When the principal of a South Side elementary school received the instructions for the start of kindergarten classes, she rebelled.
The Chicago Board of Education mandated that only half-day classes be held, with a maximum of 17 students in each.
”I decided the kids needed a longer time in school, especially if we were going to cover all the material they wanted,” she explained.
Against board wishes, she persuaded teachers to run classes all day and expand their size to 25 students to stretch classroom time with her available staff.
”When the powers-that-be saw what I had done, they started sending people out almost daily to count the kids and tell us we were violating the rules,” recalled the principal, who asked not to be identified.
”Their reaction was: `Get those kids out of the room; you have an auditing exception.` My reaction was: `So?` ”
For two years she fought the system. She said teachers became ”jittery” each time auditors dropped by and clerks ”hid the books” to make it seem they were following the rules. Her program finally was accepted because it worked, and eventually it became the model for other kindergartens across the city.
”I wouldn`t bow down,” the principal said. ”In a sense, it was open defiance, but it was done in a creative way.”
Her defiance illustrates one of the many methods–some constructive, some questionable–that principals and teachers use to circumvent a bureaucracy they see as burdensome, annoying and counterproductive to the primary aim of educating the 430,000 students in Chicago public schools.
Principals complain that they frequently are asked to duplicate reports. They routinely shun requests for such things as enrollment and racial statistics, knowing they already have submitted those reports. Principals say they also are overwhelmed by a responsibility to solve social ills–and the accompanying
paperwork. They also claim that in the eyes of the bureaucracy, a principal who reduces vandalism to school property is better than one who runs a strong academic program.
Though most asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, many Chicago public school principals boast about their ”survival tactics” and suggest that insubordination not only permeates the school system but has developed into an art form that is actually required if a school is to function at all.
”If I have to make a choice between working with the bureaucracy and working with my kids, my kids come first,” one principal said. ”So if the report`s not in on time, call me. I`ll get to it. I`ll get to it when my back is up against the wall, they`re after me and I`m going to get caught.”
A recent example of what principals call bureaucratic ”madness” from the Board of Education concerned the ”transitioning to a larger meal ticket to correct problems experienced with small tickets.”
Four pages of rules accompanied the new meal tickets and described in detail the ”acceptable” pens to be used for coding: ”Medium-point ball point pens (dry in a few seconds).” And in case there was any doubt, the following written instruction was included: ”Tickets can be destroyed by cutting them into pieces with scissors.”
”There are indeed things in the bureaucracy that work against being able to provide a quality education for the children,” said Loretta Nolan, president of the Chicago Principals Association. ”The red tape and paperwork are enormous, and some of the kinds of things that they`re asking for are not even sensible.
”What has happened is that all these things have been shoved onto the principal`s desk, who then has to come up with some magical way to deal with them. As a result, principals are forced to come up with their own
solutions.”
Researchers at the College of Education of the University of Illinois-Chicago call the practice ”creative insubordination.” In a three-year study, they trailed 16 principals for as long as 12 days each, documenting cases of disobedience.
A major surprise was the way ”principals exploit cracks in the bureaucracy to circumvent, outwit and manipulate the system on behalf of the school and personal goals,” said Van Cleve Morris, a professor of education. ”Here is behavior that is clearly, from a bureaucratic standpoint, illegal,” Morris said. ”But almost always it`s done for good motives. It`s done for the kids. For these administrators, disobedience is an art form and, to a certain extent, the system depends on it.”
Morris added that insubordination may be more widespread in Chicago`s school system than in others he has studied, because of a frequent turnover in school superintendents.
”Every time there`s a change in leadership, you get a change in rules,” Morris said. ”The superintendent has to learn who it is he can trust, so people in the system get very defensive about their jobs. There`s no team effort.”
The principal of a large magnet school complained: ”One day you get one mandate, and 15 days later you get another that totally contradicts the first. You would end up being schizophrenic if you tried to figure it all out.”
Morris, along with associate professor Robert Crowson, collected examples of principal insubordination for a book titled ”Principals in Action.” Among them:
— The principal of a black neighborhood school received two new reading teachers because of embarrassingly low reading scores by the school`s pupils. But instead of using the new teachers to help the worst students, the principal told them to help only marginal students who were reading almost at grade level. In this way, she improved her own image and that of her school when she gained a ”measurable” increase in reading scores.
— Two principals made a ”gentlemen`s agreement” not to transfer students as part of the ”Access to Excellence” desegregation plan ordered by former Supt. Joseph Hannon. Though the transfers were intended to desegregate the schools–one white, the other black–the principals reasoned that the travel time needed to bus students would take away from classroom time.
But Orpen Bryan, the newly appointed assistant superintendent for school support, said he does not believe Chicago principals are disobedient.
”I don`t think there is a wide-scale refusal by principals to follow directives,” said Bryan, former deputy superintendent for field management.
”For a person to do that could be cause for serious disciplinary action, and it would certainly damage their reputation within the system. When a directive comes down, it is written by people who are in the position to make decisions about what is best for the schools.”
He acknowledged, however, that the system could be better organized.
”I`ve been in the system for 30 years, and I can`t remember a year when we haven`t said, `Let`s get efficient.` But that doesn`t mean the system is out of control,” he said.
In many instances, principals said they bend rules to improve the images of their schools and attract better students. They said they engineer requirements for students to enter special programs, accept good students who live beyond attendance boundaries and tell poor students who want to transfer into their schools that the rules cannot accommodate them. Sometimes they organize parents against the system, using the parents` ”outrage” to pressure the school board into changing a decision or taking a stand.
”It`s like a big game of chess,” Morris said. ”But as the system is buffeted, month by month, by educational innovations and internal
mismanagement, the rules begin to change. The chessboard shifts beneath the players` feet, but they`re expected to go on playing.”
Ultimately, Morris considers the insubordination ”pernicious.”
”Any organization that gets itself in the position where insubordination is not only condoned but encouraged is in for trouble,” Morris said. ”It`s not good for morale; the goals and efficiency of the system as a whole are often compromised, and an adversarial relationship develops between principals and the central office.”
The bottom line for many principals, however, is providing service to their students.
”A system as large as this helps only the person who talks the loudest,” one principal explained.
