Chris Cerf on principal empowerment

Cerf on the importance of empowering principals:

What is the big idea behind empowerment?  Simply put, our view is that a "command and control" approach to system reform has proven moderately successful at eliminating the most embarrassing failures  – raising the floor, so to speak. In the end, however, urban school districts that pursue this course inevitably encounter a "ceiling effect." As Sir  Michael Barber, Tony Blair's former Education czar, noted in his recently-published book,  two additional points must be added to Jim Collin's now famous continuum: Awful and Adequate are predecessor states to Good and Great. Top down  management has proven reasonably promising at moving school systems from  "awful" to "adequate." Little empirical evidence, however, suggests the likelihood of further progress. "You cannot mandate greatness," Joel Klein has  observed, "it has to be unleashed." Only by empowering schools with broad decision-making authority within the context of real accountability for results can we stimulate innovation and maximize the creative powers of our committed educators. Only then can we move school systems to the next  level.

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Thursday, August 09, 2007
Enabling School Leaders to Lead
Opinions here are my <http://www.broadacademy.org/fellows/fellow.php?alumni_id=21&amp;category_id=4> own and not those of the NYC Department of Education, where I serve as Deputy Chancellor.

The concept of principal "empowerment" lies at the heart of New York City's comprehensive reform effort. In short, the idea is to put as many resources and as much authority as possible in the hands of school leaders and then the hold them strictly accountable for achievement gains. Towards this end, New York has dismantled significant parts of the bureaucracy and used the savings to devolve nearly $350 million directly to schools. While the NYCDOE continues to set the core curriculum and (needless to say) requires schools to comply with applicable legal and contractual provisions, principals (and their teams) are given broad latitude over such matters as scheduling, professional development, and budget. Indeed, schools are given the discretion to purchase "support services" directly from the district or even from outside organizations depending entirely on their own judgment about the school’s particular needs in meeting its ambitious achievement targets.