students. ALL students must take physics, chemistry and biology. And ALL students must take algebra, advanced algebra, trigonometry and calculus. ALL should learn to play a musical instrument, and ALL students should learn a sport they can engage in for a lifetime - like tennis or swimming.
I was fortunate enough when I was young to teach in Malaysia (northern Borneo) in a junior high school and a high school (almost 50 years ago). All of the students took physics, biology, chemistry, advanced algebra, trig and calculus. This rarely happens in our schools because we tend to think that these subjects are too difficult for our kids. This short changes our boys and girls, and our country.
7
W. Michael O'Shea:
I have two Master's degrees and have never had physics, trig or calculus and I have managed quite well. I don't play any music instruments, don't know a foreign language, nor do I play a sport.
I have learned biology, chemistry, microbiology. I can read and write very well. I have taken algebra and I have had some of the social sciences. For most of my career I was a successful professor.
We need to do a better job of assessing a students talents, desires, and needs and then determine what education is appropriate for him/her.
28
Dear esp,
I know you "think you're fine", but imagine what you could be if you experience all the many ways of thinking that you have brushed off. Learning higher math and experience with the arts are not only skills, they transform the brain to allow different ways of thinking. That's why institutions like MIT, for example, insist in humanities courses for their students.
1
There is another reason for making sure students get a good education in all of the above areas. If they don't, they have far fewer choices about what to do in life. Of course, one can decide for a student from the age of ten onward that he or she must be a STEM major, in practical vs. theoretical ways, so as to get a job as a cog in the existing industrial-corporate machine. Isn't this a different version of the old vocational ed--or, for that matter, of soviet education systems? Much of education is indirect--you can't quantify with some crude statistical or financial efficiency how reading literature will lead to "critical thinking," much less imaginative and ethical growth. Students deserve exposure to as many high-quality intellectual disciplines as possible, for the sake of their own freedom of choice.
2
This well-intentioned article buys in to several fads and shares their blind spots.
First, you cite graduation and college matriculation rates, but can you say anything about *what* the students are learning? Can they comment thoughtfully on a work of literature? Can they identify fallacies in an argument? Can they prove an important theorem, such as the binomial theorem? Can they distinguish between subtly different political, ethical, or aesthetic positions? All this commotion about test scores, graduation rates, and so forth is empty unless the students are actually learning something.
Second, you describe "growth mindset" as a desirable feature in a school, not questioning the phrase. Yes, there's evidence that students perform better when they believe they can improve and know how to do so. Schools can help on both fronts. Yet it does not follow that any of us has an overarching "mindset" in the first place or that pure "growth mindset" would be good.
Third, you describe successful principals as "high-energy types," not recognizing the intellectual aspect of such leadership. I have known outstanding principals who did their work well because they understood both people and subject matter. Those with reserve may at times have more room to consider complex situations.
Finally (for now), you set up a false opposition between teachings wanting to be left alone and teachers needing to collaborate. Solitude and collaboration are both essential to teaching.
60
...an excellent critical analysis ... thank you
1
Students aren't stupid. They can see right through teachers, administrators and principals who are just marking time.
I was struck by how many words Mr. Brooks spent describing the best school principals with not much emphasis on how their qualities are received by the school's "customers"--students and parents.
A principal can be high energy, collaborative, and honest as all get out, but if they lack empathy, or concern for their students, the students will know.
Would you want to study hard and perform well if you thought the people overseeing your education really didn't care?
This goes beyond people pleasing: it's the essence of people management. To draw out the best---not just in peers but in the objects of your mission, the students--you need to show them you're their champion and want the very best for them.
There was a business book a few decades ago that stressed "management by walking around." Seemed pretty basic then, and sure seems appropriate now for schools.
Sitting alone in your office and calling students in one by one will never compete with rubbing elbows in the classroom and showing interest in--not judgment over--their performance.
