Sending the Principal Backto Class

摘要

Kim Lowry, principal of South Elementary, a 500-student school in rural Kennett, Mo., was wary when her superintendent enrolled her in a parttime, two-year business school program. Her school had failed to meet benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind law and faced a state takeover. Business classes were the last thing she wanted to do with the money earmarked for improving her school. Says Lowry: "I was very resistant." That changed in the summer of 2009, when she attended her first classes at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. Under the guidance of professors there, she wrote a plan for transforming her school. That fall she formed teams or teachers that scrutinized student performance, hired consultants to help improve scores on standardized tests, and posted the results of every student in the staff lounge, making teachers publicly accountable for their classes.