Update on Mass Teacher Firings.

[PoliticalChic]

1. CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student performance. But if the administrators thought the teachers would be grateful for a second chance, they were wrong.

2. Many teachers aren't showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.

3. The problems come despite a labor agreement that union leaders and administrators in this poor, heavily immigrant city trumpeted as a breakthrough at Central Falls High, a struggling school of roughly 840 students where just 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.

4. Exactly what's causing all the problems is unclear, but both sides acknowledge lingering discontent over the firings and the changes that followed.President Barack Obama appeared to endorse the firings, saying drastic action may be warranted when schools show no signs of improvement.

a. Following months of negotiations, the teachers were rehired after agreeing to work a longer school day, undergo more rigorous evaluations and provide more after-school tutoring. At the time, Gist said the changes would result in "dramatic achievement."


5. Richard Kinslow, an English teacher who has not been calling out sick, said a new management team that was put in place was inexperienced and failed to offer support for teachers or crack down on rampant discipline problems, including what he said were physical and verbal assaults on staff members by students.

6. "We don't have a sense of clarity from our leadership. We don't have a clear sense of their mission or their vision. Communication has been, again, awful," Kinslow said. "If I'm going to be thrown into the bus by my supposed leaders every day, where is my hope? Where is my sense of team? Why would I be working?" Troubled RI school hits bumps on road to reform - Yahoo! News


This, in microcosm, represents the problems of many of the nations' schools.
Anybody see a solution?

 

[Oddball]

Alliance for Separation of School and State Home

 

[Jackson]

How they gloss over the fact that the school was "heavily immigrant". Just how many spoke English?

Where was leadership when discipline and behavior was out of control? Did they have ways of dealing with this?

Teachers being threatened and attacked? What person would stand for that? We worry about students being bullied, what about teachers?

Obama didn't look beyond the nose on his face. "Fire the teachers!"

Hogwash. The students who can't speak English have no business in school until they can speak the the language. When students are discipline problems, they are out. Get the parents in to sit with the babies.

The principals saw the test scores. Were they oblivious to the fact that 11% could do math? Where were they when the teachers were passing them on instead of failing them?

Fire the teachers! Right Obama, you're really analyzing problems aren't you.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Adding to oddball's point....getting gov't out of the education system would be the first improvement, and the most successful improvement.
Everything else....window dressing.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Adding to oddball's point....getting gov't out of the education system would be the first improvement, and the most successful improvement.
Everything else....window dressing.

Vouchers attached to the child.

 

[DaGoose]

Adding to oddball's point....getting gov't out of the education system would be the first improvement, and the most successful improvement.
Everything else....window dressing.

Further adding to oddball's point.......99% of the problems in education stem from the lack of parental involvement. Period.

 

[chanel]

BLUEBERRY STORY

A Businessman Learns a Lesson
by Jamie Robert Vollmer

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!" I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society." Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.

They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant - she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant.

We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis, English as their second language, etc. We take them all! Everyone!

And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a postindustrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

It will take YEARS to fix that school. They are going to have to start with the little guys and force the parents to be involved. And parents of small children are more easily persuaded.

The older students who are illiterate, truant, undisciplined and passed along their whole school careers aren't going to change over night. That is a learned behavior.

 

[editec]

1. CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student performance. But if the administrators thought the teachers would be grateful for a second chance, they were wrong.

2. Many teachers aren't showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.

3. The problems come despite a labor agreement that union leaders and administrators in this poor, heavily immigrant city trumpeted as a breakthrough at Central Falls High, a struggling school of roughly 840 students where just 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.

4. Exactly what's causing all the problems is unclear, but both sides acknowledge lingering discontent over the firings and the changes that followed.President Barack Obama appeared to endorse the firings, saying drastic action may be warranted when schools show no signs of improvement.

a. Following months of negotiations, the teachers were rehired after agreeing to work a longer school day, undergo more rigorous evaluations and provide more after-school tutoring. At the time, Gist said the changes would result in "dramatic achievement."


5. Richard Kinslow, an English teacher who has not been calling out sick, said a new management team that was put in place was inexperienced and failed to offer support for teachers or crack down on rampant discipline problems, including what he said were physical and verbal assaults on staff members by students.

6. "We don't have a sense of clarity from our leadership. We don't have a clear sense of their mission or their vision. Communication has been, again, awful," Kinslow said. "If I'm going to be thrown into the bus by my supposed leaders every day, where is my hope? Where is my sense of team? Why would I be working?" Troubled RI school hits bumps on road to reform - Yahoo! News


This, in microcosm, represents the problems of many of the nations' schools.
Anybody see a solution?

So where's all those LIFETIME JOBS that some of you imagine teachers have?

How can they be fired if they TENURE?

See?

Everything many of you THINK YOU KNOW about the teaching profession is a load of right wing anti-union NONSENSE.;

Teachers have the highest turnover of ANY profession.

