Dept. of Education Offers Cash to Schools Willing to Throw a Coup

School principals celebrating summer by sipping cocktails on poolside lounge chairs: Look alive. The federal government will allot $170.2 million to low-achieving Florida schools, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Friday — but to receive the money, the schools must disband, go charter, or fire their principals.

“When a school continues to perform in the bottom five percent of the state and isn’t showing signs of growth or has graduation rates below 60 percent, something dramatic needs to be done,” Duncan said in an email.

Schools are broken up into “tiers” that define their need by
graduation rates, passage of Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), and math and
reading proficiency rates. Of the 164 public schools in Broward and
Palm Beach counties, just six are considered Tier I or II schools,
which the school improvement grant application
labels “persistently low-achieving”: Coconut Creek High School, Glades
Central High School, Lake Worth High School, Larkdale Elementary,
Rosenwald Elementary, and Sunland Park Elementary School.

As if
to preemptively cut the “rewarding for doing poorly” criticism, Arne
outlined four models, one of which school districts must opt for if
they apply for funding:

• TURNAROUND MODEL:
  Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more
  than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve
  the school through curriculum reform, professional development,
  extending learning time, and other strategies.
• RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization
• SCHOOL CLOSURE: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.
• TRANSFORMATION
  MODEL: Replace the principal and improve the school through
  comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending
  learning time, and other strategies.

Blaming the principal for a school’s poor showing has been scoffed at in everything from the  Washington Post
to mom-and-pop blogs, but this kind of policy is pretty standard in
states. I tried calling up the principals of our county Tier I and II
schools, but either I was told the principal was unavailable or the
phone just rang and rang. School’s out for the summer, but it might
turn out to be an indefinite vacation.