14
One need only look at Betsy DeVos who means well but hasn’t got a clue although she may care about individual students who fit her framework for appropriate to receive help. She understands little about the necessity to improve public schools for everyone, as opposed to gutting them for profit. The nation will listen to experts in nearly every field of endeavor except education where every politician thinks s/he knows best and no one wants to put the money into education although they are happy to tell you that you need to spend money in order to get “the best” in any other field. Perhaps we ought to pay students in grade school with actual money. This might provide the parental incentive to get their kids to compete in the way Betsy DeVos believes is necessary.
74
I'm afraid that calling the public "customers" accepts the claim that "education" is just another commercial activity that needs to be run on business principals.
8
Betsy DeVos cares about individual students? C'mon! You're giving her way too much credit.
41
My teaching began long ago during the era of New Math, prompted in part by the Soviet space success. Today it's STEM. I started at a very small, rural Montana school. The superintendent, Jerome Kovis, was the finest pubic school administrator I've known. Although the Kovis personality was more intimidating than necessary, his interest in student success and his efforts to send qualified students on to major colleges and universities (some of them the students didn't know existed), was special and inspiring. He was also willing to innovate, to let me (for example) initiate an advance composition and literature class and produce plays aimed at proving the remarkably-hidden talents of those country-raised children. Later, after I had moved on, he surprised me with a letter of encouragement that remains inspiring.
Unfortunately, many of today's public school administrators are beset by bureaucracy and endless paper-work, so often the schools' leaders are trained to be effective paper-pushers. Many who choose administrative careers are naturally attracted to being "managers" rather than caring, inspiring, motivating leaders. And those who must manage large troubled urban and suburban institutions can find it very difficult to lead with the heart instead of by the numbers.
Our politicians and reluctance to fund, improve and rescue the nation's public school menagerie promotes remoteness and burn- out. Children are the major victims.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
13
“Principals set the culture by their very behavior — the message is the person.” Is this effect true for presidents too? I am afraid we will continue seeing a decline in civility and of democratic norms.
21
Just saw the movie Wonder, Patinkin played a great principal. There was a scene when a bully's mother was a bigger bully than the kid! It really has to be collaborative synergy with all involved. Kids have to be open to growing emotionally and socially, and that has to be fostered at their community life every day, wherever that may be. Even when parents are unavailable for whatever reason, community means "I've got your back, here's a safe place to grow." The students' communal reaction to the recent shooting is an example. They are getting the support to not give up their cause. It's about the journey, progress that can't always be measured into a statistic.
4
Tom Peters called it MBWA, management by wandering around in his powerful book In Search of Excellence many years ago. Simple stuff; profound consequences, whatever the business domain, including Education...and speaking as a 40 year career educator myself I would say it matters even more in schools. Still rarely done enough. What a difference it makes in establishing and reinforcing the cultures David Brooks describes that elevate school excellence!
Historicaly good principals have not been "administrators and middle managers, overseeing budgets, discipline, schedules." They have been first rate, experienced educators who infuse their teachers and students with the skill and experience that they gained in the classroom.
They know what works, not because of statistics, but because they are master teachers themselves. But let's not forget that principals need to manage the education program, not falling plaster, overheated classrooms, lack of heat or up to date equipment.
Good leadership is not a substitute for a well funded school. And too often those who preach educational reform think that they are.
12
Can you define “well funded”? Is it $7500 per pupil or $12,500 or $22,500 per pupil?
Education means the development of the innate talents that we possess as humans. In this sense, personal transformation IS education.
However, we are still educating healthy students into a sick society, where we would literally rather have people get sick and die rather than pay for their healthcare. We pay twice as much as we should rather than have a little bit of sense and compassion for ourselves and our neighbors.
The ultimate point is that if we want our children to develop good character and values, the adults have to model that behavior and way of being first.
There is obviously a lot of work to be done in that respect.
6
"We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them."
Speak for yourself, Mr. Brooks. I never held this misconception.
5
Hmmm.... Not a word about the ability to shoot a gun or arm the faculty? We have a president who wants to "harden" schools and an education secretary who admits that it's never occurred to her to set foot in a low-performing school. We have a populace that voted in as president a man utterly lacking in trustworthiness, honesty, and optimism. To set up an expectation that chronically underresourced educators be superhuman (pushing a stand-up desk on wheels around all day?) in the face of the pernicious forces that undermine American society is a typically Republican solution.
