Rating the Superintendent Choices: Dr. Gary Norris

One could certainly argue that APS Superintendent candidate Dr. Gary Norris looks like a Southern Baptist preacher, or the host of a television game show. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

More importantly, we are above the superficiality of looks here at Burque Babble. No, we plunge deeper and instead focus on the superficiality of slogans like "NeXt Generation Learning", Dr. Norris' totally rad initiative to make his Sarasota Public Schools better. Perhaps it is our inherent cynicism that makes us leery of something called "NeXt Generation Learning", or perhaps it's our disdain for the use of old Pepsi ad campaigns to promote school improvement initiatives. Mainly it's that upper case "X". That's just about making me choke on my Cheerios this morning.

Anyway, "NeXt Generation Learning" is about more than an upper-case "X". It's about $350 million of education buzzwords to promote a "NeXt Generation" classroom (teacher included) that does the following (unlike a bad, horrible evil 1950s classroom...not to mention the segregation angle):

1950s Classroom
Passive
Receive Knowledge
Learn Alone
Learning Content
Replicate
Teach all the time

"NeXt Generation" Classroom"
Active
Construct Knowledge
Learn Together
Learning to Learn
Innovate
Adapt to Learning Styles

The sales brochures for "NeXt Generation" say the "NeXt Generation" will consist of longer school days, a bunch of technology and creation of a teacher certification process that is like National Board Certification but different enough to cost Sarasota taxpayers $20 million over four years.

And now comes the clincher from a Sarasota Herald-Tribune story about Dr. Norris' status for the APS job:

Norris is credited with overseeing sweeping changes in Sarasota's 42,000-student school system, but his impending departure comes at a time when the district's ambitious academic reform, the $350 million Next Generation Learning plan, is being implemented.

Outside of having a terribly uncool name "NeXt Generation Learning" doesn't look like that bad of a concept. Sure it is full of the same buzzwords that make any education initiative difficult to assess, but things like increased technology and teachers adapting to their students is fine. What irritates is that the "inventor" of these particular buzzwords is leaving, or wants to leave, just as the thing gets started.

Perhaps my expectations are too high, but I want my radical reformer administrators to stick around for the tough days of radical reform implementation. I don't want somebody to just sell me a marching band or "monorail" and then head out to the next Shelbyville or Albuquerque.

I'm still rooting for an "out-of-towner" to be hired, but why does this process have to so closely mimic the hiring of a college basketball coach? Hundreds of thousands in pay to lure somebody who either wants to use the job as a stepping stone or, like Dr. Norris, is somewhere deep into the back nine of a career and wants to max out on his/her retirement?

Maybe I'm being naive, but I was kinda hoping we could find somebody who wanted to innovate here and stick around for the years it will take to make it happen. I don't know if Dr. Gary Norris is that guy (maybe none of them are). Add to this the fact Norris, in true college basketball coach fashion, already held the Sarasota schools hostage by threatening to quit back in 2006 and we basically have a 68 year-old, or so, Steve Alford on our hands.

"NeXt"!