Woke up spicy

I cannot express my contempt for folks who could never do my job who've spent years pushing a deficit-based, dubiously scientific but definitely politically conservative approach to reading pedagogy.

Imagine being a reporter who can't tell an ELD lesson from an ELA lesson and deciding that the problem with reading today is one (1) woman, who unlike you has spent her life listening to children.

Further imagine that you posit this woman is driven by greed while you work tirelessly to direct millions of dollars to wealthy Republicans and their publishing concerns.

Then imagine that you listen to one (1) podcast and decide you can do my job plus evaluate curriculum better than experts.

Unlike today's local Astroturf, I was here the last time we did this and I'll be here for the next reading war (I hope to retire by the fourth battle of my career). So don't come at me with exactly the same curriculum you've been selling since the 50s and insist I pretend it's something new because this time you call it science.

I hear SFUSD is planning voluntary summer PD on whatever they buy and let me assure you it is in their best interest to keep it voluntary so I don't show up (as a courtesy). The last time they made it mandatory they also started saying just entirely made up shit about English phonology and I'm afraid I was forced to derail that shit. I know it's tiresome af for everyone else there, but it is also super bad to teach teachers nonsense (that has the bonus of being kinda racist) and I am too ADHD to sit through that and crochet in silence.

Elswhere in Papers of Record

The New York Times has noticed that there's something of a substitute teacher crisis. Alas, it's the Times, so they're mostly concerned with individual teachers and districts (and mostly teachers - the author notes in the comments that there isn't evidence for the suggestion that teachers are not at work more days than other professionals, but that's the theme of the piece).

Personally, I think this is a missed opportunity to talk about how we didn't spend COVID funds on HVAC improvements. The nation has old school buildings with bad HVAC. Failing heat and lousy ventilation mean people get sick. It's true the federal government ended up zeroing out a proposed fund for school infrastructure, but there was a lot of money for COVID improvements and it didn't lead to concrete, lasting changes like better buildings with better air circulation.

Also of note is that the article proposes site support subs as a possible fix. A site support sub is a substitute who works full-time at a school. This person can cover classes if someone is out (or to facilitate lesson study, during the day meetings, etc.) but is at the site every day even if there are no absences. In this way, the sub builds relationships with students and staff, and that should mean that when they do sub, the day is more like one with the teacher of record.

What's interesting about this is that SFUSD used to have site support subs at high-needs sites. They got rid of them a couple of budget crises back. As part of the UESF contract extension for 2022-23, there was a site support sub pilot. Under Matt's "Four Times the Required Reserves, Enough Assistant Supes to Staff a Large Elementary School, and Up to Fifty Cents for Each School Site" budget, site support subs will be cut, again. 

This is SFUSD: every elementary school will have an instructional coach next year, despite the very limited data of their efficacy. No school will have a site support sub, despite the clear impact of unfilled absences on a school and a class. No data were collected to judge the impact of the pilot; we fund our schools based not on data, but on the whim of our Supe.

Bad Ideas Never Die (if they're popular with billionaires)

One of the most frustrating things about my field is how impervious it is to data. No matter how much evidence once can marshal, certain theories return again and again. Sometimes they have a new gloss (it's not just phonics and basals: It's The Science of Reading!)¹, but sometimes it's just the same bad ideas, under the same name, with the same problems.² The Washington Post has a long and eye-roll-causing history of pushing the worst ideas of ed reform, whether it's punitive charter models, Teach for America, or just basic "Teachers unions ate my homework and kicked my dog" stuff. Today, they decided to let a pundit post like it's 2010.

I mean, this op-ed is so obviously nonsense - it ends with the "both conservatives and liberals will hate this, so it must be good!" reasoning, a claim so devoid of meaning even middle schoolers know better than to use it in their opinion pieces - that I almost hate to discuss it.

Still, for folks who are new to this argument, let's look at it a little more closely.

First, I need to note that while a $100,000 salary is a pay increase for most starting teachers, it's a significant pay cut for veterans in most cities. Does Daniel Pink pay any mind to that - or even to cost of living issues, given that many districts in the Bay Area already start around this salary? Of course not: he opposes tenure and step and column pay increases in general, and merely admits at the close that his proposal of "pay all teachers the same salary, nationally, for their whole career" is probably not a winner and there are some things to work out.

