Thursday, May 31, 2007

Chancellor threatens principals for poor survey response

Word is the response rate on the parent survey is so low that DOE will extend the deadline once again. They are now openly threatening principals that if they don't get parents to return them in greater numbers this may count against their schools in their grades, which in turn could put their jobs at risk. In turn, principals are begging parents to fill in their surveys and send them back.

Here’s part of a desperate email that went out to parents at one school today:

“Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has informed all principals that the surveys "are so vital that I have instructed the Office of Accountability to count low response rates in a school's Progress Reports".

Tweed puts together a lousy survey, they have almost no communication skills, they do little outreach except a terrible ad, they have alienated parents for six years and continue to ignore our views about the changes we'd like made in our schools – so now they will punish our principals for a low response rate?

Where's the accountability? When are the Chancellor and his inner circle going to recognize that it's not adult to blame everyone else for their own mistakes?

I bet if they had asked about issues that parents care about -- class size , testing, and the quality of leadership at the top, while offering just a hint of evidence that they actually care about what we think, rather than simply engaging in yet another empty exercise in PR, a lot more of us would have bothered to complete the surveys and send them back.

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