Too Hard to Try?!!
(05/15/2009)
In a recent update to our volunteers we were reminded of
Frederick Douglass' famous quote: "Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never did and it never will."
In this update, a lesson from Gregory Hodge, Principal of
NYC's Frederick Douglass Academy comes to mind as a very
strong counterpoint to the needlessly hopeless May 3 LA
Times article Failure
gets a pass: When firing a teacher is almost too hard to
try. Compare the LA Times' pessimism with this introduction
to Principal Gregory Hodge's lessons from No
Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools
p.1 (PDF p.8):
"A tenured teacher recently came to my office and
told me, “These children can’t learn. It’s
cultural.” So, I looked at the lady, and I said, “You’re
coming from 72nd Street, all the way up to Harlem, to tell
me that children of color cannot learn?” I said to
her, “You’ve got two choices. Either resign
or I’m going to fire you.” And you know what,
she left, quickly. Because I made her life miserable. I
observed her every single day, and I told her she couldn’t
teach, and she had to go. And she left. Good principals
know the union contract. Good principals weed out ineffective
teachers."
As great as having this skill of weeding out ineffective
teachers may be, we should keep in mind that this skill
is useless apart from the far higher-level skill of attracting,
retaining, and developing great teachers to work collaboratively
with their peers and management to successfully close the
achievement gap in every grade, subject, and year. It is
the absence of this far higher skill that makes charter
schools perform no better as a group than their public school
peers!
But for those few charters who know how to wield their hiring
flexibility for good, their extraordinary performance is
unmistakable. Want to see a bright future where the LA Times
sees only pessimism? Turn again to No
Excuses, this time to pp.17-23 (PDF pp.24-30). Here
you'll get a glimpse of what Altadena Schools might look
like when staffed with the skills necessary for closing
the achievement gap!
