By Carolyn DeRaad A little over a year ago Irv Moskowitz, Superintendent of Denver Public Schools, made news by firing principals at schools in which the academic performance of the students remained flat or fell. Again this year principals were fired or reassigned in an attempt to bring some academic rigor to the schools. Standardized tests such as the ITBS are not perfect, but they allow comparison between performance at local schools and those across the nation in the essential areas of reading, writing and math computation. Firing principals, Goals 2000 and Standards, each is an attempt to reform the educational morass we've achieved in our country. Goals 2000 sets out broad goals for schools.
Standards are an attempt to ensure that some common knowledge and skills are acquired by students.
But the rubber meets the road in each of the school buildings around the state. In each of these buildings are people either pulling together for a common goal or working independently. Principals are the people charged with focusing the efforts and making a motley group of teachers into a school with a goal, a purpose, in short, a mission . The Brookings Institute's report Politics, Markets and America's Schools claims that strong principals are very responsible for performance. Other more anecdotal accounts lead to the same conclusion.