NEWS
- To keep its best principals, DCPS needs to give them more autonomy [Friendship PCS mentioned]
- Lisa Ruda leaves her D.C. schools post, and also leaves a revitalized system
To keep its best principals, DCPS needs to give them more autonomy [Friendship PCS mentioned]
Greater Greater Education
By Natalie wexler
July 13, 2015
After 35 years as a teacher and principal in DC Public Schools, during which he managed to turn around two struggling schools, Patrick Pope resigned, becoming part of a wave of high turnover among DCPS principals in recent years. He's now principal of a charter school. If DCPS administrators want to retain successful school leaders like Pope, they need to trust their judgment and allow them greater autonomy.
In 2013 and 2014, DCPS replaced about two dozen principals a year in 2013 and 2014. Although there's no official count yet for this year, the Washington Teachers Union estimates the figure will be at least as high. That means about 25% of DCPS schools have been changing principals every year, compared to a turnover rate in Montgomery County of between 5 and 7%.
As DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson has recognized, it's hard for reforms to take root in a school when there's churn at the top. And a strong school leader is a crucial ingredient in any turnaround effort.
No doubt there are a variety of reasons DCPS principals have departed, but some of those who have gone—like Pope—have been highly regarded. And, like Pope, some of those have chosen to leave voluntarily. Pope is unusual in that he's willing to discuss his reasons.
As principal of Hardy Middle School in upper Georgetown for many years, Pope brought in an arts focus and saw test scores rise. Ousted from Hardy under controversial circumstances by former DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, Pope later adopted a similar approach at Savoy Elementary in Ward 8 and won national acclaim.
But after a little over three years at Savoy, Pope said in an interview, he decided it was "time to move." He resigned at the end of the 2013-14 school year. In January of this year, he accepted a position as principal of Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy Middle School, part of the Friendship charter school network.
While Pope is circumspect about the details of his decision to leave DCPS, he says he didn't have "the autonomy to put staff and resources where they needed to be." Over the course of his career at DCPS, he says he saw a decrease in principals' autonomy and a movement towards greater centralized control.
"They will say the words autonomy," he says of DCPS administrators, "but the model is, you can have autonomy when you get to a certain level of student performance measures."
But principals need autonomy in order to increase those measures in the first place, Pope says. And he argues that teachers and administrators at the school level are often in the best position to figure out what students need to succeed.
The arts as a way to get kids engaged in school
Part of Pope's own formula for success has been bringing the arts into the school curriculum. The arts, he says, "is an easy way to get kids engaged," giving them "the opportunity to feel school is a positive, challenging place, where their particular talents will be tapped and grown."
The narrow, basic-skills-focused curriculum that currently prevails in many schools, especially those serving disadvantaged populations, doesn't serve that purpose, Pope says: "Kids don't come to school to be told how poorly they read and how poorly they do in math."
At Hardy, Pope was charged with creating a program that would help spur middle school enrollment—a problem DCPS is still grappling with. Not only did he ensure that all students were engaged in the arts, he says the school also developed "a terrific athletic program and great math and science. Our kids went to the best high schools and did well."
But the school failed to draw students from the surrounding affluent area, instead attracting many from neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. Rhee decided that a change in school leadership was necessary, citing what she said was a confusing application process that gave neighborhood families the false impression that Hardy was a school they didn't have a right to attend. In addition, some neighborhood residents didn't care for Hardy's arts focus and didn't warm to Pope personally.
But there was no influx of neighborhood kids after his removal. Enrollment has declined from a peak of 521 in 2009-10, Pope's last year at Hardy, to 386 in 2014-15. And while the school has apparently managed to draw more students from within its boundaries in recent years, they still make up only 15% of the student body, according to the DCPS website.
Pope says he tried to reach out to neighborhood residents, but he believed a lot of families in the area would send their children to private schools "no matter what we did." For the school to grow, he realized, it "had to be attractive programmatically to families from all over the city."
While the application to Hardy asked for a letter of recommendation and some evidence of experience or interest in the arts, Pope says it was more in the nature of a "handshake," ensuring that families would see themselves as partners with the school in educating their children. Asked if he would have rejected an in-boundary family, he says he doesn't know because "it never came to that."
Transforming Savoy from the "saddest school" to a place of joy
At his next principal post at Savoy, Pope didn't have the benefit of that handshake. As at other neighborhood schools, parents didn't have to take any affirmative steps to get their kids admitted or commit to any engagement in their children's education.