5
Pretty sure the solution is: vouchers.
That is what Betsy believes and she should know.
My father was a successful manager of a retail store. He had a large office in the back that was so cluttered that he never used it. I asked him why. He took me onto the sales floor and told me, "I need to be here where the customers are".
The leadership of any organization needs to be where the "business" takes place. In schools, the business of teaching is done everywhere but in a principal's office. A successful principal will be where his/her teachers and students are.
3
This is a terrific, uplifting column, Mr. Brooks.
I agree with your premise that "Good leaders make good schools."
That said, I'm wondering if you caught Lesley Stahl's 60 Minutes interview of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Sunday night?
Do you think Secretary DeVos' ideas, insights and leadership are improving our schools?
Do you think she embodies and is spreading the character traits of the successful principals you are heralding in this column: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination.
Do you think Secretary DeVos is building a culture, Mr. Brooks?
181
She’s incapable of doing the job she’s been given, but she’s going to make a fair number of investors a nice bit of change from the public trough.
"Good Leaders Make Good Schools"
One might hope, although it's hard to prove ...
What the social sciences definitely prove, however, is that Good Students Make Good Schools.
6
"....social sciences definitely prove...."
WRONG !
Social science is based on interpretation of data.
Give the same data to another group of social scientists (barf) and you may get an interpretation totally in contradiction.
" Social science " aint science, and can't "prove" anything.
I'm sorry, but I don't remember any time when there was serious thought that a school could be transformed without strong, good leadership.
11
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for an illuminating article.
We must resist the temptation that there is one single thing that will improve all schools. Good principles are crucial, but so are good teachers. So are good parents, yes, and some of the responsibilities lies with the students themselves. But none of these things are isolated. My wife teaches 3rd grade where 25% of the students are homeless. And some of their parents are heroes, some have given up. Corporations are pushing iPads into 3rd graders classroom, when the kids are hungry. Corporations are pushing test regimens on the kids, teachers, principles, administrators, when there are 5th graders who don't know how to read - and their teachers don't know or don't want to know. Corporations are pushing Ritalin and other psycho stimulants on our kids when the stresses of poverty are too much to handle, or the parents are not able or willing to give a child the sense of safety or stability it needs to calm down. Can we blame the parents?
In this environment principles have to be hyper energetic heroes, but who is fueling them? Teachers need to be heroes, but who is fueling them? Teachers and principles are human's, too, and we need to support them, physically, financially, but also emotionally and psychologically.
35
I wonder how the principal who makes spontaneous visits to classrooms as frequently as cited has negotiated a truce with the teachers unions. There is hardly a teachers contract in the country that doesnt require advance notice before a principal enters a classroom to observe a teacher. And, for tenured teachers perhaps only once, maybe twice a year. I certainly agree that strong principals are major influences on school performance, but so many of them have their power reduced and their efforts hamstrung by protective teacher contracts.
I don't know about contracts elsewhere, but in NYC, principals may visit classrooms as often as they wish. In addition, evaluative observations of each teacher must be conducted a minimum of 3-6 times per year (depending on several factors). Unless it's a formal observation which requires a meeting before and after the lesson, observations may be unannounced. Principals write up detailed reports using a well-regarded teacher practice rubric approved by the union, and ratings must be supported by evidence from the observation (transcripts of discussions and instruction, and descriptions of student engagement). The contract also provides options for teacher intervisitations so that peers can improve their pedagogy and practice together. That's the contract, and in my experience, that's actually what happens. In my hardworking, high poverty NYC public school, teachers and administration are committed to their work, there's a high level of trust, and everybody's door is open for feedback and professional growth.
21
I think you are confusing formal observations, which are set up in advance, and informal visits, which are to touch base with students during learning as much as see how the teacher is doing. Principals can wander in for a visit any time.
13
My experience is that principals can enter a classroom any time they like. However, they can not use anything they observe to evaluate that teacher.