Also, in exchange for this (dubious) largesse, Pink has two demands: an end to "summers off" and also some kind of test-based accountability/and end to tenure. The latter of these is risible even given this column: Pink fully admits that robust data indicate that test-based accountability doesn't work, but he still seems to think it's necessary. Honestly, the Washington Post should've had an editor make Pink reckon with this: any high school English teacher would require revision here.

That leaves us with those eight weeks of vacation Pink wants teachers to give over. In exchange for this (possible) raise, teachers simply have to agree to work 22% more every year! A mere forty extra days a year! (Pink is silent on whether he thinks those days should also be extended - we could be looking at even more additional labor, but I am now thinking more deeply about Pink's proposal than he did. It must be the teacher in me: I am too habituated to working for free.)

Beyond the obvious question of whether something is actually a raise if you have to work an extra eight weeks to receive it, Pink hasn't grappled with what teachers are doing in those weeks. Ancedotally, I spent two entire weeks of my last summer vacation moving into a new classroom, three weeks completing professional development of my own volition, and one week lesson planning and preparing for the new year. In all, I had two weeks off. Teachers are not overburdened with planning time during the school year, and deep professional development doesn't happen in ninety minutes after school. The time teachers volunteer over the summer makes them better at their jobs. Pink does not understand what teaching is, so he cannot consider the implications of his (already problematic) breezy end to summer vacation.

What's really tiring about this op-ed is that it's been written before. We've done this all before. Education reformers and dilettantes (but I repeat myself) are forever proposing salary increases for teachers - but only if those teachers agree to some set of conditions. Those conditions are typically unsupported by data, but strip away the job protections teachers have managed to hold on to despite other workers losing them.

Here, teachers give up tenure and regular, predictable raises for an unsustainable work year and a dubious raise. You know, like at KIPP schools (another WaPo favorite). KIPP salaries often beat their surrounding public school district's - but they have miserable turnover and rely on uncredentialed, itinerant teachers because the job is unsustainable.

One has to wonder if Daniel Pink is unaware of this issue, or if he knows that his tired idea doesn't increase teacher recruitment and retention but is very popular with wealthy folks who resent teachers and our unions and our pensions and our troubling unwillingness to give them up.

1 Alas, the Science of Reading is just phonics and basals. It's not science and the data have not improved since the last time we did this, which was less than twenty years ago.^↩

2 I know this is not unique to education - I live in San Francisco, where self-described "moderate Democrats" are investing heavily in bringing back the worst ideas of the Reagan administration. Also, yes, I did just learn how to do footnotes.^↩

Just a Little List

 In SFUSD, right now:

• Third year of payroll drama (current issues: second year of mistake-laden W2s, folks on leave are not getting paid, raises retroactive to 7.1.23 and ratified 11.23 unlikely to be paid until 5.24)
• Due to massive staffing shortfalls, extreme expenditures on independent contracting firms to complete basic functions, especially in Special Education - higher cost, more privatization, increasing number of children moving to private specialty schools at district expense because we can't meet their needs
• Absolute failure of onboarding, leading to hired staff waiting months to be cleared for classroom work and ultimately leaving for other districts that will pay them
• Gutting cuts to sites, some as large as 50%, leaving schools unmanageable and unsafe

AND YET! Our highest-paid staff received two raises in the last twelve months. For some of these folks, all of whom make more money than teachers with 22 years or more of service, that added up to a 33% increase in pay. 

This is SFUSD under Matt Wayne: a total failure to manage basic functions like payroll being rewarded, while the folks who do the work drown under ever-increasing responsibilities and fewer people to complete them.

One might wonder where the Board of Education is on all this, and the answer is: HA HA HA HA HA. Under the supervision of the lavishly-paid, resume-light AJ Crabill (known for presenting his own unvetted work as a roadmap to success, but under his old legal name so we think he's relying on outside experts), the Board has given up authority to the Superintendent and their "Goals and Guardrails". It boggles the mind to consider that they may believe rubber-stamping raises for the same folks who can't submit a fingerprint check to the Department of Justice are the folks who most need more money, but this is what happens when you recall the educators of color on the Board for well-monied Mayoral appointees.

Since Twitter is a Hellscape and Matt's here to privatize SFUSD out of existence

 I am going to start blogging again, for real! I've been on a social media hellsite but the Nazis there are getting me down.

