Audio By Carbonatix
It’s a balmy morning in April, which to Anthony Tovar means only one
thing: crunch time. Instead of walking the halls of Sunset High School
in his usual happy-go-lucky way, greeting teenagers with a grin and
calling them by name, the principal is hunched over paperwork in his
office, his round, brown features drawn together in a brooding frown.
There are just three weeks left before the school’s 2,200 students sit
down to take the fateful standardized tests that are referred to simply
and ominously as the TAKS. The names on Tovar’s list belong to the 75
seniors who, having failed one or more of the exams, are about to get
one last chance to graduate with their class.
“I’m worried about this bunch. This will be their fifth or sixth
time to take the test,” Tovar says. “I hate to say it, but it’s going
be tough for them to pass.” He shakes his head. “You call ’em in to
tell them whether they passed and they cry—either from joy or
sadness. Eighteen-year-old boys crying like babies because they passed
a test; it’s a sight to see. But it breaks your heart when you have to
tell them they didn’t pass…again.”
Glancing at his watch, Tovar snaps back into the upbeat motivational
mode instilled in him over 22 years of coaching baseball and football.
“You have to encourage them,” he says. “Say, ‘Look, you improved by 50
percent last time. Keep comin.'” He turns to the intercom for morning
announcements and tells the 75 seniors on the list to gather in the
auditorium. “We’re down to three Saturdays left before the TAKS,” he
says, his voice reverberating throughout the labyrinthine school.
“We’re here for you guys. We need you to come to Saturday school and
after-school focus groups.”
Moments later, the listed seniors file into rows of seats in front
of a stage framed by purple curtains. In keeping with Sunset’s
demographics, all of them are Hispanic, and they hold their backpacks
and watch impassively as Tovar, in a crisp white shirt and red tie,
launches into his last-ditch pep talk. “How many of you work?” he asks.
Roughly half of the students’ hands go up. “You want to keep working at
those places?” Only one hand goes up. “Your back is up against the
wall,” he continues. “If you want something bad enough, you’ll do it.
You’ll sacrifice. You’ll put your girlfriend or boyfriend or job on
hold and focus for the next three weeks.”
These students’ futures aren’t the only thing hanging in the
balance. Their scores will help determine whether Tovar can make Sunset
the first non-magnet school in the Dallas Independent School District
to be crowned as “recognized” by the state, a coup that would build on
this year’s “acceptable” rating and be especially meaningful
considering most of Oak Cliff’s high schools have long been deemed
unacceptable. To be “recognized,” in most cases, a school must have at
least 75 percent of its students pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge
and Skills tests in all four areas—English/language arts, social
studies, math and science (there are other factors that can change the
75 percent requirement).
Under Tovar’s leadership, in the past three years Sunset has
challenged the assumption that urban schools are doomed to languish and
fail. It has seen its TAKS scores rise and its parental involvement
skyrocket, and this year, it’s being touted as the district’s most
effective high school, according to the DISD rating system that gauges
how well schools perform in relation to their demographics (27 percent
of Sunset’s students have limited English proficiency, 96 percent are
Hispanic and 70 percent are eligible for free or reduced lunches).
Since 2006, the number of Sunset students who passed the reading and
language arts TAKS jumped from 77 to 82 percent, the scores for social
studies rose from 89 to 91 percent, and the math and science
scores—most challenging district-wide—inched up from 53 to
57 percent and 56 to 62 percent, respectively.
“If Sunset’s ‘recognized,’ that will blow the top off some of the
myths about urban high schools,” says DISD Superintendent Michael
Hinojosa, who holds up Sunset as the embodiment of the district’s
education innovations and a model for other schools. “People have low
expectations because the comprehensive schools lose top students to the
magnets, so they think they can’t compete. Tony’s changing that
conversation, and I’m really rooting for him to make it.”
Sunset, Hinojosa says, is one of a handful of DISD campuses that
have seen leaps in performance under principals with a knack for hiring
effective teachers and administrators, inspiring people to succeed and
instituting new practices that produce results.
“It’s a leadership issue,” Hinojosa says, stressing that Tovar’s
success can be replicated. “You have to have systems that work, but you
also have to have someone who can inspire people and rally the teachers
and the students to make things happen.”
