I would encourage one and all to visit the original Gotham Gazette site and leave a comment on this conflict of interest and self-serving veiled attempt by the DOE to further control and de-legitimize our public school system....
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The thin wall — more like a tissue curtain really — that separated the New York City school’s Leadership Academy from being a public agency now has disappeared entirely.
Last week, the Department of Education announced that the privately funded, city inspired program to train people to be principals in city public schools had been awarded the city contract — yes — to train people to be principals in city public schools. Three other places bid on the contract but, according to the Sun, the department would not disclose who they were. So now the academy wil get about $10 million of public money a year to inculcante prospective principals with the ideas of former GE chief executive Jack Welsh.
The results of this process were not exactly surprising.
In the April press release announcing the bidding, Klein was quoted as saying, “I congratulate the Leadership Academy for developing a system of principal training that so clearly benefits students.” As skoolboy, filing it for Eduwonkette, wrote. “The DOE had a competitive bidding process to award a contract to an organization that Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein had created and publicly supported over the past five years.”
Although the department has billed the academy as a success, other analyses have questioned the efficacy of the program. A review by the Post last fall found about half of the schools headed by Leadership Academy principals last year received grades of C, D or F in the school report cards issued in 2007. One quarter of all failing schools, had principals who went to the Leadership Academy. At the other end, 23 percent of all city schools got A’s — but only 15 percent of those led by Leadership Academy graduates got the top grade.
“Here’s where an independent research verification group, an idea that’s been batted around for the next iteration of mayoral control could play an important role,” wrote Insideschools.org this spring. ” It’s entirely possible that Leadership Academy grads are more skilled than other principals. But we just don’t know…. The DOE has an interest in making Leadership Academy principals look successful, so those principals might have received assistance in addition to the academy training. In addition, an independent research board might design an experiment that looked at variables other than test scores.”
And, while they’re at it, maybe they could tell us who those other three bidders were too.
