Students and Teachers Expect a Battle In Their Visits to the Principal's Office
This article certainly underscores the brutal difficulties of trying to turn around one of the worst schools imaginable...
A common theme emerges in all, which is the view by Ms. Rohloff's many critics that she is an abrasive, autocratic leader, bent on imposing her agenda and intolerant of dissent.
''The morale here is well into negative figures,'' said Patrick Compton, a social studies teacher at Lafayette for 21 years.
His colleague, Rick Mangone, chapter leader of the teachers' union at Lafayette, said, ''Teachers are worried about how she'll react, not how to teach.'' He added, ''She uses fear tactics.''
Kamilah Brathwaite, 16, a junior who represents Lafayette on a citywide council of high schools, offered a strikingly similar observation.
''The majority of the students are not pleased with her,'' Kamilah said in an interview. ''She brings out policies by just throwing them on students. She doesn't consult with us. She doesn't want to hear anybody else's input. It's whatever she says, goes.''
Ms. Rohloff does not deny or disavow her actions. In an interview this week, she portrayed herself as an educator who had to act swiftly and decisively to reverse a ''culture of failure'' at Lafayette before the Department of Education decided to close the school entirely.
What is undeniable is that Lafayette was a mess before Ms. Rohloff took over in September 2005. Under her predecessor, Alan J. Siegel, the school registered a graduation rate of about 45 percent and Regents scores below those even at schools with a similar profile of largely poor, largely nonwhite students.
Lafayette also became notorious for bias attacks by African-American students against Asian-American classmates.
In November 2002, assailants beat unconscious Siukwo Cheng, 18, a top-ranked student and valedictorian candidate.
The United States Department of Justice alleged that education officials ''deliberately ignored'' such episodes. Under a consent decree in June 2004 between the Justice Department and the city's Department of Education, Lafayette was required to enforce a strict policy against harassment.
SO, Ms. Rohloff, who had been a teacher and administrator for more than 15 years before entering the academy, took over a school needing and presumably wanting improvement.
She does get widespread credit in the school and the surrounding Bath Beach neighborhood for restoring safety. Under her watch, Lafayette was taken off the list of ''impact schools,'' those with chronic violence.
Her main mission, she said, has been to raise academic standards, by such means as ending the tracking of students by ability and harshly evaluating teachers she considers inadequate. Until her arrival, she said, Lafayette's poor reputation had ''been like a magnet,'' attracting substandard teachers from other schools.
Last June, at the end of her first year at Lafayette, she gave unsatisfactory ratings to 9 of about 120 teachers. Under previous principals, about two a year would get the ''U'' mark, which can lead to dismissal.
In the process, Ms. Rohloff, 54, acknowledged, she has created enmity and enemies.
Mr. Cantor said yesterday that Ms. Rohloff had “performed extremely well in highly difficult circumstances.” He said the principals of all five schools would remain as principals, although they could be reassigned to other schools. The preponderance of Leadership Academy graduates among the five, he said, was a factor of the “extremely tough” assignments that the academy’s graduates are often given.
ON EDUCATION; Students and Teachers Expect a Battle In Their Visits to the Principal's Office
This month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg delivered the keynote address to a conference of philanthropists at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark. He took the opportunity to extol his administration's efforts to reform the New York City school system. And he singled out the Leadership Academy, a $77 million program intended to develop new principals, calling it ''a huge success.''
posted by Whitney Tilson at 2:19 PM
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