The Ackerman-must-go movement

Some segments of the community now openly want to get rid of SFUSD Superintendent Arlene Ackerman.

Usually, when a school district ousts a superintendent, it’s because of low achievement, financial mismanagement or outright corruption.

But in SFUSD, test scores are rising, as Ackerman’s critics acknowledge. And they allow that she has taken significant steps to clean up the district’s finances and root out the corruption that abounded before she got here.

Those aren’t the problems Ackerman’s critics have with her. They accuse her of restricting SFUSD staff from talking to the press, and they say her underlings respond slowly and grudgingly to media inquiries. They blast the size and budget of her PR staff. They say she isn’t "talking to people who disagree" with her. They say she disrespects student dissenters, and — needless to say — they oppose her pay level and recent controversial raise.

But can our school district afford to cast out a superintendent who’s doing an excellent job by traditional measures? True, she has personality conflicts with a faction of the Board of Education, and the unions are mad at her, with contract negotiations currently going on. And she has really ticked off one alternative newspaper.

(The San Francisco Bay Guardian — an employer with its own history of cold-blooded union-busting and an ax to grind with Ackerman — has transformed itself into the new champion of labor during SFUSD contract negotiations.)

Whatever her faults, Ackerman's achievements are neither insignificant nor PR hype.

• Test scores have risen. And they’re doing so with more and more students who used to be excluded now being tested. In the last year of Bill Rojas’ administration (1998-’99), only 77 percent of SFUSD students (in tested grades, 2-11) were included, with kids who were deemed likely to bring scores down excluded wherever possible. In 2003-’04, 98 percent of SFUSD students (in tested grades) were included in testing.
  
• Ackerman introduced the weighted student formula, which creates a more equitable funding arrangement, guaranteeing that schools with harder-to-educate kids (such as low-income students, language learners or low achievers) get more funds. If the student changes schools, the funds follow him or her.
  
• She implemented site-based budgeting, so that school communities, not the central office, determine how to spend their money.
  
• Formerly underperforming high schools are starting to turn around. Mission made the Newsweek list of top 1,000 high schools in the nation. Galileo has shown a big jump in test scores – its statewide API ranking jumped from a 3 to a 6, while its similar schools ranking climbed from a 2 to an 8, in just one year. Balboa is on the radar for families who would never have considered it a few years ago.
  
• Elementary and middle schools that were once widely viewed as undesirable have surged in popularity. Examples include Alvarado, Aptos, Miraloma, Fairmount, McKinley, Monroe and others.
  
• Ackerman has unearthed and fought corruption, winning millions for the district in settlement and reward money and getting crooks who stole from our kids sent to jail.
  
• Since she arrived in SFUSD, city voters have passed an important school bond measure (2003’s Proposition A) and a groundbreaking measure to provide city funding to schools (2004’s Proposition H). The election results showed that Ackerman’s leadership had helped overcome the community hostility created by a badly flawed Chronicle exposé on the school district — which by implication tarred Ackerman with her predecessor’s corruption and mismanagement so as to give the Chronicle credit for reforms actually initiated by Ackerman.
  
• She supported the creation of a nutrition policy that may be the most comprehensive in the nation, while other superintendents nationwide were vigorously selling their students' health out to junk-food interests.
  
• More students have access to more AP classes.
  
• She has met demand by increasing the number of coveted language immersion programs.
  
• Before the current disastrous funding crisis, teachers got a significant raise.
  
• SFUSD is currently a finalist for the national 2005 Broad Prize for Urban Education. As a finalist, the district receives $125,000 in scholarship money, and if it wins, the award (to be announced in September), comes with $500,000 in scholarships.
  
• Ackerman was just named chair of the Board of Directors of the Council of the Great City Schools, a national urban education policy and research organization that represents 65 big-city school systems.
  

All that raises the obvious question: Do Ackerman’s critics have a replacement waiting in the wings?

Not unless it’s a deep, dark secret. There’s certainly no obvious candidate. Who would come here and take on all the challenges of this district (the consent decree/desegregation issue, the student assignment process, the budget being shortchanged by a hostile governor, many language learners speaking a vast array of languages, aging facilities, and much, much more)?

And to top it all off, the newcomer would be working with a deeply divided Board of Education that seems to fight for the sake of fighting — and with a faction sometimes accused of making decisions based on what is best for its political agenda, not what’s best for schools or kids.

Sounds like a dream job! Oh, and this same faction and its supporters will cut the new hire’s pay, too.

After seeing how part of our community has tried to run out of town a woman whom many educational insiders nationwide view as one of the best superintendents in the country, out of personal antipathy or on ideological grounds — yes, they’ll be lining up for miles to apply for that cushy gig.

A little nationwide research reveals that it’s extremely difficult to find an honest, competent superintendent — and harder to keep one. Turnover is high and pay gets higher and higher.

PBS education reporter John Merrow wrote last year in the Washington Post about the search for a Washington, D.C., superintendent — Ackerman’s previous job, which turned over in 2004 for the fifth time in nine years.

Just as the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball seem to play musical chairs with their respective coaches, search firms recycle superintendents.

Typically, a new superintendent arrives in a city, hailed as the answer to every problem — low test scores, poor attendance, embarrassing graduation rates. When change does not occur overnight, or perhaps at all, disappointment sets in. The superintendent departs for the next school district, and the cycle begins anew.

Instead of producing candidates with the hard-eyed management and single-minded concentration needed to figure out how best to teach kids, the search process gives these school systems more of the same.

Reports from Detroit, Dallas, Cincinnati and elsewhere emphasize the difficulty. The Dallas News wrote in July 2004 about the departure of its superintendent, Mike Moses:

The job of urban superintendent has never been easy. But in the last decade, it's become an around-the-clock stress test — the sort of job that chews through dynamic leaders and, more often than not, leaves them exhausted and beaten.

"It's just a constant bombardment," Dr. Moses said after announcing his resignation Wednesday.

Here in San Francisco, Arlene Ackerman has achieved goals that other school districts would love to emulate. Is it best for our schools and our kids if we get rid of her, with no feasible replacement waiting in the wings and a shrinking pool of competent applicants?

We don’t think so.

— Nestwife and Caroline