Pope told the Washington Post that when he arrived at Savoy in 2011, "it was the saddest school I'd ever been in." Students were unruly, teachers were burnt-out, and test scores were abysmal. Still, Pope managed to turn things around.
With the help of a federal grant of about $450,000, Pope made sure all students in 1st through 5th grade took instrumental music and a daily movement or dance class. He also integrated the arts into other classes. Savoy became, according to the Post, a "vibrant, even joyful" place. As at Hardy, Pope won the respect and enthusiasm of parents, teachers, and students.
Savoy also became one of eight schools nationwide chosen to participate in the Turnaround Arts Initiative of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Artists like Yo-Yo Ma visited, and Michelle Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised the program.
And test scores, which had been falling, began to rise. By 2014, the proficiency rate was 26% in reading and 31% in math. That may not sound impressive, but two years before the rates had been 19% and 16%, respectively.
Now, as principal of Friendship's Tech Prep Academy Middle School, Pope is preparing to work his magic again, turning its STEM program (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) into a "STEAM" program with the addition of the Arts.
At Friendship, as at Hardy, Pope will have the benefit of a parent body that has affirmatively chosen the school. But Pope has shown he's one of those rare leaders who can accomplish the tougher job of turning around a school where parents haven't given him that figurative handshake from the beginning. While Pope says he's confident that Savoy will continue on its upward trajectory under new leadership, DCPS can't afford to lose principals like him.
In an effort to reduce turnover, DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson recently announced that some principals would be eligible for three-year rather than one-year contracts. That's certainly a step in the right direction.
But as Pope's experience shows, a longer contract may not be enough to retain visionary school leaders. It wasn't that DCPS wanted to get rid of Pope. Pope wanted to leave DCPS, essentially because the bureaucracy didn't allow him the freedom to do what he thought was necessary for his school's success.
Inevitably, some principals in the system will need more top-down guidance, even control, than others. But if DCPS administrators want to turn around their lowest-performing schools, they need to figure out a way to distinguish between principals who need to be reined in and those who need the freedom to run.
Lisa Ruda leaves her D.C. schools post, and also leaves a revitalized system
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
July 13, 2015
When Lisa Ruda arrived in Washington to help Michelle A. Rhee begin a transformation of D.C. Public Schools, Ruda had less than eight weeks to clear her first major hurdle — preparing the city’s schools for opening day.
She was met with a backlog of work orders for school repairs, a warehouse packed with undistributed textbooks and a history of opening schools in the District late because of fire code violations or roof repairs.
Rhee, who then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty brought in as schools chancellor in 2007, was a rising star among education reformers. Ruda, who was a chief of staff in Cleveland’s school system, had experience running schools day-to-day.
Schools opened on time that year, and have since, as Ruda overhauled the planning process. In August, Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson declared the first day of school as the smoothest school opening she has seen.
On July 5, the eighth anniversary of her first day at D.C. Public Schools, Ruda packed up her office. She is officially leaving her job as deputy chancellor for operations by the end of the month, her position having been eliminated as part of a reduction and reorganization of central office staff. Nathaniel Beers, a pediatrician who has served as chief of specialized instruction, is taking over for her in a reconfigured role as chief operating officer.
Henderson said she could not comment on personnel issues, but she said that Ruda has had a significant impact on the schools. “DCPS would not be where we are today if it were not for the tremendous work that Lisa has contributed over the last eight years,” Henderson said.
Ruda said she has loved her time with the District’s public school system. In an interview with The Washington Post, she said she came to a school district in crisis, but she says she is leaving a more stable organization. “It’s a new phase of the work,” she said. “We are not always going to operate by crisis management.”
Ruda’s departure, which she announced to her staff before spring break in April, surprised and troubled many colleagues, especially principals, who describe her as a go-to person with extensive institutional knowledge in an often unpredictable environment. She knows the intricacies of school budgets as well as the three types of paper towels that schools use and where they are stored in the warehouse.
Maury Elementary School principal Carolyne Albert-Garvey, who started with D.C. Public Schools in 2004, said the processes of planning for the next school year and projecting enrollment improved dramatically under Ruda, and so had the level of support principals receive. “Lisa always responded to every e-mail,” she said.
Although much of her work was behind the scenes, Ruda wielded significant influence as part of an inner circle of leaders who could make things happen or put them on ice, an ability that alternately pleased or frustrated those who worked with her.
D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), education committee chairman, lauded her responsive, straightforward style and her willingness to solve issues quickly. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who sparred with her over the District’s food services contract and other issues, said it often seemed as if “her job was to be an obstacle.”
