Don't Hire This Guy

A school administrator back out in the job market, hired under a cloud, still under a cloud for fixing scores. Tribune:

Two days before Guerra started at Waukegan last July 1, the Tribune reported that he was the target of a grade-fixing investigation by Chicago Public Schools officials. A year later, district officials have not made additional public statements on the investigation. Reached Wednesday, Malon Edwards, a Chicago schools spokesman, said the schools' general counsel, Patrick Rocks, was unavailable for comment.

Why no results yet, hmm? Until there are, parents with administrator vacancies, take note. Don't let your school board hire this guy. Too often these "nationwide searches" are a sham anyway:

Guerra signed a four-year contract and was paid $130,000 for the 2006-07 school year. He created waves in the early weeks of the last school year when he offered extra credit to any student who participated in a Mexican Independence Day parade.

He also drew criticism when he installed metal detectors at the school.

Roxanne Swanson, a co-founder of the local Community Organization for School Leadership and Accountability, said that as a taxpayer, she was frustrated with the district, which spent thousands of dollars to identify Guerra for the job a year ago, only to be back searching for another principal.

"It feels like a total waste of our money," Swanson said.

COSLA site here. At least when we're spending money on education we'd like to know it was going to actually educate students. School choice would go a long way toward ensuring that. And as Jonah Goldberg asks---why have public schools at all?