Yet Sunset’s status as a bright spot in DISD is also a sobering
reminder of the district’s grim realities. Just 55 percent of Sunset
students graduate in four years; only 40 percent of those who graduated
in 2006 are enrolled in higher-education, and a mere 3 percent of those
who take the SAT or ACT college entrance exams have college-ready
scores. Such statistics are like battle lines to Tovar. The son of
Mexican immigrants who married as teens and never finished high school,
the 53-year-old principal is determined to make Sunset into the sort of
school that defies its circumstances, just as his family defied
theirs.
“I wish our students’ parents had higher expectations,” he says.
“They hope the kids will finish high school and then maybe go to
college. I remind the parents and the kids that a high school diploma
is the beginning, not the end of their education.” One of his greatest
frustrations is teen pregnancy, which is so common that Sunset’s
yearbooks are filled with baby pictures and it often seems there are
nearly as many baby showers as graduation parties. “A lot of times I
say stuff to Hispanic kids that I could get in trouble for if I were
white or African-American,” Tovar says. “I say, ‘I’m tired of reading
that Hispanics are No. 1 in DISD in dropping out of school and we’re
No. 1 in getting pregnant. I’m tired of hearing we can only do
“Mexican” jobs.’ When I see a kid skipping class, I say, ‘You’re living
up to what they’re saying in the papers about us. You’re making us look
bad.'”
For Tovar, the most challenging part of being a principal is getting
evaluated for results that in many ways depend on demographics and
other factors beyond his control (this is especially apparent to him
since he coached and taught history at Skyline High School—a
magnet—for 16 years). “It’s frustrating when you’re dealing with
parents who have given up on their kids, and it winds up counting
against you,” he says. “I can’t go to anybody and say, ‘This guy can’t
get his kid to go to school, and I’m getting penalized for that.'”
It can also be wearisome for all of his varied efforts to be judged
by a series of standardized tests. Like most educators, he acknowledges
the need to monitor schools’ effectiveness and hold teachers
accountable, but he has concerns about how well the tests measure
learning and about the sorts of creative material that may get left out
in the rush to pass.
“I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” he says of TAKS. “I just know we
have to be measured by it.”
Tovar doesn’t spend much time wringing his hands over the things he
can’t control. When he gets discouraged, he thinks about former
students who have gone on to become lawyers and teachers and
professional baseball players. He thinks about the last senior whose
cool façade gave way to grateful tears because he passed the
TAKS test and got to graduate. And then, like any self-respecting
coach, no matter how bad the odds might seem, Tovar keeps searching for
new strategies that might help his team win, all the while cheering
them on as if they’re the best players on earth.
—-
On a recent afternoon, Tovar heads down the hall toward the
cafeteria during lunchtime. Students nod and smile as they pass. A
young woman greets the principal from across the hall. “Hey, Tovar!”
she shouts with a grin. He waves back. “Hey, how are ya?”
He stops a pale, gangly teenager. “Hey, Cyrus,” he says, “did you
get a ride last night?”
“Yeah, I got a ride. Thanks, Mr. Tovar.”
Moments later the principal strolls through the packed cafeteria
past the senior table, where “Class of 2009” is painted on the wall in
enormous purple letters. A young woman waves, and he waves back. “She
just got a scholarship to Austin College,” Tovar says proudly.
When you ask teachers and parents what sets Tovar apart as a
principal, one of the first things they say is simple: He’s visible.
Instead of spending all of his time holed-up in his office or attending
meetings, he reserves the late afternoon and early evening for
paperwork so he can dedicate much of his day to visiting classrooms,
walking the hall and talking to students, parents and faculty.
“They’re seen,” Cynthia Hall, who has taught science at Sunset for
15 years, says of Tovar and the administrators he hired. “The ones we
used to have didn’t come out of their office. These are out there
supporting and motivating the kids. That’s really big.”
Hall also points out that unlike prior principals, who after two
years left for loftier posts with the district, Tovar has been there
for three years and says he doesn’t have plans to leave. (Hinojosa says
Tovar, Sunset’s 10th principal in 16 years, recently told him, “No
offense, but I don’t want to go down to the central office. I want to
stay at Sunset.”) For teachers and administrators, that sense of
stability is crucial for implementing reforms. “If you’re constantly
changing administrators, there’s no direction, no support,” Hall says.
“You don’t know where you’re going, and you have to start over all the
time.”
To begin a new era at Sunset when he was hired in the summer of
2006, Tovar replaced three administrators and five department heads.
