This week: why Hartz resigned and what's wrong with education in New York. Next week: A look back at four years as principal.

Eric Hartz has served as Lansing High School Principal for four years.  Before that he spent four years as Groton High School Principal.  On May 13th he resigned.  What made that significant was that in his resignation letter he said he wasn't resigning from Lansing High School, but from education altogether, because state mandates had made it impossible for him to function as an educator.  While Hartz hopes to keep a finger in the pie by teaching education part time on the college level, he has lined up a job as salesman for a construction management firm. 

Last week Superintendent Chris Pettograsso alluded to the difficulty of attracting talented and experienced administrators even to as desirable a school system as Lansing.  Educators are less willing to move to new positions where they lose seniority and security. 

Hartz's resignation is an indictment of education in New York.  He says onerous unfunded mandates that clearly punish successful school districts like Lansing force teachers and administrators to spend more time on paperwork and testing and less on actually teaching kids.  When Hartz sat down with the Lansing Star last week he spoke passionately about the state of education in New York and his experiences during his tenure in Lansing.

Lansing Star: From things you have said over the years,  this was the dream job.  You lived here, your kids went here, great system, etc.  Right?

Eric Hartz: Absolutely this is a dream job.  I think that Lansing Central Schools is, honestly, one of the most fortunate districts around.  I really do.


So what finally put you over the edge?

My simple answer is I just can't do it any more.  And part of it's my own problem.  If you read any book on leadership they talk about building relationships and culture.  Those are your top two chapters.  Right now our state is asking us to not do that any more as leaders.  There are too many things right now that are pulling us down, that aren't allowing us to build relationships with kids, maintain relationships with teachers, build relationships with the community and build a solid, good culture, because we are getting so boged down right now with the new APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review, the newly state mandated teacher evaluation) system and the paperwork.  We're getting bogged down with the testing system and how we can grade tests.  This week (Regents exam week) teachers can't even grade their own tests, so we've lost the ability to even call teachers professionals any more.

The system is broken.  And we're not doing good for kids.  What we're doing right now is so political and so dollar sign driven that I don't care to do this any more.  My ability to have impact in a school district, which is to help with policies, procedures, safety, working with children to graduate.  To make a school system... we don't have that ability any more.  It's taken away from us.

It's taken away from us in several different aspects.  It's been taken away from us by the dictation of this New York government telling us how we now have to distribute tests, administer tests, APPR for the teachers.  Everything is being dictated to us right now.

The funniest part of this is that it is the opposite of what New York State says we should be doing for our kids.  It's the opposite of the Common Core Curriculum.  Do you know that the biggest part of the Common Core Curriculum is to teach kids to be critical thinkers?  We're forcing our adults to be non-critical thinkers now.  So we're not even modelling a good example of what's good for education.

Because we're telling everyone what to do and how to do it and how much the points cost if you don't pass, and if you don't do this... 

So I'm done with this.  I'm done with the political stuff that's going on.  I can't do it any more.

I love going to the concerts.  I love going to the ball games.  I love going to the plays.  I was in the musical this past year.  Those are important things.  Doing the fundraisers when we're out on a basketball playing, and doing those things...

The problem is, I'm working 70 to 80 hours a week.  I have it documented.  I'm taking away from my wife.  I'm exhausted when I go home.  I'm doing emails at home at 11 o'clock at night or five in the morning.  It's a point where you almost have to step out of your shell and say 'What am I really doing right now?'  I made a choice for me that my beliefs about what a good principal is and being able to be well rounded in the community and support kids... you can't do it all any more.  And I will not take away from my personal life and family life because I need some of that time.


The time element is a big deal.  I remembers sitting with (former superintendent) Steve Grimm when APPR was just being implemented.  We figured out the number of hours that each principal in this district was going to have to spend on just that mandate alone.


Unbelievable!



I was blown away by it.  I don't think most people know what a principal does unless they get sent to the principal's office -- you know that part!  But obviously, you're leading a team of how many teachers?


