Welcome to Firedoglake – glad you could join us this morning!

Welcome to FDL, President Weingarten.

Can you tell us what the latest news in the negotiations are? I understand they wanted teachers to work overtime for reduced wages. Is that still a demand?

Welcome, Ms Weingarten. Thanks for stopping by.

Thank you, and good morning. Today’s news that the Supt is willing to go back to the table is great news for the students. We are glad the district liked our plan to transform the school, but we need to quickly resolve so we can bring back stability and focus on the kids

Welcome

Can you tell us what impact this new policy is having across the country? What are you hearing from other educators in other school districts?

Thanks Jane- the real issue was having a comprehensive educational plan, not additional time. The teachers agreed to additional time when they agreed to the transformational reform model back in January, and that time can be paid for by federal money. We want to make sure it is well used.

Welcome, President Weingarten. Teaching is already hard enough (and yes, fantastically rewarding). Why should anybody want to be a teacher, when teachers are treated so badly?

And why should students respect their teachers, when it’s obvious that the rest of society does not?

I think it important to note, however painful to fellow Democrats, as Jane does here, that Obama and Duncan not only weighed in with support for the firings, but that their policy set in motion the process that led to the firings. We need to look at what we are dealing with in the President and his education secretary, not what we wish we were dealing with. I, frankly, think the policy of prescribing mass firings as one of four courses of action for underperforming schools was intended to undermine union power in the negotiating process and I would like to know how that can be remedied.

I also think people need to bear in mind that this dispute and the resultant firings was not about whether or not these were good or bad teachers, school nurses, adminstrators, counselors, etc.. It was a dispute about compensation and hours.

I just wanted to say thank you for doing this chat. I think these are important for demystifying labor unions and really engaging with the netroots so they understand what we’re about.

Bravo
Elana (Writers Guild of America, East)

Welcome. The problem occurring in Rhode Island is, to a greater or lesser degree, being repeated in many parts of the country. Given the budgetary realities extant, and a Secretary of Education who has the temerity to applaud the RI findings, how does the staff actually doing the work with and for the students begin to fight back in any meaningful way?

Thank you for your time.

Actually here’s a question: Why is it that NYC thinks that closing an underperforming school is going to improve education? All that happens really is the school changes its name, stays in the same building and all the same kids end up back in it right? Or does the city then fire all the teachers in the under performing school. I’ve always been confused by this practice in NYC.

As the daughter of a teacher (and union leader), I want to thank you, Ms. Weingarten, for all the heavy lifting that you do.

It should surprise no one that the superintendent of the R.I. school district was not held to account for her failures. Like any large corporation, failure is never the CEO’s fault.

Absolutely. We really appreciate President Weingarten being here today to talk with our community. It’s an important issue and hearing directly from those involved, rather than through the filter of reporters who often don’t understand what’s involved, is really helpful.

The situation in Rhode Island is one being watched across the country. There is a groundswell of support for students and teachers in that school-as there was at the recent CF’s school board meetings where parents, students and alumni called for the board to keep the teachers. The real issue is how to turn around schools that are not succeeding for children- and the events in RI have prompted people to ask “what works”

What we know is turning around schools is hard work- and doesn’t happen magically. It takes the kind of plan the teachers presented Monday-a good instructional plan and program that has a track record, supports to ensure teachers can implement that plan, additional time, and personalized supports and other resources for students to ensure we meet each of their needs. We also know just closing schools and firing everyone was tried in the nineties and didn’t work.

What brought the supt. back? Was it public reaction, therefore putting the union in a better position to negotiate going forward? Or, was it concessions on the part of the union?

Well said-

Welcome Randi.

I’m glad to see that the AFT statement places emphasis on the kids, who are being ill-served by that educational system.

Clearly, there are many elements that contribute to a failing school, only one of which is teaching. However, as President of the AFT though, perhaps you could weigh in on that element.

Every profession/industry has people who aren’t a good match. How can this be addressed in the context of a union shop and tenure?

We have the failing schools issue in spades here in New York City. (Click here for a very recent though terribly flawed article about what is, nevertheless, a real problem).

So punishing the students by firing all the teachers accompolishes what? This is a disgusting development. If there is not any better solution to improving a school than firing all the teachers then this country is in more trouble than is already apparant.

Thanks for this chat.

Welcome, and thank you for coming to FDL. President Weingarten, my fiancee works at one of the worst performing high schools in Colorado. I constantly hear about the challenges that teachers face. My question is why teachers should continue their support of the Obama Administration given their current policies.

