Tag Archives: Public Schools

“College Isn’t for Everyone”—It Depends on Who Is Saying It and Why!

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First, a full disclosure: During my 11 years as a high school principal, I encouraged and witnessed many students who graduated from my high schools and chose not to attend college immediately—even though, consistent with my school’s policy and expectations, they were college-ready, eligible, and, in many cases, had been accepted to several colleges.

Some chose to start private entrepreneurial businesses. Others entered well-paying civil-service careers with excellent benefits or went directly into strong private-sector positions. Some used the STEM education they received while in high school to earn technology-industry certifications and went on to work for major corporations. Others attended specialized skills-training institutes, for example, in the culinary arts, or pursued long-term careers in one of the military services.
Still others entered construction-trade apprenticeship programs after earning both a college-ready high school diploma and a CTE (Career and Technical Education) pre-apprenticeship certification. Some combined pathways, attending a post-high-school specialty training institute or CTE program and later starting their own businesses related to the skills or crafts they had mastered.

Many of these graduates did well, and continue to do well, without having attended college, while others simply delayed college until it made sense for their personal or professional goals.

And that is precisely why I do not automatically object when someone says, “College isn’t for everyone.” For me, the critical questions are: Who is saying it? To whom are they saying it? And for what reasons are they saying it? It is ultimately a matter of the professional expertise and ethical intent of the person giving the advice—and whether that advice is designed to expand the advisee’s possibilities or prematurely limit them.

All of the above is to say that, in public education, the same words and phrases can carry vastly different meanings—and produce vastly different consequences—for students from different socioeconomic classes and for specific cohorts of students, particularly when it comes to college and career advisement.

After spending more than 40 years working at virtually every level of this profession, you certainly do not get to see and hear everything; I stopped saying that somewhere in my third principalship year—but you do get to see and hear a lot. And during my long period of experiential seeing and hearing, I have learned that if I were creating a critical:

“Parents, You Must Pay Attention to This” list, one item would unquestionably appear near the top:

“When the school is speaking about your child, which political language are they using?”

Are they using the vocabulary of high expectations?
Are they using the vocabulary of efficacious care and concern?
Are they using the vocabulary of equity and equality of opportunity?
Are they using the vocabulary of dream-affirming generational advancement?
Are they using the vocabulary of fully developing your child’s innate gifts and talents?

And are they using the vocabulary of having the agape love of wanting for your child what they would want for their own child?

Yes, public education is always, ultimately, and above all, a political act.
Therefore, guidance and counseling, like every other part of the public education system, are not politically or values-neutral. And in an efficacious, ethical, and best-seeking-for-every-student sense, they should not be neutral. They should actively help students overcome external societal factors that would dismiss, diminish, or deny their human potential.

However, there is another side to this reality:

Our economic system is not presently structured as though public schools will successfully prepare every, or even the vast majority of students to enter a meaningful, economically sustaining adult-life after high school, or a meaningful and useful postsecondary school career pathway. And we should at least be willing to ask an uncomfortable question: What would happen to the many institutions, private and civil service occupations, and businesses built around correcting, fixing, supervising, punishing, and incarcerating people if our public schools actually succeeded with nearly all of the children they serve?

Consider, for example, an admittedly imaginary scenario in which New York City public schools fully achieved the often-stated mission that “all children will learn”—including dramatically improved educational and economic outcomes for Black and Latino boys. That achievement alone might not eliminate all known forms of crime or the need for some form of criminal incarceration.

But imagine what might happen if we could substantially interrupt one of the major pathways to incarceration in America—one that has long concerned educators like me and many other human- and civil-rights advocates: the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.

The implications would extend far beyond schools.

Imagine, for example, how dramatically the debate over the future of NYC’s Rikers Island might change if far fewer young people ended up there after being repeatedly exposed, grade after grade, to inadequate educational experiences, low expectations, and denial of access to high-quality learning opportunities—conditions that can contribute to eventual involvement with the criminal justice system. The numerical realities themselves could fundamentally alter the political conversation: fewer people entering the pipeline would mean fewer people needing to be incarcerated.

And so, when I hear the statement “College isn’t for everyone,” I immediately and instinctively follow it with two questions:

“Who is saying it—and why are they saying it?”

Because after more than four decades in public education, I have heard colleagues, from classroom teachers to district superintendents, propose, implement, support, or mandate pedagogical practices and educational policies for other people’s children that they would never accept for—or impose on—their own children.
And therein lies the problem.

The question is not whether every child must attend college, or even attend college immediately after high school graduation; my opening full-disclosure statement makes that student-by-student, personal-journey point clear. The question is whether we are providing other people’s children with the same range of high-quality advice, choices, preparation, encouragement, information, and opportunities that we would insist upon for our own.

“We need to bring back vocational education!”
(Enthusiastically cheered on by the social-media professional education experts.)
Actually, we don’t—not if by “bring it back” we mean returning to the way vocational education was too often used as a targeted, group-demeaning practice for separating students into two categories: those who allegedly could only work with their hands and those presumed to possess the intellectual “gray matter” required to work primarily with their brains.
We know better now. That was an artificial—and, dare I say, often cynical pedagogical division.

What we should do instead is continue upgrading and expanding a modern Career and Technical Education (CTE) philosophy: one that prepares students for meaningful post-high-school careers while refusing to separate technical skill from intellectual development, academic rigor, entrepreneurship, college readiness, or future professional growth.

What many members of the NYC public may not fully appreciate is that schools such as the High School of Fashion Industries, Transit Tech, and Aviation High School are CTE schools. These schools demonstrate that career preparation and serious academic preparation need not be competing educational philosophies. They can enrich both the minds and the skilled talents of young people.*
In other words, we can educate both the mind and the skilled talents of a young person at the same time.

That power of CTE conversation brings me to NYC’s Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers.

I recently read a sad story about this historically significant NYC high school. A school with the physical capacity to serve approximately 3,000 students is now serving roughly 90 students.

Speaking as a former high school principal and superintendent, I don’t know how to look at those two numbers—3,000 and 90—and conclude anything other than that something is terribly wrong. And when a problem reaches that level of magnitude, tinkering around the edges is not enough. Sometimes an extraordinary problem requires a radical reimagining of what a school could become.

So, here is mine.

Think about the extraordinary possibilities represented by the Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers name, mission, location, and physical capacity. This is a school situated in New York City—the financial capital of the world; home to an enormous civil-service workforce; thousands of small businesses and major corporations; thriving technology, healthcare, construction, and skilled-trades sectors; and one of the world’s great tourism and hospitality destinations.
Why not radically reimagine Murry Bergtraum as a powerful, comprehensive, 21st-century CTE high school organized around multiple career-themed majors?

