New Philadelphia schools CEO Arlene Ackerman is making an impression right away; the Philadelphia Inquirer reports:
More than 200 Philadelphia School District staffers received layoff notices this week, a move the new schools chief hopes will begin to de-centralize the district and move resources into classrooms.The employees were all academic coaches, mostly veteran educators who supported teachers in a variety of roles, from technology to mentoring new teachers.
In short, she's quickly asserting control over a behemoth bureaucracy, much like Michelle Rhee is in D.C.
The Philly union leader suggests it's for show: "This is the kind of thing that happens each time a superintendent takes over." I might be so cynical myself, except we know that such central-office "coaches" are often poorly managed and, unbeknownst to them or anyone else, can help cause huge funding inequities between schools. Marguerite Roza has studied this phenomenon; in an anonymous city where four psychologists float among 10 schools, one "says she spends most of her time at a school where the principal ???values her work,'" and another "spends the largest portion of her days at the school her own child attends." As a result, some schools are shortchanged--and often those with the neediest students.
Ackerman might have such a problem in Philly: "When I asked what these coaches do, people would sort of shrug their shoulders and say, 'Well, I don't know.'"
But what's most encouraging to me is that it's "a move the new schools chief hopes will begin to de-centralize the district and move resources into classrooms." Such decentralization is a crucial element of weighted student funding, an important reform Ackerman helped implement in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. In this interview, she leaves no doubt that Philadelphia will be next, welcome news for those of us disappointed by Rhee's moves in the opposite direction in D.C.
