Facing the facts

Out of the blue, here's an op-ed piece from St. Paul that offers some words of wisdom about urban superintendents, and the pitfalls of searching for silver-bullet fixes and charismatic leaders that rings pretty true here.

Ted Kolderie: Face the fact -- we don't know how to get all students to learn:

...Why else do you think superintendents move all the time? They know the promises they've made can't be realized. So they know not to stay in one place too long. They're like machine-gunners in combat, who know they have to move every 15 minutes so the mortars won't get them.

Our former superintendent gets a special mention as an example of one of these promise=and-move-on machine gunners.

But the point that I find more interesting comes when he describes what characteristics of an administrator that might work out better:

Find someone who is willing to free up the schools and their teachers — those closest to the students — so they can be continually adjusting the program of learning to meet the needs of the particular students, collectively and individually. Give them the chance to create new schools — different schools.

Carlos Garcia's "Beyond the Talk" strategic plan is starting to catch a little flack in some quarters. It offers many idealistic promises and plenty of nebulous, high-minded prose that some might say has a whiff of BS to it. I find some of the prose off-putting. Yet the crux of his vision sounds an awful lot like what this columnist describes. It challenges teachers and school sites to take stock of their specific challenges, their particular student needs, and gives them the challenge to craft their own approaches and innovations. Instead of top-down prescriptive solutions it opens the door for a site-driven diversity of approaches.

Will Garcia's approach bear fruit? Or will he join the ranks of itinerant urban superintendents? Stay tuned.