Imagine a school offering rigorous college-ready academics alongside pathways in finance and banking; accounting; entrepreneurship and small-business development; hospitality and tourism; information technology and cybersecurity; artificial intelligence and AI coding; public administration and civil service; construction management and skilled trades; healthcare administration; marketing and digital media; and other emerging fields tied directly to New York City’s present and future workforce needs.

Then build partnerships around those pathways—with corporations, labor unions, government agencies, colleges and universities, professional associations, apprenticeship programs, and successful entrepreneurs. Give students opportunities to earn industry-recognized certifications, college credits, paid internships, apprenticeships, and authentic workplace experiences before they graduate.
And make entrepreneurship more than an elective course. Make the school itself an entrepreneurial incubator, where students with the interest and ability to build something of their own can graduate not merely knowing how businesses work, but having already begun the process of creating one.

That would be my proposal: a total CTE redesign for Murry Bergtraum High School. Based on my experience, I have found that students enrolled in high-quality CTE programs are often strongly self-motivated to come to school every day, engage passionately in their CTE courses, and be inspired by a like-minded group of fellow CTE students and dedicated CTE teachers. They also benefit from access to industry partnerships, external stakeholders, internships, and other authentic work-based learning experiences.

And perhaps most important, there is the very real possibility of a good job—not four years after graduating from high school, but immediately after graduation. That makes the incentive to stay in school, successfully complete the program, graduate, and enter a meaningful career pathway extraordinarily powerful.

A school building designed to educate approximately 3,000 young people but serving roughly 90 should not simply generate a conversation about declining enrollment. It should force us to ask a much larger educational question:

What could we create here that thousands of New York City students and families would actually want—and deserve—to attend?

The larger point, however, is not simply about one school.

Communities that have historically experienced educational disenfranchisement need to pay very close attention to the “love language” being used when their children are discussed—even when those communities are represented politically by people who look like them.

Is the school or district message:

We love the fact that your child’s presence helps pay the bills and sustain an educational system in which some other children will receive the highest-quality educational opportunities?

Or is the message:

We love your child enough to insist that, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, immigration status, parental wealth, or political power, your child receives every reasonable opportunity to become the highest expression of their best potential self?

Those are two very different educational agape love languages.

And if I had to grade myself on one aspect of my own career, I would probably give myself somewhere between a D and an F for my inability to convince some of our most educationally dismissed and American-Dream-disinherited communities to consistently ask a few basic questions whenever a major education policy is announced:

“Which groups of adults, and which groups of children, are being enfranchised and empowered by this policy?”

“Which groups of adults, and which groups of children, are being disenfranchised and disempowered by this policy?”

And, even more importantly:

“What will the implementation of this policy mean for my community—and specifically, what will it mean for my child?”

Whether the issue is the misguided and politically motivated proposed paraprofessional bonus, the annual class-size debate and its disconnection from the far more important question of a school’s instructional quality, or New York State’s changing Regents examination requirements, parents should resist evaluating educational policies solely through education’s rhetorical “greatest hits,” political slogans, endorsements from stakeholders whose primary interests may not be the children, or the racial and cultural identities of the people promoting them and the policies.

Every public-school-system action can play out differently across different school districts, and in different schools within the same district, and with different groups of children within the same school building.

So do not simply rely on—or automatically trust—a person because of their skin color (“all skin folk ain’t kin folk”), nationality, political party, organizational affiliation, or political rhetoric. Ask the question that matters most for your child:

“Will this action expand or restrict my child’s educational opportunities?”

Malcolm X offered a warning that remains relevant here: “If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you’ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies.”

Which brings me back, once again, to the statement at the center of this essay:
“College isn’t for everyone.”

But before accepting that advice when it is directed toward your child, ask the three questions that have guided this entire discussion:

Who is saying it?
Why are they saying it?
And who is your child?

That third question may be the most important of all. Who is your child—their interests, gifts, talents, academic strengths, aspirations, temperament, dreams, and possibilities? And is the person offering advice about your child actually taking the time to know that child before deciding which educational and career doors should remain open—or be quietly closed?

Because ultimately, the question is not whether the speaker is a political friend or enemy of you. The far more consequential question is:

Is the person saying “College isn’t for everyone” speaking as a friend—or an enemy—of your child’s future possibilities?

________________________________________
*And, since we are on the subject, here is another CTE proposal: Congress could significantly increase federal Perkins funding and expand its funding portfolio to explicitly include career-intensive visual and performing arts high schools such as New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Baltimore School for the Arts, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Los Angeles’s Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, and Washington, D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

Why shouldn’t we recognize these schools as engaged in serious professional career technical/technique education?

A young person intensively studying instrumental or vocal music, dance, theater, technical theater, filmmaking, visual arts, or another professional arts discipline is not simply participating in an extracurricular activity. That student is developing specialized techniques, professional habits, technical competencies, discipline-specific knowledge, and potentially marketable career skills.
If we are serious about expanding our definition of career and technical education for the 21st-century economy, then Congress should consider expanding the federal Perkins funding framework so that qualifying career-focused visual and performing arts programs can benefit from those federal resources as well.

Episode 3 of Lanterns Reclaims the Uncorrupted Meaning of “Woke”: Black Protection and Black Progress

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Episode 3 of Lanterns Reclaims the Uncorrupted Meaning of “Woke”: Black Protection and Black Progress

I promise: this essay contains no spoilers. I will only suggest that you watch Episodes 1 and 2 before watching Episode 3, so that what happens in that episode can land in your heart and mind with its full meaning and power.

As I watch the current use of the word “woke,” I am struck by how far it has traveled from the meaning I first understood in the early 2000s—and from its much earlier expressions in Black political and cultural life. Marcus Garvey, for example, issued his Pan-African call to “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” And in 1938, blues and folk musician Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), speaking in connection with his song about the Scottsboro Boys, urged Black people traveling through Alabama to “stay woke.”

Today, the term is routinely deployed by ideological descendants of the anti-civil-rights and anti-Black-progress coalitions of the 1950s and ’60s. More recently, they have been joined by a younger group of self-described progressives who sometimes find themselves apologizing for, and distancing themselves from, what is a false presentation of “woke” or “wokeism.”

And then there is a large cohort of extraordinarily talented Black journalists—all younger than I am—who rarely correct their White colleagues when the term is used in ways that bear little resemblance to its original meaning. Surely many of them are more knowledgeable than I am about its linguistic and cultural origins. (Where is the New York Times’ John McWhorter when we really need him?)

I can understand people in my 75-plus age group being confused about the Woke phrase. The only reason I became familiar with the contemporary use of “woke” many years ago was that, as a lifelong public-school educator, I remained connected through social media to many of my former students.

And what I encountered as the meaning of “woke” was not that complicated.

Stay awake.

Don’t sleep on dangers intended for you. Study—and, in particular, study your history and the history of America’s racist traditions. Stay alert to current events, especially those forces capable of harming your present existence or restricting your future. Recognize threats. Recognize opportunities. Protect yourself. Prepare yourself. Make progress for yourself and your cultural community.

