Herban Sprawl

06/18/09

The latest chapter in the Fleming SOL Scandal has opened with the errant principal hiring a Richmond attorney and her own PR spin doctors. The Times has rightfully pointed out the amount of money this is likely to drain from the public coffers - money that should be going toward the education of our young people.

The Times has also called for Ms. Willis to do the right thing - to gracefully step down. Oh my.

Let’s back up for just a moment, class, and review the facts in the case. First, we have painted ourselves into a corner by jumping onto the high stakes testing bandwagon. To be sure, in the Star City we now have a curriculum that is division-wide and have cut down on the holes created when families move around and children transfer from school to school. The children most subject to that problem are those who come to school with three strikes against them anyway: low income, low parental interest in education, low expectations. The schools have done their best to deal with numbers three and two, in that order. They have raised the expectations of not only the teachers, but also those of the community at large. The dribble down effect is that parents now are catching on to the importance of the Almighty SOLs. Not that they give a rip, but they are getting the drift that changing schools won’t make the teachers ease up on the need to show up for conferences!

High stakes testing has also created a fertile growing medium for the kind of dishonesty that has come to light. It is no secret among those in the profession that there are nearby school divisions that have been getting away with the very same indiscretions committed at Fleming. The difference is, in those systems, there is a culture of don’t ask-don’t tell. Everyone is mum and it keeps real estate agents touting the non-existent superiority of those schools and the growth of McMansions that hang off the formerly scenic hillsides like Snuffy Smith’s cabin on steroids.

In the Star City however, high stakes testing has only served to fertilize a well-established culture of administrative bullying. Belatedly, the school board got scared when there was a mass exodus of teachers from certain schools. However, the principals responsible for bullying didn’t get reassigned to the classroom. Instead, the administration has appeared to do nothing to alleviate the situation. I am careful to say appeared, because who knows what Dr. Bishop has said and done in private. Sometimes she has a righteous streak that won’t quit, and if a mass exodus is going to cost her a lot of money to replace teachers, that’s grounds for her to get her undies in a wad. I’ve been around her when she gets on one of her toots, and believe me, that lady can be downright frightful! She can also be a great champion when she sees potential.

The late Edward Spear, CEO of United States Steel, once told me employees are never promoted by the people above them, but rather by those below them. People in a position of leadership will stay there when they can work with their employees and maintain a positive workplace that becomes productive. The productivity of their underlings is what promotes them. It’s what gets the attention of the Rita Bishops. They see a good bottom line and they reward those leaders.

In the case of Fleming High, the teachers were responsible for making silk purses out of sow’s ears, and in most cases, they succeeded. But the system failed those kids when the pressure on an administrator to raise test scores collided with reality. Now mix in her propensity for bullying and you have a high-heeled Hitler fannying about, raising hell about students who are stuck.

Two things are wrong with this picture. The first is our special education system, which is deeply flawed and mired in a ditch of legal mud. The second is the culture that encourages anything so blatantly political as high stakes testing to begin with! We were so eager to “fix” the schools that we threw out the baby with the bathwater. No child left behind has become a goldmine for the educational testing industry, not to mention the “how to teach to the test” industry. Are the children any better educated? No. The same kids do well as have always done well. The others are learning to jump through increasingly more frustrating hoops, and we have the drop-out rate to prove it.

But let’s get back to this particular scandal. This woman is not going to go away gracefully and anyone who thinks she will is crazy. She has already risen through the ranks thanks to her bad behavior toward her employees. They have produced and it has made her look good. The warning signs were ignored when teachers left in large numbers. The implication was that she had gotten rid of dead weight. No, the only dead weight in that building was in her office. The teachers produced and she took the credit. When the statistics showed she had a population that would derail her career plans, she cheated. She and her ilk have been cheating all along, so why should we now be concerned? What is so different about this time?

The public doesn’t like it when the flaws are aired and everyone else can see. The city educators do a fabulous job. They can out-teach the county and Salem’s teachers with a patch over one eye, one hand tied behind their backs, and standing on only one leg. They are that good and they have to be. This one administrator has sullied their work and reduced to ashes their achievements. Worse, the kids are being short-changed every which way imaginable.

The newspaper had been blithely reporting on all the positive things at Fleming High, as though that principal had single-handedly changed it into the best school in the region. No. It has always been a great school, and it has had some really outstanding teachers working very hard with a population that does not value education like they do on the south side of town. The only thing this principal did was to draw attention to herself, and the paper and the city fathers fell for her PR job, hook, line and sinker. She doesn’t need to hire spin doctors - she’s been doing a damn good job of it all along.

I am disgusted. I worked in feeder schools in Fleming’s district for 18 years. My loyalty to those kids and those teachers is solid. I know what they have gone through and I can definitely say, this person doesn’t care about anyone but herself. It’s always been that way, and it’s just about time the paper caught on to that fact.

By allowing for that culture to exist, now the school board and the upper level administration have to tiptoe through the landmines of employment law. For all these years, the teachers and kids have been paying for that attitude by “downtown,” and now “downtown” has to reimburse them. It’s a sad, sorry state of affairs, but I knew it was coming. I’m glad the truth is out there - finally. I’m just sorry the school will now be in such turmoil when they should be so excited about their well-deserved new building. Again, it’s the ones who aren’t old enough to play the game who will be paying for it.