I do not know of a single k-12 teacher who cannot be fired.

Not one.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

1. CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student performance. But if the administrators thought the teachers would be grateful for a second chance, they were wrong.

2. Many teachers aren't showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.

3. The problems come despite a labor agreement that union leaders and administrators in this poor, heavily immigrant city trumpeted as a breakthrough at Central Falls High, a struggling school of roughly 840 students where just 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.

4. Exactly what's causing all the problems is unclear, but both sides acknowledge lingering discontent over the firings and the changes that followed.President Barack Obama appeared to endorse the firings, saying drastic action may be warranted when schools show no signs of improvement.

a. Following months of negotiations, the teachers were rehired after agreeing to work a longer school day, undergo more rigorous evaluations and provide more after-school tutoring. At the time, Gist said the changes would result in "dramatic achievement."


5. Richard Kinslow, an English teacher who has not been calling out sick, said a new management team that was put in place was inexperienced and failed to offer support for teachers or crack down on rampant discipline problems, including what he said were physical and verbal assaults on staff members by students.

6. "We don't have a sense of clarity from our leadership. We don't have a clear sense of their mission or their vision. Communication has been, again, awful," Kinslow said. "If I'm going to be thrown into the bus by my supposed leaders every day, where is my hope? Where is my sense of team? Why would I be working?" Troubled RI school hits bumps on road to reform - Yahoo! News


This, in microcosm, represents the problems of many of the nations' schools.
Anybody see a solution?

So where's all those LIFETIME JOBS that some of you imagine teachers have?

How can they be fired if they TENURE?

See?

Everything many of you THINK YOU KNOW about the teaching profession is a load of right wing anti-union NONSENSE.;

Teachers have the highest turnover of ANY profession.

I do not know of a single k-12 teacher who cannot be fired.

Not one.

Since the subject of Tenure applies specifically to New Jersey perhaps in THIS thread you will inform us of what that State has a Tenure laws? Obviously this school district in this Article does not have such a system.

 

[chanel]

Wrong thread. This is about RI.

 

[chanel]

Newly elected GOP Governor Rick Scott has vowed to end teacher tenure altogether in the state of Florida, and Wyoming's legislature is debating a bill that would do the same.

Politicians in New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois say they simply want to reform the practice by revoking tenure from teachers who are rated unsatisfactory for a certain number of years, so that the districts employing them can fire them more easily. Seven states passed laws reforming tenure in 2010.

Reformers also want teacher evaluations to be tied in part to how well a teacher's students do on standardized tests -- one key provision in the education reform law passed in Colorado in 2010

National strike ‘not off the table’ if states reverse teacher tenure - Yahoo! News

 

[Oddball]

Adding to oddball's point....getting gov't out of the education system would be the first improvement, and the most successful improvement.
Everything else....window dressing.

Further adding to oddball's point.......99% of the problems in education stem from the lack of parental involvement. Period.

What do they pay their taxes for?

 

[Annie]

I don't think the problem with schools are parents not being involved with the schools or immigrant children. Problems arise from the expectations that schools should be able to handle all children in 'regular classrooms' regardless of abilities, language barriers, handicaps, and behavioral issues.

If parents would fulfill their roles in socializing their children, you know teaching manners and self-discipline, respect for teachers and adults in general, many issues at school would be ameliorated. Parents are the conduit for teaching values beyond common decency and hard work. Schools should not be deciding values for their charges, their job is to teach the children to think and to communicate their thoughts, so they can express their own values down the line.

If schools would perform their role in teaching English, reading, math, science, history, physical education and the arts many of the academic issues would be less severe. Schools have been turned for too many minutes of each school day into places to address social issues that really haven't academic value. Regardless of abilities, our children do not have those minutes each day to be given up. The kids appear to spout off understanding of issues they know only on a surface level, they are being denied the tools for information gathering and critical thinking skills necessary for evaluation of what they are being told.

 

[Trajan]

BLUEBERRY STORY

A Businessman Learns a Lesson
by Jamie Robert Vollmer

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!" I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society." Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.

They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant - she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant.

We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis, English as their second language, etc. We take them all! Everyone!

And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a postindustrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

It will take YEARS to fix that school. They are going to have to start with the little guys and force the parents to be involved. And parents of small children are more easily persuaded.

The older students who are illiterate, truant, undisciplined and passed along their whole school careers aren't going to change over night. That is a learned behavior.

great article thx.


as far as parental involvement, well, thats a hard one. I CAN tell you that as we take or that is relieve parents of responsibility we get less of it.

 

[DaGoose]

Adding to oddball's point....getting gov't out of the education system would be the first improvement, and the most successful improvement.
Everything else....window dressing.

Further adding to oddball's point.......99% of the problems in education stem from the lack of parental involvement. Period.