In essence, as I understood it, being “woke” was a call for Black Protection and Black Progress.

I don’t recall anything about DEI, who could use which bathroom, men playing in the WNBA, or canceling the language of White America. In fact, the “woke” commentaries I encountered were not anti-White at all. They simply were not addressed to White America.

They were positive Black messages, by Black people, addressed to Black people.

Who stole “woke” and then cynically corrupted its meaning is an analysis I will leave to those working in the political, cultural-linguistic, and historiographical arenas.

My primary interest, as always, is educational.

And that brings me to Season 1, Episode 3 of Lanterns.

What the writers, director, and actors accomplish in this episode is to educate a nation about the painful fragility of Black existence—especially for Black boys, who are too often forced to surrender their childhoods much too early because, in the eyes of too much of America, their birth certificates might as well have been stamped:

Dangerous if he survives to adulthood.

In that sense, Episode 3 reclaims and restores what I understood to be the original, unadulterated meaning of being “woke”: a compassionate commitment to Black survival and success.

We All Received “The Talk”

Black boys of my generation received “The Talk” when we reached a certain age and, perhaps more importantly, a certain size.
I remember being told that I could no longer run on the sidewalks of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

“If you want to run, run in the playground at P.S. 9 or in Prospect Park.”

That rule seemed strange to me, since joyfully running was an essential part of our early-adolescent play world. But I was also given very specific instructions about what to do—and what not to do—if stopped by the police. I was told to carry identification and a dollar or two in my wallet.

Like young people everywhere, however, we were determined to prove that the old folks worried too much.

So one day, walking home from Middle School 294, my friends and I decided to race along Vanderbilt Avenue between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue. Our adolescent logic was impeccable: there were mostly factories along that stretch and no pedestrians, so technically, we reasoned, we were not really violating our parents’ prohibition against running on crowded sidewalks.

Halfway up the block, a police car pulled us over.

The officers emerged menacingly, shouting and snarling commands.
Suddenly, “The Talk” was no longer an annoying collection of parental rules.

It was a survival manual.

I immediately reminded my friends: Don’t run.

We put our hands against the wall as directed. Continuing down my mental checklist of instructions, I spoke loudly, clearly, and politely, without turning around or making any sudden movements:

“I am reaching into my pocket to get my wallet and I.D.”

Without turning, I handed my wallet to the officer closest to me. Prominently displayed inside was my Police Athletic League (PAL) membership card.

The atmosphere suddenly changed.

One officer said something to the effect of, “Oh, these are Officer Powell’s kids”—referring to the officer who ran the PAL program at our local police precinct.

They let us go.

We continued our journey to the Brooklyn Public Library—shaken and, needless to say, no longer running.

We also reached an immediate and unanimous agreement:

We were not telling our parents about the incident.

I certainly wasn’t, because I had no desire to stand quietly—which is what children were expected to do in those days—through a long Caribbean-American parental speech titled:

“I thought I told you not to…”

That would have been followed by several versions of “What were you thinking?” Followed by: “Oh, you were not thinking?”

And the lecture would not have ended at home. Neighborhood and church elders, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and godparents would eventually have been informed of our bad-decision deed, requiring us to endure multiple sequels of that original admonition speech.

But there was another childhood lesson in Black protection that I did not understand until years later.

I was a dedicated reader of Ebony and Jet magazines. One month, however, I could not find the latest issue of Jet. And, as my mother undoubtedly hoped, I soon forgot about it. There were too many scooters to build, war games to play, comic books to read, and stickball and skelly games demanding my attention.

Years later, I learned why that issue had disappeared.

It contained the horrific open-casket photograph of Emmett Till.

That next summer, without any explanation to us kids—not required in those days—the Black parents in our neighborhood canceled their children’s trips down South. My mother explained to me years later, when I was in college, that the neighborhood “ban” had been imposed largely to protect Black boys from the possibility of suffering a similarly murderous fate.

That was those parents being protectively “woke.”
Not a political slogan.
Not a partisan insult.
Not a cable-news debating point.

Protection. Awareness. Survival. Preparation. Progress.

And That Is What the Parents in Lanterns Are Trying to Do
The Black parents in Lanterns are trying to protect their Black boys the best way they know how—albeit in heightened and dramatic ways appropriate for television.

The two extraordinary actors, Jasmine Cephas Jones and J. Alphonse Nicholson, are portraying what generations of Black parents before, during, and after my generation have tried to do.

First, get their children safely to adulthood.

Second, make them strong enough to confront unfair and undeserved societal obstacles without allowing those obstacles to define or defeat them.

And finally, help them discover and realize their innate gifts, talents, possibilities, and special calling in life.

That is the essential arc of effective parenting.

And schools can either assist or hinder that work.

I resented then—and still resent today—those portions of my childhood that had to end prematurely. I resented having to think about survival to adulthood as a goal at such a young age. And I hated hearing another warning that sounded grossly unfair to my young ears, but turned out to be painfully true: “You must be twice as good to get a fair chance.” My teenage years seemed to exist between dangerous extremes: Would my life be damaged or ended by a police bullet or arrest, drugs, imprisonment, or the unsolicited violence of another Black or Latino teenager in the neighborhood?

As an educator who spent many years working with teenagers, I know that growing up is hard enough. Young people should not also have to calculate their chances of surviving to adulthood while simultaneously trying to discover who they are. They should be thinking about future careers, occupations, aspirations, and possibilities—not wondering who they might become if they can safely make it to adulthood.

That is one reason we desperately need well-educating, intellectually challenging, emotionally nurturing, and physically safe public-school buildings where Black and Latino young people do not feel hunted—or haunted—by society’s fears of them and low expectations for them.

Parents cannot fight this battle alone.

Public schools must do their part.

They must create safe, secure, and educationally rich learning environments capable of bringing forth the best gifts and talents of children whom too much of society has already decided are unworthy of our best adult efforts.

The Baton Must Be Passed

And speaking of gifts and talents, a personal disclosure:
One of the wonderful young actors in Episode 3 of Lanterns, Lumi Oniyide, is the child of two of my former students. One of those former students—despite all of my shortcomings as a principal—decided to become a principal and is now a great one.

There is something beautifully circular about that for me.

A former principal watches the child of his former students portray, in a powerful work of art, themes that connect directly to the lives of generations of Black children—and to the educational responsibility of those adults entrusted with preparing them for the future.

There is always hope in the positive passing of the baton.

One generation protects, prepares, educates, and encourages the next. And then that generation must do the same for the children coming behind them.

Perhaps that is another way to understand what “stay woke” was always supposed to mean:

Know what came before you.

Know what could be coming for you.

Understand what surrounds you.

Protect what is precious to you.