The formal evaluation process is usually incredibly Byzantine, and requires advanced notice. Principals are generally buried in ridiculous paperwork and have little time to support teachers. Good teachers want as much feedback as possible.
Isn't this obvious? Our local high school had a leader. He was just as this column describes: rarely in his office, always walking the halls calling teachers and students by name, stopping to talk with parents, exuding energy and encouragement. He made decisions himself when things weren't working; he devised solutions with teachers and parents and gave them the go-ahead. No waiting. No layers of management. He was replaced by two co-principals who were managers through and through. They were never in the hallways. Their doors were almost always closed. You could just feel the energy drain away from the school.
37
Great companies have great CEO's and so do schools. Very interesting research.
If we can solidify great school leadership at the top, it will solve the problem of teacher burnout and sub-par teaching, too. Good culture spreads as well as bad.
Hope in 10 years principal salaries aren't in the millions like CEO's!
A great article. And I think David has tapped into a gaping yawn in our public school systems. One that I don't think, unfortunately, the current Secretary of Education is going to contribute much of value to and will probably more like, take away some of what is there that's good.
I do agree with some who post here that we don't value education in this country. We leave it to mostly property taxes to fund the schools. And that's a built-in failure route for poor neighborhoods where properties are of little taxable value. But we don't pay educators/teachers well enough. I have several in my family. They are dedicated. But sacrifice a great deal because of salaries that don't justify all the years of education to prepare. And we don't seem to be able to attract top people to fill the posts for principle and vice-principle.
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In Germany, in the mid-1980s, I knew many people who taught or planned to teach. Back in the US, I had very few friends who taught.
The difference? In Germany, teaching is a solid middle class job, which is respected.
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smc1: My friend and I were required to take an upper level education class to complete our master's degrees in a profession other than teaching.
The education students (who were seeking a master's degree in education), were unable to articulate a thought, were unable to complete a sentence, were unable to write a sentence. It was embarrassing. My friend and I received A's. None of the teacher students received anything higher than a C in this class which was by far the easiest class my friend and I had ever taken.
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This is not all that surprising. I remember studies from 40+ years ago that essentially found that the specific curriculum was far less important than having someone in a position of leadership who passionately believed in it and challenged everyone to make it work.
In a sense, it's not all that different from many other situations. We work harder and better when there's an inspirational leader who pushes us to move beyond "business as usual" to keep improving what we do.
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If you're looking to Washington, DC, New Orleans, and Chicago for information on how to improve schools, you're only looking at urban systems all cast in the "reform" mode where there are plenty of incentives to juke the stats, as seen by the latest information on the illegitimate increase in high school graduation rates in DC. Yes, principals are important in building a school culture, but sometimes, it's the longtime teachers who train the principals in that culture, or the parents who train the new teachers. School culture is very important, but there are lots of great ways to create it. Focusing exclusively on principals feels a lot like the "flavor of the month" school "reforms" that have been plaguing us for two decades now, but by all means, let's keep researching and trying to figure out all the many factors that improve education.
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The fraudulent New Orleans "reform miracle" has created the 20-something TFA principal who earns over $100k -- a welfare program for American privileged kids from hither and yon. The reform propaganda has gone unchallenged b/c the middle-upper class families that aren't in the state-run system are blissfully ignorant of nor do they care about its atrocities. They swallow the lies of the ruling cabal who brought privatization to the city while it was evacuated after Katrina by lobbying the legislature to fire all employees of NO Public Schools and owns the media that reports nothing but lies. I've seen it up close as a citizen curious about how miraculous reform occurred overnight in a city legendary for corruption. The bottom line? There is no reform or miracle; it's an illusion created by experts at PR and callous disregard for democratic processes. NOLA privatization has rendered a post-K humanitarian crisis the status quo, visible in the off-the-charts youth/young adult crime rates: can't anyone put 2+2 together? They won't, because the engine for the new "New Orleans" has been school privatization and the flood of privileged white people who poured in as scavengers, driving gentrification and more displacement of native New Orleanians. It's an abomination.
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@lch
Really? You think that teachers or parents can "train" principals. Where and how does that happen?
