Hernandez's initiatives were all about scripted lessons, pacing, and incessant progress monitoring and testing. PBC parents led the resistance and were joined by many PBC teachers calling for Hernadez's demotion.

Read the entire article and posts, and post a comment of your own on palmbeachpost.com.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/...dez-138366.html

-----

Controversial Palm Beach County school district leader Hernandez stripped of power

By Samantha Frank and Adam Playford

Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009

Jeffrey Hernandez, the architect behind the controversial academic plan that threw the Palm Beach County School District into turmoil, was removed from his post Monday, Superintendent Art Johnson said.

In an effective demotion, Hernandez, who was chief academic officer, will lose his leadership position and wide-ranging power over the district's curriculum, Johnson said. He will hold an advisory role, helping low-performing schools improve, but will not oversee those schools nor their principals, Johnson said.

For months, Hernandez has been the focus of protests from furious parents and teachers, many of whom said they felt straightjacketed by strict reforms that required frequent testing and dictated minute details of how they run their classrooms. ...

The change comes three days after new test results showed that reading scores are down at 51 percent of county schools, despite Hernandez's reforms. Johnson said that the two are unrelated, calling the data statistically insignificant and only one thin slice of the big picture. ...

Hernandez, 35, first wowed Johnson after becoming responsible for turning around failing schools in three counties, including Palm Beach, in August 2008 in his position as a state education administrator. He began his career at the Miami-Dade school district, zooming up the district's ranks and developing a reputation for turning around flailing schools. ...

Hernandez quickly took on an unprecedented role, seizing control from principals, even at high-performing schools, and forcing reforms that emphasized frequent testing and uniformity.

Salting the wound was Hernandez's professorial style, laden with graphs and charts and statistics, which critics perceived as arrogant.

By June, his meetings with parents were already turning sour. And in the six months that followed, the fights bloomed, until Hernandez was at the epicenter of one of the most intense clashes to consume the district in years. Despite announcing in October that the academic changes were no longer mandatory, the firestorm didn't die down.

Lisa Goldman, the Wellington mother behind the "Testing Is Not Teaching" Facebook group that became home to thousands of discontented parents, said she is thrilled. ...