Prepare an easier path for those who will follow you.

And every day, keep moving forward as the best presentation of yourself.

That is our collective, sacred Woke-Hope.

That is Woke Black Protection.

That is Woke Black Progress.

Ask yourself: “Are You Afraid” of a Positive Black Future?

And that is why I hope Episode 3 of Lanterns, “OutKast,” receives the Emmy recognition—and award—I believe it deserves.

Lanterns, Season 1, Episode 3, “OutKast,” is currently streaming on HBO Max and through the HBO Max Amazon Channel in participating regions.

Direct NYC’s $8,500 Large-Class-Size Teacher Bonus to Master Teachers—And It Could Save Countless Students

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First, let’s go inside the thinking and practice of a highly effective principal leading a Title I school that is, academically speaking, “punching above its academic-achievement-expectations weight class.”

In any high-performing Title I school situation, it is predictable—In fact, I have never not seen it; that the school is led by a strategically smart, bravely audacious, and creatively thoughtful principal who daily knows when and how to bend, work around, and, when necessary, challenge those public-school-system rules and regulations that stand between Black, Latino, poor, or otherwise politically disenfranchised children and their ability to engage their innate gifts and talents and perform at very high academic levels.

For students attending many Title I schools, the combination of public education’s bureaucratic operating structures and its too-often adult-employment-happiness priorities can condemn them to an educational and dream-deferring death sentence.

And so, the only way to interrupt that cycle of not-learning and poor learning, and student underperformance, is for a principal to demonstrably interrupt the process itself. That means challenging, bending, or creatively working around all of those “bad” or “incomplete” rules that get in the way of students learning.

For many years, I heard that some highly successful Title 1 principals would deliberately over-program their highest-performing master instructional practitioners—with those teachers’ permission, of course—with classes larger than 34 students; for example, 39–44 students. And, of course, these principals found creative and legal ways to reward those teachers, although obviously not to the tune of $8,500. (Which, by the way, is one compelling reason every Title I school should establish a 501(c)(3) support foundation capable of raising the much-needed extra-budgetary funds that schools serving societally ignored, economically disadvantaged, and politically dismissed communities so desperately need.)

But this larger-class-size arrangement can accomplish two important school-mission reaching objectives.

1. Put More Students in Front of the School’s Best Teachers

Contrary to the beliefs of the pedagogically misinformed, it is the quality of instruction, not class size alone, that is the most important school-based factor in determining students’ ability to engage in high-quality learning.

This good-sounding political obsession with “class size” can become a convenient distraction, one that allows crucially positioned, powerful elected and appointed stakeholders to avoid confronting the far more difficult and consequential challenge: dramatically improving the quality of instruction, especially for our academically weakest and most instructionally vulnerable students.

However, by placing those additional five to ten students in the classrooms of master teachers, principals could increase the likelihood that those students would perform at higher academic-achievement levels, pass their courses, earn higher grades, become better prepared with the prerequisite knowledge and skills required for the next-level course or school year, and perform more successfully on standardized examinations. In high schools, this could also mean helping students remain on a positive credit-earning trajectory and ultimately graduate successfully.

The sad and morally troubling part of this process is that school administrators must painfully decide which students will receive access to those master teachers.
That selection is potentially a life-changing decision, for students—and one I am sure those school administrators wish they did not have to agonizingly make. Yet they still have to make it.

These principals most likely made those decisions in consultation with the teacher and other school-building leaders, using a “greatest-needs” criterion. In one case, I heard that high-potential but self-sabotaging and intentionally underperforming Black and Latino boys were deliberately placed in these oversized master-teacher classes—with amazingly positive results.

But morally and ethically, there is no legitimate way to claim that this is how we should be doing public schooling. Every child should have access to a high-quality teaching-and-learning environment.

Something I always warn prospective principals about is that, beginning with the creation of your annual school budget, you will be forced throughout your principalship tenure to make extraordinarily difficult choices. And you will quickly discover that very few of those decisions will involve choosing between a perfect good and a perfect evil. Most will involve choosing among imperfect options while trying to determine which choice will do the greatest educational good—and the least harm—to children.

2. Give New and Struggling Teachers Smaller Classes While Master Teachers Carry More Students

The way the public education system is structured, it is not unusual for Title I schools to be burdened with disproportionately high numbers of first-, second-, and third-year teachers.

When a school reaches a “tipping point” in the number of new teachers it must absorb, the problem can become self-perpetuating. Every new school year brings another large cohort of inexperienced teachers. Eventually, that number becomes too great for the school’s administrators and instructional leaders to effectively mentor, coach, supervise, and develop.

Some of those new teachers will frustratingly leave the profession.

But some first-, second-, and third-year teachers, after a Title I school has invested enormous amounts of mentoring and instructional-coaching time, and substantial professional-development resources, in helping them improve their practice, will become very good at their craft. And then, ironically, that very success can create another problem: they may either be actively recruited away or self-select to seek employment in a non-Title I district or school, where students are generally not confronting the same magnitude of social, economic, and parental resources challenges.

And so the destructive cycle continues:
New school year. Too many new teachers. Insufficient mentoring and coaching capacity. Teacher turnover. Another new school year. Another large group of new teachers.

In addition, one of the quiet “open secrets” of public education is that some school districts and schools do not experience—or tolerate—the same degree of instructional mediocrity. In part, that is because their entitled, politically connected, well-organized, well-informed, and highly active parent bodies simply will not tolerate mediocre instruction endangering their children’s futures.
In these more fortunate districts and schools, public officials are also more likely to see themselves first as public servants, obligated to act primarily in the best interests of the children and families they serve. Unfortunately, that same sense of urgency, responsiveness, and institutional accountability is not distributed equally across all communities.

How else, then, do we explain the stubborn persistence of what has been called the “school-to-prison pipeline”—a societal pathway in which some children are systematically provided with fewer high-quality educational opportunities, denied access to mind-expanding educative experiences, subjected to diminished expectations of their intellectual capabilities and potential, and ultimately excluded from the quality learning experiences that could dramatically alter the trajectory of their lives?

Meanwhile, Title I principals and superintendents, and the families they serve, do not enjoy that same level of powerful, societal, external political protection.

In such a system, one of the few instructional weapons available to a Title I principal trying to save children academically is to deliberately oversize the class of a Master Teacher while giving a new teacher—or an underperforming veteran teacher—a smaller class size.

I know someone reading this, someone in private industry, someone working in a private school, or perhaps someone who has never worked in the NYC public school system or another large urban public school district, is probably asking:
“Why doesn’t the principal just get rid of the underperforming veteran tenured teacher?”

For an NYC principal, that can mean investing an enormous amount of time, documentation, energy, and administrative work into a process they may very well lose. From the principal’s perspective, the arbitration and disciplinary system can make successfully removing an ineffective tenured teacher extraordinarily difficult.

