It's a Screwed-Up System

that gives one person so much power to destroy lives and careers. Few dictators have that kind of power--okay, I am engaging in a little bit of exaggeration here, but only slightly--a school principal is given and without any kind of accountability:

A not so well-guarded secret: principals (not all, but many) U-rate teachers for all kinds of reasons separate and distinct from the teachers’ pedagogical acumen: personality clash; bias based on race, sexuality or ethnicity; political or policy differences; a desire to make room on staff for a friend, friend of a friend, relative of a friend, etc. and, of course, money. (A veteran teacher costs an individual school twice what a brand new hire costs. U-Rate and dismiss a veteran? Ka-CHING! Lots of new money freed-up for whatever.)

This is one of the biggest problems with "reform": There is no acknowledgement of the extreme power imbalance between teachers and principals. Principals are very rarely fired outright but moved around, demoted, or promoted even.

The post was from November of last year. Here is an article about this "wonderful" principal in question:

In her ten years as principal, Reidy’s critics say, she has driven out precisely the kind of teachers who make Bronx Science special. They argue that her pedagogical approach—the sort of data-driven, systematized method the Bloomberg-era Department of Education has mandated elsewhere—might be appropriate for schools that are failing. But for Bronx Science? Teachers who don’t hew to Reidy’s methods, no matter how experienced or highly regarded, have come to be seen as a problem, the principal’s detractors say. “You were questioned on everything,” says Helen Kellert, an English teacher who took early retirement in 2009. And several younger, untenured teachers who have strayed from the dogma have been given unsatisfactory ratings—­often a career killer in the city schools and a historically rare event at Bronx Science.

Student groups, meanwhile, have demonstrated against Reidy. Alumni have started a private Facebook group, 1,600 members strong, to commiserate about the fading glory of the school and plot her ouster. One former teacher, Mark Sadok, who worked on Wall Street for more than 30 years before changing careers, has started a scholarship fund for the school that will be doled out only when Reidy leaves. Sadok taught social studies, but left in 2010 after Reidy gave him bad evaluations, which he disputed. He now pickets the school several times a month, carrying a sign that reads ABUSIVE ADMIN = DECLINING SCHOOL. “I have the time and the resources,” he tells me. “Teachers were seeing therapists because of her.”

Reidy, for her part, makes no apologies for the way she runs the school. When she arrived, in her view, the teaching methods were haphazard and ineffective, many of the teachers were self-satisfied and sclerotic, and students weren’t being challenged the way children of their ability ought to be. Standardized-test scores and other measures of achievement weren’t high enough for a school of this stature. If the downward trajectory weren’t reversed, Reidy believed, Bronx Science would risk losing its vaunted status. And so she began to undertake the most ambitious overhaul of the school in its 73-year history. If people are unhappy, she believes, that’s because change is inevitably upsetting. She seems to welcome the fight. When I contact her asking to visit, she replies right away, asking me to pick a day. “Let me know,” she says. “Nothing to hide here.”

This is somebody totally unfit for the job and intoxicated with her power. Of course they keep people like her around to destroy the school environment.

Make sure to read the comments following the article.