DOE Principal Survey II

Posted by helen at 6:27 PM

This past winter, the DOE surveyed the city's 1400 principals. And today, the results of the second principal survey were released, with steady improvements in many measures, including principal satisfaction with DOE support in attaining school goals, school support organizations, and DOE accountability measures. The 1000+ principals who responded (anonymously) also reported a slight decrease in satisfaction with professional development programs offered by the DOE's Department of Teaching and Learning.

The first survey likewise highlighted many strengths -- and identified shortcomings in certain critical areas, like OSEPO's placement of special-education and English Language Learner (ELL) students and OSEPO's response to admissions and placement issues (limited satisfaction, between 50%-53%). The current survey omits any OSEPO questions, making direct comparison from one survey to the next impossible.

The current survey is about a third shorter than the first, because principals objected to its length, according to DOE sources. Why decisions were made to omit certain subject areas, like OSEPO, and include others, related to school management and accountability, for example, isn't quite clear. But given the prominence of OSEPO in the admissions confusion of the past couple of weeks (and ongoing, for plenty of parents), it would have been great to hear from principals, the proverbial leaders in the 'trenches' of academe, just exactly how OSEPO is doing.