Red indicator light

On last night's news, the news anchor was reporting the effect of Dallas' new superintendent after his first year.  Anyone with any sense at all could have predicted the effect.  The superintendent was former military and has been superintendent in only small school districts in Colorado.  He had a no-nonsense approach to management of people, had very limited experience in dealing with a diverse number of teacher and community interest groups, and he established goals and deadlines that had very little to do with the human condition, as if delivery of education was the same as delivering boxes through UPS trucks.

Yeah - you're right. That's exactly what happened.  Dallas has 25% fewer teachers after year one.  Almost 10% of the 25% were due to contract non-renewals.  Unheard of.  The rest had varying reasons, but many of the teachers felt forced out.  Some knew they couldn't work under the testing goals and the policies instituted to accomplish those goals.

It's a good thing that unemployment is high in the private sector.  Otherwise teachers historically would be hard to come by.  The line to get into teaching ranks is longer when private jobs are fewer and farther between.  But, then that's the irony of this debacle.  Why would people leave a job when the economy is dictating difficulty in finding a new one?  

Professionals, whose business it is to educate human beings, know when someone at the helm is ridiculously out of order.  They will have no part of maniacal behavior.  Humans are not inanimate objects and teachers do not make a product.  They leave the classroom for a variety of reasons, but when principles of good education are not the principles they see in their classrooms, fallout is inevitable.  Incongruity takes its toll.

The Dallas superintendent is holding the line.  But, the reality will be that his line of action won't achieve his goal of having higher test scores because those are achieved as a by-product of good education rather than the product of deliberately teaching test answers.

25% - horrendous!  Well, the board of trustees are business people.  They'll miss the point.  But at most companies a 25% turnover in employees is an indicator that a strategic error on the part of its leadership has been made.