“The people here were great people, nice as can be,” he says. “But
instructionally they were horrible. They didn’t know how to talk to
teachers, improve teachers, improve classroom management. I had to get
stronger instructionally and make sure I hired people who were. There
are 2,200 kids and 155 teachers—I can’t run this place by
myself.”
Coming off three-year stints as an assistant principal at Adamson
and Molina high schools, he says, he had a lot to learn to ensure that
he wasn’t just managing the brass tacks of operations, but also
developing a team that could effectively evaluate and improve teaching
methods, ensure students learn, and fulfill on district-wide
initiatives such as daily “collaboration” meetings in which teachers
who teach the same subject share their strategies.
“A lot of what I did comes from my coaching days,” Tovar says. “You
have to have players, good people surrounding you.”
His new team included Mark Ramirez, a former science teacher and
DISD science consultant, as associate principal in charge of the
science department; and Jonathan Parker, a former associate principal
at Pinkston High School, as the assistant principal in charge of the
math department. At first, implementing new practices like the teacher
collaboration meetings was challenging. Some teachers were too
embarrassed or too proud to ask for help, Tovar says. Beth Pumpelly, an
assistant principal intern who helps coordinate
limited-English-proficiency classes, says other teachers resisted
sharing their tried-and-true methods, preferring to keep the secrets of
their success to themselves. Yet eventually, a new sense of
camaraderie, free communication and mutual support emerged.
“We all help each other, and we have an administration that backs
us, and that’s rare,” Pumpelly, who has taught for 16 years and came to
Sunset in 2007, says. “I almost feel like I’ve walked into the
Twilight Zone.”
One of Tovar’s most momentous personnel decisions was to create a
community liaison position and fill it with Nora Garcia, an Oak Cliff
native who was working as a teaching assistant for the LEP classes. A
petite, gregarious woman who’s fluent in Spanish and exudes an
efficient, no-nonsense air, Garcia brings to mind an odd combination of
your favorite elementary school teacher and a monster Caterpillar
tractor. She immediately began reaching out to parents and within two
years has managed to increase the attendance at PTA meetings from a
couple dozen to around 120 parents each month.
“You never see that in high school,” Superintendent Hinojosa says.
“Maybe elementary school, but not high school. Somehow, they’ve managed
to engage the parents.”
Parental involvement is crucial; for educators it’s something like
the rudder on a boat—if students’ home lives are in shambles and
they lack support from their families, you can row all you want and not
get anywhere. Since most of the students come from poor families, there
are many single parents who work multiple jobs and are hard-pressed to
be very involved in their children’s education. Garcia leads weekly
parenting classes on Monday mornings that routinely draw 20-50 people,
most of them Mexican immigrants. She has addressed a range of topics,
from talking to kids about sex and drugs to helping them with their
homework, disciplining them and supporting them in the run-up to the
TAKS tests. She also offers English and computer classes.
“A lot of the students come to us without any English, or without
any formal education in either language, which makes it very
difficult,” Pumpelly says. “But the government requires us to educate
them and get them out of here in four years. If we can empower the
parents and teach them, I think you’ll see remarkable things.”
A number of the parents who have been attending Garcia’s classes say
they’ve already seen remarkable things. Maria Fe Basa says that as she
and her husband have spent more time helping their daughter with her
homework, they’ve watched her grades rise from C’s to B’s. Maria Nunez,
a mother of four from Mexico, says the classes have helped her with her
17-year-old daughter. Before, she was too strict because she was so
scared the teen would get involved in drugs or gangs or get pregnant.
“I didn’t let her go anywhere,” Nunez says. “Now I do. I realize I have
to give her some freedom and responsibility, and she shares a lot more
things with me.”
Aracelly Rios has also started to communicate more with her son, a
17-year-old senior who arrived in Dallas in eighth grade speaking no
English. Concerned about drugs after noticing that one of the boys he
carpooled with stopped showing up for school and took to driving around
in flashy sports cars, she asked her son about it. He told her that
while there were lots of kids selling marijuana or other drugs at
school, they didn’t pressure anyone to buy them.
Rios also found out at Garcia’s class that to keep up with his
class, her son could attend night school and Saturday school. “There
are lots of opportunities you don’t know about until you come here,”
she says.
On the morning of April 20, about 40 parents sit at round tables in
a classroom decorated with periodic table diagrams and TAKS strategies.
“I know you get tired of me talking about this, but I notice that a lot
of parents have stopped parenting,” Garcia tells the group in Spanish.
“They think work absolves them of this responsibility, and then when
they come in for a meeting, they’re faced with a lot of surprises. We
teach the students to read and do arithmetic, but to truly educate them
about managing school and their life—that’s your job.”
A woman named Amalia nods. “It starts with us,” she says. “We come,
learn, develop ourselves, and then we can help our children.”
“A lot of us don’t read, we don’t speak English, and we can’t
understand the fliers the school sends home to us,” another woman says.
“There are classes, but we have to take advantage of them. We have to
be responsible.”
A third woman in a pink sweater questions how much of a difference
all of this will make in the face of a new and often mysterious
culture. “The problem is, the kids don’t respect their elders like we
did,” she says.
Garcia, suspicious of any statement that sounds remotely like an
excuse, isn’t buying it. “You think it’s this country’s fault your kids
misbehave?” she says, managing to be blunt and respectful at once. “You
have a privilege. This is one of Oak Cliff’s best schools, and that’s
partly because you guys have stepped up and gotten involved. I’ve known
many of you for a long time. You’re good parents. But what about the
parents of the kids who yell at teachers? The parents of the kids who
fight and get sent to alternative schools? Where are those parents? We
need to reach out to them.”
Tovar’s voice blares over the intercom as the class wraps up.
“Seniors,” he says, “a tentative graduation list will be posted today
in fourth period. If your name is missing or incorrect, let us know.
This is our last week before the TAKS test. I want to congratulate you,
Sunset. We had almost 300 kids here for Saturday school last week, and
we hope to have more this time because it’s the last one.”
—-
If there was one thing that always motivated the Tovar kids to
excel, it was the blood and grease covering the floors of the Supreme
Beef plant on Second Avenue. Their father worked at the meatpacker for
more than three decades, and when Tovar and his two younger brothers
were growing up, Anthony Tovar Sr. would bring them to work with him in
the summers.
“If you don’t finish your education you’ll be working here next to
me at this plant,” he’d tell his sons, “so think about that.”
Tovar is the oldest of four, and when he was born, his mother, Nina,
was nearly a child herself. She’d married Anthony Sr. when she was 15
and he was 17. Both were born in Dallas, but their parents had
emigrated from Mexico. They chose to begin their family in a Pearl
Street duplex in Little Mexico near Reverchon Park. Most of the modest
homes were occupied by multi-generational families, and in the
evenings, Tovar and his siblings would play baseball in the street
while the adults sat on the stoops and talked in the fading light.
When Tovar was 5 his parents bought a house in Pleasant Grove for
$15,000 and moved to the then mostly white area. Tovar attended John
Ireland Elementary and recalls being one of the only Hispanic students.
He adjusted quickly and by fifth grade had fallen in love with baseball
and football and was determined to become a coach. “I was on the
fifth-grade football team, and I thought, ‘What a great job,'” he says,
“‘you get paid for playing!'” He and both of his brothers, Michael and
John Paul, or J.P., would go on to lengthy coaching careers in
DISD.
As Tovar progressed through John B. Hood Middle School and later,
Samuell High School, his mother remained ever-vigilant about his
performance. She got wind of some behavioral problems when he was in
the seventh grade (“I was being a smartass,” Tovar recalls. “I thought
I knew everything.”) and insisted on accompanying him to class for two
full days. If she noticed he was unfocused or talking out of turn, she
would raise her hand and say, “Excuse me, my son isn’t behaving.”
Remembering his embarrassment, Tovar—now a father of four
himself—laughs. “She never had to come again,” he says.
His mother recently told that story at one of Garcia’s parenting
classes. Garcia thought the Tovars’ story would be inspiring for her
pupils, so she had them come into the auditorium as guest speakers.
Nina and Anthony Sr. arrived on a Monday morning looking dapper, Nina
in a smart skirt suit with a flower pinned to the lapel and her husband
sporting a suit and tie.
“My parents wanted the same thing for me that you want for your
kids,” Tovar said in labored, third-generation Spanish as he introduced
them to the group. “They didn’t go to high school, but they have four
kids who finished college.”
His father took the mic and addressed the group in fluent Spanish.
“Sixty years ago education wasn’t considered very important for
Latinos,” he said. “We’ve been married 57 years, we have four kids, a
house, all the stuff any family could want. But my one regret is that
we didn’t finish our education. Sending four kids to college isn’t
easy. It requires sacrifice. For many years we never took a vacation
because we worked year-round.”
