Be active as an educator, principals told

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 10, 2009 - Page: 4B

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A group of aspiring school principals listened Thursday as veteran educators and political advocates urged them to not only learn how to run schools well but become entrepreneurs who pioneer better ways of educating kids.

“You have two diametrically opposed priorities: execution and innovation,” explained Tom Vander Ark, former executive director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Vander Ark said most schools rightly focus on executing their school plans well, but spend little or no time on innovating.

Consequently, they may be doing well, but still falling far short of meeting the needs of their students, he said.

Shirl Gilbert made a similar point. Gilbert is a veteran superintendent, including several years running schools in Indianapolis. He recently took over as superintendent of the Recovery School District-Louisiana.

The district oversees low performing schools, including 12 in Baton Rouge, that the state has taken over for low academic performance.

“Complacency is the poison of education,” Gilbert said.

Even successful schools that rest on their laurels run the risk of ultimate failure, he said.

“Even when we do things well, we can get complacent, and with enough time, things will deteriorate,” Gilbert said.

Vander Ark and Gilbert were two of the eight members of a panel that met at LSU.

They spoke to 21 principals-in-training, the second class of an alternative training program called Redesigning Lessons Re-Envisioning Principals.

The program is run by Advance Education Initiative, a recent offshoot of the nonprofit Advance Baton Rouge, along with LSU’s colleges of education and business.

LSU Chancellor Mike Martin, a member of the panel, said a generation of children is in danger of being lost if schools don’t find ways of giving more of them a quality education.