And so, sadly, some principals conclude that it is easier to just try to “move the teacher along”—unfortunately, passing the problem on to another one of their principal colleagues somewhere else in the system. That does not solve the problem. It merely changes the school address where the problem resides.

So, What Could the $8,500 Large-Class-Size Teacher Bonus Accomplish?

The proposed $8,500 Large-Class-Size Teacher Bonus is not a perfect solution. And, to be honest, I am not optimistic that a Master Teacher/High Quality Instructional Practitioner requirement would ultimately be allowed.

But imagine if it were.

Imagine if eligibility for that $8,500 were strategically tied to demonstrated instructional excellence, so that principals could deliberately assign additional students to the highest-performing master teachers in their buildings—particularly in schools serving large numbers of academically struggling students.

And again, just in case a reader who has never worked in a public school is wondering, “Well, how will these best-of-the-best teachers be identified?”—that is not nearly as difficult as it might sound. The teachers in a school already know who the master instructional practitioners are. They know because they see their work, hear about their results, observe their instructional practices, and, perhaps most revealingly, those are the teachers in whose classrooms they would want their own children placed.
In fact, that “best-of-the-best” professional knowledge often extends beyond the walls of a single school. From a district perspective, information about “who the great teachers are in a school” travels informally between schools. Teachers will sometimes request the “professional courtesy” of having their own children placed in the classrooms of highly proficient teachers working in schools where they themselves do not work.

That tells us something important: the identification of instructional excellence is not some mysterious, unknowable process. The people working closest to teaching and learning generally know where and when exceptional teaching is taking place.

We proved this in Community School District 29 Queens (CSD 29Q) in the early 2000s, when we developed a professional-development activity titled The Best Instructional Practices Fair. Teacher-presenters were selected by their individual school-based teams, consisting of school administrators and teachers. And I do not recall hearing of a single school team experiencing any serious disagreement over who their school’s best instructional practitioners were—or who should represent their school at the Fair.
However, although we incorporated an awards system into the Fair, this proposed $8,500 incentive presents a very different situation. When substantial amounts of money are attached to being designated a “Master Instructional Practitioner,” I would not want to create unnecessary and unfriendly competition, resentment, or conflict among teachers by asking them to select one another for the award.

Therefore, I would place the selection responsibility with the school administrators, who already have access to multiple measures of teacher instructional performance. But those selections should be subject to strict superintendent and district-level supervisory oversight, with clearly established data-based selection criteria and safeguards designed to prevent favoritism, cronyism, or any other abuse of the process.

The goal should never be to create a popularity contest among teachers. The goal is to identify, as objectively and professionally as possible, those master instructional practitioners who have demonstrated the capacity to successfully teach more students—and then strategically place more students in front of them.
Now the $8,500 Large-Class-Size Teacher Bonus policy would become more than compensation for having additional students in a classroom. It could become an instructional intervention strategy.

The bonus could provide principals with a meaningful tool to place more academically vulnerable students in front of the teachers most capable of accelerating their learning, while simultaneously creating smaller instructional settings in which novice and developing teachers could improve their practice.

Would such a policy “over-help” schools that already enjoy significant entitlement advantages?

Probably.

But that is almost always a danger with every system-wide initiative. Schools with greater organizational capacity, politically influential parent communities, stronger staffing stability, are often better positioned to exploit any new resource or policy opportunity.

That reality should not stop us from pursuing a potentially useful idea. Rather, it places an even greater responsibility on serious and sincere Title I principals and superintendents to make this—or any other initiative—work in the best educational interests of their children.

Because in an imperfect public education system, the best principals will do this every day:
They take imperfect policies, imperfect rules, imperfect resources, and imperfect circumstances—and creatively transform them into the best possible educational opportunities for children.

And if NYC is going to spend $8,500 per teacher for oversized classes anyway, then we should at least ask the most important instructional quality question:
Why not deliberately place more struggling students in front of the teachers who have demonstrated that they can teach them exceptionally well?

Michael A. Johnson is a veteran public school educator and former New York City public school teacher, principal, and school district superintendent. He has also served as an adjunct college professor of education, and has spent decades mentoring teachers, assistant principals, principals, aspiring school-building and district-level leaders. He is the author of Report to the Principal’s Office and Report from the Principal’s Office and writes the weekly blog, Michael A. Johnson’s Education Notes: A Site for Educaring Leaders and Learners, where he examines public education policies, school-building leadership issues, educational equity, and the moral responsibility of educators to act courageously in the best interests of children.

Responding to Racist Attacks on Popular and Heroic Black Public Figures: An Educational Imperative for Adaptive, Corrective, and Protective Lesson and School-Wide Response Planning

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As the bulk of the decent, non-prejudiced poisoned citizens left in America express, justifiably so, righteous anger and moral indignation at the U.S. President’s escalation toward more explicit visual expressions of the ugly beliefs and policies that undergird his reign of racism; professional educators, who are human beings and ethically embarrassed citizens (we take any form of ignorance personally), will also feel the pain of this moment. And that pain will not be limited to Black educators only. We therefore must “stay focused, and stay on the job.”

First, we must recognize, from a pedagogical perspective, what Barack and Michelle Obama meant, not only (but especially) to Black children in our own country and beyond, but also to children of every color, ethnicity, and nationality, in schools not just across the United States, but in schools all over the world.

So, our first job is to develop age- and grade-appropriate lesson plans, across multiple content areas, including active involvement with guidance and counseling departments, that support healthy healing, conceptual correction, and, particularly in light of the current ICE brutal assaults on human beings, a reassuring sense of both group and personal protection.

We know enough developmental psychology to understand that when young people are hurt, angry, or frightened, they will not always express or act out those feelings in the most positive or productive ways; therefore, professional educators must step in directly into the present fray, and help students process this disgraceful moment in our history in the most positively edifying and emotionally strengthening manner possible.

Each school-based administrator must make a personal and professional decision regarding how far to go, and in what format; therefore, I would not offer a blanket recommendation for how school leaders should respond to these types of historical moments.
That said, based on my past experiential practice as a high school principal, where we understood that whatever major event existed in the public atmosphere, our students already knew about it, so instead of hiding from the obvious, what I did then, and what I would do now, is to shift into full response mode.

I would immediately convene a crash cabinet, school-leadership and departmental emergency meeting to design a school-wide classroom, and guidance-counseling response strategy, beginning with four grade-level assemblies that I would personally lead. After all, we invested a great deal of time—eight years—building students’ pride, resilience, hope, and aspirations around the exemplary model and public leadership excellence of the Obama family; and we cannot allow all of that deliberate self-esteem-building work to be attacked without a purposeful teaching-and-learning response.

A note of caution for principals: understand that superintendents are, by job description, though not necessarily by personal preference, both educational and political actors. You must therefore read the present situation within that dual context and know your superintendent’s position on this matter before acting.

