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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Brave Principals « Diane Ravitch's blog

Brave Principals « Diane Ravitch's blog:


Brave Principals

The principals of New York State are amazing. When the State Education Department began creating its “educator evaluation system,” it called together the principals and showed them what it was up to. It showed them a video of guys building a plane while it was flying. This was called, in self-congratulatory parlance, “building a plane in mid-air.” A few principals noticed that the guys building the exterior of the plane were wearing parachutes, but the passengers didn’t have parachutes. The principals realized that they, their staff, and their students were the passengers. The ones with the parachutes were the overseers at the New York State Education Department. For them, it was a lark, but the evaluation system they created was do-or-die for the hapless passengers.
The principals rose up in revolt, led by Carol Burris and Sean Feeney. They wrote a petition and circulated it to