Let me paint the picture for you. It was 4:00 in the afternoon on the Thursday before teachers were supposed to report back to school. This was just three days after I had sent my principal a list of ideas to improve the inclusion program at my school, we had started it last year and there were numerous issues with how we did things. I had met with him just six days before for an hour and a half and he had asked me to do so. I was enjoying one of my last days off and heading to the movies when my phone rang. Hello, I answered. The voice in a matter-of-fact fashion said, this is so and so from the district, you have been surplused. On Monday you are to report to such and such school.
At first I thought it was a joke, who is this, I asked, but after a few minutes it became apparent this was no laughing matter. The person I was talking to offered me no explanation and no sympathy either. They told me to get in touch with Tony Belamy the director of Turn-Around schools if I had any questions but then wouldn’t give me his number. E-mail, him they said.
I did and much to his credit he agreed to meet with me the next day.
I was told I was being surplused because my data was bad and it showed that the kids in my classes had not improved enough. Initially I was shocked and my core was rocked to its foundation. Up till that moment I had been operating under the apparently mistaken foundation that I was a pretty good teacher. My method of going slow, drilling and redriling, and reteaching if necessary had seemed to be working.
The district, as they were transferring from the school I had been at for five years and which was also the school I attended while in high school and worked at while in college as a para professional, was now telling me different. I was upset, disappointed and dismayed but after I calmed down I also knew something was up. Several other teachers, all veterans, all leaders, all out-spoken about the direction the school was heading in had likewise been surplused for the same, in my opinion dubious reason but they had been told weeks before. Then I started asking questions and it readily became apparent something was rotten in Denmark, make that in DCPS.
What’s the data I asked and all they could say was some data on Pearson. Okay I thought shaking my head. I had seen this before. The district is run in a haphazard fashion and the powers that be think teachers are replaceable cogs. They don’t remember how just a few years ago we were recruiting in Canada and India and begging people from the business world to give teaching a chance. If they don’t like you or they perceive that you are a threat to them or heck if they have a neighbor who has a nephew that thinks they might like to try teaching they can make things very difficult for you. I recently had been outspoken about a few personnel moves and had asked the administration if they were more interested in rewarding their friends or doing what’s best for the kids and I had done so just two days prior to me being let go. I can’t say for sure that was the reason but the timing was more than convenient.
I imagine they thought I would just take what they said, put my head between my legs and slink to the next school grateful I had a job. The thing is life should be about more than just being grateful you have a job and education should be about what’s doing what’s best for the kids even if that means enduring a loud mouth that asks questions and has opinions. You see I knew something, that they didn’t care about and that’s I am a pretty good teacher. I thought if they are going to surplus me they had better have a good reason for doing so and because some random data on a program that the district spent millions on that most teachers only use kicking and screaming said I wasn’t, wasn’t going to be good enough. I was getting nowhere with Mr. Belamy, he was sticking with his decision, so after the meeting I filed grievance with the union and waited two months for them to show me my supposed “bad data”.
This is what I found out.
My data (and I guess my year and maybe my career) was based on how 27 kids did. These kids were not in the science 9-12, health 9-12 or research classes that I taught alone. These kids were dispersed through four classes I “co taught”. Though to say co-taught is a bit of a stretch.
Let’s talk briefly about my co-teach classes. First I was co-teaching both biology and earth space science. I don’t know how it is at other schools but other than me, teachers at my school were assigned to teach biology or earth space not both. I co-taught with four different teachers and the only training I received was a six hour class a week before school began, to which none of my co-teachers showed up.
At the training, put on by six district people (two to talk, four others to sit around bored working on their nails) they showed a few clips about co-teaching and in all of them the co-teachers were together all day long, not just for ninety minutes every other day like I was expected to do and in one of the clips the co-teacher said, “Our first couple years were rough but now we have a routine down”. These teachers who were together all day long needed years to get it right but Duval County expected us to hit the ground running and expected me to be successful with multiple teachers in multiple subjects with just a six-hour training. That’s the Duval County way, to send out impossible to implement edicts and then blame the teachers when they don’t hit some arbitrary number on a spreadsheet. The district puts teachers (and students) in impossible situations and then wonders why they don’t do very well.
Oh and why was I being switched to co-teaching, moving from my special education science classes to regular ones? Well in Duval County they are in the process of moving most of the county’s special education students into regular education classes whether they are capable or not. The year before I wrote a memo suggesting a few of my student could benefit from regular education classes but what I thought was understood was that the vast majority of my kids were right where they should be. The county (and not because of my memo, which I am sure was filed in the trash) has decided to transition most special ed kids into regular ed classrooms and do so despite the fact that the environment is unsuitable for them. I was sent to the regular education classes to help the special education students be successful. So it wasn’t just 27 kids that determined my fate it was 27 special education kids, half of whom, if Duval County cared about doing the right thing, should have never been there in the first place.
And how much co-teaching actually went on? Well in the regular education classes I didn’t plan or introduce instruction. I didn’t come up with assignments or write test questions. Heck more often than not I found out what was going on that day at the same time the kids did. I felt like I was a high priced para professional and when I gave suggestions to improve the situation they were ignored. I was told meet with the regular education teachers to plan but not given the time to do so, plus remember I had three of my own classes covering three different subjects to prepare for and furthermore I had thirty kids on my IEP caseload too.
So it turns out that my “bad data” came from how twenty-seven special ed kids spread over four different classes, several of whom had no business being there, in two different subjects that I had never taught before and wasn’t even teaching now, did? Except it’s not even that simple.
How did the 27 kids do? I learned they were supposed to be evaluated by the MAP pre-test and EOC post-test. Of the 27, – 7 students did not take either test, 4 took only the pre-test, 7 took only the post-test, 9 took both. Of the 27 only 9 took both. Any test not taken was assigned a value of zero. Kids dropped out, I got a zero, kids missed the days they were given I got a zero. Kids in classes they shouldn’t be in, taking tests that shouldn’t be taking, I got a zero. Try and wrap your mind around that; I received 18 zeros for the kids that didn’t take both tests so even if all nine improved it wouldn’t have made a difference.
What does this say about the new evaluation took which is heavily based on student data? What happened to me does not bode well for teachers as the value added, multivariable calculus base monstrosity takes effect.
People wonder why teachers are against merit pay based just on tests. Here in Florida the test is the FCAT and that measures several years of growth not just what was taught by the teacher who it holds responsible.
Furthermore, here in Jacksonville that quite often means the children are far behind because we socially promote children regardless of whether they have the skills to succeed or not. Deciding an individual’s worth based on one test is just wrong especially when there are so many factors that they have no control over.
You might be wondering how the nine special education kids in classes for all intensive purposes I did not teach did. I wondered but I don’t know, nobody will tell me.
Fortunately I have landed on my feet. I am at a new school working with a great staff and with great kids. Though here I am like sprinkles on ice cream. They don’t really need me, while at my old school my position months later has gone unfilled and my kids have not gotten the services they need. I also felt like I had a lot of unfinished business at my old school. I so wanted to be there to help with the turn around. Furthermore last year the county spent about two thousand dollars to CAR-PD (a reading program) train me, training I will never use at my new school. What a waste of both time and money.
Duval County has issues; heck the state and education in general do too. They are not going to be solved unless we get serious and the powers-that-be treating teachers like easily replaceable cogs based on barely decipherable data that doesn’t reflect what is actually going on in the classroom is not going to solve anything either. I am not a cog.
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