by David Safier

Reader and commenter Phillip D sent me a lengthy commentary on my post about TUSD's strategy of firing everyone at Rincon and Palo Verde high schools, then hiring back half the teachers. His opinion is, the single most important hire may be the principal.

Here is a short excerpt from what he wrote. You can read the whole thing after the jump.

It’s hard not to conclude that since great teachers are not going to be walking in off the street [to teach at Rincon and Palo Verde] and, like you pointed out, great teachers will not move in from other schools (let's face it, schools have a quarterback problem), it is the principal's responsibility to make sure teachers are not only teaching specific performance objectives from the state standards, but they are given development time to analyze data and prepare lesson plans that will improve scores. In an underperforming school, therefore, it seems like even if most teachers would recoil from what could be perceived as an overreaching, overbearing inappropriate micro-managing, the principal need to take the extra step of  making sure the state standards are being taught effectively and making sure methods and protocols are in  place in the classroom that will lead to success. The principal is a key factor, more so than usually thought. Again, this is what modern education in Arizona looks like.