As for me, I have articulated my own self-guiding response position to moments such as these across several chapters of my book, Report From the Principal’s Office: A 200-Day Inspirational and Aspirational School Leadership Journal, including:

13. The Ethical Principalship.
20. Ethical Righteous Authority Means You Can’t Always Ask for Permission to Act.
21. Wise Righteous Authority Means There Are Times When You Should Ask for Permission to Act.
32. The Authentic Principalship.
64. The Mindful Principalship.
And very relevant to our present concern:
75. Part of the Effective Principalship Practice Is Not Throwing Yourself Under the Bus!

So, act according to your ethical inclinations, pedagogical responsibilities and your district political realities.

I do not want to get any principal in trouble, so full disclosure: my leadership style is my leadership style, and even when teaching future school administrators, I always explain my leadership approach with a clearly stated warning label. That said, I firmly believe that the most moral, ethical, and pedagogically sincere educators, and especially educational leaders, are, in fact, made in and for this moment.

This is not a moment for professional silence, instructional avoidance, or moral retreat disguised as neutrality. Racist attacks on major well-known by students Black public figures, particularly those who represent dignity, excellence, and aspirational possibility, inevitably, one way or another, land in our classrooms, whether we invite them or not.

The question before educators is not whether students will be affected, but whether we will meet them with intentional guidance, protective care, and intellectually honest instructional practices. If we truly believe that education is both a moral and civic endeavor, then this is precisely the moment when principled, prepared, and courageous educational leadership must rise to meet the work.

Michael A. Johnson has served as a NYC public school teacher, an award-winning principal, and a school district superintendent. A former adjunct professor of education and the author of two books on school-building leadership, he writes about educational equity, policy, and the ethical and moral obligations that come with safeguarding the educational lives and promising futures of all children. Inspired by ancestral heroes such as Dr. Gerald Deas, John Lewis, and W.E.B. Du Bois, he strives to make as much “good trouble” as possible before closing his eyes for the final time.

Winning NYC’s Affordability Fight Is Impossible Without Public School Accountability

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When public schools fail to educate with integrity and accountability, families are priced out of the future.

When a city’s school system fails to deliver high-quality education to its most educationally, politically, and economically disenfranchised students, and does so without intentional, effective integrity or, no possibility of facing the threat of meaningful consequences for failure; the families of those children, and the communities in which they live, pay severe and permanent costs.

Those costs are psychological, financial, and social, paid through diminished opportunity, eroded trust, and the stolen hope public education is meant to make possible for all students: real, meaningful generational leaps in the quality of their lives. Any city will remain unaffordable, generation after generation, for families whose children are denied access to the kind of rigorous, accountable education that breaks cycles of poverty rather than reproduces them, regardless of zip code, socioeconomic status, immigration status, race, or nationality.

No city, state, or nation can sustainably outperform, economically or otherwise, the level of educational quality it is willing to invest in all of the children under its care. I learned this lesson viscerally years ago, sitting in my principal’s conference room, when I posed a blunt question to a visiting international delegation of senior public-education officials: Why travel halfway around the world to visit a 99.9 percent Black and Latino, Title I urban American high school?

The answer, delivered with striking honesty, left no room for ambiguity. I paraphrase, but not the intent: “To fully develop our country, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), we must close the quality gap between our rural and urban schools. National strength depends on educating every child to their highest potential.” They had studied our work, referencing the New York Times (“Scores Count,” Sept. 8, 1996), and noted something they found instructive: students who entered our high school with significant academic deficiencies were graduating four years later performing at high academic levels.

That PRC delegation was operating with a clarity of purpose too often missing from American debates about “school improvement,” what they described simply as “seeking truth from facts.” Their thinking echoed the famous words of former Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping: It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or yellow, as long as it catches mice. In other words, results matter. And nations serious about their future do not knowingly leave large segments of their children educationally underdeveloped and then expect long-term economic prosperity, innovation, or social stability to follow.

The history lesson here is unambiguous. Societies that deliberately deny any group of children, by race, gender, geography, or circumstance, access to a rigorous and empowering public education are choosing chronic underdevelopment across every sphere of civic life. Economic vitality weakens. Scientific and medical advancement slows. Cultural and artistic innovation withers. The tremendous human potential necessary for national progress is squandered.

Replacing educational opportunity with missed-opportunity incarceration is neither a sound economic strategy nor a defensible educational one. A prison industry fed by failed public schooling outcomes is a moral failure masquerading as public policy. With courageous civic leadership and sustained determination, public school systems can move beyond models that tolerate mediocrity for some children while reserving excellence for others.

Moral, ethical, intellectual, and technical capacities do not emerge by accident. They are built, child by child, class by class, school by school, through a compassionate but uncompromising commitment to high expectations, instructional excellence, and equal access to opportunity. But accountability must be real. It must be shared, and it must be tied to meaningful consequences, not borne solely by students, parents, and the communities with the least political protection.

Public school systems cannot serve two masters. Schools must be places where children’s learning is the non-negotiable priority, not adult employment agencies protected from the outcomes they produce. At the very least, parents and taxpayers deserve honesty about which path has been chosen. Without that truth, what passes for “reform” is little more than the rationalization of failure.

And as long as a city is willing to accept devastating public education outcomes for its least politically connected and least protected children, that city will remain unaffordable for them, generation after generation, regardless of who occupies City Hall.

Michael A. Johnson is a former NYC public school teacher, award-winning principal, and school district superintendent. A past adjunct professor of science education and the author of two books on school-building leadership, he writes frequently about educational equity, policy, authentic school improvement, and the moral obligations of those entrusted with the lives of children.

PreK-12 educators must uphold the valuable pedagogical principles of Diversity, Equity, Equality, and Inclusion in their conceptual and behavioral learning objectives.

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As professional educators, we must take an enlightened and ethical step up and away from the common uninformed and often divisive ‘politically toxic’ current conversations concerning the application of the principles of Diversity, Equity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEEI). We understand the educational value of each DEEI principle individually and how they work together in a school building. Additionally, we recognize that, operationally and pedagogically, Equity and Equality are profoundly different teaching and learning strategies. And even if some of our university colleagues, now under political and financial siege, are forced to abandon the efficacious teaching and learning power of applying (or even discussing) DEEI, we must hold the line. For in our PreK-12 world, these core doctrinal conceptual and behavioral learning standards are inseparable from the type of schools we want to create, the learning objectives we want to teach, and the profiles of the kinds of students we want to send into a very diversely integrated and growing internationally-interactional nation and planet. We must seek to empower students with a broad spectrum of communicative competencies and a rich reservoir of applicable knowledge and intelligences. Their neighborhood, the city, the state, and the region of the nation where they reside, along with their nation itself, is not the entire planetary humanity story, not even close! Our job as intellectual capacity builders is to broaden and not limit and shrink the child’s locus of power and influence. In a good and wise Democracy, its public education system will build a greater unity of purpose that fully embraces and develops the gifts and talents of all of its citizen children.

