Handing over critical school operations to pricey outside consultants who don’t know what they are doing is kind of a sore subject in the school system at the moment. The bus mess is surely a cautionary tale, but Alvarez and Marsal are not alone. Outside consultants are practically a leitmotif of the Dept. of Education under Klein and Bloomberg. The issue bears looking further and harder.
Let’s ask what value uber-consultant Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) and other crack management consultants have contributed to training principals for the school system under the pricey Leadership Academy.
To date the Academy, which Klein and Bloomberg launched in 2003, has spent about $60 million and placed 164 principals. That’s $365,854 per principal, but who’s counting, especially when you get leaders of the caliber of Jolanta Rohloff. Remember her? She was the principal of Lafayette High School who changed student grades, painted over their mural and withheld their textbooks. It’s OK, though, because Lafayette is closing, along with four other schools. Three of those four had Leadership Academy principals as well.
OK, let’s not criticize by anecdote. Let’s take a hard look at the data. Are those principals getting results? Are their kids meeting standards?
A year ago, the DOE told the New York Times that early results were promising. But those results were based on a select sample. Using more current data on the 39 elementary and middle schools that have Leadership Academy principals from the 2004 graduating cohort, the results tend to swing the other way. Apples to apples comparisons are not easy in this instance, but here’s what the data show in a nutshell:
The percentage of students meeting English Language Arts standards in elementary and middle schools currently headed by the first group of Leadership Academy graduates rose 6.3 points in two years. By comparison, their home districts’ average gain was 9.4 points.
(In those schools with only one year of data available, the average percentage meeting ELA standards fell 5.6 points. Their home districts fell too, but by a lot less–1.3 points.)
In math, the LA-led schools gained 8 points. The comparable average district gain was 11 points.
The averages mask many extremes. At PS 84 in District 3, the percentage of students meeting reading standards fell 4.1 points over two years while the district on average gained 7.3 points. At IS 232 in District 18, math scores dropped 4.4 points while the district overall gained 20.5 points.
To be sure, there are standouts in the other direction. PS 65 in District 19 raised scores 24.7 points while the District gained 14.5. But on average, the Leadership Academy schools underperformed their districts.
It’s hard to believe that the DOE hasn’t crunched these numbers too, and come to a similar conclusion. But in their by-now familiar style, unfavorable results get buried deep in the bowels of Tweed. Only good numbers see the light of day, whether or not they are really valid or reliable.
The Leadership Academy needs tax-levy funding to continue. Its original private funding is almost used up. But if these results continue, how would Klein justify such spending? Judging schools by test scores alone isn’t fair, of course (but then neither is remapping bus routes in the middle of January without even checking to see if the street runs in the right direction). When you play with the public purse you have to meet basic standards. So far, the consultants haven’t met them.
6 Comments:
1 northbrooklyn
· Feb 13, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Would it be possible for edwise to publish a list of principals in the leadership program? Also, is the tc principal program the same or different? Thanks.
2 Maisie
· Feb 13, 2007 at 5:46 pm
The TC principal program is at Columbia Teachers College, right? If so, it is different. Leadership Academy is not run by a university. I’m not sure about a list. I’ll see.
3 Peter Goodman
· Feb 13, 2007 at 7:43 pm
New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS.org) is another Leadership Program that has a contract with the DOE (and many other school systems) – Selectees spend a year as a “resident principal” (actually like an ap)and then are placed in a school … on the other hand you can go to Touro College after school and receive a State Certification in two semesters …
4 Jackie Bennett
· Feb 13, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Leadership Academy is just another example of Klein’s fundamental misunderstanding of education. Sure, some good people will come out of it – because some good people will go into it. It won’t be the Academy that made them what they are, because, frankly, you can’t make principals the same way you make pharmaceutical salesman.
The whole notion is ridiculous.
You know what it’s like, for teachers watching Klein, seeing this one-track corporate mentality? It’s like watching a guy who knows only one ball game, baseball. So someone hands him a bowling ball. And what does he do? He hits it with a bat.
It’s all he knows.
And we keep saying, this isn’t baseball, Mr. Klein. But he’s not listening. He just keeps breaking more bats.
As for the principals themselves, nothing has been sadder for me in the last few years under Klein than seeing poorly-qualified principals try to break good teachers into the DoE mold of education. “Where are your mini lessons, conference notes, running records, where is your post-it, why don’t I see this, and that, and the other thing, why are the groups of chairs arranged to the left, not the right, and why doesn’t the flow-of-the-day done in four different colors, the way that we discussed…”
As if that’s what teaching is.
As if that is what leadership is.
5 xkaydet65
· Feb 15, 2007 at 5:04 pm
The whole Leadership Academy idea escapes me. How is a teacher of 8 years who earns his SDA from Hofstra and spends 18K doing it and teaching a full load supposed to feel when some ad agency guy gets to have his SDA fully paid for., and be paid 85K while attending the academy full time, no classes, no lesson plans to prepare, no conference notes or TANs to keep. This tells any teacher who tries to achieve an SDA or SAS one thing. “you’re a sucker!!!”
While I am not the teacher described above, I know plenty of folks who’ve taught seven to twelve years, who’ve spent thousands of dollars and time and energy in graduate school who now see very little chance of even being an AP let alone achieving a building principal position. Did Bloomie make his bucks promoting from outside his company?? It would seem he believes that is the way to go.
6 jd2718
· Feb 16, 2007 at 7:13 am
If he were trying to improve the system, and this is how he had chosen to do it, you are all right, it makes no sense.
But I think the evidence is fairly clear that he is trying hard to disrupt and disorganize public education in New York City. The Leadership Academy is part of that effort.