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As New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina begins to make policy decisions, many —such as limiting or fifty-fifty eliminating schools closures and restricting or ending the co-location of lease schools — are intended to roll back the policies of the previous administration. There is nothing unusual about members of a new assistants coming in assertive that they are smarter than their predecessors. Why else agree to take the second hardest job in America if non to better on the work of those who came before you?

School principal requirements
Eric Nadelstern

In one area, however, the Chancellor and her assistants may shortly discover that the futurity isn't what it used to be. I'm speaking of the new requirement that prospective principals should have seven years of teaching experience. This policy change is likely to adversely affect the quality of schoolhouse leaders in the futurity.

Allow me to explain. Thirty years agone I opened the starting time International High School in New York Metropolis. (Today, there are xvi in New York and two in California.) At the time, 80 percent of loftier school principals were middle-aged white guys. At 35, I was among the youngest.

In the years since, the demographic profile of high schoolhouse principals has changed dramatically. The median age for all principals is in the mid-30s, and it'south non unusual to find principals in their late 20s. As importantly, at that place are many more than women, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians in chief positions than there were when I first became a chief. Today, school leaders are a more diverse group, and more reflective of the demographics of the students we serve.

The question remains every bit to why the dramatic driblet in median age. By mode of attempting to better understand that change, we need to understand how young people approach work in the 21st Century. We know, for instance, that virtually young people today will have 5 or six jobs, if non careers, over the course of their working lives. This stands in stark contrast to my career and Carmen Farina'southward since both of us take spent 40 years working in the New York Urban center Public Schools. What's more, nosotros knew when we entered educational activity that this would be our career destination.

In dissimilarity, virtually young people today are merely prepared to stay with their jobs equally long every bit they feel they are learning and growing. When that growth levels off every bit it invariably does, they motion on to another job where they can proceed the learning trajectories. I've seen this trend among our best teachers and principals, with less talented individuals remaining in place longer. This is non a dynamic that I discovered, just rather, the conventional wisdom of the mean solar day in nearly professions. All the same, every bit a profession, we take not sufficiently and systematically studied the demographic trends I'm describing, nor have we considered the implications for the way we structure our schools and manage man resource policies in school districts.

"This policy modify is likely to adversely affect the quality of school leaders in the future."

The Chancellor's new policy regarding seven years of feel for master candidates flies in the face up of current working trends and demographics. As a result, information technology will likely have the following unintended consequences:

  • The strongest school leader prospects will go elsewhere, benefiting charter schools and other districts.
  • Those who remain and movement into school leadership positions will likely be weaker candidates, many of whom volition be motivated past the bump in salary.
  • The district will fall curt of hiring the 200 new principals each year that it requires.

Any student of public policy understands the danger of exacerbating the very situation you are attempting to solve by the human action of policy making on the fly based on intuition rather than data. I fright this policy might very well be such a pitfall, and hope that it'south not too tardily to study the demographic information before attempting to solve one problem by exacerbating a more serious one.

Eric Nadelstern is a former deputy chancellor for school support and teaching under Bloomberg and currently a professor of Do in Educational Leadership at Teachers Higher, Columbia University. He is also the director of the Summertime Principals Academy at Teachers Higher.

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Eric Nadelstern a professor of practice in educational leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University and onetime New York City deputy chancellor for schoolhouse back up and instruction under Bloomberg.