This was forwarded to us. It's author is, simply, "Paul." Thought we'd share it:

The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) and an Oklaholma school system decided to have a canoe race on the Trinity River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Oklaholmans won by a mile.

Very discouraged and depressed, DISD decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat, forming a team of school principals to investigate. Their conclusion was the Oklaholmans had 8 teachers rowing and 1 administrator steering, while the DISD team had 8 administrators steering and 1 teacher rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, DISD management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Oklaholmans, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the teacher rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There were discussions of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment and extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.
The next year the Oklaholmans won by two miles.

Humiliated, DISD management laid off the rower for poor performance and declared the need for a new bond program to fund a larger canoe so they could double the number of steering supervisors, superintendents and assistent steering managers.

Sadly, The End.

This is really funny. Paul may not be aware of this, what happened is worse than what is portrayed here.

Dallas ISD created a whole new division called the Transformation Management Office (TMO) headed by another useless person whose only job was to dress well and arrange meetings between the canoe team and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). After spending $5,000,000 and putting together some fancy PowerPoint presentations, TMO and BCG came to the conclusion that the whole problem can be solved by hiring more staff for the TMO office and getting a larger office for the head of TMO.

Maybe if they had half as many rowers that actually knew how to row and how to be efficient with their rowing!

[Ed Note: So the danger must be growing for the rowers keep on rowing? Quick folks... what movie?]

Thanx!

[Ed Note: We 'aims' to please!]

We're all well aware of the research leading to the development of Classroom Effectiveness Indicators. With a measure of the academic level of each student walking in the door each year, DISD attempts to measure the value-add or growth of students over a year of instruction by each teacher.

As a taxpayer and proponent of breaking the district into smaller parts so citizens and parents could actually have their voices heard, I'd be appreciative of any evidence of the value-add of layers of central administrators or even campus principals.

Have any parents/citizens had honest responses to their questions or concerns from area superintendents? Has any central administrator added to the academic growth of your child? Does your campus administrator actually bring more expertise than the best teachers on campus?

Wouldn't it be possible to eliminate all the executive directors, area superintendents, and even the superintendent's role as it now described and make budgets totally campus-based with little allowance for all these central administrators? ADP could handle payroll. Consultants/training could be chosen at the campus level based on the needs of faculty. With at least 10 or even 20 smaller school districts where central administrative jobs didn't pay particularly well, would students be better served?

Does your campus administrative staff bring the integrity and instructional expertise so that their "value-add" could be measured by student gains? Aren't all student gains the product of teacher efforts? If so, doesn't the entire model need to be re-examined?

How about a model of very small, community based schools where veteran teachers were indeed directly accountable for the quality of programs?

The only folks really being served by the size and model of delivery of DISD are central administrators and campus principals who could never garner their salaries or pensions in a free-market economy. The size of the district works against any real reform, so why the insistence on the mirage of reforming a model that doesn't deliver services to children but only serves as a ridiculously high paid jobs program for adults?

What? No listings of CEIs for the teacher? (That would be canoe effectiveness index, which the rest of the crew would calculate for the rower, but that none could later explain the algorithm they used to determine it.)

[Ed Note: I'm rolling on the floor laughing at this moment!]