One of the best kept secret on why some schools struggle both academically and safety wise is the poor quality of the school's administration. There are far too many principals who have no business leading their school. In fact Chancellor Carmen Farina stated that she believed that 400 principals are not capable of leading their school. However, she apparently forgot to tell her Superintendents and few, if any principals were removed.
Many of the principals that need to be removed are graduates from the infamous "Leadership Academy", which until recently, the graduates didn't even have to be a classroom teacher! Instead of being an instructional leader they became the CEO of their school and saw the Principal position as a stepping stone into higher paying positions in the educational policy field. The result was that the school administration refused to collaborate with the staff and teachers viewed the administration as the enemy rather than instructional leaders.
Under both Mayor Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, the educational priority is how to remove"bad teachers" from the system rather than improve the hostile classroom and school environments. Therefore, it suited their purpose to retain vindictive administrators as they were the tool to get veteran teachers to resign or retire. Sure they also refused to give tenure to new teachers who dared to challenge their unwise decisions concerning students but who cared since there was always a fresh supply of inexpensive "newbie"teachers to abuse or hire an ATR provisionally for the remainder of the year.
Therefore, its in the DOE's best interest to protect these bad principals since they do the dirty work of removing veteran teachers and their institutional memory on how good schools work while using faulty statistics to claim improved student academic achievement is ongoing. Of course, there has been little or no academic improvement in years. Remember, its not about what's best for the students but for these principals its how to protect themselves by manipulating graduation rates, hide school safety incidents, and blame staff for their shortcomings or unwise decisions for far too many principals in the system.