{"id":6243,"date":"2009-11-12T09:02:58","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T14:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6243"},"modified":"2009-11-12T09:02:58","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T14:02:58","slug":"blood-from-an-expensive-turnip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=6243","title":{"rendered":"Blood From An Expensive Turnip"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Strib editorial board, writing about the Saint Paul School Board’s perennial search<\/a> for the flavor of the month in Superintendants:<\/p>\n

Given the challenges faced by the district, the schools need a collaborative, inspirational CEO who has had success in improving student achievement. The district needs a strategic thinker who can build relationships, heal morale problems and be a strong, respected advocate for schools within various constituencies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Er, no.<\/p>\n

:Advocating for constituencies” is what got the Saint Paul Public Schools into the mess it’s in now.<\/p>\n

The SPPS is paralyzed <\/em>by “constituency” politics; watching a School Board meeting is like watching film of 1960’s Comintern meetings, with endless streams of apparatchiks <\/em>solemnly declaiming their district would meet its quota of desk chairs or eggs or iron ingots in support of the glorious Five Year Plan.\u00a0 Only instead of eggs or desk chairs or ingots, or even students, the apparatchiks<\/span> <\/em>principals and program directors and staff members would solemnly swear that they were meeting their goals for “diversity”.<\/p>\n

And yet the SPPS’ achievement gap is the worst of any major city.\u00a0 The schools’ budget is bigger than that of the City of Saint Paul, but the graduation rate is south of 50% and falling. Over an eighth of Saint Paul’s parents have hit the lifeboats (myself included), bailing out for charter, private and parochial schools, or schools in the ‘burbs, or homeschooling (and that was as of two years ago; the numbers have no doubt accelerated).\u00a0 And for all that – with increasing budgets and declining enrollments – the SPPS threatens to cut teachers, programs and schools every budget cycle (although never laying a finger on the grotesque bureaucracy at 360 Colborne).<\/p>\n

What the Saint Paul Public Schools needs is someone with experience in arresting failure<\/em>.\u00a0 The district needs the educational equivalent of Red Adair.<\/p>\n

What the district will get, with its current all-DFL, mostly-Teachers-union-member board, is what it’s had for the past twenty years; a principal who is adept at being politically correct; one who carefully massages the various constituencies (and I’m not just talking ethnic groups, here) on the one hand and plays them against each other on the other hand.\u00a0 One who will sit quietly aside while the School Board, as concentrated a bloc of far-far-far left DFL ideology as you will find in this state, babbles on about diversity and barring recruiters from schools and abolising JROTC and handing out condoms and supporting constituency support programs that happen to employ their non-profit cronies…<\/p>\n

And beyond those qualifications, the district’s next leader must be committed to staying on the job long enough to make meaningful change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And given the dynamics in the “market” for big-city superintendents – with an endless parade of school boards bidding up salaries and benefits ever-higher in an endless game of institutional musical chairs that essentially ensures the power of the radical left in big-city education<\/em> – that “committed” leader will ride in on a pink unicorn.<\/p>\n

The market for superintendents – paid for with an ever-rising pool of taxpayer money – is a scam designed to jack up the power of “elected”, invariably liberal school boards.\u00a0 It turns the Superintendant into basically a temp employee.<\/p>\n

Or a well-tended lapdog who isn’t too bummed about having to spend half of his\/her term looking for the next, higher-paying job, for a position that will pay better and be of even less consequence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Strib editorial board, writing about the Saint Paul School Board’s perennial search for the flavor of the month in Superintendants: Given the challenges faced by the district, the schools need a collaborative, inspirational CEO who has had success in improving student achievement. The district needs a strategic thinker who can build relationships, heal morale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6245,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6243\/revisions\/6245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}