He introduced his wife as “the backbone of our family,” and she
talked about the importance of constantly monitoring and motivating
one’s children. “I was always behind them,” she told the parents. “You
have to stay on them.”
Tovar inherited a dose of his mother’s tenacity. At Samuell High
School, he earned only a C-plus average, but he was still set on going
to college and becoming a teacher and coach. His guidance counselor
didn’t agree. “I said I wanted to go to Texas Tech; she said Sears and
the phone company were hiring,” he says. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna buckle
down and prove her wrong.'”
Tovar graduated from Texas Tech in 1978 and took his first DISD job
teaching history and coaching baseball and football at Woodrow Wilson
High School.
Developing personal relationships with players and students always
seemed to come easy to Tovar. He recently stood in his office, where
the walls are lined with baseball team photos from years past, and
looked at a picture of Skyline High School’s ’87 team. “All these guys
have been successful, except this kid—he got into drugs,” he
says. “This kid has played for the Detroit Tigers, this one’s done well
and has a big house in Coppell, this one ran for judge, this one’s a
very successful nurse. I just ran into him at a Stars game.”
Tovar still draws on the rapport-building skills he learned as a
coach to connect with students and teachers. “I don’t care how smart
you are,” he says. “You better build that relationship with that kid or
he won’t care. They have to know you care.”
—-
Tovar gives district-wide Hinojosa-era reforms such as reduced class
size much of the credit for Sunset’s improvements, but he and his staff
have also brought unique zeal to district mandates. In the run-up to
the April TAKS tests, he redoubled efforts to prepare students for math
and science tests, which are the most challenging for the majority of
schools. While 91 and 82 percent of Sunset’s students passed the social
studies and reading/language arts TAKS last year respectively, just 62
and 57 percent passed the science and math tests. That’s up from 56 and
53 percent in 2006, but far shy of the 90-percent goal for 2010.
Starting in late March, Tovar instituted special test-prep pull-out
classes in addition to Saturday school. Students who had already failed
the math and science tests in past years were taken out of their
electives for the special sessions to review material and encouraged to
attend at least one session on Saturdays.
In early April, a white board in Tovar’s office lists various TAKS
goals and strategies. “Sense of urgency,” one item reads. “Senior
lock-in for TAKS—when?” another asks. “Who’s tutoring in the
morning and afternoon?”
Among the students high on the administrators’ priority list are
those 75 seniors at risk of not graduating because they still need to
pass either the math or science TAKS. One of those students is Anne
Arana, a 17-year-old who was born in Dallas to Mexican immigrant
parents and who wants to go to college and study interior design. She
has taken the science test three times—once as a junior, once
last summer and once last fall. Her scores improved each time, but she
didn’t pass. “I haven’t put as much effort as I needed to,” she says.
“I didn’t know it would take me this long. I’ve studied a lot harder
this time.”
On April 24, Arana sits in a special TAKS pullout class with around
10 other students and answers practice questions about cellular
respiration, mitochondria and what distinguishes viral infections from
bacterial infections. A banner hanging over the blackboard reads,
“Fabulous ’50s: Nothing Less than 50 Questions Right.” The motto refers
to the fact that it takes 35 correct questions to pass and 55 to be
rated commendable. Aimed to lighten up the pre-TAKS atmosphere, it was
the brainchild of Cathy Donaldson, a DISD TAKS consultant and former
teacher who—like most of the faculty today—is decked out in
’50s clothes and wandering the halls in a pink poodle skirt.
Arana, seated in the back of the class with her backpack and a large
textbook called Tackling the TAKS, is answering a lot of teacher
David McMahon’s questions. “A 1 kilogram ball has a kinetic energy of
50 joules,” he reads from a practice test. “What’s the velocity of the
ball?”
“G, 10 m/s,” Arana says.
McMahon asks her to come up to the blackboard and write out the
formula that led to her answer. “You know how to do it, but not
everybody knows,” he says.
Tovar appears in the doorway a few minutes later. In the spirit of
Fabulous ’50s, he’s wearing a white T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up,
a black leather jacket and aviator shades. “You guys ready?” he
says.
The class nods. “Yeah,” says a girl with long, dark hair and a pink
backpack. “We got this.”
