Quality Education for [Some]: Collateral Damage

Quality Education for All: what about the collateral damage?

I’m talking theory only here. Nothing I say should be taken as a disparagement of any teacher or group of teachers. I’m only going with the district’s premise.

Offer bonuses of 50% of base salary and attract the highest-performing teachers to move to the lowest performing schools. Who could argue with that, especially if the bonuses are being funded privately by the city’s millionaires?

However, to move these great teachers into QEA schools, the ‘bad’ teachers (I put that in quotes to indicate I do not agree with the label) had to be moved out.

The vacated positions in the great schools, the successful schools? Everyone wants to transfer there. They could pick the best.

Where did the others go? You know, the ones no one wanted: to all the other struggling schools in the city with vacancies. To the schools where the principals were told not to hire new teachers because these surplused ‘bad’ teachers would be put into those positions.

If the bad teachers were really responsible for the struggles of the QEA schools, then they would ruin the schools to which they were sent.

Again, we’re talking theory.

QEA even as conceived and designed could not solve a problem. If its many premises are correct (they are not), all it could do is transfer the problem.

If you live in a Westside or Arlington neighborhood, you should be really angry now.