Also, in December 2023 Matt and the gang presented a cuts and closures (blame the greedy unions) plan that cut 200 classroom teaching positions but retained two open positions for Assistant Superintendents, and I come back to my blog and I find schools were taking 25% budget cuts while 555 hired two new EDs (one for Looking Serious and Sad When Closing Schools and one for Screaming "EQUITY!!!" While We Disproportionately Underfund Schools in D10) in December 2021.

I suppose it's the nature of systems to resist change BUT.

ANYWAY, stay tuned for a partially finished post on Why TikTok Teachers Who Hate Kids Should Stop Demanding Total Compliance, and I will definitely be around for this year's budget cycle.

If I were making two or three times' a teacher salary and still on work from home I would probably make an attempt at, like, not sending staff and children back to super unsafe conditions! Demanding the city support outdoor lunch with staffing and tents, providing home tests, sending out N95 masks, delineating a streamlined and supported contact tracing process would all be among my first steps.

Just on an optics level, our senior management fails every time. They're laying off several hundred teachers but just two directors (and hiring one additional executive director). They're still working from home because the district offices aren't safe but sending staff and students back into dubiously safe conditions (ventilation is still a problem; classrooms are freezing). Nor do they even try to justify these choices.

This has a real cost. Staff who were on the fence about quitting are quitting. The retired teachers who comprise most of the substitute pool are opting out until conditions improve. The people who are left will be taking on more work, with fewer supports and more stressed families. 

One thing we can count on is no help from above. We are on our own. And when it fails, it will be on us. As always, management will skate.

Some Stuff About the District's Horrible, Terrible, No Good Very Bad Budget

The BoE was presented with two budget plans for a final vote last night:

Management's Plan: All Cuts to Sites and Direct Services, But We Promise to Look Sad About It for as Many as Ten Minutes

Sanchez/Alexander Plan: The "One Director for Every Student" Goal Is Better Suited to Windfall Years

Anyway, the latter got withdrawn, the former passed 6-1, and the district made some noise about perhaps someday hiring an Assistant Superintendent for Exploring How We Got So Many Directors in the First Place and then maybe a couple of Executive Directors to figure out some efficiencies and also check all the vending machines and couches for loose change.

None of this will surprise long-term budget watchers! However, a couple of points:

1. Everyone anticipates far better revenue projections once the state budget drops, and the district said that Peer Resources and AVID would be the first programs to be restored. Still, the district says all sorts of exciting things, but this commitment isn't in writing and the district sadly has a documented history of reneging on commitments. If you want these programs restored, be loud about it as soon as the Governor's budget drops. Remember: this budget also lays off two Directors and only hires one new Executive Director, and how will the district manage with so few new administrators? We know what the district prioritizes when left to its own devices. So let's not leave it unattended with new money.

2. The extent to which the district elides the severity of their actions fills me with a bleak sense of ennui, the kind of emotion wherein one must turn to the loudest and most aggressive music in one's collection just to feel something. Let me share that quiet void of feeling with you.

Various central staff made allusions to sites having so many choices to make with their site funding. It sounded like a clever site could restore all the central staff allocations they're losing (and for sites with multiple language pathways, especially those in Tier 2/3, they're losing a lot). However, this is not actually possible because the site funding is also getting chopped. So actually sites are getting cut every which way. Tier 3 sites will be cut marginally less, but they need exponentially more, so it's bad all around.

The state's austerity expert said several times last week and last night that "staff cuts don't mean service cuts". I am sure that this is a very nice turn of phrase, recommended by all consulting groups that rake in big bucks through blighting the land and firing the workers. It's also true 0% of the time. The example given was a school that lost 25% of its students but no staff; under this budget, it also loses staff but nothing changes except the class sizes are a little larger. This is not representative of any district school or the cuts in this budget. At many schools, the budget looks more like 12% enrollment declines being met with 30% budget cuts. You can't maintain service levels.

Saying stuff like this is dismissive to the point of arrogance. I'm sure it sounds great at the district office or in Sacramento, but anyone working at a school knows that everyone there has too many responsibilities already. When you cut staff, the work they did is not cut. That work gets added to someone else's load, or it's dropped entirely. Both options are terrible. Pretending otherwise is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the people paid to be responsible.

Wow, I find myself with so much rage about SFUSD during a pandemic that I think I'm going to blog again.

Like many Kindergarten teachers in the District, I occasionally find myself checking the local parent blogs and sites.  It's hectic for families and teachers alike - families waitpooling, families adjusting to their chosen sites, teachers harried and eagerly awaiting the day their roster stabilizes.

