Coaching for Baltimore City school principals through the transition to a new management strategy is a good idea — if it’s temporary and ends up saving taxpayers’ money. Chief Executive Officer Andres Alonso is matching 15 coaches with principals as part of his move to decentralize administration.
Leaders of administrators and teachers unions should abandon their traditional mindless reflexive response against better education. They are squeezing $1.69 billion a year out of us now and giving us failure in return.
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Cutting bureaucracy at the bloated headquarters, giving principals more authority to run their schools and ultimately focusing more resources on actual teaching is a good idea. Like most good ideas, it is not easy.
“The work is going to be difficult and messy,” Alonso said at a meeting Tuesday where he kicked off the school year and introduced nearly 50 new principals.
New and veteran principals do need guidance in adapting Alonso’s overhaul of moribund city schools.
His efforts to “tap our homegrown experts … to go from islands of success to a system of great schools” is a good way to deal with the pernicious details of transformation and propagate best practices.
He said these coaches are former principals with proven track records of better academic scores and community relations. The very real and very bright lights of success are too often lost in the overall catastrophic gloom enshrouding public education. Spreading those lights is one key to unlocking adequate (if not excellent) schools essential to our future as a nation.
Doing so is going to require more than innovation. Certainly it is going to require much more than unproductive maneuvering to manipulate data for the No Child Left Behind Act.
It’s going to require more than hard work — though that is essential. More than anything it is going to require smart work.
Face facts. American public education, especially in urban areas, is collapsing. The more money the system gouges out of citizens, the worse things get. Our nation cannot compete in the 21st century with what we have. Using even more money ineffectively will ultimately lead to tax revolt.
The many teachers, principals and administrators — like Alonso — that are truly called to the profession cannot sustain themselves forever in the toxic environment of traditional public education.
The temporary “pals for principals” program Alonso put in place to help principals through a strategic transition is an example of one good idea growing into several better ideas. Citizens can trust Alonso to make sure the program does not become a permanent crutch. Public education has too many of those now.
Unions must get behind this program and other innovations, and they must come up with some of their own programs that actually cut costs and improve education.
Our public schools can either initiate their own revolution, or they can have one thrust upon them — and they need to choose soon.
WEB EXTRA:
Take a look at Baltimore City Schools budgets:
