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Some experts unhappy with stature of Boston superintendent finalists

WGBH reports, adds there are questions about the status of finalist Guadalupe Guerrero's doctoral work at Harvard.

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ABD is a thing for a reason, and I've met plenty of Ed.D.s and Ph.D.s who made me wonder just how the hell they got their degrees. Yes, a terminal degree is standard for superintendents, but I'd rather see more practical measures of performance.

What I find more troubling is that his record as a principal. Six years is a long time to be at a site with no improvement, regardless of social issues his student population faced. According to his SFUSD bio, that was ten years ago...meaning if the timeline in the linked post is accurate, he left the Dorchester school in 2010. That doesn't sound like a lot of time to learn how to be an effective principal, let alone a superintendent leading principals in a district with so many issues. No doubt, being a good principal is hard work and it takes some time to learn.

As a former inner city high school teacher who still works with public schools, this is a great example of why so many schools struggle: bad/ineffective/under-experienced/under-trained admin just get shuffled around school sites; some fail up so that they are taken out of the most critical areas or if they've good political connections, they get a promotion regardless of their work quality. He could be a great administrator someday, but without more decisive job performance data, it sounds like he needs a bit more experience.

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...Guerrero once led a local school that state officials ultimately deemed as failing. Michael Jonas wrote:

“The good news for Guadalupe Guerrero, one of four finalists for the Boston school superintendent post, is that, as the only candidate with prior experience in the district, he is well-known to many in the system and can speak with some familiarity about the city and its schools. The bad news is that his prior Boston experience included six years as principal of a Dorchester elementary school that struggled with low-test scores under his watch. It continued to falter so badly that the school ended up in state receivership, one of only a handful of schools statewide to meet that fate under a 2010 law allowing for such takeovers.”

Did the state receivership happen while Guerrero was principal, or had he left by then?

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ABD is a thing for a reason, and I've met plenty of Ed.D.s and Ph.D.s who made me wonder just how the hell they got their degrees. Yes, a terminal degree is standard for superintendents, but I'd rather see more practical measures of performance.

A Ph.D. is often viewed as a hazing ritual, a quaint rite of passage considered the price of admission to higher academic levels. Keep in mind, though that it's usually the first time that someone has actually had to put forward their own analysis and ideas and defend their merits to a panel of experts. By its definition a dissertation requires an original and significant contribution to the literature—one has to prove he or she understands what's out there and come up with a worthwhile new idea that builds on it.

Obviously being able to write a gloried term paper that's graded pass/fail is not the most relevant measure of whether or not one can improve a school system. But what else does this person offer to demonstrate an ability to understand a large problem and analyze it?

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I tend to think that job interviews that require the candidate to actually demonstrate job-relevant skills are a good way to hire. A key part of being a superintendent is dealing with the press and getting the public behind you. This interview process seems to force candidates to demonstrate that they can do that. The article spent three paragraphs criticizing the public hiring method, but he didn't actually explain why he thought the method was wrong other than to say that it provides the mayor with political cover. That's not, in and of itself, a reason not to use this method. Sometimes the right decision is also the politically expedient decision.

I also don't really understand why completing a doctorate is a prerequisite for this job. It's a management job, not a research job. As long as he can demonstrate that he has the skills, I don't see why having a doctoral degree (as opposed to two masters degrees) matters. The author seems to be implying that something went wrong, but people leave graduate school for lots of different reasons, and even if he did have problems that's not necessarily relevant to being a good candidate for the job. Grad school is very different from work.

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I believe I wrote something similar here a week ago and was chastised as a "racist" and "mouth-breather" among other things. Honored that WGBH has jumped on board.

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Try to keep up with the party line comrade

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Because you questioned the make-up of the group based on the color of their skin and implied that because they weren't white, they must not be the best candidates available to the search committee.

Hope that helps.

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I am unhappy the Boston City Council giving themselves raises when they are campaigning ever other year and during the time they are campaigning they are getting paid by the city. I am also very unhappy with the quality of police officers from the recruits they hire all the way up the top brass.

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