a two-period required class and one-period optional class) in the eleventh
and twelfth years. The vocational program did not suffer—students, for
the most part, learned the same skills in less classroom time as teachers
consolidated their instruction and paid more attention to time on task.
This is not an either-or problem. The issue can better be stated as How
can we meet our state and district testing requirements while at the same
time truly educating our children? Good teaching does both. Good plan-
ning, providing instruction in the skills students need to pass exams from
the first semester of the course of study, eliminates the need for crash
review courses—a waste of instructional time—just before the exam.
Good teachers and good schools have students who pass the exams and
receive a good education. As mentioned previously, when exam results
are good, the powers that be will leave the school leader alone to run his
instructional program on his own terms.
Life is unfair in the world of education today. School boards demand
immediate results from superintendents. Superintendents demand im-
mediate results from principals. Principals demand immediate results
from assistant principals. In the not-so-distant past, school leaders had
time to learn their jobs and their schools’ cultures before being expected
to provide significant achievement gains overnight. It takes at least two
years to impact on the achievement of the students in a school. Given this
time, a competent school leader can make a difference through curriculum
revisions, staff training, hiring of new staff, administrative procedural
changes, parental involvement, and grant support. But, the modern school
leader is often put into a problematic school and given one year to obtain
results. If he fails to do so, he is out of a job. Life is unfair.
The new school leader assigned to a school in need of improvement
must be honest with his school community from the first day and let it
know he must show significant improvement in student achievement in
one year. He needs to enlist the help of all his constituencies to come
up with an emergency one-year plan that will yield results quickly and
a long-term plan that will make systemic changes that will improve
achievement over the long haul. This is hard to do if he does not know
the key players or the culture of the school. In this case, the school leader
needs to find a key player he can trust and have her lead him through the
maze of the school’s culture and politics so he has a chance to succeed.
180 Chapter 13