Cell Phones in Schools Operational Follow-up: As a profession, how many bad policy historical experiences do we need?

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Yes, there have been many instances where some student somewhere, in some classroom, has used a pencil, pen or a computer in an unintended, not so good, and perhaps, even in a dangerous way, should we then ban those writing and educational instruments from schools? Continue reading →

If you want to start as a public school-based administrator (SBA), then get the process started right! Part 2: The state/local SBA job requirements, the official administrative SBA job posting, and the applying process is the process, so meet and follow them faithfully.

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If you want to start as a public school-based administrator (SBA), then get the process started right! Part 2: The state/local SBA job requirements, the official administrative SBA job posting, and the applying process is the process, so meet and follow them faithfully.

(Excerpts from an upcoming book for educators aspiring to be or attain the next level of their school-based leadership careers.)

“…Seeing a discombobulated, disorganized, inattentive to details like spelling/grammatical errors on a CV or other personal, personnel office documents, a grossly unserious or clearly unstudied SBA applicant could cause the superintendent’s interviewing team to ask: “Well if they cannot organize and optimize their own personal and professional job search life, what does that say about their capabilities with taking on the awesome task of organizing and optimizing the people skills and talents of an entire school building family? But, not being fully certified and licensed is an automatic disqualifier. There is a long, unfortunate list of aspiring to the next leadership level SBAs who, in one way or another, were unprepared to “legally” step up and step in when a school-based leadership position suddenly and unexpectedly (and they do!) opened up. It’s crucial to be proactive in your preparation practices, taking serious responsibility for your future career advancement readiness….”

Once you have decided to become a school-based administrator, get School Supervision and Administration (SS&A) credentialed, become state (And if appropriate, locally) certified and licensed by a “recognized and respected” university’s school of education graduate SS&A graduate school program as soon as possible. The university SS&A graduate program should have some face-to-face residency requirements and a field experience component. People in SBA appointment decision-making positions may not want (for lawsuit reasons) to say this, but I will. Superintendents and their district-level screening teams can be suspicious of any SS&A graduate school degree-granting program that does not allow professional and experienced educational faculty to, for a considerable amount of time, at least “lay intense eyes on” the SS&A graduate student—my goodness, children’s emotional and academic well-being is at stake; and so who is being certified by these “emailing-it-in” graduate programs to serve as a school administrator?

You should only be able to partially email-it-in and study online to earn a full SS&A degree. There is a need to fully engage in person with a professor and other SS&A students. Understandably, the distance-learning approach might be the only realistic option for many (especially rural) educators who do not have easy access to an established private or public university SS&A graduate school program near them. Nevertheless, if you can, seek out a “physical residency” in-contact class (not completely virtual) SS&A graduate degree-granting program, even if it is structured for you to attend classes during the summer and concentrated “school-break” sessions. Dialogical interactions with a professor and fellow SS&A students are integral to the learning about school leadership process. I also can endorse taking the “local lane,” meaning taking the class load or credits per year you can manage with your present professional, personal, and family responsibilities; just be consistent with whatever full- or part-time schedule you choose.

Furthermore, whatever SS&A study path you choose, study with intense sincerity; this is not simply a SBA job search “check-off” box issue, but instead, it is an opportunity for you to invest time in serious leadership thinking, the learning of the many theoretical formations of the best school leadership practices, for there is much to be learned about the valuable craft of school operational and managerial techniques that can be taken from these SS&S courses. Some of the SS&A knowledge and information you acquire (e.g., the history of education, curriculum theory, etc.) may even seem to not be helpful or “relevant” to your imaginations of what school leadership work consists of, that is, until you are an appointed SBA, and then, the true applicable power, the “putting together” of all of your SS&A studies will make perfect sense.

In addition, the idea that all graduate SS&A programs are equal is untrue. For example, attending an SS&A graduate program rich with faculty members who themselves are former licensed, certified, and practiced SBAs means they have both school-based practical PreK-12 experiential and theoretical knowledge to share and (for SBA job searching benefits) even better if they served as a district-level officer (e.g., director of operations, content area specialist, etc., or in the superintendency).

This practical knowledge and expertise they bring to the school leadership learning space are crucial because it takes an accomplished and qualified SBA to explain what the SS&A student will encounter with those many critical “hidden” and unwritten but absolutely required on-the-job description-expectations tasks I cover extensively in my two previous books: Report To The Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership (https://majmuse.net/report-to-the-principlas-office-tools-for-building-successful-administrative-leadership/ ). And, Report From The Principal’s Office: A 200-Day Inspirational and Aspirational School Leadership Journal (https://majmuse.net/report-from-the-principals-office-a-200-day-inspirational-and-aspirational-school-leadership-journal/).
Moreover, later in this book, I discuss how these not-so-soft school leadership skills and knowledge can significantly impact the SBA job search and selection process.

I admittedly have a personal bias here, and here it is, gained from interviewing a lot of AP and principal candidates, that for SBA job searching purposes, I believe those SS&A university programs that have a significant number of faculty members who have served in the job capacity of having been a classroom teacher, school-based administrator, district-level director, deputy or superintendent, will more easily be able to engage in real school world “what to do when or if…” practicum teaching and learning sessions. Further, faculty instructors who have served at the district level could be very familiar and helpful in sharing those “not-widely-known” aspects of the school system’s career ladder ascending and school leadership job promotion challenges. Additional job searching/acquiring benefits exist to having experienced school-based or district-level experienced administrators as your SS&A faculty instructors.

I talk later in the book about how the SBA job-seeking process is like an iceberg because so much of the “unofficial” (not to be confused with the unprincipled, political, or illegal) elements are known only to those who are informed by those who know the complete “inside” story. Then, there is the “helpful contacts factor,” which is always a factor in any employment sector situation and central to every aspect of the school leadership job-acquiring process. As a former superintendent serving on a university faculty, I was in touch with many presently serving superintendents and principals (many of whom I appointed) or APs I mentored, coached, and appointed who are now principals. I can honestly tell you that all letters of recommendation (LOR) are not equal. Some verbal or written referrals and recommendations carry more weight than others.

Furthermore, unofficial “off-the-record” assessments can carry the same influencing power as the official “on-the-record” assessments. Simply because your superintendent days are over, it does not mean that your “school leadership talent scouting” instincts disappear; besides, you want the principals you appointed to have the best APs, and your superintendent collogues/friends to have the best APs and principals. Moreover, you could be fortunate (as is my case as a former high school principal) to be in a position to help your former students who have arrived or are making their way up the school-building leadership career ladder. However, most importantly, for the educational well-being of children, you want to do the best preparation work for all SS&A students. Therefore, you want to get the best (of the best) SBA candidates in the best possible position to win a SBA appointment.