Roughly, I supervise 50 adults and 350 kids.  So every day I supervise 400 people, not including (interacting with) parents or community members.  They're under my auspices.  They're under my care for the seven or eight hours they're here.

With the time needed for APPR it looked like you wouldn't have time to do any of the normal things a principal should be doing for two or three months.


No.



Is that an exaggeration?



No.  I figured it our this year.  It's about five or six hours per teacher.


That was what Steve estimates when we talked about it.


If you look at that people say, 'Well that's not that much time.'  It is.  Don't forget teachers' contracts go from roughly a quarter of eight to three o'clock, so they're only here until three.  And don't forget that they only teach five or six classes a day that I have the opportunity to observe.  So it's not like I have all day long to observe them, or all year long.  I only really have them for ten months.  So I don't have a full year cycle during which I can observe.

That's not the teacher's fault.  I want to be very clear: I'm not upset with the teachers at all.  But the way contracts and things work, it's not like I would have in the corporate world where people work 12 months and an eight hour day.  I don't have that  ability to oversee and evaluate all the time.  People forget this is a different place.

You said something very interesting, that people don't know what a principal does.  One of our own teachers is doing an internship for administration right now, and has been spending the last couple of weeks with me, and daily says, 'I had no idea you do that.'

Now this is a person that has been with me in my building as a teacher that is now walking the steps with me and saying 'I had no idea you did that.'  Right down to the phone call from the parent on the emergency problem; we had one of our past students whose mother passed away.  We still deal with that.  We're a community here.  And that's the part people forget.

What's frustrating to me is -- and this is where our government is killing us right now.  With all these unfunded mandates they're forgetting that we're a community and human people.  This is a human resource business.  We are not making parts of a machine where we can turn our machine off and walk away from it.

You don't do that here.  When a teacher is out we have to have a substitute teacher here to take care of the kids.  You don't shut that door for the day and say, 'Oh sorry, we're not going to have that class today.

It's a human resource field.  It has caring and nurturing people in it, and that's what we are.  We are not a machine, but New York State thinks we're a machine and that we can stamp these kids out and just get product.  That does not happen.


Is this state worse than other states, do you know?


That's an open ended question.  That's loaded.  I think New York State jumped too fast to fix too many things at once.  That's what I think we did.  With no money.  I will say that a million times over: with no money.

They'll tell you we're getting money.  Go split the state in half and go look at what downstate gets and what upstate gets.  I'll guarantee you right now the funding is a whole lot different.

We had a doctor we loved, but he closed his practice because of a lot of the things you are talking about, but it was coming from the insurance industries.  When a talented, experienced administrator leaves for these reasons it should open a lot of eyes.  You would think it would open a lot of eyes in Albany, but as we see in the insurance industry, they don't seem to do anything.  Do you think this will get Albany's attention, and do you think mandated gratuitous rules and reporting requirements and so on are happening across our culture and not just in education?

I sent my resignation letter to Governor Cuomo and Commissioner (of Education Dr. John B.) King.  I asked them to take three minutes to read it and I offered them 30 minutes of my time to discuss it.  That was three weeks ago.  I haven't heard one word.

So, no.  Do I think Albany will hear it?  No.  they simply don't care.


That's six hours and 30 minutes including driving.


But I don't care.  I was willing to give that time up because I feel so strongly about what's going on now.  They don't want to hear it.  I think they don't want to hear it because they know that what they're doing is wrong.  Nobody ever wants to hear it when they're wrong.

I think they know they've got a problem right now, with all the lobbying that's going on.  They don't know how to fix it.

Your other question was do I think it's cultural?  I do think it is.  We're seeing more of it from the federal government and being pushed down to the states.  Our federal government is doing it right now with Medicare.   It's interesting to me how we have gotten so paper- cover yourself-documentation inundated that we've forgotten the purpose of what we're supposed to be doing.

Does that make sense?