This is less hectic for teachers than the Tour Season.  I have nothing against the tours, since I really do believe in classrooms being open to all (who are willing to sign in, at least).  (That said, remember that a large group of adults descending on a Kindergarten is disruptive and may affect what's happening.)

However, Tour Season also leads to Online School Reviews, and woe betide the teacher who was having a bad day.  While I understand that the reviewer wants to give the audience valuable information, it's a bit mind-boggling to see reviewers opine upon pedagogy, discipline, and classroom style based on a ten minute (at most) observation of a classroom, particularly when those comments are very negative.  Having not made an appearance in a review, I both sympathize and fear it.

Reviwers, NextDoor users and visitors, please be honest but kind to the educators who (perhaps grudgingly, because they have kids to teach) welcome you into their rooms.

Still teaching, also not dead

(Seriously, come Thanksgiving at least 23% of all teachers are actually undead.)

It has been such an exciting and jam-packed couple of years (school renovations! no contract! serious out of state job offer!  actual existence of personal life!) that I have neither blogged nor kept my personal wardrobe at the level I have come to expect.  (My shoes, however, remain on point.)  Yet I continue to have opinions on my district that I believe must be scream-typed unto the world for its edification.

Also, I have learned to adapt to screen-typing.

A few things you may not know:

• In SFUSD, teachers get three days of professional development before one work day.  This isn't enough to set up an elementary classroom, so teachers typically go back to work early (I went back on 1 August, not including the two weeks of professional development I did in June and July or some planning in both months).  However, this is unpaid labor.  Kindergarten Roundups and orientations usually take place before the work day, so do not expect to be able to visit the rooms.
• Elementary room set up means just that.  Usually all the furniture is taken out for floor cleaning, which typically requires the contents of shelves be boxed up and everything be removed from the floor.  Some schools wash the walls too.  So no matter how cute and little your child's teacher may look, s/he is a furniture moving expert with the muscles and bruises to show for it.
• If your child's class has pets, your child's teacher had pets this summer.
• The moral of the story is: If you appreciate your child's awesome, polished, inviting room, think kindly on the hard labor that went into it!  Teachers want to have nice rooms - beyond everything else, we'll be living in them for the rest of the school year ourselves!  But sadly, Classroom Fairies are a myth.

Tomorrow: The First Day of School!

And so it begins!

Here's my advice for the big FIRST DAY.  As a reminder, I am actually a teacher at a public school.  I do not merely play one on the Internet.

Therefore, my advice is reasonably trustworthy and good.

Short version:

• Many teachers have first day checklists to fill out before you leave; please check to see if yours does before leaving.
• The first day is chaotic.  No advance planning can keep it from being so.  Embrace the insanity.
• When your child leaves for the day, make sure s/he alerts the adult in charge of dismissal.  This is really important.
• Permanent marker is your friend!  Label your child's belongings.
• Based on my reasonably large sample group of SFUSD Kindergarten teachers, it is good form to let your child's entry teacher know if you have received your waitpool school.  Otherwise we tend to take this personally. 

Right then.

I am leaving town tomorrow for two weeks of professional development, partially about writing.  And also, I'll be visiting with some of my comrade public service workers.  And moreover also again, it's back to Kinder this year.

All of which really should be impetus to blog rather than to spend my sad paychecks on delightful clothes that will not be improved by the generous if misbegotten addition of finger paint.

Look Who Has His Own Anti Site!

As a devoted Enronista, I've been following John Arnold for years and years.

I'm happy to say that his continued campaign to destroy pensions - one dating back to the pensions Enron destroyed when it bought a utility so it could trade electricity, the retirement Enron's rank and file didn't get because John Arnold took a (non) retention bonus that doomed the attempted merger, those pensions bankrupted with Enron's collapse, and those counting on UBS retirement cash (that little interlude in his career rarely gets mentioned, maybe because it ended up that without controlling the platform and tolerance of insane risks, Arnold wasn't such a hot trader) - but I digress.

Do check out The Truth About John Arnold.  It isn't pretty, but it's important.

(I'm pretty sure that he wasn't the second youngest billionaire, by the way, but it's not something to research on a school night.)

In exchange for that 12% raise...

