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One thing that I've become a firm believer in is that teaching isn't the problem; administration is. A good administrator or group of administrators will make t

One thing that I've become a firm believer in is that teaching isn't the problem; administration is. A good administrator or group of administrators will make the entire school into a team that can excel. They set a clear vision for what teachers need to know and do. They set clear standards for discipline, which are practiced in a fair, evenhanded, rational fashion. They uphold high standards and remove the non-hackers who can't do the job. They respond quickly to concerns and show that they legitimately care. Incidentally, one of the biggest reasons why private schools do so much better is that their administrations tend to be better. When a kid is acting up in class, he gets punished. When a teacher sucks, he gets fired. When concerns come up, they are addressed quickly and promptly. These things are so important that teachers willingly and happily take a pay cut just so that they can be in this environment. In contrast, a large number of public schools have horrifyingly incompetent administrators. The school then becomes a muddled mess where individual sparks are snuffed out by the chaos. Who would teach in such a place? One of my favorite models of people's performance is the "10-80-10" distribution. 10% are heroes, who will do an amazing job no matter how bad things get. 10% are shitbags, to be extirpated with prejudice. The remaining 80% will go with the flow. If your school is awesome, they'll approach the heroes. If it's garbage, they'll approach the shitbags. Administration is what decides where the 80% will go.

acjohnson55 12y ago
One of the few jobs I want even less than my old teaching job is my old principal's job. The role has insane expectations. The collective administration has to be capable of management, budgeting, academic master planning, public relations, recruitment (of staff and teachers), HR, scheduling, event planning, behavior management, and the list goes on practically forever. The principal has to build a team that can cover all of these bases with no gaps, and in a school district like the one I taught in, they have to do it with a very limited number of people and typically on a very difficult time scale. In a rough school district, turnover is rampant. Few sane people want to take this role or honestly feel qualified to do it, so it tends to attract manic people, with the assortment of negative personality traits that tends to correlate with. You name it: manipulativeness, sleaziness, narcissism, capriciousness, etc. I have yet to see a private school that effectively serves the neediest communities with a model that is actually replicable. Even the best charters tend to weed out the neediest students, in their messaging, their admissions or through high daily expectations with lack of support. The lack of support undercuts high expectations at all levels of the educational system.

acjohnson55 12y ago

One of the few jobs I want even less than my old teaching job is my old principal's job. The role has insane expectations. The collective administration has to be capable of management, budgeting, academic master planning, public relations, recruitment (of staff and teachers), HR, scheduling, event planning, behavior management, and the list goes on practically forever. The principal has to build a team that can cover all of these bases with no gaps, and in a school district like the one I taught in, they have to do it with a very limited number of people and typically on a very difficult time scale. In a rough school district, turnover is rampant. Few sane people want to take this role or honestly feel qualified to do it, so it tends to attract manic people, with the assortment of negative personality traits that tends to correlate with. You name it: manipulativeness, sleaziness, narcissism, capriciousness, etc. I have yet to see a private school that effectively serves the neediest communities with a model that is actually replicable. Even the best charters tend to weed out the neediest students, in their messaging, their admissions or through high daily expectations with lack of support. The lack of support undercuts high expectations at all levels of the educational system.