"Select the Right People"
This is the chief problem of staffing turnaround schools. The past 3 and one-half years, my district has offered big salary supplements to teachers to transfer to schools identified as 'struggling,' basically any school in the feeder pattern to three of our high schools.
Known as the Quality Education for All program, which quickly garnered other acronyms such as DTO schools, geez can we ever give the naming a rest? the district attempted to bring any teacher with good data, that is test results, to these schools in the naive belief that success in one school transfers to any school.
I predicted that teachers who fell for the gambit would find frustration and fallen status as they found that their previous success depended upon the neighborhoods from which their students came.
Too true. Many high-flying teachers found out the hard way that DCPS demanded a 3-year commitment from them, but the salary bump was contingent on test results.
James Young writes in his second chapter that this uncertainty makes good teachers reluctant to move to a turnaround school. You got that right, James.
But you get other things wrong, such as asking elective teachers to be in other classrooms on their planning periods to support reading and math. No, a drama teacher needs her planning period to grade, reply to parent email, plan new lessons, do the paperwork to get performance rights, etc. A music teacher needs the same. Asking them to forego their planning time to work in a math classroom to do what? Teach children fractions as a means of understanding a time signature on a music piece? No, you are trying to intimidate unprepared teachers to be paraprofessionals in classrooms that undergo state testing. Bad idea.
Do you want to run a school, Mr. Young? Or are you happy being a factory manager, whose factory is test preparation?
Going back to the intro, your job is to see that our threatened schools survive. So do what you need to, but let us not pretend that this is what schools should be doing.
Then you say that teachers who don't know how to teach can be taught, (yes, I put that sentence together deliberately), but teachers who don't know their content area must go.
I agree that teachers who don't know their subject need to exit, but really, you want to make an argument for TFA? Yes, you do: 'Ribault's reading performance doubled with four ELA teachers having a combined total of eighteen months' experience. Two were first-year Teach for America teachers. One was a second-year Teach for America teacher, and the fourth started in January of the previous year.'
I'll spare you the rest of the quote. At this point, we must remind ourselves that test scores mean nothing more than how well students can negotiate a test. TFA recruits are good at this. Young's job is to raise test scores (Maslow's lowest level: the need to survive), but let's not pretend that this is anything more.
Play the game, hire TFA. You want to know why experienced teachers who went through traditional colleges don't get the best test scores? Because if you really teach for student understanding, if you really understand the developmental stages and needs of the kids you teach, and if you deliver lessons that produce that, you don't get the best test scores.
That is the trade-off every teacher has to make. Do what's best for children and get the lowest scores in the building.
Let's not get started on charter schools. KIPP? Test-prep factory that is so abusive to teachers that its annual churn of staff is mind-boggling.
Again, Young was hired to see that our threatened schools raise test scores. Let's skip ahead to what he has to say about assistant principals.
He demands that principals should be allowed to hire their APs. (Never going to happen.)
What he wants is for a principal to hire APs who are competent in the many areas of administration and can handle the demands and paperwork of a system such that the principal is free to concentrate on instruction.
What he looks for in an AP: they want to be at the school, they want to be a principal (don't they all?), they have instructional knowledge (so that the principal can assign them a content area to oversee), they have a skill set that the principal lacks (oh, yes, it is an exceptional principal who will admit to a deficit and seek out people who can fill it--but this is true of leadership everywhere), they are creative, independent thinkers. By which he means that he wants no yes-people, but persons who will say what they think.
Lastly, he wants academic coaches, one for every five teachers in an 'accountability area,' that is, any course that is tested by the state and is used to calculate a school grade.
Good luck with that, Mr. Young. I was an instructional coach and I wasted my years trying to do the job. I was good, but my principals didn't understand what a coach was supposed to do. I was given extra duties that prevented me from being in classrooms. Freed of those duties, I found myself saddled with a principal who thought a coach was a substitute teacher. You would do better in putting those people back into the classroom, which would reduce class sizes.
