“Dr.” Terrence P. Carter and Chicago’s New Leaders for New Schools.

If you have been following the sordid story of Terrence P. Carter and his attempt to doctor his resume than you probably don’t live in Chicago.

The local media isn’t interested in the story.

Carter got busted for claiming a doctorate from Stanford and other universities. It is a degree he didn’t earn.

The Chicago connection is the story about how a guy, Jonathan Schnur, whose background is business – not education – created a fast track to jobs as CPS administrators that mirrors Teach for America’s fast track to jobs as classroom teachers.

The organization is New Leaders for New Schools – Now named simply, New Leaders. Over the past decade they selected candidates and have filled many of the principal positions in CPS schools. This is particularly true of charter schools and turnaround schools.

As one CPS principal told me, Schnur and NLNS took a critique of university administrative programs – some of which was accurate – and removed most of what was good about the existing programs, reconceptualizing the administrative role in purely technocratic terms.

Carter was the poster child for New Leaders for New Schools.

Ben Fenton was a cofounder and chief strategy and knowledge officer for New Leaders for New Schools. He is former management consultant at McKinsey & Co.

In an article for ASCD, Fenton writes:

Before they begin the recruiting and selection processes, highly effective principals take the time to identify exactly whom they are looking for. In general, they seek out candidates who demonstrate content knowledge and core pedagogical skills. But they also focus on broader selection criteria that are often overlooked:

First and foremost, a genuine connection to and interest in students.
Second, a deep commitment to the belief that every student is capable of academic success.
Third, a focus on driving measurable student learning outcomes.
Finally, essential personal attributes—such as a willingness to make teaching practice public and to constantly learn and improve—on top of a capacity for teamwork, leadership, and cultural competency.

More specifically, highly effective principals look for teachers who are a good fit for the school’s particular culture and instructional approach. Even as early as the hiring process, they are looking for teachers who exhibit potential to develop into future leaders.

With these criteria, finding teachers who are a perfect fit may seem like a herculean task. Terrence Carter, a New Leaders principal at Clara Barton Elementary School in Chicago, remarks, “It is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Fenton describes model recruitment practices of NLNS alum Terrence Carter:

After having identified potential teacher candidates, highly effective principals rigorously screen to select candidates who have the most potential to increase student learning and contribute to their school’s culture. They also look for candidates who have the experience and content knowledge to fill gaps on grade-level or content-area teams.

Just as New Leaders for New Schools’ selection process tightly aligns with our criteria for successful candidates, highly effective principals also create a strong connection between the knowledge, skills, beliefs, and orientations they hope to see in their teachers and the process they use to select them.

The selection process typically involves

An application.

Interviews with the principal and leadership teams.

Demonstration lessons with teachers, students, and sometimes even parents.

Opportunities for candidates to receive constructive feedback and reflect on their own learning and professional growth.

Where possible, candidates should demonstrate measurable student achievement growth in their prior work.

At Clara Barton, Carter also requires candidates to study his school’s student achievement data and discuss how they might propel it forward. Highly effective principals and their leadership teams focus interview questions on the candidate’s belief in the academic potential of every student and willingness to engage in professional learning. Alignment in these areas is considered nonnegotiable, and teacher leaders play a key role in assessing whether the candidate is a good fit for the school’s culture.

After hiring, highly effective principals and their leadership teams engage new teachers in a robust induction process to orient them to the school’s cultural norms. In forthcoming columns, we’ll examine two essential elements of school culture for dramatically improving schools: building student aspirations for academic success and instituting a caring, learning-focused, schoolwide code of conduct.

This all couldn’t be more ironic given the current troubles involved in Terrence P. Carters plagiarized and fraudulent application for New London school superintendent.

New Leaders for New Schools, along with the Academy for Urban School Leadership have all played a significant role in Chicago’s corporate driven school reform movement.

As in the case of Teach for America which has produced good individual teachers, there are fine individual principals that came out of New Leaders.

This is an issue of systematic and institutional corporate reform taking over a city’s schools.

And Carter is also a product of it.