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Of course, one needs to consider the quality and effectiveness of those former six years of public education that Chicago is now cramming into five years of schooling; and David skips by on that. It could well be that those six years actually are worth three years in how well they prepare kids for college work, yet they’re still taking five years to shovel it.
It seems that some are DEFINING “talented leadership” by good school performance. That Minnesota-Toronto university study appears to simply assume that if school performance is high, then the principal must be “talented”; yet talented leaders could exist at low-performing schools where the low performance is attributable to factors other than his or her “talent”. As a general matter, it’s probably never bad that a leader be “talented”, but by implying such a direct and exclusive relationship, we could be missing school performance factors we should be considering.
Just sayin’. I love a tight argument, and I live to be contrary.
It’s good news about Chicago schools, and heaven knows Chicago needs all it can get. It’s good to see that Rahmbo may have a legitimate legacy OTHER than being the guy who tried to teach Barack Obama how to pull wings off flies (and, thankfully, failed).
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The six years of learning in five years refers to six years of growth as measured by testing in reading and math as cohorts move through the grades. It does not mean that they are cramming six years of material into five years of school. Growth tells much more about the effectiveness of instruction at a school than test scores alone. (Betsy DeVos did not understand the difference between scores and growth when questioned about it in her confirmation hearings, but hey, she's not a principal. She's only US Sec. of Ed.) For students to make accelerated growth over several years means that effective instruction is happening across the grades, which happens under strong, knowledgable, dedicated leadership.
The study does not assume that high scores mean good leadership. What is impressive about the growth in Chicago schools is that their students disproportionally experience factors that do contribute to low school performance (ex: 77% of Chicago school children qualify for Free and Reduced Price Lunches).
Having taught in four schools in one district, I know the difference the principal makes. Good principals coach, know effective teaching strategies, understand how students learn, work with staff as a team, provide opportunities for meaningful teacher learning, create a culture of learning, and much much more.
This article explains in more detail.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/upshot/a-better-way-to-co...
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Mr. Luettgen claims to "love a tight argument" (as I do) and then proceeds to blast Mayor Emanuel on the basis of a tale that is irrelevant if not apocryphal. This is certainly a loose canon, not a tight argument.
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@Richard, I object to the title of this Op-Ed, but the columnists don't always title them so I can't fault David. I would title it "Good Leaders Maximize the Potential of Schools."
I don't even know what makes a "Good School" anymore. Our competition is global, and although my state performs well on international PISA tests, most of the nation does not. So, while any improvement in any district in any state is welcome, clearly there are many factors other than leadership that determine absolute outcomes. I refuse to believe my state has some sort of monopoly on fantastic principals.
And, I'm sure David understands that. He just likes to promote the 'community kumbaya' approach to solving every single problem in America. Asking faculty to "create a vision of a school that's perfect" by scribbling their thoughts on a whiteboard is just a ton of fun for all, but it's only step zero. If I were in that room, I would have picked up a marker and drawn a dollar sign.
Used to work in a GREAT public HS in the Bronx. Why was it great, because we had a wonderful principal who had been a teacher for nearly 3 decades before becoming a principal. She respected her staff and treated us like professionals and we gave our students 1000% because she gave that much, too.
Enter Bloomberg and his Principal's Academy, a disaster for moving inexperienced teachers into administrative positions, and Chancellors who had little respect for teachers. Add to this a climate in which every one of society's ills was blamed on public school teachers. But millionaire's know best what is wrong with schools and how to fix them. Don't talk to an actual teacher!
Long story, short, our wonderful principal retired. She was replaced by an incompetent egomaniac that was favored by the local Bronx superintendent. A man with no skills, no leadership and a bully to boot. The school is now a dangerous place for students and teachers. 90% of the teachers left and the quality has diminished for the remaining students. I know because I keep in touch with my former freshmen, who are now juniors. They lament their choice of schools. Two years is all it took for one man to destroy a very effective school.
The teachers all feel like we escaped. For the children who miss an education, its a tragedy.
