D.C. should decline this award
I have known many winners of The Post’s Distinguished Educational Leadership Award. Since 1986, the prize has gone to the school principals chosen by their districts for exemplary service to kids. The DELA recipients I know have been wise, energetic, erudite and honest.
But this year, for the first time, I have serious doubts about a winner of the awards, which are given by The Washington Post Co. Educational Foundation to principals chosen by their school districts. (Neither I nor anybody in the newsroom is involved in the selection process.)
I don’t think the D.C. Public Schools should have chosen J.O. Wilson Elementary School Principal Cheryl Warley. I hope D.C.school leaders decline the award or give it to someone else. The award reception is Thursday night.
On the face of it, Warley’s record looks exemplary. She became Wilson principal in 2002 and built a student-designed playground, added green space and created a $250,000 state-of-the-art library media center. Since 2006, her school’s percentage of students testing proficient and advanced in math has gone from 29 to 76 percent and in reading from 46 to 67 percent.
Roger Caruth, who has two children at the school, told me she has a