Bottom line- I don’t really know but grateful that the Supt wants to go back to the table. However, time is of the essence- remember we are in the middle of a current school year, and it is important to resolve so this is not a distraction to teaching and learning this year.
Can you imagine trying to teach and trying to learn with this swirling around.

Can you tell us more about the plan that was presented on Monday?

Agreed. The fact that Obama also choose to do this in front of the Chamber of Commerce is even more disgusting.

Welcome President Weingarten!

“We also are disappointed that Gallo and the state education commissioner have rejected my overtures to meet and discuss what is best for the students of Central Falls and also have said no to former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chaffee’s proposal for mediation. It is simply wrong to say no to kids and to parents who want to improve their children’s school”

1. Refusing to meet, discuss and mediate sounds darn serious. What is the superintendent hiding?

Were these teachers given any extra help, training, assistants in the classroom? Were there any programs after school for the students or parents. My oldest daughter is a teacher in Colorado. So often she finds that the kids who are not doing so well are kids who do not have the support or help at home due to parents working etc.

2. What is the socio economic situation in that school district?

No, I can not imagine. Good luck.

How does the union deal with the fact that schools, especially in these poor economic times, are being asked to provide more and more basic life services for their pupils? For instance, I read somewhere that many impoverished children now eat all three meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, at school.

right on! It’s like bizarro-land magical thinking. I’m gonna take a guess— that the school in question is underfunded. Maybe, I dunno, if we fund schools through something other than property taxes schools in lower income areas could have enough money to hire enough teachers and have enough resources for students to do better.

But I must be dreaming…

In January I delivered a speech at the National Press Club (www.futurestogether.org) about how to creat a new path foward to great teachers and teaching. It included 4 components- revamp evaluation systems to ensure they really are continuous models for development and evaluation of teachers, come up with models of due process that are aligned and that are fair and fast, give teachers the tools, time and trust they need to be successful and most importantly overhaul the labor managment relationship- to ensure collaboration and partnership is what counts, not conflict and combativeness.

We know that when we all work towards excellence, and take collective responsibility kids will succeed.

I also wanted to know how teachers will be impacted if SAFRA fails to pass in time for the money to go to schools next year.

What’s your sense of where things stand?

Hi Randi,

I’m in Local 1021/UTLA. I am glad you have finally recognized the destructiveness of Obama’s neoliberal approach to public ed. Here in LA the Eli Broad forces are trying to bust our union and administrative hacks are making teacher activists and social justice educators life hell. The constant push for robotic testing and diminishment of critical thinking pedagogies is rampant and rolling on like a freight train without any brakes.

We have spent years and millions of dues-paying members dollars trying to fight NCLB, or at least modify it, and completely failed. Our students are being pushed into the military or prison because school conditions are in a state of permanent crisis and there are no jobs, only debt, for those who can make it through the gauntlet to higher ed.

Are there any largescale national work actions we need to engage now to prevent the collapse of public ed in America? If you can’t think of any I can think of a few.

See you in Seattle this July…

What is sad is that no one thinks we should fire all the police officers in a precinct if crime goes up-my point is we should ensure that teachers are doing a good job, and give them the supports they need to do so, but we can’t do it alone. Education of children involve lots of factors.

Here’s a copy of President Weingarten’s speech (PDF):

http://www.futurestogether.org/page/-/2010_01_12_Speech_Docs/A-New-Path-Forward-Speech-Transcript.pdf

A dear friend who is a retired teacher taught in a New Orleans school district 35 years ago. She said they made a concerted effort to provide classes for parents in the evening to help them help their children. She has shared that this program helped the kids finish homework, raise scores and set the parents more at ease with their own gaps in reading, math, etc.

Do you think after school or evening classes for parents helps students improve?

Also can you talk about the size of the classrooms at the “chronically troubled” school where the teachers were fired?

I consider Duncan’s and Obama’s comments about the R.I. case be a calculated insult to teacher unions, and to public employees in general. My opinion of both men is greatly diminished.

What did you expect from a President who quotes Ronald Reagan with admiration? He’s a union buster like Reagan and a closet Republican who is completing the plunder of the Treasury and the destruction of the public school system. Make sure that Rhode Island allows home schooling or that you can afford to send your children to a good prep school. It’s going to get worse.

Jane- the budget issues facing schools next year are huge, and in some ways trumps all of this. We are hearing terrible stories from states all across the country. At the same time as kids and their families are still hurting from the recession and need supports like health care, and after school services, those are being cut. In addition if the numbers of layoffs being proposed remotely happen, it will drastically affect the core instructional program in most schools.

