Mike's Rx For Everything: Looking At Data

That's NYC Schools' Chancellor Joel Klein briefing the future crop of centrally selected Principal clones.
City Centralizes Hiring Process for Principals
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, nytimes of 1/30/08

The Bloomberg administration is overhauling the way that principals at New York City’s 1,500 public schools are evaluated and selected, taking centralized control of the initial screening of candidates and trying to shake up a system where, officials say, a vast majority of principals routinely get satisfactory evaluations....Starting this year, education officials said, the administration will create a centralized pool of candidates for principals who will be judged on their leadership abilities through résumés, essays and in-person evaluations of how they examine school data and evaluate teachers’ lesson plans.........Ernest A. Logan, president of the union that represents the city’s principals and assistant principals, said he supported the new rating system. He added, however, that he did not find the current principal placement process to be flawed, and questioned the value of the prescreening process that will determine who is eligible to apply for openings. “I see this as another attempt to identify successful school leaders, and I don’t know if this is it,” Mr. Logan said. He said he thought the administration was misguided in its quest for a fool-proof formula for selecting principals. “I think these folks really like to have a matrix,” he said. “They like something that can be objective, analytical, put your finger on and say you do boom, boom, boom, this happens. And education doesn’t quite work that way.”