Is the school board off to Canada again?

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, it smells like déjˆ vu all over again.

Four years ago, Portland was hunting for its next school superintendent. After months of interviews, flights around the country and many public hearings, the school district said it had found its candidate: Ben Canada, then the chief of Atlanta's public-school system.

While the school board gamely tried to present Canada as God's gift to public education, lots of Portlanders who had met him and checked him out knew that the truth was a wee bit different. Canada was all suit and no substance, a fellow with a great smile and good patter but little else. The district hired him anyway, claiming him to be the tonic for the ills that beset the district--no credibility in Salem, poor labor relations
and an ossified bureaucracy.

Three years later, Canada was run out of town with the treatment typically afforded cattle rustlers--though he did manage to wrangle a healthy severance check.

Now, it seems, we're about to do it again.

For a variety of reasons, including the decision this week by St. Paul, Minn., superintendent Patricia Harvey to withdraw from consideration, Portland is left with only one candidate: Anthony Amato, the superintendent of the Hartford Public Schools system.

From the Nose's perch, this 54-year-old former math and science teacher, whose primary accomplishment is that he made one of the worst-performing urban school districts in America slightly less bad (by raising test scores), is exactly what Portland doesn't need.

Amato is brusque and authoritarian--a man who is often wrong but never in doubt. As superintendent, he would make phonics mandatory, revive math for dummies, pound the hell out of rote teaching and fill schoolkids' days with tests, tests and more tests. What will Amato accomplish if he is successful? He'll raise test scores in the small number of Portland schools that are considered in crisis. This will provide a short-term gain but will do squat to bring about the critical thinking skills that are central to the education goals Oregon embraced several years ago.

The Nose isn't the only one who feels this way. A number of the people who interviewed Amato or heard him speak when he visited Portland last week think that Amato is a square peg--and that Portland is a round hole.

But some school-board members and a chunk of the Portland establishment (the Chamber of Commerce, The Oregonian's editorial board, the mayor) have lined up behind Amato, claiming him to be--get this--the tonic for the ills that beset the district. These kingmakers, by the way, were the same group of Pollyannas who defended Ben Canada's reign long after most observers knew that the emperor wore no clothes.

Getting rid of Canada was a painful and expensive process, which makes the Nose wonder what the rush is with Amato. Why doesn't the district accept the fact that the one candidate it has left is not the right candidate? Why not take a deep breath and reopen the process?

The Nose does know this: In Jim Scherzinger, the district has a sitting interim superintendent who's doing a fine job and has said he isn't going anywhere. Why can't we keep him around until the board can find a better match?

There must be a good reason--perhaps the Nose just isn't looking hard enough.

WWeek 2015