The Mindless Network
Coleman, Mary Clayton
The Mindless Network Mary Clayton Coleman Why was the centerpiece of the Orlando convention a speech by George Steinbrenner, not a serious discussion of education? Because such...
...But according to Herb Kohl, a public school teacher for 30 years in both New York and California, search consultants play “a game having nothing to do with education, children, or pedagogy...
...Judging from these results, it’s obvious the school boards’ decision was wrong...
...Nor is it hard to understand why we now have so many superintendents who lard their districts with all sorts of unnecessary printed and audio-visual materials, often bought from the consultants who hired them in the first place, and so many who put school funds to personal use...
...The average stint for a superintendent nowadays is just five years...
...The Council of Great City Schools, an organization of the 40 largest school districts in the country, reports that 88 percent of its member districts who hired superintendents in the past three years relied on a search consultant...
...It is a political game having to do with the preserving of jobs and the preserving of a few people’s social and economic status...
...The Mindless Network Mary Clayton Coleman Why was the centerpiece of the Orlando convention a speech by George Steinbrenner, not a serious discussion of education...
...Superintendents who take jobs mainly to puff up their resumes for the leap to the next rung on the consultants’ ladder don’t, as a rule, stay in them long enough to make any real difference...
...They were better off when they did things the old way: hiring someone after watching his progress through the teaching and administrative ranks of their system for 10 or 20 years...
...And as the convention fare shows, it’s a network of second-raters...
...It’s also a game in which the schools are the big losers...
...Leaving things to consultants has meant poorer quality control...
...Because such conventions aren’t about education...
...This national nexus developed because local school boards became convinced that they could not conduct searches for new superintendents by themselves...
...They’re about making connections in the network of educational consultants who ultimately place most of America’s school superintendents...
...The only thing that the new network makes better is the consultants’ bank statements: Superintendent searches bring in consulting fees of anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000...
Vol. 22 • September 1990 • No. 8
