Principals Choose Status Quo

Faced with three reform options meant to transform the way schools will be run next year, school principals this week overwhelmingly chose the most familiar of the three, the Department of Education announced yesterday.

The goal of each option is to free principals from departmental constraints by eliminating their old bosses in favor of new supports. But only 11% of principals elected to work with outside consultants, and more than half, 54%, chose a familiar face — one of the four superintendents currently in the school system — as their new support.

The rest of principals chose a third option, known as empowerment, which gives them the most autonomy. Most already followed that model.

Perhaps the biggest vote for the status quo was the number of principals who chose the oversight of so-called Learning Support Organizations. The leaders of those groups are now regional superintendents, all four of whom will work with many of the principals now under their purview.

"A large number of principals are obviously happy with the support they've been getting," a department spokesman, David Cantor said.

But differences have already surfaced in at least one school, where a principal today told a teachers' leadership group that she would take on the empowerment model next year—much to the teachers' excitement, a teacher said. The school has already begun retooling weekly lesson plans, currently micromanaged by the regional superintendent.

The new process is in line with a master plan outlined by Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, who expects the reforms will help principals improve student learning. "The people closest to the students are now the people making the key decisions," he said.

Some aren't as sure. "No one knows what any of this means," a historian of education, Diane Ravitch, said.