Matt Rainey – New York Times
In an effort to boost the performance of struggling Newark’s school 39,000 student district, superintendent Cami Anderson hired a host of new principals to run nearly a quarter of the city’s schools. These 17 new principals, 11 of them under 40, and 7 are from outside Newark. Superindentent Cami Anderson, plans to tackle the problem and rebuild the city’s schools that has faced low achievement and high dropout rates.
There are some who believe Anderson’s plan will fail while others believe this is just what the city needs to revitalize its educational program.
“I believe a strong principal is the key to almost everything,” Ms. Anderson said in an interview. “Where you have great performance, you have great principals, period, full stop. Where you have low performance, you have struggling principals. It’s not that complicated.”
— New York Times
Before Anderson came, she described principals would be chosen through “informal and arbitrary process” based largely on recommends of schools employees, parents, and political leaders.