Watertiger,
You echo my sentiments exactly.
The Superintendent should be the first one held responsible.
After 38 years of teaching H.S. and now retired, this post is near and dear to my heart. Thank you Jane and President Weingarten for being here today.
One of the big problems and supposedly Arne Duncan is looking into it, would be the provisions of No Child Left Behind. There is no way that by 2014 we are going to have 100% AYP. No way, but having said that, we need to find a way to keep improving the schools, set benchmarks that are realistic, and provide a unit of measurement that judges the whole school and it’s performance rather than relying on a test taken one or two days in March or April that determines the fate of that school making Annual Yearly Progress.

Ms Weingarten,

I taught (retired now) for twenty-five years in the poorest district in the State of Michigan.

What concerns me most about the mass firings is the idea that ALL teachers are responsible for the problem. And teachers alone, apparently.

In my experience I taught with some of the very best teachers I have ever seen. Professional, dedicated, and highly-skilled. It is just when it comes to delivering services to the ever-transient population who suffer from a myriad of physical and social ills, it just isn’t enough.

We do the best that we can, often dealing with administrators who refuse (for whatever reason) to acknowledge the reality that we face daily. They use their positions as seats of power and influence and are more than willing to undercut the teachers and principals if it will endear them to the community in some fashion.

I spent a large amount of my salary every year providing books, pencils, papers, computers, and even food to keep my children working.

Look: deciding that the seat of the problem is the teachers is just absurd. And to generalize that ALL of the teachers in a school are substandard is just repulsive.

I find the situation very disturbing and mean-spirited as well as intellectually suspect.

I can only assume that these teachers were given performance reviews and plans for improvement. If these are acceptable, why?

President Weingarten, as the son, nephew, and cousin of teachers at all levels, thank you for your ongoing efforts.

One would think that before such extreme measures were taken (sounds illegal) that a team of education experts would be sent in for a month or what ever it took to improve the situation.

The point of making schools centers of community where we can co-locate services like classes for parents is a great idea. We should have one stop shopping so art, music, after school programs, health and social services and programs for parents are at the same school in which their kids attend. That was a great idea in New Orleans, and we should do it more. I have seen schools really work for kids when these kind of services are coordinated or even done at the school site.

Class size is a very important proxy for personalizing and differentiating instruction.

Thanks for your work. I am a retired educator – started my teaching in 1965. Over the 35 years I taught I watched as the system was dismantled(dumber population is easier to manage)and was glad I had left before NCLB. This seems to me to be the latest step to destroy what is left. It all makes me very sad. This is the next step to try to destroy unions. Thanks Ronald Reagan.

“It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”

That day seems a long way off

Thanks for your comments- and you are right that we need a different definition for what constitutes success in education. We and others are looking at student growth, rather than comparing one set of students to another, which is what AYP did.

Makes for more jobs too

I cannot help but recall that Reagan fired the Union Air Traffic Controllers that led to the next 28 years of Union Busting.

Is this Obama’s version?

Jim Clausen, 33 years a teacher, unemployed.

Welcome President Weingarten, a great honor to have you here.

Randi,

Did you see the article in yesterday’s NYT that Ravitz has reversed herself? Now thinks teaching to the test causes important subject matter to be dropped from the curiculum that that charter schools bleed money from public education. [Duh.]

On the topic of this thread, what was/is the plan for the students assuming negotiations fail and the teachers stay fired?

DWDD- As I understand it was actually worse- all the teachers received positive evaluations last year, and one of the recent reports from the RI Department of Education lauded them for their progress. The key here is that the people who want to make a difference in childrens’ lives should not be scapegoated. At the same time, we have to find what works to turn around schools to ensure that all kids- not just some kids have a chance to live their dreams.

thank you

Was just looking up the public/private school ratio in Rhode Island. The push to privatize our public school system is a strong under tow.

Hope that superintendent gets called out

A dumber population is easier to manage – until they turn on you!

(see French Revolution: The Terror)

To be clear, neither Secretary Arne or President Obama fired these teachers. They were fired by the local Board of Trustees on a 5-2 vote. Voting for firing the teachers were Leslie Estrada, Vladimir Ibarra, Anna Morales Sonia Rodriguez and Ana Rosado.

One of the Trustees voting no, who is a teacher in Providence and a graduate of this school made these intersting remarks.

B.K. Nordan, one of two trustees who voted against firing all the teachers, nevertheless delivered some of the harshest words of the evening to the high school’s teaching staff. Nordan, a graduate of Central Falls High School, now works as a teacher in Providence.
“I don’t believe this is a worker’s rights issue. I believe it’s a children’s rights issue,” Nordan said.

