A wonderful comment by a principal. Build alliances:
Please do not assume that administrators are not every bit as disheartened as teachers at what is happening in public education. I am a principal. I taught for over 20 years. I became a principal because I knew that teachers need administrators who know how hard they work, how dedicated they are, and how much they give to the children in their classes. I became an administrator to ‘stand in the gap’ and allow teachers to teach, even in this high stakes testing, anti-teachers environment. It breaks my heart every single day to see what is happening to our schools. Every day my goal is to help the teachers in our school build the learning environment where our kids find joy in learning and our teachers find joy in teaching. And trust me, it is not easy. Sometimes I feel like the only way to DO my job well is to put my job on the line every day.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you because as I sit here I wonder why the administrators are allowing the govt to destroy public ed.
As I’m sitting here, I wonder why parents and local Boards of Education are idly standing and watching the train wreck. Teachers and administrators are under constant threat, like Diane said of termination. New Leaders for New Schools is the principal equivalent of TFA.
What I find disheartening is that NLNS and TFA inflict their damage primarily in areas of high concentrations of poverty with an overwhelming population of African-American and Hispanic/Latino children. Just thinking aloud. I wonder why that is?
It is heartening to read the post from the administrator. I hope there are many more out there who are as saddened by the destruction of public education as so many teachers are. I do not think that “administrators are allowing the govt to destroy public ed.” The power to do the amount of destruction being done goes far and above the administration of a local school. School administration is under the same threats of termination and professional destruction as teachers are. Administrators who care are trying to motivate their staff to keep them going and teaching and welcoming in the students for another year while trying to implement state mandated or federally mandated programs and watching the train wreck happen.
Yes, there are many of us in administration who stand with our teachers. The shame is that the people who are causing the real damage are never held accountable. We continue to allow elected officials to erode public education while conveniently blaming teachers. They allow public education to be taken over for profit. When will we hold them accountable for their failure of overseeing the public school systems they are charged with protecting? NCLB has failed and RTTT is no better.
Instead of parents blaming teachers, and teachers blaming administrators, everyone should look at the people creating the policies at the top. Let’s evaluate our politicians, governors, and state Ed superintendents by using statewide test scores as their VAM scores for accountability. Their jobs should be tied to test scores just like teachers.
“Their jobs should be tied to test scores just like teachers.”
I hope you are being sarcastic with that comment as no one’s jobs should be linked to the invalid test scores of students.
Administrators in the state of the “model ed reform”, LA, can now be fired by the Supt. School board is no longer in the hiring and firing position. Will this be good? Will it be bad? Have to wait and see.
I have never seen it work differently. The School Board accepts or rejects the recommendations of the Superintendent. They are not directly responsible for personnel matters. They are responsible for overseeing the performance of the Superintendent. Since they are not interested in having the district sued, their scrutiny will be determined not only by their level of trust in the Superintendent but by their own study of the issues. Of course, the School Board in all the districts in which I have taught have been elected (and not appointed).
1508 NY principals …over 1/3 of NYS, signed a letter, a detailed research based letter, against evaluating teachers by test scores. A few thousand teachers signed too. How about 1/3 of NY teachers signing?
http://Www.Newyorkprincipals.org