Raising school achievement isn't enough - D.C. principals must also keep order

Dunbar High School Principal Stephen Jackson was fired at the end of the last school year by the private management group in charge of the school but put back in the job last week by interim D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson at the urging of parents, community leaders and teachers. Jackson seemed an unusually lively and energetic educator when I met him at the long-troubled Northwest Washington school a year ago. He may be the person who can finally straighten Dunbar out.

But the odds are against him because of the ingrown nature of the school's problems and the dispiriting message Henderson's decision sends to him and any other school leader she assigns to a low-performing school after this.

Jackson has the support of many teachers and parents, some of whom have written to me. Although they have not commented on the matter, leaving the decision to Henderson, Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray and D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. have indicated that they thought Dunbar needed a change from the Friends of Bedford, led by George Leonard, who has a good track record in raising the achievement of low-income students in Brooklyn.

Jackson is also getting extra security help - six more police officers and two more officers from the Roving Leaders unit of the Parks and Recreation Department. Leonard said he had been asking for such assistance, but it was approved only after the school faced a series of disruptions, including six students being arrested (the charges were later dropped) and accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in an unoccupied area of the school. That led to the ouster of Friends of Bedford and the return of Jackson, whom Leonard said he fired for not pushing improvements in teaching.

If Jackson and Henderson can organize the new security force properly, they might find a way to remove the scourge of D.C. high schools - a stubborn culture of absenteeism, tardiness and wandering the halls during class. In a new book, East Los Angeles principal Henry Gradillas describes how he ordered teachers to lock their doors at the start of each period and used counseling, detention and transfers to wear down or, if necessary, remove the students rounded up each day for not being in class. That created an atmosphere in which his efforts to raise achievement began to work.

A concerted effort by Jackson and his team might have the same result, but it remains to be seen whether Henderson, the new mayor and the D.C. Council will be willing to provide the necessary resources and ignore complaints from parents and lawyers of the most disruptive students when they are transferred involuntarily to other schools or expelled.

Under its contract, the Friends of Bedford is still running Coolidge High. The school climate there has apparently improved in a building better designed for order. This sets up a competition between Dunbar and Coolidge. Which will have the quietest campus and the most improved academic achievement at the end of the school year?

Friends of Bedford produced the greatest gains in reading proficiency last year of any D.C. high school. Dunbar increased from 18.2 to 31.9 percent and Coolidge from 38 to 53.6 percent. Any new school leaders must now assume that raising achievement will not be enough to keep their jobs. They must reduce the daily disruptions caused by a reluctance to take harsh measures and the fact that D.C. high schools, their enrollments shriveled by an exodus of students to the suburbs and charter schools, have many empty classrooms.

If principals can't keep order, their only alternative is to do whatever will make them popular in the community - whether it helps learning or not - so they will not be blamed for the disorder.

Henderson says this is not true. She is a good person. She might be right. But it doesn't look that way to me.

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Results of D.C. principal's controversial methods need to outweigh criticism

Dwan Jordon, more quickly than any principal I have ever known, has made a name for himself in D.C. public schools.

On July 6, he was the hero of a front-page Washington Post story by my colleague Stephanie McCrummen. Jordon arrived at Sousa Middle School in 2008 and in his first year produced the biggest achievement gains of any D.C. middle school. He was a fiend for data, urging teachers to identify each student's weaknesses. The portion of Sousa students testing proficient in reading jumped from 23 percent to 39 percent and in math from 17 to 42 percent.

His name has also spread quickly through the ranks of educators because, after that great year and the hard work of his staff, almost all of his teachers left, something I have never seen. Some were terminated. Some couldn't stand to work for him. He said the old staff members had resisted his ideas, even though they worked. With a new hand-picked staff the next year, "all of us were focused on doing what was best for students," he told McCrummen.

Her story detailed the negative reaction to Jordon, but not enough to satisfy former Sousa teachers who commented on my Class Struggle blog and called me. Of six I have spoken to, ranging in age from 25 to 59, only one gave me permission to use her name. All, including Carla Riechman, were critical of Jordon. A former Sousa teacher who signed onto my blog as "PositiveNotes" said Jordon was "one of the most important and powerful people" in the school district, and capable of firing anyone who crossed him.

Riechman said Jordon demanded she teach her special education students far above their achievement levels. Other teachers said he warned them repeatedly not to speak ill of him to others, frequently threatened firings, kept vital information out of evaluations and castigated a teacher for careless exposure to potential molestation charges when she was helping boys study at lunch with another administrator's permission.

Jordon has said his actions were designed to improve instruction and rid the system of inadequate instructors. But two of the three terminated teachers who spoke to me have jobs in other D.C. schools, and one was rated highly effective. The third, Riechman, retired. Their stories reveal an odd dynamic between Jordon and the teachers union, each unintentionally helping the other.

I have long considered the Washington Teachers' Union a weak player in the battle over how to raise achievement for D.C. children, given its corrupt past, its internal divisions and its loss of political and administrative clout. But Jordon's turbulent first year affirms the union's power to save teachers' jobs. His rule-breaking, teachers say, made it easier for the union to reinstate them. The union, in turn, protected fired teachers from lasting harm but got them out of Jordon's school so he could hire people he wanted.

It is difficult to find a celebrated school reformer who has not violated administrative procedures, and sometimes actual laws.

Deborah Meier, whose success in an East Harlem, N.Y., high school has made her a national icon, benefited from the support of school administrator Sy Fliegel. Fliegel violated several staffing rules, such as one requiring that he post job openings at Meier's school.

Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, co-founders of the Knowledge Is Power Program, the nation's most successful charter network, admitted to defrauding an innkeeper when they placed more children than they had paid for into the rooms of the Embassy Suites hotel on Jefferson Davis Highway in Arlington during KIPP's first field trip to the District in 1995.

Jordon has shown the same focus on results, no matter what. But his second-year scores, soon to be released, had better be good, or any powerful enemies he makes will have more than enough witnesses for a case against him.

For more Jay, go to washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.

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