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Agreed. The outright propaganda around New Orleans's reform "miracle "is strictly that. Having been on the ground there as a curious citizen, I spent 2 years looking at the state-run charter system where the overwhelming majority of the city's impoverished children and youth with special needs have been warehoused, while the Orleans Parish School Board has held jurisdiction over the schools that are the touted high-performing, but keep in mind they stand out only b/c the overall state performance scores are near the US bottom. Moreover, the media of New Orleans & Baton Rouge is owned by the cabal that brought privatization to the city to begin with. Few realize that while the city was evacuated post-Katrina, the state legislature fired every single employee of NO Public Schools system, funneled $850m in USDOE funds to charters and bring in TFA, whose untrained, deer-in-the-headlight corps members have done little other than spend years punishing students for absurd infractions like chewing gum with the insulting protocols of snapping fingers and calling for Level Zero that characterizes their brand of robotic "education." Meanwhile veteran NOPS teachers who passed tests were hired back after Katrina and they fill the Orleans Parish charters where recognizable education takes place. To call the NOLA charter scam corrupt doesn't begin to convey the ongoing, de-humanizing degradation of the city's most at-risk students now 12 years in the making.
5
Yes! I'm a retired teacher of 25+ years, mostly in Chicago. Principals must be selected from a pool of energetic, enthusiastic, effective teachers with years of experience! Too often the teachers who disliked teaching brush up their resumes with coursework and express enthusiasm prompted by the chance to escape teaching in interviews.
1
"Enter Bloomberg and his Principal's Academy, a disaster for moving inexperienced teachers into administrative positions,
Blomberg has the same effect on his gun-control tours. He has no knowledge of firearms or the 2Amend but he is preaching his gospel to the masses.
So true, Mr. Brooks.
As long long-time small public high school principal, who likes to believe that over his career he did more good than harm, this time around you get far more agreement from me than usual.
Principals (leaders anywhere) do matter. Of course, they do. So does a a welcoming culture that collaborates to pursue high standards for everyone in the school, students, teachers and support staff. The most successful schools even export that positive vision to their communities, creating and benefitting from the shared synergy.
That said, one further thought.
To be successful principals have to have relatively free rein, and not be subject to constant second-guessing by their administrative superiors, school boards or influential community members who might have the ear of either. As you say, research and experience both tell us that real cultural change in schools takes time, and principals, no matter how principled, energetic, dedicated they might be, can't function when they are constantly under siege.
When they are, you have an obvious explanations of the "burnout" you mention.
And of course the constant Right Wing attack on all our public institutions, especially schools with all their "lazy teachers and overpaid administrators," doesn't help.
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The problem is not test scores and educational institutions. The problem is this hegemonic push to convince our society that "continuing education" is the key to a great country. All continuing education does is create a society that never does anything and ultimately is disenfranchised by the teachers and institutions they give all their time, money and effort. Kids need to chose a path. Not have the path chosen for them by people who do not have their interests at heart. Wake up Brooks.
1
Thank you David for this positive reporting. Now if only these proven methods could be amplified by federal policies.
Oops, I forgot, the most influential part of the donor base of the GOP doesn't want the government involved in education and would prefer the whole system was privatized.
Have you officially become a Democrat yet? Your Republican party left you at the station when it switched tracks to the extreme right.
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Switched tracks? More like, went off the rails.
Important insights, Mr. Brooks! Many, many years ago when I was pursuing my ph. d. in education and social psychology, my dissertation looked at the cognitive styles of those who pursue careers in administration. Those with more open, cognitive styles, the more entrepreneurial if you will, were disproportionately exited from the public schools. Eventually the bureaucracy wore them out and sadly, those who were left behind were the more rule oriented, black and white, closed cognitive styles.
The DNA that you describe is what schools desperately need....
There is no question that the most effective principals are authentic, passionate leaders who can build a culture that attracts other educators who are equally passionate about teaching, learning, and developing others. When you walk into a school with such a leader there is a 'smell to the place'. You can sense order tempered by excitement, and education with a mission. But first we need to throw away the rule book and let leaders lead. Most schools of education teach conformity rather than selecting and promoting 'raw talent' based on these 'gifts'.