For this year's 4%, District teachers are doing way more than 4% new work:

• We are required to use two new data systems.  Neither was ready by its projected roll-out date, so no preservice professional development was provided.
• We must also use a new mailing list/online storage system to access the still-unfinished math program.
• And we are expected to use these new Google accounts even if we already have our own.
• No hardware has been provided for these new job requirements.
• The District is now largely mandating a reading program model in which I have been trained...at my own expense.  Woe to those who haven't made the investment.
• Those of us who have are expected to provide unpaid modeling and planning support.  Teachers collaborate naturally, but requiring a certain type of collaboration and supporting it with neither materials nor time nor training is offensive.
• We have new ELD standards.  Teachers have been directed that they may no longer use the District lesson plans (which were never a curricula; you created all your own materials).  However, no new plans have been provided.

This year, I am writing my own ELD program.  The math curriculum as available is unworkable and no materials were purchased for any K unit after the third.  So I am also writing my own math, plus lots of grants to get the required materials.  Then I go help other teachers plan their reading.

The Powers that Be in SFUSD seem really confused as to why teachers STILL aren't happy and why it's so hard to hire and retain educators.  To me, this is willful blindness.

There has got to be a better way to handle the wait pool than a three week carousel roster.

One week down.

Yay, one week of Kindergarten under the bridge.  My class is enormously cute and bright.  I am hoping that my roster is stabilizing, but I suppose that's unlikely until after the ten day count. Also, I like my grade level team, and being at the same school as last year, and my moderately revised classroom set up.  Additionally, I have some nice new dresses to wear, several Donors Choose projects funded and on their way, a rocking new pair of sneakers, and have been able to maintain a strong organizational system FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK.

That's the good.  The bad is that I do not have enough time for everything I need to do.

Most of what I need is time for planning.  We have a new math program and got a big six hours to learn it!  Sadly, the Kindergarten modules apparently aren't complete, so I can't even get a full sense of what they year in math will look like.  (Don't ask about the manipulatives and reproducibles.)  This is particularly important because the math program is set up so that teachers can use materials they have found effective to teach the concepts as they are laid out in the curriculum.  In my case, that means pulling out materials from a couple of programs I find particularly effective.  However, alignment takes time, and I need to see (and read) the modules to do it well.  While we are on a five year plan to fully implement this program, and it certainly has been extensively revised over the past year, I think implementation would be siginificantly eased if teachers had more time to familiarize themselves with the material before jumping into year one.  After all, a five year implementation doesn't mean we can do poorly by the children who are in our classrooms in year one.

Teachers also need to align their ELD instruction to the new state standards, and the district is not providing a new curriculum or updating the in-house lessons available.  Again, thsi is time-consuming work.

We also have a whole new data system, Amplify.  At least as of right now, we will not be receiving or using Amplofy curricula or tablets, which I think is a positive.  However, using the same data program that powered In Bloom is something I wish had been open to more public comment.

So really, the year is off to the usual start: I really love being in the classroom, teaching, collaborating, and all that stuff.  I really dislike some of the District strictures that make it harder for me to feel prepared and effective.

Summer Reading List?

Is there a Kindergarten student in your household?  Then read this before school starts, and think about how you can help Kindergarten be a place for happy, creative, brilliant young children.

Advance Planning Scofflaws

In February, it seemed like a totally great idea to apply for an out-of-state professional development taking place the week before I report back to work.  "This will make me be very intentional in how I pack up my classroom in May," I thought.  "And in August, I'll really need to ready the room in an organized way - as opposed to the usual eight thousand projects going at once two week hysteria!"  What an opportunity for learning I could have, even after I returned!

Now that I'm in New York - having failed to mindfully pack up my room for cleaning and to develop strategic organizational skills over the summer - I'm not so sure this was a great plan.

Plus side?  I will be so ready to implement what I'm learning, without forgetting some of it as I would had I done this training in June.  Also, I'm in Manhattan.  With my back to school money.  After a disappointing year in personal style, one that included enforced orthopedic footwear, I will be returning - nay, exceeding! - my earlier heights of fashion.

And should I spend more than I ought, I'm sure some financial institution will be ready to make money by extending credit that will allow me to purchase school supplies.  Not only do we fail to fund schools adequately, private institutions are ready to profit on that failure.  Neat!

However, I did have an idea for a business which would provide a marketplace for teachers to vacation-swap their homes.  Teachers could get reasonably priced accomodations and be assured that their tenants have passed a background check and are unlikely to break their furniture or host wild parties (probably you would want to lock your closet of off-season sale school supplies, though).