I am not sure the Trustees made the right decision. It seems at a minimum that the mass firings occurred too early in the process. Yet, it seems to to me, particularly when I look at the composition of that local Board of Trustees, that there is more to this than this discussion suggests.

None

Since it seems clear that the appointment of Education Secretary Arne Duncan shows that the Obama administration is more focused on cutting costs on the backs of teacher’s unions than on improving education outcomes, how far along is the process of letting the current administration know that making education more of a right wing play toy than any previous administration is unacceptable? There is no question that state funding is headed for serious trouble all across the nation and compromises will have to be made but the menu of options provided by Duncan would seem to make compromises more difficult rather than more likely. Do other parts of the Administration even make the right sounding noises or this is concerted effort to change the paradigm?

Keep up the good work.

Not to be redundant, but how does that district think they’re going to attract any good teachers at all in the future?

Yes, it was a cruel, mean-spirited, scapegoating move — but it was stupid, too!

Let’s stay on topic please with our guest here.

The President’s comments were unfortunate-more because they did not reflect the reality on the ground that progress has been made in the last two years in the area of literacy despite the instability of leadership and the constant churning of instructional programs. I think it speaks to the impulse to try to sound bite our way to educational solutions, when in reality teaching, particularly for students with high needs is complex tough work which requires multiple strategies implemented well.

Diane’s new book is awesome. Read it.

As to what happens next, failure of these negotiations is not an option.

I apologize – but I thought it was on topic.

Thank you. I will check out your speech.

It certainly seems like coming down hard on the teachers, and only on the teachers, is a really poor idea. These are systemic problems, so it’s not surprising that the failing schools with failing kids are in the poorest communities.

Parent/community involvement is a major element of success. That NOLA parent education program Leen referred to sounds like a fantastic way to build involvement and create home environments conducive for learning.

I’m trying to do some work with the school mentioned in the article I referenced above…the stark contrast in parental involvement and capacities of the PTAs of the two schools is remarkable.

You have a point that over the long term who will come and stay teaching in tough situations if they know they will be thrown under the bus. In the short run, particularly during a recession, we get alot of applicants. However the best teachers will tell you that experience and support is crucial.

Citizen Weingarten:

Welcome and thanks for standing up in fornt of those teachers who are at the moment drawing fire in the first skirmish in what some of us believe is a battle planned in the White House to dismantle public education as we know it and rebuild around federally subsidized Charter Schools.

What has your experience been with Arne Duncan and was he directly involved with the school board and local officials at all up to the point of the firings?

Is the AFofT organizing any efforts within your membership to respond to this crisis and expose the administration’s clumsy hand in it?

P.S. My old man taught for 40 years and organized locally for the AFofT when it was not really safe ta buck the company education association.

There is a difference between mass firing and looking at employees individually.

The AFT has done a lot around the Central Falls situation- first by shining a light on it, and more importantly on trying to resolve it in a way that ensures the school continues the turnaround track it was on, building on the great dedication of the teachers who teach there. For more information go to CentralFallsKidsDeserveBetter.com

That’s interesting. We should have Ravitz on Book Salon.

It seems curious to imagine that the idea of showing young people, who are perhaps not overly interested in getting a degree already, that getting a college education will in no way protect them from getting fired will engage the same students into thinking that getting an education is worth the time and effort. Were this a Republican effort the explanation of the policies would seem apparent.

Thank you, President Weingarten.

I’m not a teacher, but I know very many, both family members and friends, and I wrote a post yesterday that matched very closely what DWDD said. There are some issues with Unions making it difficult to fire poorly performing teachers, but most teachers are good to excellent, work much harder and longer hours than they get credit for, and many really go the extra mile to assist their students AND their families.

In a lot of circumstances, poorly perfomaning students reflect family issues. If the parents are unable or don’t know how to provide adequate support to their child’s education, esp in helping with homework and such in the early years, expecting the teacher to somehow miraculously “fix” the situation is magical thinking. It’s easy to scapegoat and target teachers, in part because conservatives have been on a jihad against the unions for decades. So if there is a perceived problem, then let’s just bust the union, fire the teachers and the heck with the needs of the kids.

What I am most gob-smacked about is the fact that they propose to yank all these teachers out of the school in the middle of the school year. Conservatives seem ecstatic to watch this happening, apparently caring little to not at all about the needs of the kids and their families. I know for a fact that this could not be a worse decision at this point in the school year. At LEAST have the sensibility to do it over the summer break, for goodness sake (not that I agree at all, but still).