“Take your time,” Tovar says. “Make sure you get enough sleep and
come in ready to go. I believe in you. You can do it!”
As much enthusiasm as the teachers and administrators muster for the
TAKS, it’s no secret that educators across the district and the
country, including many at Sunset, despise the standardized tests
required by the federal government.
“TAKS needs to be done away with because these kids were not born on
an assembly line—they all learn differently, and you can’t
measure what they’ve learned by using a standardized test,” says one
Sunset teacher who didn’t want to be named. Spending so much time on
the test teaches them only to take the test, the teacher went on,
instead of developing and testing broader skills through papers,
research, labs and other hands-on projects.
Another teacher who also declined to be named for fear of losing the
job, says that often, the “teaching to the test” criticism is spot-on.
“Most people wind up teaching to the test because you want your kids to
pass and you want to have a job next year. Sometimes you’ll miss a lot
of good material. They’ll ask a specific question on the test about DNA
and they’ll learn that and that’s fine, but then they’ll miss a lot of
things that go with it. I realize we need to have accountability [the
original goal of the testing], but we also have to engage the
kids.”
On the last Saturday school before the test, a teacher leading a
science classroom tells students, “Those are the only three things the
state of Texas usually asks about that, so if you know those three
things, you’ll be good,” and, “Which system does HIV attack? They put
that on the test all the time.” That’s to be expected at a last-minute
TAKS prep session, but it also raises the question: Does a decent
showing on these tests actually indicate broader learning
effectiveness? It’s a thorny and controversial question, but only one
of many that arises when you talk about standardized tests.
One of the Sunset teachers voices another common
criticism—that linking funding and job security to performance
leads to an inflated focus on money and school status, and can
sometimes even pave the way for unsavory methods.
One Sunset parent who declined to be named says her child has told
of foreign exchange students being pushed to take the TAKS even though
it’s not required in their home country’s school systems, and that
teachers—who receive a cash incentive for each student they sign
up to take an AP test—have pressured the exchange students to
take AP tests in their native languages, such as German and
Chinese.
“The smart kids, the foreign kids, the ones who have the ability to
single-handedly raise the scores of a whole class are hand-picked,” the
parent says. “If they’re bringing up the whole school, then I guess
that’s fine, but it seems like it’s just to get money.”
Tovar counters that the test gains have been across the board and
that it’s worthwhile for high-achieving students to take AP classes
because it helps them in college. But he also says that while he
doesn’t know of students being pressured to take AP tests simply so
teachers can get the incentive money or so the percentage of students
taking the tests will rise and reflect on the school’s record, he
condemns such tactics. “The push has been to get more people in AP
classes,” he says, “but you can’t push kids into them just because
they’ve scored well on other tests. The kids have to be committed to
being in the AP classes and putting in the extra work.”
Late May finds Tovar parsing through the TAKS results. The social
studies and English language arts scores jumped to 91 and 84 percent
respectively, but the math and science scores still lag well under the
75-percent requirement to be “recognized,” at 62 and 67 percent,
respectively. Nevertheless, a DISD spokesman says preliminary
calculations suggest Sunset and six other non-magnet high schools may
reach recognized status because of new rules that take other factors
into account.
Still, Tovar is a little disappointed. “We’re a little stunned. We
were hoping for double-digit gains,” Tovar says. “I got a call from the
district office saying they’re very happy with our scores and that any
time you get five points of growth you should be happy, but I thought
we would be recognized. Well, we just gotta keep truckin’.”
He has set up a meeting with his administrators to brainstorm ideas
for new “interventions” to teach students the material and measure
whether or not they’re actually learning it in advance of the test
dates. “I think we did a good job of putting a sense of urgency into
people, but we’ve got to come up with systems that will help us monitor
the kids’ progress throughout the year and make sure we’re making the
progress we need to make,” he says. “Maybe we need to get in people’s
faces a little more, see what we can do to step it up.” Known to ask
teachers to “get a little badass in them,” he’s considering putting
certain teachers on performance plans, and moving them if they don’t
deliver. “I want them to be comfortable, but not complacent,” he
says.
To soften the disappointment that comes with going for a goal and
missing, he’ll remind his teachers to think about all the kids who did
pass, and the ones who will graduate and go on to bigger and better
things. “Your rewards won’t come today,” he’ll tell them. “Your rewards
will come later, when you see the difference you made in their lives
10, 15 years down the road.”