Cheating Beats Actual Progress.

Pay for performance is a very popular education reform plan.  The fact that pay for performance doesn't seem to work very well - I give you The VA scandal as just the latest failure - doesn't seem to dampen the fervor for it.  I suppose it's popular because it sounds like it would work, and it lets reformers talk about paying teachers more without actually doing that so much, as this article eventually points out, much to its own headline's dismay.

(I also note, as I must always, that the people who are selling pay for performance never want to submit their own jobs to the same scrutiny.  This goes both for the various DC public school central office administrators running IMPACT Plus and the investment bankers making big returns on charter schools and ed reform.)

And we know specifically that pay for performance has had ugly effects in schools already.  Atlanta is one of the saddest examples.  The New Yorker recently ran a story about Parks Middle School, the subject of many glowing articles and education reform joy during its heyday and the subject of forty or so pages recounting widespread cheating in the eventual investigative report.  The article is worth reading, although it glosses over some of the other scandals at Parks (nepotism, sexual harassment, embezzlement, all involving the principal, whose conduct belies his claim that he wouldn't have cheated for money).

Having read the report in its entirety, though, the story that really sticks with me is Harper Archer Middle School's.  (Harper Archer's narrative is in the second part of the report, available at the link above).  Harper Archer had the misfortune of being co-located with a district administrative team, and that team is believed to be responsible for the cheating.  Not the educators at Harper Archer, nor the principal: the Deputy Superintendent.

You see, Harper Archer had been making small but significant gains in performance.  Despite having a disproportionately high percentage of students with special needs, improvement was happening.  In fact, the Harper Archer staff discussed in the narrative seem to share a collaborative spirit, a real commitment to their students, and a shared purpose. 

This was not a popular attitude in Atlanta.  Both the principal and vice principal were put on improvement plans and given a mandate to increase test scores.  The principal was pushed to place teachers on performance plans if their test scores did not increase; he refused to do this and specifically instructed teachers not to engage in any unethical behavior.  He strongly felt that his hard-working teachers had the skills to support their students and that slow, steady progress was valuable.  (The principal also wondered why children were matriculating at Harper Archer with outstanding fifth grade test scores and poor academic skills, which earned him a reprimand from his Deputy Superintendent.)

The Deputy Superintendent's other suggestion - outside punishing teachers - was to visit Parks Middle School.  Despite the fact that an investigation had already suggested cheating at Parks, the hard working educators at Harper Archer were told to emulate it.

They didn't. 

The principal resigned after not being offered a contract for the 2009 school year. 

But guess what?  The 2008 CRCT scores came back with double digit gains!  Just like Parks!

When interviewed, not one of the teachers admitted to cheating.  Several mentioned being heavily pressured by the Deputy Superintendent to increase test scores; some believed that the principal resigned because he had been asked to cheat.  To a one, they felt classroom teachers at Harper Archer would not cheat.  Some refused to give the test scores to students because the scores were so unbelievable.

When asked about who could have been responsible for a cheating, the principal, vice-principal, and teaching staff all pointed to the Deputy Superintendent and her staff.  Some noted that the Deputy Superintendent had access to the test and was coming to the building very early and staying very late during testing.  Others noted that their tests were out of order when they received them each morning; one was informed by a custodian that the district staff told her the students were testing very well.

So at Harper Archer, you have a staff committed to working with a high needs population and having some real success.  But because their success is reasonable and measured, it's not enough.  They needed to be more like Parks.

This is the end result of pay for performance, then.  The enormous cheating at Parks wasn't only bad for those students, but students throughout the District.  And when teachers and administrators were unwilling to sacrifice their principals for their paychecks, then Deputy Superintendents were willing to take that step themselves.

Ultimately, this is what pay for performance gets you.  Because Parks was willing to cheat, they created an entirely false standard to which every other school could be held.

Christopher Waller created a toxic climate of secrecy and cheating at Parks.  He turned teachers against each other, firing those who wouldn't get with his program.  He used performance plans and reprimands to rid himself of teachers who did not want to cheat.  He was showered with attention, positive press, and bonuses.

Michael Milstead created a climate of teachers who worked together and believed that their students could succeed.  He encouraged collaboration and ethical conduct and protected his teachers from District demands, because he could see that the students at Harper Archer were making academic gains.  He got fired.

Which school served students better? 

Which school succeeded under a pay for performance plan?