One absolute precondition for successful school turnaround is that principals must have the freedom to pick their staffs. Looks like the 24 beleaguered Big Apple schools stuck in the judicial tug-of-war won’t have that option. Impossible to imagine much positive change for kids coming out of this. This is one case where common sense arguments – namely that school leaders ought to have significant authority over which individuals are staffed in the most challenging schools – run into a legal framework that basically forbids those kinds of decisions. Wall Street Journal has the latest.
