Application

I have been dragging my feet about submitting an online principal's application for the DoE. I finally realized in the middle of the night that rather than write an application designed to get me a job, I should write an application designed to get me a job I would want. I decided to just say what I wanted to say. Here are the questions and my answers.

Question: Please describe one instructional initiative that you undertook that was intended to improve student achievement. Select an initiative where you were responsible for the results and had a significant leadership role. The endeavor could range in scope from a school-wide program to an initiative that you implemented in your classroom. Specifically address:

* The purpose and scale of the initiative
* The steps you took to start and implement the initiative
* Measurable student outcomes that resulted from the initiative
* How, during the course of the initiative, you overcame any unexpected obstacles
* How your leadership skills were further developed
* What you learned through implementing the initiative

In 2001 I was asked to be on the committee that would form small learning communities at Washington Irving High School. The purpose of this initiative was to divide a 2700 student school into small learning communities of approximately 500 students each. The feeling was that students would be held more accountable and that student outcome would improve.

By September 2003 I was the instructional leader of a 500 student community called Yalow house. This community had approximately 100 screened students and 400 unscreened students. Our mission was to increase the scores of our students and to stabilize the attendance data.

The great thing about running a small community is that you can program teachers to do the most good. To this end I put my most successful English teacher in the 11th grade and increased the number of students who passed the ELA regents. I created a strong 9th grade science program with the goal of increasing the number of students passing the Living Environment regents and I worked hard on the 9th to 10th grade math curriculum to increase the student’s success.

The first surprise I had was how difficult it was to program teachers. Programming is the key to a successful school. Developing master schedules is easy if you are not worried about having the right teachers in the right classes. But if you are it becomes very difficult. The mathematics of it is difficult and the politics is even more difficult. You want your best teachers in your toughest classes, but you also have to give them at least one great class that allows them to shine. This also keeps them happy and motivated. What I finally did was to bring in all of the teachers from each department, one department at a time and tell them what classes we needed to offer and then discussing how to break up the load. I found that good teachers were more willing to take on tough classes when saw the issues facing the house at large.

The purpose of our community was to create a school that respected teachers and students. This seems to be contrary to the current thinking of the DoE. What I see all over the city is principals being trained to manipulate teachers and students to achieve a "statistically significant result". I think statistics are important. The goal is not to create a student who loves school and has no skills that will help him/her succeed in collage or work. But the alternative of creating a school with out respect also fails at helping a student achieve his/her maximum potential. I sent a student to collage in Albany who did not think she wanted to go. I had dinner with her a year later and she told me she just came back from South America. She had gone there because she had received a journalism internship to go there. She had also been asked to write a column for the Albany city paper I know that she has succeed partially because I respected her and because I cared about her. If you go through my school you will find that there are those kinds of connections between most students and at least one staff member. Without these connections you are running an education factory, but not a school.

It is hard to measure what we did in Yalow. I recently started connecting with students from 4 or 5 years ago using Facebook. I am connecting with kids, who graduated college, are often going to grad school or have good jobs and generally seem to have blown by all of the immense obstacles put in their way because they were poor and often did not have very supportive families. These kids have succeeded in the ways that ultimately count. They are leading lives of hope. I am most proud of this.