11
Good teachers aren’t dependent upon a good principal, but a talented, dedicated leader defines a quality education program. Based on my years of experience as a parent of a public school student, the relationship between the principal and staff sets the tone for the entire school community. A good principal empowers their staff and everyone benefits. Parents sigh with relief!
I absolutely support efforts (policy?!) to train and retain talented education administrators. It is undoubtably a worthwhile effort. Unfortunately there is a more fundamental problem for American education: Americans don’t value education. Teachers are some of the lowest paid professionals, especially considering their years of training and the long-term impact of their work. Competitive college student generally don’t pursue education degrees. And consider the last presidential election: we had a “nerd” for a president and look what happened.
16
We understand the critical role of leadership in our football and basketball teams, our corporations and our churches, hospitals, police forces, even our cities. So, why is it a surprise that the exact same factors determine how successfully schools accomplish their mission, and how well their 'teams' of teachers and students actually perform?
Fortunately, David presents evidence here that might make a difference - unless its ignored or sent to the ideological dumpster by political hacks in Washington and elsewhere who themselves flagrantly lack the character traits of successful principles: "energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination".
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"What do principals do? They build a culture."
Amen, Mr. Brooks. Now if only you or some other pundit with access to Trump - Sean Hannity comes to mind - will tell it to Trump that leaders build a culture, not destroy it.
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Contrary to what you and Trump believe---the world does not revolve around Trump. This essay was about education. Not Trump. People constantly allow Trump to permeate every segment of their life. Every thought. Sad.
Good principals who are allowed to have a vision that encourages growth, professionalism, and support are at the root of this. All too often principals are driven from above by government policy.
9
I didn't think it was possible for someone outside of education to capture a key essential feature of successful schools in such a positive way. But David Brooks did it in this article! Now he also needs to follow up and explore other factors -- adequate resources and personnel, a strong arts program, adequate counseling services, a listening culture, help and support for children in difficulty, many extra-curricular activity options that interest students, career and technical education options, parent and community involvement, social and emotional learning supports, strong professional development that helps improve teaching and learning, less emphasis on standardized tests and more performance based assessments, and so on. Not a criticism -- the article is a great beginning!
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A great school is not an academic boot camp, it a community of nurturing hard working high functioning adults who never give up on the kids they have pledged to serve. I generally don't fully concur with David Brooks column, however, having served as an independent, private school headmaster for the past 32 years, and having also served as a classroom teacher in both public and private education since 1967, I am certain of Brooks' analysis. An educational leader sets the tone by working hard to advocate for students, teacher, and parents. Clearly, today's problems and challenges are complex and often deeply painful for the students whom we serve; and yet, a great school leader will work diligently to protect the people she or he is charged to serve. It is in the very nature of that service, that enduring dedication to the well being of kids and faculty, and, yes, parents, that great schools earn a reputation for quality.
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School improvement certainly is happening. Chicago is an excellent example and if you want to know what is at its core of their growing success check out the book Trust in Schools: A core resource for improvement. The study opened my eyes to the impact of trustworthy leadership on teachers, community and kids. If you want to dive into what it looks like in the trenches try the book (self-promotion alert, but principals and teachers have told me it is really helpful) The Invisible Classroom: Relationships, neuroscience and mindfulness in school.
4
Principals are important, but it is the classroom teacher that does the teaching. They need the skills to teach and that means more than giving tests and marking papers. They need a love of their subject matter and that means scholarship and continuing education for teachers. They also need the respect of their students, the cooperation of parents and the support of the public and that means an end to the blame game and salaries that match the contribution they make to society by educating its children.
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Wonderful, hopeful column in times of waning hope. Leadership is not only the key to improving schools and education, but in my life experience, it has been critical in all social and economic institutions including small and big businesses, government at all levels, churches, nonprofits, and the military. Show me a failing unit of any of these and I will show you a leadership problem. In my work life, when we replaced a manager at a failing unit with a proven leader, the results were incredible in terms of morale and accomplishment. So nice to highlight Chicago and other cities that are making a difference.
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I guess this comment can apply to Congress, can it not?