Picking the Right Leaders

A great article by NYC Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf that relates to the one I sent out last night about Ernest Logan:

Over the last five years, NYC has closed  62 schools, opened 286 new schools, and hired over 900 new principals.  Although leadership has been one of our central pillars from the outset, the  law of large numbers guarantees that we’ve made our share of mistakes. The  need to step up to a new level is especially critical for us given our central  "theory of  action." <http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/ChildrenFirst/default.htm>  Our biggest bet on achieving dramatically higher gains in student  achievement is to broadly empower principals with more resources and expanded  programmatic discretion while holding them rigorously accountable for results.  As our critics have not been shy in pointing out, the success of this approach  is highly dependent on the capacity of our school leaders.

So what are  we doing? We continue to invest heavily in our nationally recognized Leadership Academy <http://www.nycleadershipacademy.org/> , which  identifies, trains, and places over 50 candidates a year and provides training  and support for all new principals. We successfully negotiated merit bonuses  (up to $25,000) and an additional $25,000 for principals with an extraordinary  record of success who accept the challenge of leading our highest needs  schools. (Kudos to the leadership of the CSA, which represents principals, for  is openness to and support of these ideas). In exchange for greater autonomy,  every principal signs a performance document. And perhaps as importantly as  anything, we empowered them to craft their own path to success, ending the  more prescriptive "top down" approach that most districts favor. That alone  has significant potential to attract a new cadre of quality candidates, while  encouraging our many superstars to stay on. To a substantial degree,  leadership capacity comes from within, but it is our responsibility as  administrators to create a professional environment that supports great  leaders in their desire to step up to the challenge. If we fail to do this, we  should expect our most entrepreneurial principals to seek employment  elsewhere.

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Picking the Right Leaders
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.
Eduwonk, http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/08/picking-right-leaders.html