And I think that's everywhere.  Right now to process an insurance claim you have to give your right arm.  People in medical practice -- you hear about it all the time.  They're paying so much money because of lawsuits.

Part of it is our own problem, because we've allowed this to happen.  But on the other hand there have been some issues that have not been dealt with.

There are some teachers that probably shouldn't be teaching, right?  So why don't we look at how to fix the problem for those few instead of trying to make all teachers be something they don't have to be?  We're not looking at how to solve the problem of the few, or the problems of the few kids who aren't doing well in school...

You want to take a look at Lansing? 80 to 90 percent of my kids are doing great.  Why aren't we focusing on the 10 or 15% that aren't?  No, we're focussing on trying to fit every kid through the same hole and making the standard a mandate, which is not fair.


Doesn't that bring down the successful schools to a lowest common denominator?


Sure it does.  Absolutely.  Look at how many days of testing we are doing right now?  And what's the testing for?  SOme of the testing is for student knowledge and some of the testing is to grade teachers.

I personally struggle with grading teachers on a student's one-shot-deal test.  I had a kid get mono just yesterday who couldn't take a Regents exam.  So does my teacher get dinged for that because a student got ill?

There are a lot of problems with this whole system that we're not thinking about.  We're just trying to stamp these kids out and get these grades that make us look better.  We're just not doing it the right way.

As you know I was a college teacher and we dealt with a lot of these issues then.  Things like teacher evaluation, tenure, student performance and so on.   So I think about it a lot.  On the one hand I think President Bush and others who wanted accountability in education are not wrong on a philosophical level.  But I also think that it has gotten so out of hand that it's gotten in the way of true learning.  Do you think in general that the education community did a bad job of self-monitoring that prompted the state to jump in with mandates?

I think they're taking the whole state and wrapping it into one bundle.  That's not the way to do it.  I think that not looking at individual schools in terms of who is being successful is not.  And why we're being successful and why not.

Some of it may be because we're considered an affluent district.  But I say to you we've also got a lot of poverty in this district, so I don't want to hear about it.  I think we're trying to take too big an issue.  Do teachers need to be evaluated?  Absolutely, and so do principals.  Do kids need to be tested?  Absolutely.  So what is the outcome we are looking for?

We should be testing for student knowledge, right?  Not to see if teachers did their job during the year.  Administrators should be trusted to evaluate teachers throughout the year using a pure drop-in system.  I don't think that teachers should have the right to know when I'm walking in their door.  I should be able to evaluate them any time I want to.  And I get to use all the information any time I want in an evaluation.

If you know you're going to be observed that day you're going to do your darndest to have a good lesson plan, have it go well, tell your kids boom-de-boom.  It's a setup.  You'd be perfect.  When we do the drop-ins is when we see a lot of what's going on in daily classes.  I think drop-in is where you go.  I do think you have a post-observation every time you do it.  So you do a drop-in and you meet with the teacher.  I think we should do three a year.  How's that?  Three 20 minutes a year, but get rid of all the paperwork that comes with it.  And track it.  That's what I think you need to do.



How many evaluations are required right now?


Two.  But one has to be scheduled where I have to do a pre-observation, sit for the whole 40 minutes and a post-observation.  I think I should be able to drop in and I don't think there should be a minimum or maximum time on it.  If you're really a good teacher and you're doing what you should be doing I should be able to walk in that room any day and time and see good teaching.

Nobody wants to hear it: evaluating a teacher on students' ability to sit for a one-time test... I have kids who have classes in which they do really well on homework.  They're horrible test takers.  So you're going to judge my teacher on a kid who is a horrible test taker?  Are you going to judge my teacher on students with disabilities who are struggling through school when we could accomodate for it?  Maybe that student gets a leg up that helps the teacher when that's not fair.  It could go the other way.


There's really no objective system that can realistically evaluate?