Anyway, it seems like actions like this end up getting broken down into convenient talking points, which focus mainly on money and privititzation. And the true needs of nurturing our kids and providing them with real education gets lost in the shuffle.

I wish you all the best and hope for a more positive outcome. I decry this action; it’s not right.

Ultimately, the teachers were quite suprised that the district initially left the bargaining table over the issue of hours and compensation. They want kids to succeed, and are very committed to the CF community. That is why they put out their own reform plan and are delighted the Supt has decided to come back to the table.

In far too many school districts, eCAHN, the “money” never even arrives because too many who have prospered and done well do not “believe” that “they” should have to “support” others, the tax arrears in my local school districts amount to the TENS of millions of dollars. I doubt, in these economically turbulent times that such arrears will ever be collected, and … when the economic situation worsens, as we both agree that it will, then there will be even less incentive to pressure a disappearing middle-class, so the burden will be shifted to the swelling ranks of the poor … one way or another.

DW

You are so right. And let me be clear, I know first hand teachers want to help other teachers who are struggling, but bottom line, teachers will tell you all the time that we don’t condone either incompetence or malfeasance. Teaching is a really hard job- and we need to work hand in hand with parents, as we try to motivate our students, and we need the support of our administrators.

Transparency and accountability has to go both ways- and we must hold the powers that be responsible for getting to schools every dollar that has been appropriated

Jane- Thank you so much for having me on today, and thank you to everyone for your comments.

Agree. Too many wealthy to upper middle class folks are totally and utterly and completely disengaged, disinterested and uninclined to help the poorer among us (including the so-called “middle class” these days) in way shape or form. Most of them still have enough money to pay for private schooling (I don’t know for how much longer), so they really could care less what happens with the public school system. They think that the public schools are passe for them and filled with “dirty” kids (I’ve had that said to me directly) that they don’t want their children mingling with.

They see no reason on earth why they should have to pay anything to these school systems, why it should be their responsibility in the slightest. Conservatives have done a bang-up job at convincing the wealthy among us that they owe nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero to help our nation function.

Sad. Education is extremely important, and not just for MY kids, but for everyone’s children. It’s a very short-sighted, stupid notion, and ultimately more deleterious for our country’s economic and financial well-being than these narrow-minded conservatives care to see and acknowledge.

Thank you so much for being here, President Weingarten. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and let us know what’s going on. Please come back any time.

Indeed, so do I.

Thank you so much, President Weingarten, and all the very best to you. We’re behind you all the way!

Obama’s comment on the firings was reprehensible. The President is one to talk about accountability – he is failing us on almost every front!

Thank you for coming.

Bville by chance?

Go Norske! Runs in the family I see.

;)

Thank you, Randi, for joining us AND for what you do every day to encourage a better future for those who ARE the future.

DW

President Weingarten,

Thank you for all you do on behalf of our educators and students.

In our discussion yesterday, I was disturbed to learn about the Obama Administration’s education policy. This is what was reported in an article at the Providence Journal on Feb 24, 2010:

[U.S. Secretary of Education] Duncan is requiring states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools — those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates — and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and “turnaround” which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall.

But surely this Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) approach to education fits what was the Bush agenda and not what one would have expected to find as part of the Obama agenda.

I know that you are determined to make Superintendent Frances Gallo take responsibility for failing the teachers and their students and make sure the teachers are reinstated, but what do you think of the Obama Administration’s education policy more generally? This situation in RI should be used to highlight serious flaws in the neoliberal nonsense coming out of Obama’s White House.

For a sec I thought the “in the family” comment was regarding Arne…that’s a rather Norske name, isn’t it?

Citizen DWBartoo:

Great catch Citizen…the psychology of those who oppose tax support for local schools. This is of course the psychology of the pseudo conservatives all over this country in their basic oppostition to public tax support for public institutions. But the problem of uncollected taxes in small shcool districts is particularly difficult in economic conditions like today. My wife is in her 32nd year of teaching and we have seen this district go from the shinning star of this part of the state to a crumbling pile of rubble over the last 25 years and that deterioration doesn’t have anything to do with the problem of getting rid of poor teachers, it has to do with the change in politics and political psychology since Reagan and the neo-fascists won in 1980.

Thank you for being here, great discussion!

Corporatist=Neoconservative=Neoliberal=Neofascist

It’s all about the ideology of corporatist supremacy.

While Obama is demanding that House Democrats accept the health care bill now that it’s been stripped of any and all reform and been packed with gifts and giveaways to the constituency of AHIP and PhRMA, Sebelius is meeting with private insurers to make sure that everything meets with their approval.