First as chief of staff and, later as deputy chancellor for operations, Ruda oversaw a growing portfolio that included school operations, school security, school budgets, enrollment projections, general counsel, facilities and interagency relations. She handled decisions about snow days, emergency response and the contentious process of closing three dozen schools. She also oversaw the outsourcing of many school system functions, including two that have come under scrutiny in recent months.
The school system outsourced food services to Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality beginning in 2008, a contract that has become the subject of multiple investigations, a wrongful termination lawsuit and a $19 million settlement by the vendor, announced last month, to resolve a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the company overcharged the city and mismanaged the meals program.
Ruda took over direct supervision of the food service contract in 2013, and she said she supported efforts to recover the money that was due to the schools.
The Department of General Services took control of the school system’s multibillion-dollar capital building program in 2011. The Office of the D.C. Auditor last week released a highly critical report of the city’s financial management of school modernizations, citing major problems with transparency and oversight of the program by multiple agencies, including D.C. Public Schools.
Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, said that Ruda and D.C. Public Schools also could have done much more to plan for modernizations and educational programs in a more fair way to benefit children in all parts of the city. “They were asleep at the wheel,” she said.
Ruda said that outsourcing such services was the right decision for D.C. Public Schools.
“School districts try to be everything to everybody,” she said. “If we put all our energy into teaching kids to read and write, maybe we have a fighting chance.”
Ruda, 46, started her career as a lawyer with a degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Early in her practice, she represented Cleveland’s public schools in a major desegregation case, and by 28, she was recruited to become chief counsel for the school district.
She was promoted to chief of staff, a post she held for six years, and she served as the interim chief executive. She was in between jobs when she joined Rhee’s administration in Washington in 2007.
Rhee said in an interview that Ruda’s experience in Cleveland made her an integral and trusted part of her team.
“She just came in and took charge,” Rhee said. “Budgeting, food service, transportation — she had been through it all.”
After opening schools, Ruda helped move the D.C. schools to an automated system for paychecks and away from the handwritten time sheets that led to late paychecks and panicked employees. She also helped set up a crisis hotline.
“At first, the expectation was very low,” Ruda said. “When someone calls, pick up the phone.” But even that was a level of service that employees and parents were not accustomed to, as the hotline received about 16,000 calls a year.
Rhee called her “chief” and had Rhee’s assistant pound on the wall between their offices when she wanted her attention.
Ruda said Rhee’s decisions to lay off teachers and close schools were necessary at the time, even as they took their toll at the polls during the next mayoral election in 2010. Ruda was with Rhee and Henderson at the Ritz-Carlton bar in Georgetown on election night, an evening that started brightly and ended somberly, when then-D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray — who had battled with Rhee — claimed the Democratic nomination for mayor.
“We thought the end of the world had come,” she said.
Soon after, Rhee announced that she would step down and that Henderson would take her place, a succession plan that Ruda called Rhee’s “greatest gift to D.C. Public Schools.” Ruda said more time for Rhee would not have helped repair her reputation after the layoffs: “I don’t think she ever would have been able to rebuild the trust the community did not have in her.”
Henderson went on to build relationships and continue the work that Rhee started, Ruda said, and “Mayor Gray turned out to be awesome.”
Rhee agreed that the change in mayors was also the right time for a new schools chancellor. Even as she was leaving, Rhee said she persuaded others to stay on to give the system continuity. She was surprised that Ruda stayed as long as she did.
“This work is grueling, fast-paced, and nonstop,” Rhee said.
Ruda said she typically gets her first call between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. about a school break-in or a water outage. At 1 p.m., she gets a security report with updates about students who brought knives to school or fires that had started.
Restroom fires — kids lighting paper towels — happen regularly. But in 2010, a fire at Takoma Education Campus, started by some construction workers, destroyed much of the building during winter vacation, and Ruda’s staff worked through the break to relocate the school.
Ruda responded to an Anthrax scare, an earthquake and a funeral that was scheduled at McKinley Technical High School on the same day as a city-wide science fair.
There have been many dark days. She coordinated support for Daniel A. Payne Elementary School, after a third-grade homeless student named Relisha Rudd disappeared. And she recalled being summoned to Rhee’s office to find her crying at her desk on the night that Brian Betts, a well-known principal, had been found killed in his house.
Looking back on her tenure, Ruda said she is most proud that the school system’s enrollment has started to rebound, with three consecutive years of increases, a sign of progress that she expects will continue.
“That hasn’t happened in 47 years,” she said.
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