No.  That's why I'm so frustrated.  What did we try to cause here?  How about we have trusted administrators and make sure they do a good job of evaluating teachers, and then how about restructuring the tenure system?  Because I don't think the tenure system is good, I'll be honest with you.  And if somebody's not good let's look at them and say, 'You'e not good.  Here's your opportunity to change it and if you don't you'll be asked to leave at the end of the year.'


I had tenure when I was teaching but we also had merit pay.  I think tenure is a good idea if it's paired with something like merit pay that continues to encourage good teaching.


I would love to sit in a room full of educators and brainstorm on what is the best way to do it and have something that's really good.  What I don't like right now is that we're putting undue pressure on kids, not only trying to pass tests and graduates, but tests that they know is against the teacher.  High school kids know these tests affect teachers.  Middle school and elementary school kids know these tests affect teachers.  I feel that is just wrong.  That is just wrong.

It does not build a welcoming culture -- that's part of good leadership -- in a school of humans in a human resource field in which we care about people.

You pit people against people.  It's a very skewed power structure and kids feel that pressure.  How about the kids that purposely bomb a test because they want to take a teacher out?  Has anybody talked about that one yet?


Are you talking about a case or cases that you know of?


I'm talking about things I've heard.  I'm talking about two kids that did it in a test that didn't even know it would affect the teacher but didn't want to take it.  That wrote 'I hate New York State' all over their exam.  That failed and it then went against the teacher.  Now, is that fair?

No.

These are high school kids.  They're not stupid.  We are not setting this up to be a good system where students are valued and their learning is being looked at as a value of what they are.

This whole thing about everybody being able to pass these tests...  last I knew not everybody graduated college as a doctor or a lawyer or in the upper echelon.  I'm sorry, but why are we trying to stamp the same kid out of high school?  We need to get over this, and I say thank goodness for BOCES and Career and Tech and those kind of things.  Those ids are finding their avenue.  They want to go in the workforce.  If that ever goes away we are in real trouble.

What are we doing?  We have free public education here and our government's forgotten that.  (We teach) everybody.  That's what we do here.  Not everybody's equal (in ability or interest).  So let's figure out what's good for those kids and be able to adjust it.

Oh I'm sorry, we don't have any money to have programs like that.  If you really want to build a model school... a model school would have the ability to have arts, science, math, English.  For those kids who want to excel you'd be able to have elective courses like poetry writing, creative writing, public speaking... You'd be able to have endless course choices throughout the system that truly found the niches of those kids and let them excel in their areas, still gaining general knowledge, to be able to graduate from high school.  But I'll guarantee you the kid that hates math and loves English... if they were able to take more electives in the English area they'd figure out a way to do math.  Because they'd be more involved in school.

Or arts or music or phys ed.  But we don't do that.


When my kids went through school my concern was how well teachers gave them opportunities to succeed.  That's not to say that the kid does succeed, but that the kid has an opportunity and feels it.

I call it 'buying in'.

Why can't that count as English 12?  Why can't 12th grade English be choices?  You have a straight English 12 with more novel reading and writing.  You've got a poetry class.  You've got a poetry class paired with public speaking.  Why can't have kids have choices?  We want them to be critical thinkers.  That's what the state is telling us.  That's why we're changing to the Common Core.  Why aren't we creating an environment that supports children who want to go in a direction?

Maybe its the math and sciences.  We have an astronomy class here I can't put enough kids in.  Why don't we create some science and math courses that go along with technology?  How innovate would that be? That could be your third science.

We put such stringent guidelines on these kids.  You gotta take this and you gotta take this and you gotta take this.  It's a requirement.

And I was just looking at this: when I graduated in 1984 you needed 16 credit hours to get out of high school.  It's 22 now.  It's six additional classes right now.


So it's more pressure on kids and more pressure on teachers at a time when they're already loaded.


But wait a minute, don't forget we don't have enough money.  We're cutting teachers.  We're cutting positions.  We're cutting, we're cutting, we're cutting.  But do more, do more, do more, do more.  That's an equation that anybody can figure out doesn't work.

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