Obama cares more about pleasing the overlords and masters than about doing what’s right for the American people or about the fact that the American people know they’re being screwed over.

So much for the mantra that elections matter.

It doesn’t require understating the problems this school – and presumably, its entire district – have in order to find little to praise about a mass firing of teaching staff while the board members keep their job and pretend to do it. For a school to reach this “in extremis” condition, its board and administrators would have to be as much, and possibly more, to blame than individual teachers or the teaching staff as a whole.

To sanction, indeed, to praise such a blunt, ineffective and needlessly painful instrument as a mass firing – as Obama and his education team just did – is to bow down to the god of big bidness and blame all ills on the worker. Never mind the CEO who fails and walks away with $30 million cash, or the board of directors asleep at the switch, or the lenders who rape their debtors as much as poor managers or workers with the British disease.

Let’s throw out the good teachers with the bad, and scare the hell out of kids, families and new teachers just to show them who’s boss and that he means bidness. That would damn a generation of graduates and would be graduates from this school. I don’t think even David Brooks, and here I could be wrong, could find a silver lining in that mindless act of frustrated incompetence.

Wow, extremely well said!!

That comment should be read by all. Strikes at the heart of the matter.

Well done EOH!

Here are the 6 conditions the teachers were asked to agree to.

Increase length of school day by 25 minutes to provide more instructional time for students.

Formalize tutoring schedule so struggling students have extra help for one hour before and after school.

Agree to eat lunch with students one day a week to build stronger relationships.

Attend two weeks of professional development in the summer at a rate of $30 an hour.

Stay after school for 90 minutes one day each week to work with fellow teachers analyzing student work and test data and discussing ways to improve teaching at a rate of $30 an hour if Gallo can find grant financing.

Accept more rigorous evaluations by a third-party starting March 1.

http://www.projo.com/ri/centralfalls/content/projo20100211_cfhighschool_keypoints.1094bb3d0.html

Amen! It’s happening everywhere, esp in CA where Prop 13 also really did a number on Public education. CA used to be the ultimate shining star in the eductational firmament from K – grad school. Now all of that is gone, including tertiary ed and beyond.

And the conservatives cheer themsevles stupid – pun intended – at fouling their own nest. They think it’s just fantastic.

I have had a Ph.D. acquaintances of mine babble (only way to describe it) on & on about how having 60+ kids in elementary classrooms is just fine and makes not one whit of a difference in the “educational” process. I could go on but will leave it there.

Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Dick Cheney, Roger Aisles, Pat Robertson, and all their piggy brethern have done a real number on the conservatives – about how it’s fantastic to have citizens who can barely read, write & do sums – along with getting them to agree that it’s all the fault of the Unions, so let’s bash teachers to death, bust the eeevul unions, and make everyone govel for crumbs.

A very sad but telling state of affairs.

There’s quite a bit to negotiate in that list of demands. For starters, if the school could find $30/hour for 90 minutes of overtime instruction for students, it could find part-time and student teachers to do most of that extra teaching. It would need only a few full-time teachers to manage the process. That would free current staff to better prepare and recover from their own day at the office, an important point since the extra work seems required because so much is missing from the regular day.

A 90 minute increase in an eight-hour day is an 18.75% increase in a teacher’s work day. Teachers already spend extra hours preparing for class and marking work, and many spend their own money and time finding basic or more interesting materials to bring to class. Others supervise extra-curricular activities that enrich children’s lives, from band to football to chess club.

That’s a lot. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, court house clerks, food service attendants, fish cutters, postal workers, beat cops and UAW workers would object to it. The time commitment is actually greater, when you include time to prepare for and mark the work done at those extra sessions.

A mass firing is a power struggle and a blame game, not a solution to a problem or an expression of competent management.

I live in RI and Central Falls is 1 square mile total. It is often the first stop city to live in for immigrants as it is very run down and cheaper to rent in than anywhere else in the state. Very tough area, heavy with non English speakers, gangs and drugs. I don’t know how you can solve it, but the teachers are up against the social situations at home big time.
Best bet would be to send the Central Falls kids to another town. In RI, instead of county governments, each individual town has its own school district with all the attendant hierarchy. There have been attempts to get consolidation on the radar but everyone likes to protect their fiefdoms.

I was trying to provide factual context by posting the 6 conditions.

What one makes of them probaly depends on the confirmation bias one brings to the story.

