SOUTH BRONX SCHOOL: What A Surprise! Leadership Academy Principals Blow And What Is An Allison Gaines Pell?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

What A Surprise! Leadership Academy Principals Blow And What Is An Allison Gaines Pell?

Remember when you went to school, the principal was someone who had been in education for years. Knew it like the back of their hand, and also knew how to be a leader. No anymore. Now under Joel Klein's warped mind of running schools like a business anyone and anybody can become a NYC school principal. All one needs to do is go to the Leadership Academy which is funded from Bloomberg's rich lackey's and which surprisingly has won a contract with the DOE to train principals.

Did you read the New York Times today? I did. Didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Supposedly, principals are freer, but raise doubts. Especially those emanating from the Leadership Academy. I am not going to comment on the entire article, but there were several Spock type eyebrow raising passages in the article.

“I wanted to change the old system,” Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said in an interview. “New leadership is a powerful way to do that.”

Yes, Joel, that is the way. Doesn't matter whether or not you should be in education, screw experience. As long as you have spunk that is all that matters.

But an analysis by The New York Times of the city’s signature report-card system shows that schools run by graduates of the celebrated New York City Leadership Academy — which the mayor created and helped raise more than $80 million for — have not done as well as those led by experienced principals or new principals who came through traditional routes.

Really? Please. My cat could have predicted that.

Chad A. Altman, the 28-year-old head of a Bronx elementary school,

You have got to be freaking kidding me!!! What does Chad Altman know, except satisfying his white liberal guilt?

As New York State lawmakers consider whether to renew the 2002 mayoral control law, which expires June 30, one proposal on the table would revive the district superintendents, now largely powerless, to more closely supervise and support principals.

Yes, please have the superintendents involved. I mean except BFF Yolanda Torres. The superintendents have been figuratively neutered.

For all of New York’s recent focus and investment in school leadership, more than a quarter of teachers said in city surveys last spring that they did not trust their principals or consider them effective managers, and more than a third of those leaving the system cited the quality of school leadership as among the main reasons. “Perceptions of principal leadership skills are drivers of attrition,” an internal report concluded.

Teacher turnover has been higher at schools run by Leadership Academy principals

Yes, this is so true. So many of these principals from the leadership academy feel they must make up for some type of physical shortcoming, they are making Freud spin in his grave.

over the summer of 2007, nearly a quarter of these principals lost at least a third of their teachers, compared with 9 percent of other principals

Joel, boobala, don't you see this as some type of issue and/or problem?

Allison Gaines Pell could be the personification of the new principalship. A graduate of Brown University with a master’s degree in education from Harvard, she taught for three years at St. Ann’s, a Brooklyn private school, and two in Syracuse, and worked for educational nonprofit agencies before being fast-tracked to the principal’s office through the Leadership Academy in 2005.

Please someone, somewhere explain to me Allison Gaines Pell's qualifications. Big bucks await you if you can name one.

Joy: a new computer program — which she could buy without approval from on high — designed to help teachers collaborate online.

“That’s hot!” Ms. Gaines Pell exclaimed to her assistant principal, John O’Reilly.

Oops, there is her qualification. She talks just like Paris Hilton. I wonder if she has anything else in common with Paris, I mean aside from having everything handed to her her entire life.

But while Ms. Gaines Pell’s school earned an A from the city this fall, The Times’s analysis shows that Leadership Academy graduates were less than half as likely to get A’s as other principals, and almost twice as likely to earn C’s or worse. Among elementary and middle-school principals on the job less than three years, Academy graduates were about a third as likely to get A’s as those who did not attend the program.

You know those grades mean squat. The grading system is so screwed up. But, I told you so. ;)

The first independent analysis of the academy’s effectiveness, done at New York University, is due in June. “I think our batting average is quite good,” Mr. Klein said. “Could it improve? I’m sure it could improve.”

Joel, admit it. Or is it a intervention you need. You f**ked up with this one.

Maria Penaherrera — who started as a substitute teacher 20 years ago and worked her way up to the principal’s office — used her financial freedom to hire four assistant principals at the 900-student Public School 114 in Canarsie, and ran up $150,000 in debt. Then she eliminated three of the positions only to have the fourth assistant principal quit. That left a custodian to take charge in February when a carbon monoxide alarm went off while Ms. Penaherrera was out. She has since been reassigned to a central office post while the Education Department investigates, and did not respond to requests for comment.

What do we say about absolute power given to incompetent people? A monkey from the moneky cage at the Bronx Zoo could have done better.

Seven years ago the system was changed. Nothing has changed. It was like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If your goal is to strut around cyberspace reeking of intellectual narcissism you get an A+. However if your goal is to provide the public with responsible, thoughtful, grounded, or practical information, this blog gets a D. Why not an F? Because those who get Fs don't try. You did try and failed.

Pete Zucker said...

Oh please don't whine about anonymity. And if you read the ENTIRE blog you will have seen how it succeeded.

Anonymous said...

If there were fewer spelling errors, this blog would have more credibility...please proof-read your writing so that it has greater impact.