All they have to do is do what Dallas ISD does, Lower the standards. Kids pass and No one has to say, You're Fired" problem solved
this is just an unfortunate story all around, yet it seems to be posted with some level of glee. I don't have all the answers obviously, but who do you see as the victims and villians in this story?
Repetition with flash cards are the solution to every school related learning problem. Problem solved.
This is the kind of crap that happens when schools are managed by the numbers. Poor test scores and graduation rates are not strongly correlated with teacher quality. If this is not obvious to you, then you are out of touch.
I agree with this completely"Poor test scores and graduation rates are not strongly correlated with teacher quality" What i don't know is how to rate teachers so the good ones get rewarded and the poor ones get fired. The way things are now teachers who are members of unions can't be fired 99% of the time. They may have to show up and sit around all day but they still get paid. Brotha's OP exposes both sides of this issue. The one constant could be personal responsibility.
So Alden, how do you judge a teacher/school like this? Realizing that ****** students can ruin the results, but so can ****** teachers..There has to be some kind of standard that helps measure, if the kids and teachers are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
I am a teacher at a middle class school but have worked in poorer areas and went to higher performing schools. Obviously the schools that are more affluent have higher test scores and the poorer schools have lower scores. This has very little to do with teacher quality. There are great and horrible teachers at all of these schools. In fact, I would say that the poor school that I worked at had the BEST teachers. Situations like this make it harder for good teachers to go into bad schools to try to turn it around. Why would a solid teacher want to go to a school where they will deal with more apathy, behavior problems, and now possible firings when they could stay at a nice middle or upper class school for the same pay? I would never leave my job at a middle class school to go into the ghetto even know that I am more needed there and this is exactly why. If I am going to be judged off of test scores without any thought about the background of the kids, Ill go where the kids can make the grade.
To me, you can judge a teacher off the scores of the child (regardless of background) when you give the teacher a student that has at least the basic concepts of the previous grade. As it is, we just send them on to the next grade even if they are two grade levels behind. You get fourth grade teachers getting crap from admin types when a student does poorly on a reading comprehension test; yet the student doesnt know the sound that all of the letters make (kindergarten/pre-k stuff). If you fix that, the you have a more level playing field to judge teachers off of. More importantly, you truly insist that every child learn at least the basics of each level.
I’ve read some studies on this, and very often the teachers are not to blame. The best way to improve the kids is to make them stay a few hours later, have a small group of teachers who get paid to stay late and help with homework, allow teachers more discipline capability, and get rid of summer vacation. There is a program called KIPP that uses this model (teachers have bigger classes but are higher paid). It is modeled after the more successful Asian education model. They only take the poorest kids, and often only the ones that have failed a grade or are in danger of failing. 80% of the graduates of this program get scholarships to college... Think about that. They take the worst kids, only those kids, and they turn them around to be the best. The program essentially takes parents out of the scenario.
I am constantly critical of the current state of labor unions. I don't think most people understand the original origins of unions but it wasn't as a group of laborers fighting against injustice in the workplace. I will agree completely that unions did some good in workplace conditions in the past. However, the pendulum has swung way past any mid-point and I feel that most labor unions now do a serious injustice to the hard workers in their ranks. I read the article and it claimed that only 3% of 11th graders were proficient in math. Now I agree with many on here that you can not hold every school to the same standard, but 3% is so shockingly bad it is indefensible. In any industry if you had such poor results you would be fired without even being given a chance to turn things around. And yet the union was hung up on more money for extra work. Again, I read the article, the extra work being asked was not much time at all. I would think the teachers would volunteer for the extra duty based on the horrible results that they have been getting. I would guess that if you asked all of the teachers privately, they could tell you in an instant what the problems are and who the bad professionals are and changes could be made. As usual, all the union did was end up getting the good teachers fired to prrotect the poor ones. My experience has also been that schools (much more so than other institutions) are a reflection of the leadership/management abilities/work ethic etc. of the principals and upper admin. The teachers on here can comment on this but at all the schools I personally have been associated with or my kids the best ones had very solid/smart/honest/capable principals and the bad ones did not. No one here could convince me that someone from that district who was capable- could not hand pick a principal and staff that could dramatically improve the results of the school. Maybe they will never be at the top or even near it, but 3% is a complete disgrace. The other reality is that most of the good teachers will be hired back and the good ones that aren't will not have a hard time getting hired somwhere else. The bad ones will finally get what they deserve, a ticket to a new career outside of teaching.
