Olayinka (Yinka) Alege has strong leadership, is decisive and results-oriented, as well as family-oriented at work and at home, with a proven track record of improving student learning. In his thesis, Idiscussed the approach of “principal coaching” as a replacement for “principal supervision”.
School violence is something that we all might have seen in our childhood, but nobody had the guts to talk about it. Some school staff and higher authorities adopted various strict and harsh practices to maintain discipline on the school premises. To counter all unethical practices in schools, Zero Tolerance
policies were first adopted in the United States in 1994. But, unfortunately, these problem-solvers brought to light many further problems. They were meant to solve the issue, but somehow these policies couldn't deliver the expected results.
The national attention surrounding the high rates of suspensions and arrests led to hot debates during discussions related to disciplinary practices in schools. Yinka Alege highlighted this issue in his thesis. Combining the negative impacts of punitive laws and school district policies with the practices of some school administrators in specific schools is a phenomenon known as the "School-to-Prison Pipeline."
Yinka’s primary purpose is to address the educational authorities and sell them on the idea of adopting soft and tolerant policies by shifting their perspective to the consequences of school violence on the students' career and personal foundation. Many students are removed from school for minor infractions
of school rules. Suspensions can lead to low student academic performance, high drop-out rates and low graduation levels. Though many factors contribute to low student achievement, years of research have concluded that students being suspended from school demonstrate lower student achievements.
Inequities in student discipline have led to low graduation rates among Black students and high drop-out levels.
Using facts and figures from historical events, Yinka Alege wanted to bring the world's attention to this
delicate and sensitive issue ruining students' personalities in the name of discipline. Starting with his journey as a middle school principal, Yinka Alege successfully decreased student discipline by 70% in four years,
increased student attendance, reduced student retention, and removed the school from failing status under the Florida Department of Education watch. Yinka Alege had been a fantastic principal holding up all the standards of discipline in his schools without any harsh practices. In his first year as a principal, his school, with an enrollment of 900 pupils, had over 3,500 disciplinary incidents. Working with teachers who had been practicing the same old harsh policies wasn't an easy job, but he kept his efforts up. Trying to change teacher mindsets negatively impacted working conditions in the school, but he never gave up.
All his efforts bore fruit, and the student attendance rate for the school year showed the second-highest percentage of increase among all that year. In addition, failure rates were significantly reduced, because students were in the classroom learning, rather than out of school due to suspensions. Yinka Alege succeeded,
thanks to his continued efforts, is striving to convince people that coaching principals is critical to student growth and development.
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