Last winter when parents and community activists attempted to oust Wells High School principal David Peterson, most observers wrote it off as a neighborhood insurrection. But that battle–which has spread from the near-west-side school into the courts–represents a much deeper conflict between activists and principals that threatens to upset the nascent public-school reform movement.
It’s quite a contrast with the days before reform, when principals were the uncontested bosses of their schools. Few teachers dared to buck them. Those who did were often slapped with an unsatisfactory rating or dumped before a classroom of the school’s rowdiest children.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
To become a principal one had to pass a local exam. Just taking the test seemed to require connections–it was only given every three years or so and there was usually a long waiting list. For years minorities complained that the process shut them out. Although the school population is now 59 percent black and 26 percent Hispanic, roughly 56 percent of the principals are white. “It was a closed system,” says Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, a school-reform group. “A lot of good, qualified people never even applied for principal jobs because they didn’t have the right connections.”
To replace the principals who were fired, some reform groups have started acting like employment agencies and have placed ads in several newspapers asking for resumes from educators interested in becoming public school principals.
Peterson joined forces with his five supporters to fill the seat with another supporter, Georgina Williams. At a March 6 meeting Williams cast the sixth vote needed to give Peterson a four-year contract.
Berndt correctly points out that test scores are low and dropout rates high throughout the city’s public school system. It’s a delusion, he says, to hold principals solely accountable for these facts. What about the parental accountability, or for that matter the accountability of reform groups, such as Designs for Change?
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Charles Eshelman.