This is really all about outsourcing our kids to schools owned (directly or cloaked by fancy paperwork) by church’s. Non believers are now the biggest minority in America. And its rapid growth rate causes church’s to lose money big time.
So they have no choice but to fund their doomsday cults with tax money and get to force their supernatural make believe on as many kids as possible. They know if they don’t they will be out numbered by free thinkers in less than a generation.
The writing is on the wall man kind is very close to growing up and getting away from tribal god like images, talking snakes, invisible people, and Jewish zombies.
I hope I live long enough to see humans finally evolve beyond fairy tales. 99% of the problems we have we will evolve beyond also. War and homelessness would be the first two to go.

Far too many administrators in the public school system are merely politicians of the worst sort, when coupled to the arrogant and deliberately short-sighted and often, parochial, purview of most school board members, who, themselves, are often low-level political types, the results of their combined efforts bring us to precisely where we are … and aren’t.

When we add in the fact that schools are expected to pick up the other failings of society, whether in terms of the lack of living-wage employment, the lack of parental involvement (often because the parents are afforded no time from their excessive work load, assuming the parents even have paying “work”), and the growing conviction that “education” is designed to provide most children with a life-long sense of failure and underscore the blatant unfairness of the entire social “order”, it may well be understood why schools fail.

That is precisely what is intended that schools should do. To fail the desperate needs of individuals and their larger society simply so the current system of dominance may not merely continue, but accelerate, its entrenchment.

As in so many other institutions in our society, legal, economic, and so on, it is intended that the educational system be only good enough to keep people in their places and train willing replacements for the status quo.

DW

Yeah, on this topic yesterday you were ALL FOR the firing and damn the teachers to hell.

All of a sudden today you are a bit more moderate when the AFT boss shows up.

Course, that’s just my information bias from what I see as I read thru the comments, so I’m sure I’m the one who’s warped.

I’m sorry I missed this. A friend of mine tells me if you want to know what teaching in NYC public schools is like these days, watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (arbitrary administrative hacks, testing and all). The kids and the unions sound like they’re the only thing keeping dedicated intelligent teachers on the job these days. And that’s why union busting worries me. It will hurt the kids if it continues. My nieces are five. Shame on you Obama.

We also know just closing schools and firing everyone was tried in the nineties and didn’t work.

Can anyone here give an example of where closing schools and firing everyone was tried in the Nineties?

Larue, There you go again.

Yesterday I was asked this.

Do you honestly think all, or even half, of the teachers in a school where over half the student population speaks English as a second language are so terrible at their jobs they should be fired?

I responded.

I have no idea and neither do you. I will respect the opinion of the local Board of Trustees.

In addition, I expressed my hope that the good teachers would be rehired.

As I understand it, up to 50% of these treachers can be rehired. I hope the good ones are.

I do not think a fair reading of my comments from yesterday’s thread indicate that I was “ALL FOR firing and damn the teachers to hell.”

Now, after researching this matter more thoroughly and thinking about it, I admit my position has changed to some degree. Looking into a matter more deeply and keeping your mind open will sometimes do that.

Support the efforts of students in California. They are even calling out neoliberal philosophy by name. The people of CA, even the upper middle class, are more and more supportive because they are seeing that in uncertain times private school and university tuition may be problematic and they want the state schools to be a good option. If CA can turn their system around and take back their government, maybe it will send a message to the rest of the country.

My 14 year old daughter was appalled at this story because, as she says, “Everyone knows who the bad teachers are. You can ask the kids and I’m sure the other teachers and the principal know, too. You don’t need to fire everybody. I think they were just throwing a temper tantrum or too lazy to figure things out.”

This is a true horror story for educators. Anyone who has taught in an inner city school knows the challenges. It’s totally irresponsible and unrealistic to expect schools from a lower income demographic to compete with those schools who enjoy a higher income demographic.

On the face of it, mass firings seem to hold the same kind of brutal simplistic non-thinking as mass executions.

I worked a couple days a week in a school in a poor area. Between migrant workers and constantly changing living arrangements as people got evicted or moved in with family or were thrown out from living with family, etc., the school population was constantly changing. Yet NCLB had them comparing schools to last year, when there was a very different population. You could be the best teacher and school in the world but if your students then leave and you are trying to teach a new group this year, that will never be reflected in the annual stats comparisons. Some of the kids who were there long term had problems like the buses not being able to get to them when it rained too hard because of dirt roads all through the area where they lived. The parents didn’t own cars or the dad had the only car to go to work at the crack of dawn and the school was trying to get their attendance up. One mom actually walked for two hours to get to a parent teacher conference because she really did care, but she couldn’t have her kids walking four hours to school and back every day the roads were bad. I have a feeling Arne and company have never been poor.

