How can anyone be expected to manage a situation that they do not really understand?

And how can anyone really understand a situation unless they are actually in that situation?

It is for this reason that I believe ALL school administrators should be required to teach at least one class in K-12 schools.

Yep, the Principal needs to teach a class.
The Vice Principals need to teach a class.
The Superintendent and their cabinet of decision-makers need to teach a class.
The School Board personnel need to teach a class.

If they can, that is.

And by “if they can” I don’t mean “if they can carve out the time in their schedule to do so.” School meets with clockwork regularity. (Most start by 8:15 a.m. I am not even sure if half the people on the aforementioned list are actually working by this hour.) By 9:30 or so they’ll be done and the insight they’ll gain from actually being in a room with real kids — ones they are responsible for “academically elevating” — will trump any study they could ever hope to not read. (Come on, we all know they have people summarize this stuff for them in mono-syllabic terms.)

BTW, I am not even sure if all of these people I mention even hold a teaching credential. Hmm, what does it say about people who sit in positions of policy making power when they do not even have the certification to legally give them the right to do the job over which they lord.

Come on, slum with the plebeians. Let’ em all teach 1 period. Why not?

Are they too busy?
Are they unable to perform?
Are they scared?

And just because they “used to do it” 17 years ago doesn’t mean they can do it now. It’s an iPod, google, hit me on the cellie with a txt message world and these folks think that just because they stood at a chalkboard when Ronald Reagan was president they can still strap it up and deliver real results?

Ba-hum-bug-bullshit!

Make ‘em do what they mandate us to do and watch what they mandate morph.

Cuz ya know that when you have to eat the food that you are cooking, the meal always becomes more palatable.

Why is it that the higher up one rises in terms of being an educational decision maker with real power to wield, the further one is distanced from actually working with real kids on a day to day basis?

Kinda weird, huh?

I mean, by this logic — wacky as it is when you really think about it — the ratio works out so that those who make the most influential decisions are the folks that spend the least (if any… and I literally mean, if any) time with real kids in real classrooms.

Let’s break it down in a broad overview…

–Real classroom teachers who work with between 100-200 kids per day. Immense exposure to real kids. Infinitesimal influence over matters of educational policy.

–Principals, Vice Principals and other admins. They see lots of reals kids but all too often it’s from their office windows. (And I question whether or not 50% of America’s administrators could identify, by name, 100 specific kids on campus.) They certainly dictate some policy, but big, big stuff is out of their hands in most cases and they are henchmen for bigger puppet masters in a great many cases.

–District Office Personnel. A healthy amount of power… but many of them go whole weeks at times without talking to any kids at all.

–School Board Members. Also a healthy amount of power. Do they know 50 kids by name? I genuinely wonder.

–County Offices of Education. A bureaucratic jungle where their are more cubicles than actual children.

–State Departments of Education. Now you are talking influence. This is where policy gets made. Kids are talked about every day — but real, live ones made of flesh and bone? Well, at least there are pictures on the walls.

The federal government. (Congress, the U.S. Department of Ed. TheWhite House.) Spectacular influence but they lean heavily on their political aides to give reports (in order to relay salient pieces of information inside 863 page reports such as, “Kids like snacks.”). They believe in kids. They fight for kids. They are the champions of kids. (That should lock up the parent vote, right?)

Thing are outta whack! And why? Cause the higher they rise, the further they are from what they need to see.

Let’s be honest… to a quite certain extent America is have a crisis of administrative leadership in our schools. It’s the unspoken calamity. People blame teachers for all that is wrong but the truth is our nation’s principals and vice principals are woefully under-prepared and under-resourced to do their jobs… which really is all about empowering me with the ability to better do my job.

Look at my school, for example. We have only 1 principal and 3 VPs in charge of nearly:
-4,000 students
-175 teachers
-15 counselors
-at least 50 – 75 other “classified” employees.
(These are ballpark numbers; they keep the real numbers under wraps around here for some reason and year to year I never know what’s really what. Plus things are always in flux. One year we were near 5,000 kids. This year, due to budget cuts, we are looking at losing 18% of our teaching staff. Ya just never know what’s what.)

Of course, the responsibilities for my administrators above don’t even take into account the requisite interactions with the teacher’s union, parents, other principals, conferences, meetings with the school board, the district personnel and on and on with which the P and VP’s must deal. Like these administrators even have a prayer of being able to successfully navigate all of the discipline, grades, budgets, emergencies, proms, politics, sporting events, meals, tardy sweeps, staff meetings and so on.

In a word their assignment is “untenable”. Truly. If you look at all that our school site administrators are asked to do, it’s simply not possible for them to be able to accomplish everything we are asking them to accomplish — especially if we want them to accomplish their mandates excellently well. Crud, I never thought I’d say this as a teacher, but I really think we need more warm bodies in the administrative game because with such limited resources leading our schools, how in the world can we truly be expecting them — or us — to flourish? Of course, flourish is a word that they we will all pay lip service to but let’s be honest, when we view school site administrators, we kinda get the feeling that they are merely hoping to survive, to navigate this unmanageable ship through a rocky sea without losing too many passengers to the wild waves.

Some, we know will be lost. But c’est la vie, right. There’s always next year.

And oddly enough, I like my principal. And the VP’s. They are not bad people… they are just swamped, handcuffed people who are overwhelmed, overworked, overtaxed and under-resourced. I mean, when I see that 250 teachers were axed by Rhee in DC, I gotta wonder, were these folks given support, encouragement, training, clear expectations, adequate interaction with principals and school site administrators before they were cut loose? ( I can only guess what Rhee would say. But what would the teachers who work with — not for — with Rhee say.)

If our educational ship is sinking, doesn’t a look deserve to be given to the performance of each school site captain? I mean ya can’t blame the rowers if we crash into the rocks?