Oh, wait, you want TFA people. They do need a coach. Not to coach their teaching, but to school them in the crucial pedagogy that they lack. Oops, maybe a college program of teacher education would be better?
I predicted that teachers who fell for the gambit would find frustration and fallen status as they found that their previous success depended upon the neighborhoods from which their students came.
Too true. Many high-flying teachers found out the hard way that DCPS demanded a 3-year commitment from them, but the salary bump was contingent on test results.
James Young writes in his second chapter that this uncertainty makes good teachers reluctant to move to a turnaround school. You got that right, James.
But you get other things wrong, such as asking elective teachers to be in other classrooms on their planning periods to support reading and math. No, a drama teacher needs her planning period to grade, reply to parent email, plan new lessons, do the paperwork to get performance rights, etc. A music teacher needs the same. Asking them to forego their planning time to work in a math classroom to do what? Teach children fractions as a means of understanding a time signature on a music piece? No, you are trying to intimidate unprepared teachers to be paraprofessionals in classrooms that undergo state testing. Bad idea.
Do you want to run a school, Mr. Young? Or are you happy being a factory manager, whose factory is test preparation?
Going back to the intro, your job is to see that our threatened schools survive. So do what you need to, but let us not pretend that this is what schools should be doing.
Then you say that teachers who don't know how to teach can be taught, (yes, I put that sentence together deliberately), but teachers who don't know their content area must go.
I agree that teachers who don't know their subject need to exit, but really, you want to make an argument for TFA? Yes, you do: 'Ribault's reading performance doubled with four ELA teachers having a combined total of eighteen months' experience. Two were first-year Teach for America teachers. One was a second-year Teach for America teacher, and the fourth started in January of the previous year.'
I'll spare you the rest of the quote. At this point, we must remind ourselves that test scores mean nothing more than how well students can negotiate a test. TFA recruits are good at this. Young's job is to raise test scores (Maslow's lowest level: the need to survive), but let's not pretend that this is anything more.
Play the game, hire TFA. You want to know why experienced teachers who went through traditional colleges don't get the best test scores? Because if you really teach for student understanding, if you really understand the developmental stages and needs of the kids you teach, and if you deliver lessons that produce that, you don't get the best test scores.
That is the trade-off every teacher has to make. Do what's best for children and get the lowest scores in the building.
Let's not get started on charter schools. KIPP? Test-prep factory that is so abusive to teachers that its annual churn of staff is mind-boggling.
Again, Young was hired to see that our threatened schools raise test scores. Let's skip ahead to what he has to say about assistant principals.
He demands that principals should be allowed to hire their APs. (Never going to happen.)
What he wants is for a principal to hire APs who are competent in the many areas of administration and can handle the demands and paperwork of a system such that the principal is free to concentrate on instruction.
What he looks for in an AP: they want to be at the school, they want to be a principal (don't they all?), they have instructional knowledge (so that the principal can assign them a content area to oversee), they have a skill set that the principal lacks (oh, yes, it is an exceptional principal who will admit to a deficit and seek out people who can fill it--but this is true of leadership everywhere), they are creative, independent thinkers. By which he means that he wants no yes-people, but persons who will say what they think.
Lastly, he wants academic coaches, one for every five teachers in an 'accountability area,' that is, any course that is tested by the state and is used to calculate a school grade.
Good luck with that, Mr. Young. I was an instructional coach and I wasted my years trying to do the job. I was good, but my principals didn't understand what a coach was supposed to do. I was given extra duties that prevented me from being in classrooms. Freed of those duties, I found myself saddled with a principal who thought a coach was a substitute teacher. You would do better in putting those people back into the classroom, which would reduce class sizes.
Oh, wait, you want TFA people. They do need a coach. Not to coach their teaching, but to school them in the crucial pedagogy that they lack. Oops, maybe a college program of teacher education would be better?
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