Isn't this basically what Austin ISD did with Johnston HS? Anyway, it's too bad the school district can't fire the parents. That's probably where the real problem lies anyway.
If the teachers don't like the situation, they can go teach somewhere else. That said, the administrators and academics in America are on about year 60 in their efforts to make the Constructivist theories of Piaget work out in the classroom. The theory has been swallowed whole by the educational establishment (administrators and academics) and sold to faculties and school boards in every conceivable way for two generations now. And the result of all that has been a consistent decline in academic performance. It's easy to blame society for the failures of American education, and to a degree society is to blame. But the education industry in America has a long history of uncritical acceptance of new, Constructivist approaches to learning. These approaches are periodically re-packaged and re-named and sold to curriculum directors and superintendents. The purported "research" behind these theories is inconclusive, flawed, or, most of the time non-existent. It's the one field in academia where theory repeatedly passes as research. Learning styles...multiple intelligences... differentiation...yada, yada, yada, on an endless loop back to 1950. Piaget...Gardner...Marzano...yada yada yada... All this stuff in the article is merely the chickens of Constructivism coming home to roost.
For the teachers on here..did any of you have a problem w/ what the Supt. was asking or the way she wanted to pay the teachers for the extra work.
brotha excellent question. I am guessing teachers like Larry T and Bat were already doing what they could for free and would be delighted to be paid an extra $30.00/hour for it.. Man it is sad how we are screwing the kids with all the bs. I can hear a " Director of Curriculum" spouting a Harvard study as the be all and not hearing that the kids can't read. Sorry we are screwed too.
I work with my own students when I get the chance afterschool. There really isnt much of a tutoring program for pre-k. I tutor other students for 27/hr afterschool through a district wide program. I consider that more than fair. There are a lot of kids with issues in the program so most teachers wont touch it even with the good pay. Besides, many of us are working 10 hour days as it is. If I were to move to a different grade, I wouldnt tutor - just too many hours.
This is insane here is an update on this story'. These POS were only being asked to work 25 more minutes a day. Read the story. if it doesn't make you sick you need help. "Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, eat lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers' union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands. The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. " The Link If there is more to this story that can shine a better light on this I would like to see it. Remind me where 98 % of the union campaign donations always go and for sure went in 08?? OH yea that party that loves poor people.
Yo The original story broke Friday. If there was a good union spin on this it should be out there but I couldn't find it. if someone has a link explaining why this is a good idea for the teachers and unions I would like to read it. Yo if You truly do not know where unions have historically donated 98% of their campaign money you might need some tutoring yourself. But we all know you know which party unions support . You just couldn't resist being snarky. As snarkiness goes this was pretty weak.
I need to move up there. I could double my salary. Without any knowledge of whats really going on up there, I could guess that they are using the slippery slope argument. "sure its 25 minutes now, but then its going to be an hour and a half on saturdays, etc" I am usually for more work if it equals more pay - thats why I tutor. In this instance, these teachers need to recognize that they make more than teachers just about anywhere and count themselves lucky. What I have always found strange about teacher salaries is that they dont really correlate with cost of living. For example, here are some starting teacher salaries: Vegas- 35k Austin- 40k NYC-45k Chicago-50ish And then the article said that somewhere in Rhode Island they are getting in the 70's (probably not starting). There are ways to improve your salary (with more education) in the more expensive cities but making 40k in Austin is a hell of a lot better than 45k in NYC.