Indeed, this seems to be Obama’s PATCO momemt, a la Bill Clinton’s Sister Souljah.

So well put PaulaT. This is a sign of our times…when legislators, politicians, bureaucrats, et. al. have no idea of the reality of a situation. It truly reminds me of the Auto Executives arriving in Washington in their private jets for a hand out from the government while auto worker are scrounging and scrimping for their next mortgage payment just to keep a roof over their families heads because their jobs are endangered. Then we have the way Republicans and Blue Dogs are totally blinded to the suffering and hardships endured under the present US health system. Maybe they’re not so much blinded or unaware as they are indifferent and callous.

The convenient thing about firing everybody is that you dispense with needing a documented accurate record of poor performance by individual staff and due process that teachers and teaching union members concur with.

Not having such a record indicates an absence of basic management skills or an attempt to skirt employee-protective work rules. Other ills that across the board firings hide are retribution, political signal sending, anti-unionism, etc.

Companies call them RIFF’s, reductions in force, purportedly owing to desperate economic circumstances rather than the poor performance of individuals or a group of workers. It’s an out in the miserly pro-worker laws that do exist, which are damn few.

It also hides – and should be seen as a blanket admission of fault by board members – an intolerable level of incompetence, cowardice, laziness or malfeasance on the part of board members. Their job is not day-to-day management: it is to supervise how well senior level managers do their jobs and to develop, approve and oversee the implementation of long term plans, such as to grow, to cut back, or to fix problems.

Team Obama’s ratifying and affirming this sort of blame-the-worker-but-not-the-board behavior gives a green light to public and private businesses across the nation to do the same. It is shameful, which is also becoming a defining characteristic of Team Obama’s methods and priorities.

Can’t let a little thing like educating the nation’s youth get in the way of corporate profit and union busting. Why, why, it’s unseemly. We all know that education is best served when Wal-Mart and the Koch family run it.

Ms. Weingarten –
This is my 5th year teaching high school math in Seattle. My school is >50% FRL, appx. 7% white, 40 or 60 non English home languages.

When are ideas in education going to be costed out in time the ideas take to implement per student, per class, per day, per week, … per year?

Aside from the fact that little education research is not scientifically valid, it is the nature of American headquarters management to blame the underlings for systemic failures underlings aren’t in charge of … cuz they’re the underlings, not the managers of the systems. Whew … pretty tricky, no?

I am NOT complaining about the hours I put in – I have recovery time. I want the hours to be the most effective possible, NOT playing CYA games for headquarters managers looking for people to blame, NOT dealing with problems that stop me from helping that >50% plus everyday who will try – if I can figure out work that they can do and can surpass.

We need “best practices” which help us in the classroom, NOT which help the blame jockeys at headquarters looking for phony metrics to bolster their power points and to enrich their consulting career.

How much time will an idea cost to implement. WHERE is the money to pay for the time?

BTW – I’m all for data driven decision making!!

WHERE is the data on the barrages of inane solutions-du-jour bubbling from the hard drives of EACH headquarters powerpoint jockey?

rmm.

Watched MSNBC last night… Dylan Ratigan,Ed,Chris, Keith (Lawrence O’Donnell, Rachel..Not a whisper about these teachers being fired. Plenty of coverage on Sarah Palin’s movements on 4 of the shows. Not a whisper about these teachers, what happenned and how very different rules apply to our teachers than to bankers and Wall Street.

When schools, students are failing I am sure due to a variety of reasons the Obama administration supports a firing. But when it comes to Wall Street failing, Fed, Bankers the Obama administration smacks them on the hands with words and then invites some of the worst offenders into his administration. Serious double standards.

Maybe Obama could require that the executive compesation that some of these banking thugs walked home with compensation packages directly linked to money made off of the taxpayers money being used to bail these thugs out.

Obama should demand that these thugs turn that taxpayer paid for compensations to these failing schools. To provide extra help to these teachers and families.

AND WHY IS IT THAT THE MSM SEEMS TO BE IGNORING THIS CRITICAL ISSUE

My experience with the New York Teachers Union under your leadership was that it was deeply disrespectful of good teachers. When the people who work at the union care only about their inflated salaries and the union itself cares more about multi-million NYC Department of Education programs that it runs under the union name, don’t you find it a little late to begin to sound the tone of “respect for good teachers”? For all of us Ms. Weingarten, stick to running a labor union; you do that well. It is time to stop the farce of the union as a “professional organization.”