If this is what passes for leadership in Jeb’s book, his definition is way different from ours. True leaders might have taken this situation as a moment to reflect, or even to consider the possibility that the system they created might be mis-characterizing a lot of schools, not just this one.
In other words, it would require the humility to consider the possibility that they could be wrong.
But that would require conceding that all of the ordinary stakeholders who have said (long before
Mike Petrilli) that “the problem wasn’t the schools, it was the metric" might actually have valid reasons for defending their schools, too.
And that might mean it was also wrong to ignore and criticize them this whole time.
And that could lead to wondering whether those ordinary people were right about other things, and that their insider crew of “reformers" might be wrong about other things, too.