Full confession: As a rule, I never write a recommendation that I do not believe that I could stand 100% behind my laudatory assessment comments; yes, this, at times, has led me to say “no” to a request for a Letter of Recommendation (LOR), because I cannot comment insincerely when I know parents, staff members, and students’ lives are at stake. And based on the quality of some of the many AP or principal job candidates I have interviewed, I suspect that not everyone shares my approach of not providing an unearned and unwarranted “positive” LOR, or do we simply have different standards? In any event, the upside of those rare (because folks quickly figure out my standards) uncomfortable “no recommendation” moments is that principals, district-level staff, and superintendents know that when I endorse an SBA candidate, I am saying (because I do not know the present particulars of the school), that this person I am recommending should, all things being considered, at least be on your “finalist” list of SBA interviewees becouse of their highly-valued status (later in the book I talk about the psychological and practical importance of making it to the SBA job appointing final 3 or 4 top candidates).

In addition, as was the case in my own SS&A graduate school experience, faculty members can become a coach and mentor of your immediate SBA job search and appointment efforts; and long-term advisors and recommenders of promising SBA candidates after your AP or principal tenure begins. SS&A faculty mentoring involves tasks such as enhancing your CV and assisting with the organization of your Professional Performance Portfolio (PPP). Later in this book, I discuss how the PPP can serve as an effective self-study tool, empowering SBA candidates to strategically “guide” district-level interviewers toward their areas of expertise and strengths.

Finally, beware of the widespread flawed belief among some young educators that suggests you are living a failed career life if you are not an assistant principal by age twenty-five! How about “mastering” the instructional practitioner role, a model deanship, a highly efficacious guidance counselor, the teacher who is an excellent grade or content leader? Schools are emotionally dense, often politically tense, and psychologically complicated places; therefore, a calming, compassionate/passionate steady hand and a serious discerning maturity are needed to be an effective school-based leader. There is no reason to rush the process artificially. It is a case of earning the school leadership role by learning the many complex roles a school leader must play throughout a school day. Instead, take the time to acquire and work with a “proven” presently working or retired SBA mentor-coach, learn good and effective curriculum theory, school-building management strategies, “people skills,” budgeting, student/staff scheduling, explore school improvement/raising achievement ideas, and the best instructional coaching practices since a school’s success is primarily predicated on the quality of its learning culture environment, which is very much driven by the quality (and the quantity of that quality) of its teaching and learning activities.

Most importantly, take the time to study and get to know your(authentic)self as an educator and a seriously committed school leader of educators! You should also, for district-level interviewing purposes, take as much necessary time as you need to “sharpen” your gifts and talents, strengthen your areas of leadership skills and knowledge “weaknesses” (cue the mentor-coach), and eliminate those professional flaws, unprofessional people-to-people terrible tendencies, and behaviors (e.g., unbefitting of an AP social media postings) that question your school-building leadership “temperament” and thus weaken your ability to earn an AP appointment. Understand that the district is not professionally developing your job-search skills obligated or legally responsible for telling you why you were not selected for the AP position.
Your somehow “professionally connected” veteran SBA mentor-coach could discreetly, in some situations, find out your presentation/interviewing strengths and weaknesses. Try to gain a more complete and deeper understanding of what it means to be a professional educator, and specifically, what it means to take on the responsibility of an educational leadership position in today’s world, particularly in a Title-1 school where the children and staff desperately require maximum school leadership skills, not a mediocre and knowledge deficient performance. However, all schools surely do not need someone who rushed through their school leadership learning development stages, someone who could dangerously become a poorly performing and dream-killing ineffective assistant principal. You must be able to answer in a standards-based/rubrics-ruling way the following question honestly:

“Why would a superintendent want to appoint me as an AP?”

If you want to start as a public school-based administrator (SBA), then get the process started right!

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If you want to start as a public school-based administrator (SBA), then get the process started right!

(Excerpts from an upcoming book for aspiring to school-based leadership educators)

Part 1: Aspiring to the Assistant Principalship

Being a school-based AP or principal is one of the most critical personal and professional decisions an educator can make. The quality of your career life and the quality-of-life futures of your potential School Family Members (students, staff, parents) are at stake. How you qualitatively start out with the School Based Administrator (SBA) job acquisition process is how you will qualitatively carry out that process and, ultimately, how the process will qualitatively end up for you!

“I am presently a teacher (or: dean, librarian, guidance counselor, staff developer, instructional coach, etc.), and I want to be an assistant principal––what do I do next?”

“What do I do next in my school leadership career journey?”

First, be an excellent, exemplary and highly-efficacious educator in your present job assignment!
Which means, I hope you have professionally distinguished yourself based on objective, operational performance standards in your current job position. In addition, you have received positive competency performance feedback from the district-level leadership (e.g., content directors) team. Further, your school-based supervisory administration team’s formal and informal ratings and evaluations (and maybe even written commendations) are noteworthily positive. You may have been called upon on the school or district level to present yourself or your classroom as a demonstrated example and model of high effectiveness and excellence. Or you have been asked to serve in the role of a professional development presenter? As a teacher, you may already hold a selective, distinguished leadership position in the school (e.g., mentoring, content or grade leader, departmental chairperson, curriculum writer, instructional coach, staff developer, or teacher PD center facilitator). You may be serving on a school or district-level task force or committee or have done so in the past. Your collegial peers consider you eminently respected and highly regarded. And (an excellent sign), when visiting your school, the superintendent, a deputy, or district director/coordinator (privately) ask you if you have ever considered pursuing an AP position! It is a good guess to think that they would only ask you that question if they felt you fit the AP profile and the district would benefit by your being in that SBA position-seeking “pool.” And finally, most importantly, the students under your pedagogical care make significant academic or social progress despite the challenges and deficiencies they may bring to your classroom.

Even if you are committed to pursuing an educational leadership position, remember the real-world impact of your potential role. Strive to be the best in your current role, not just for the sake of your school-building leadership job aspirations but because your actions can shape the future of children. Wait, observe, think, and listen for the authentic ‘heart’ and ‘head’ calling you into a leadership role. If the calling is true and accurate, it will persist until you answer correctly and purposely. Remember, schools deal with real people, not widgets. Your leadership can turn dreams and aspirations into reality; SFMs are not just abstract data points or names attached to official documents.

Perhaps the career advancement grass looks greener on your neighbor’s (appointed AP or principal) side of the fence because you don’t see all the extra time, hard work, planning, and strategic commitment to unpaid hours they put in to make those positions work! —So, be careful and know what you are asking for aspiring school administrators because (after studying this book) you might get that position!

Next: Part 2, The state/local SBA job requirements, the official administrative SBA job posting, and the applying process is the process, so meet and follow them faithfully.