What do they pay their taxes for?

It sure as hell isn't for babysitting which is what schools have become.

When parents get personally involved in their childrens education then the children know that their parents care and have expectations of them to do their best. I don't know how old you are but when I was a kid school parking lots used to be full on open house nights. Parents knew their childrens teachers and they worked as a team to ensure the child was doing his or her best. And if you got in trouble in school you can bet your ass you were going to get it when you got home.

Nowadays most parents do not know their teacher's name and God forbid their angelic child get in trouble for anything because "their child can do no wrong".

 

[chanel]

Yep. And that's where the social promotion kicks in. Big hearted teachers pass kids along who are frequently absent and/or do no homework, because they know it's not the kids' fault. No one wants to punish the child for having uninvolved parents. But passing them along is really doing them a disservice in the long run.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Further adding to oddball's point.......99% of the problems in education stem from the lack of parental involvement. Period.

What do they pay their taxes for?

It sure as hell isn't for babysitting which is what schools have become.

When parents get personally involved in their childrens education then the children know that their parents care and have expectations of them to do their best. I don't know how old you are but when I was a kid school parking lots used to be full on open house nights. Parents knew their childrens teachers and they worked as a team to ensure the child was doing his or her best. And if you got in trouble in school you can bet your ass you were going to get it when you got home.

Nowadays most parents do not know their teacher's name and God forbid their angelic child get in trouble for anything because "their child can do no wrong".

I never argued with a teacher or assistant Vice Principle in front of my daughter. She got in a couple scraps at school because she is as stubborn as me. On one occasion she got punishment hall, am hour in a special class for punishment. She served her 5 days but I had to pull her out on the 5th day about 10 minutes early for a doctors appointment.

The teacher assigned her another day for those 10 minutes. I made her go without complaint. Then what ensued was wrong of the Teacher. She kept assigning her another day simply because she did not like my daughter. No formal excuse. I made her go two more days then called it quits.

I went to the school and saw the appropriate Vice Principle about the punishment. My daughter was there of course. I asked her to leave when we started talking about the right or wrong of what had happened. The Vice Principle agreed that she should not have done the extra 2 days and would not do anymore on that punishment. He asked why I had my daughter leave and I explained I did not like disagreeing with a teacher in front of her. He was a little shocked LOL.

 

[Jackson]

What do they pay their taxes for?

It sure as hell isn't for babysitting which is what schools have become.

When parents get personally involved in their childrens education then the children know that their parents care and have expectations of them to do their best. I don't know how old you are but when I was a kid school parking lots used to be full on open house nights. Parents knew their childrens teachers and they worked as a team to ensure the child was doing his or her best. And if you got in trouble in school you can bet your ass you were going to get it when you got home.

Nowadays most parents do not know their teacher's name and God forbid their angelic child get in trouble for anything because "their child can do no wrong".

I never argued with a teacher or assistant Vice Principle in front of my daughter. She got in a couple scraps at school because she is as stubborn as me. On one occasion she got punishment hall, am hour in a special class for punishment. She served her 5 days but I had to pull her out on the 5th day about 10 minutes early for a doctors appointment.

The teacher assigned her another day for those 10 minutes. I made her go without complaint. Then what ensued was wrong of the Teacher. She kept assigning her another day simply because she did not like my daughter. No formal excuse. I made her go two more days then called it quits.

I went to the school and saw the appropriate Vice Principle about the punishment. My daughter was there of course. I asked her to leave when we started talking about the right or wrong of what had happened. The Vice Principle agreed that she should not have done the extra 2 days and would not do anymore on that punishment. He asked why I had my daughter leave and I explained I did not like disagreeing with a teacher in front of her. He was a little shocked LOL.

You really handled it well. I hope the Vice Principal had a firm "talk" with that teacher!

 

[editec]

Gee ! oOe would think that if TENURE was what so many of you ignoramouses thought it was, the last place on earth where MASS FIRINGS of TEACHERS (with tenure) could happen would be in the PEOPLE'S STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS.

But hey...don't let a little thing like the FACTS get in the way of your precious right wing, anti-union, teacher hating myths, or anything.

 

[Old Rocks]

Newly elected GOP Governor Rick Scott has vowed to end teacher tenure altogether in the state of Florida, and Wyoming's legislature is debating a bill that would do the same.

Politicians in New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois say they simply want to reform the practice by revoking tenure from teachers who are rated unsatisfactory for a certain number of years, so that the districts employing them can fire them more easily. Seven states passed laws reforming tenure in 2010.

Reformers also want teacher evaluations to be tied in part to how well a teacher's students do on standardized tests -- one key provision in the education reform law passed in Colorado in 2010

National strike ‘not off the table’ if states reverse teacher tenure - Yahoo! News

A felon with a record of bilking the government of 1.7 billion dollars is critisizing the job the teachers are doing?