From a reader:
My biggest concern with the article (in the Times Union about turning around schools that don't perform well on standardized tests) is the piece about plans to fire principals and half the staff at the "focus" schools. I work at one of those schools and I am beyond frustrated. This is the seventh week of school and ELA teachers still don't have most of the novels they were promised and there is a severe shortage of SRA materials. Not to mention all of the time that has been spent testing between IOWA, CGA's, district timed writing, etc. Are these things going to be taken into account when they decide to take away jobs? I doubt it.
The problem is, when you set people up to fail they usually do and that sounds like what is happening in at least one of our focus schools.
My biggest concern with the article (in the Times Union about turning around schools that don't perform well on standardized tests) is the piece about plans to fire principals and half the staff at the "focus" schools. I work at one of those schools and I am beyond frustrated. This is the seventh week of school and ELA teachers still don't have most of the novels they were promised and there is a severe shortage of SRA materials. Not to mention all of the time that has been spent testing between IOWA, CGA's, district timed writing, etc. Are these things going to be taken into account when they decide to take away jobs? I doubt it.
The problem is, when you set people up to fail they usually do and that sounds like what is happening in at least one of our focus schools.
it's already happening in detroit.
ReplyDeleteOh, but we have the CGA #1 coming up, as many teachers don't have any results from the original test still. How valid is the CGA Baseline test? Your guess is as good as mine. Was it even field-tested? No. Who created it? Teachers, yes. I know for a fact though that new teachers, some of whom had only taught for a year, created some of the tests. Seriously, are you kidding me? Let's allow a completely new doctor develop a procedure for all new patients. That's the ticket. This would never happen in the "real world."
ReplyDeleteDon't even get me started on the testing. SRA tests have to be done one-on-one, while minding a class of 28 or even 32 (forget about the promised 22 students in Teacher Academy). We're just finishing SRA, now its time to do DAR, which is also one-on-one and takes even longer. IOWA is back, but no clear guidelines on how to use it to schedule Enrichment classes. District timed writings went out, THEN they hired the teachers to score the tests! Still haven't gotten those back yet. We've had maybe 5 good days of teaching with all of the testing ELA has had to do, now it's time for CGA's starting October 14. Oh, by the way, I'm the one who made the comment about the focus schools. Can you tell I'm frustrated?
DeleteAs a teacher who was at a school which was "cleaned up" I saw excellent teachers let go because they would not change the grades to make the administration happy, they did not have enough "showmanship" or they were older. I thought things would be better under Vitti. I was wrong.
ReplyDeleteTheresa Khiyami