I’d have to do a little more research to find out how much the Amistad Academy skims, like so many charters do. Do they take special education students, ELL students, and kids with histories of behavior problems, or do they only take the best behaved, most motivated, smartest, and least complicated of New Haven’s public school students?
So when I read this morning that Governor Malloy had selected Amistad founder Stefan Pryor to become Connecticut’s next State Commissioner of Education, I had a mixed reaction. I read several articles today about Pryor and the Amistad Academy. I found mixed information. There were reports that both praised and criticized the Amistad Academies in New Haven and elsewhere, and there were many reports that lauded Pryor as a Yale-educated wunderkind—the son of teachers who studied education at Yale and actually student-taught somewhere (I could not learn where), a former New Haven city alderman, the founder of the Amistad Academy, and a man who has worked in educational and economic development in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and most recently in Newark.
All this sounds pretty good on paper, but my cynical side makes me wonder about a few things. First of all, I’m glad he’s the son of teachers and once did student teaching, but being the son of teachers doesn’t really make one qualified to be a state commissioner of education. It’s kind of like saying, I’m not really a doctor but I play one on TV. And what happened after student teaching? Did he decide he hated teaching? Was he terrible at it? It is possible to not pass student teaching.
And then there’s the lengthy resume. The guy went to law school after he student taught, and he’s only 39 years old. I don’t know exactly how long he spent in law school, but I figure he’s been working for about fourteen years, and in that time he has worked at least four different jobs in three different states. That averages out to about three years and six months on each job. I don’t know, but when a teacher or an direktur comes into your district with a job-hopping resume like that, do you get your hopes up? I just assume that guy, good at his job or bad, is off to the next big thing as soon as it comes along. Several studies in teacher effectiveness suggest that it takes about five years for most teachers to develop into truly talented practitioners, and that peak effectiveness in the classroom occurs during the next decade. If the same can be said for commissioners of education, will Pryor stick around long enough to truly excel and make a difference? Past history suggests not.
The other thing that concerns me is that, regardless of the fact that the Amistad Academies have a better reputation than most charters, a pro-charter commissioner suggests that we now have someone in the commissioner’s office who will be less concerned about curriculum, instruction, and funding, and more concerned with the elimination of collective bargaining and tenure, the adoption of merit pay, and the tying of pay, promotion, and job security in general to student performance on standardized tests.
Interviewed today in the state capitol as he glad-handed legislators and educators, Pryor said a lot of the right things about closing the achievement gap, developing student job skills, providing adequate funding of schools, and offering quality professional development for teachers.
But he also said, "We need to improve the [teacher] evaluation system, improve the way compensation works; improve the career ladder, improve the retirement system and the removal mechanisms. It's the whole array of strategies related to talent in our school system."
So I have a few questions for Commissioner Pryor. Do you support collective bargaining rights for teachers? Do you support tenure? Will you prioritize curriculum, instruction, professional development, and funding, or will you focus your energies on the ways teachers are evaluated and compensated? And if you do attempt to alter the procedures that govern our livelihood, do you have any hard data that supports your proposals? Are you in for the long haul?
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