SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Dateline: Boston, MA

In 2004, the Arlington school board trustees decided they needed a change agent to transform the local school system into a high-achieving one. Accordingly, they hired Nate Levinson, a non-educator with a Harvard MBA and a decade of successful experience running a multimillion-dollar company, Levinson proved to be very effective in raising student achievement and balancing the budget, but he met his match when he tried to fire the principal of a problem school. An ugly sex scandal involving leaked e-mails erupted and, in the end, Levinson walked away from the job. The lesson here is that even the most talented and competent administrator can find it next to impossible to run a school board well and, since such individuals are in short supply anyway, perhaps we should consider radical changes to school administrative structures so that mere mortals have a chance of succeeding at the job.

In Massachusetts, 10,000 students drop out of school every year, many of them due to pregnancy or parenthood. Programs that make it possible for these teens to stay in school, as well as teen pregnancy prevention programs, are expected to be cut next year - since the state’s finances are in a mess. No consideration is apparently being given to finding ways of providing all elementary students with the strong academic foundation that is by far the best contraceptive. Sound familiar?