Reply #37: Sorry Mason, no guarantee [View All]

[cannondale]

If you replace the just the principal, you still have no guarantee that the school (or a department, or an individual) will be better.

I have a better idea, and one that I'm willing to place half of my salary on (I need something to live on, and I could live on half the local going rate). Allow me to hand-pick every math teacher in my district's MS and HS. Do not force me to pick math-ed majors, although some will be. I need to convince some of my interesting, motivated math & computer geek friends to follow me. Give me about six years to show great progress, and I'll take just about any measuring metric. But when the students are performing better, I would like my escrowed salary back, thank you very much.

BTW, I would not keep a single math teacher in my MS or HS. I taught with these guys, so I know more than I need to know.

I seriously doubt one principal would even come close to changing the outcomes delivered by the math department at my district. Our HS has seen a several principals in the past couple of decades, and yet nothing seems to change.