Today, I had the pleasure of seeing Rob Goodman, Managing Director of First Stage, receive the Milwaukee Kiwanis 2013 recipient award. First Stage is an incredible organization that transforms children's lives through theater. Rob spoke about how the confidence, creativity, and development that is taught to the children must first be shown by the leaders of his organization. They must follow the values they expect the children to follow.
That brought me to an immediate thought. Why don't we put strong valuation into our District Administrator and Principal and let the teachers teach! What I mean by this is that we should implement a system in which the District Administrator and Principal should be evaluated. If we do that, not only will we have a much broader and meaningful measure of student improvement than by measuring one teacher in one class, it will also ensure that District Administrators and Principals could not play favorites and keep lovable, ineffective teachers, because they would care more about their own careers than the jobs of teachers they like most.
As many of you know, I have been a very vocal critic of our District Administrator, Rachel Boechler and the entire administration and School Board. This spring we saw a travesty of events in which our District Administrator "shoved through" new programming that had no curriculum, which was voted on and approved by our School Board, which is against State School Board Policy. We saw Boechler and Bayside's Principal implement a "block programming" schedule system that not one teacher could understand. We also saw Boechler terminate our Technology Director after 1 year on the job, although it was not performance based and he was promised by her only weeks before that his job was not in jeopardy. He also left a job of 12 years to come to our system, just to be terminated 1 year in. Where is the decency? We also saw the attempt by Boechler to cut the arts by 38% or more, which was approved by the School Board. We also saw Boechler try and terminate 10 teachers. Luckily, most of them survived through emotional public hearings in which numerous residents and teachers came to support the teachers on the "chopping block." Former School Board President, Debbie Frieberg later said that she did not know where the money was going to come from, but they voted for what public wanted. First of all, the money would come from getting rid of the massive spending waste and the massive amount of money that goes to the District Administrator and her staff and all of their travels and other expenses.
So, let's end the bullying of the teachers and allow all of our great teachers to teach our children without fear of losing their jobs if the vocalize anything or make any attempt to teach outside the box. If we evaluated our District Administrator and Principal, they wouldn't fire a talented teacher, even if they were a "pain in the neck" unless they were so disruptive it hurt the school's results.
If we punish or reward Administrators and Principals on results of the whole school's test results, they would keep and promote the best teachers and ditch the bad ones. If we punish or reward Administrators and Principals based on the success of the entire school, Boechler would have been gone ages ago. Bayside has the second highest per student cost and we do not have the second highest student performance on state tests. That speaks for itself.
So, let's let the teachers teach. Let them use their passion. Ensure that the District Administrator and Principal collaborates with them as they are the ones in the "trenches" and certainly can help create a stronger educational process. Teaching is an incredible responsibility and an incredible art. To be the individual responsible for enhancing the intellect, creativity and maturity of a child when they are not under our roof comes with a lot of pressure. We must let the teachers take some risks, use creative techniques to help students learn, and we must give them more respect. It is not the teachers fault that we are "broke" as many residents constantly want to say. It is because we have had an Administrator and staff that have "handcuffed" the teachers while spending our taxpayer dollars like an individual addicted to drugs.
I will bet you that if we evaluated our District Administrator and Principal in a manner that we evaluate our teachers and punished them and rewarded them based on the total performance of the schools they lead, we would see much higher test scores. We would see much better teacher morale. We would see less breaking of State School Board Statutes. We would see much more collaboration with the teachers to enhance the education of our children. And, I know we would see much less bullying and manipulation than we have seen as of late from the irresponsible leadership of our Administrators.
We would see a climate like Rob Goodman created for the employees and operation of First Stage, which has led to fantastic achievements for many, many children in Milwaukee.
