[abcnews] Rhode Island District Fires All 74 of Its High School Teachers

Those teachers have zero excuses.

If you can't graduate 60% of your students the problem is the teachers.

that ought to send a message.

 

I like it, those teachers should be embarrassed about those statistics

 

They turned down an extra $30 PER HOUR? Is that a typo?

 

THANK YOU! As an elementary school teacher, I've never understood how, whenever you hear some horror story of students graduating without being able to read, that's somehow a failure at the high school level. This a SYSTEM WIDE failure, and it starts at the beginning: elementary ed. You want to talk about a system that never shies away from graduating students to the next grade when they're woefully under qualified? I've seen students move on from 2nd to 3rd grade, 3rd to 4th, 4th to 5th without ever achieving anything even close to the skill set needed to move on. But elementary has become a bit like the penal system: just do your time and we'll let you out in 6 years. This district would be better served by looking to improve the students before they get to high school.

 

I think it meant that they would get $30/hour for the extra hours they work, while they wanted $90 (!!).

I don't have a problem with this. We're in a recession and there's high unemployment, with a lot of educated people out there looking for work. There's no reason for the school to overpay just to keep the current teachers.

Let them bring in some of those people and start over with a new teachers, new approach, etc. See what happens - it may not be any better, but it probably can't be much worse.

 

This is certainly true, but the high school shouldn't be exempt either. If the high school is getting a bunch of students in who can't read, and then they leave 4 years later being unable to read (this is a hypothetical - not necessarily the school above), then what is the purpose of the high school? If the kids are all coming to HS without the ability to read, then the high school's job is to teach them to read. I can't imagine what else they would be doing over those 4 years since it's such a basic part of the puzzle.

Basically, I'm saying no matter what level the students come into the high school, they should still be leaving 4 years later smarter than they came in. If they aren't, then the high school is no better than the rest of the system.

 

I wish teachers got paid more based on their students' performance. They are already making such a low amount for the work they do that penalizing them for students' poor performance is a horrible idea. I think this would attract people to actually become professional teachers (i.e. at least a B.S in education). Just because you are really good at math does not mean you should be teaching math. I think that is one of the problems of the education system today. It's one thing the nation is short on teachers but we don't have enough qualified teachers.

 

If the average salary truly is $60,000, you're looking at a wage of approximately $28.85 per hour ($60,000 / 52 weeks / 40 hours per week). So $30/hour isn't exactly a HUGE increase. $90 per hour is ridiculous. If the Union really did put forward that dollar amount, I would imagine they were expecting the school districts to counter-offer instead of just pulling the plug.

The only problem I have with this is that they fired 100% of teachers. You're telling me there wasn't a single teacher in the school who was doing a good job? Not one? I have trouble believing that. Also, what does this say about how RI treats Unions? No negotiation, no compromise, just 100% dismissal? I mean it seems to me the proposals were:

1. Work more hours without more pay. (How many Unions can you honestly say would go for that?)

2. Work even more hours, and we'll give you an extra $1.15.

Not saying the teachers were right: their counter-offer of $90/hour is insulting. Here's something else to consider: what about the teachers who aren't members of the Union? Were they sacked too?

New teachers =/= new approach. Any teachers they hire will be bound to the same aligned curriculum that the district puts forth every year. Not saying it wouldn't change or improve things. Just saying it might not be the dramatic turn-around you would anticipate.

As JuanValdez said in his OP, this problem extends beyond high school. This is a district-wide problem, and until they address it at the earlier stages, the problem will continue.

 

Diaspora-type busing to get the at-riskers outta there, and college-affiliated magnet programs to get the high-fliers in. One way or another, good families with good kids are going to have get involved.

 

Certainly - but if the students are coming in without the ability to read, the HS needs to recognize that and realize they can't teach them Chemistry or Physics or History or whatever. So if they aren't teaching them to read, and they aren't teaching them those other things, what exactly are the students learning in those 4 years?

Obviously, every situation is unique - and I'm referring to a hypothetical here where students are coming out of HS without the ability to read. If that's the case, the HS doesn't simply get a pass on that, in my opinion.

 

I missed that part
This is a little late in the game to blame THESE Teachers
These kids issues started alot earlier


Rocket River

 

Agreed, the high school has the obligation to educate the students to the best of their ability. However, standardized tests and graduation rates are based on students mastering the skills that deemed the "minimum" that a person of their age/grade level should have attained. If the students enter high school 6-8 years behind in skill-set, no matter how hard the teacher works and how much progress they make, there is no way the students will pass those test and/or be able to graduate.

It's a bit like an assembly line. The person at the end of the line is depending on the person at the beginning of the line to do their job. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't matter how hard that last line-worker does his/her job, the product is still going to end up defective.

Agreed, but that's not what's being evaluated here: they're judging the school by test scores and graduation rates, neither of which show student progress entering school/grade vs. leaving school/grade.

 

From the article, it's unclear based on the RI system whether there were options there. The school may have had a restricted budget or whatever, but here's the relevant piece:

When the teachers rejected the plan, upset that they would not be getting paid for working longer hours, Gallo said she had no choice but to shift from the "improvement" plan to a "turnaround" model.

The turnaround model, one of four developed by federal education guidelines, requires the superintendent to fire all of a school's teachers and rehire no more than 50 percent of them.

I don't know if they truly had "no choice" but it does seem like the alternative plan requires firing all of them, basically breaking the union. And then they can rehire the good ones.

Oh certainly - but many times, it's not necessarily the curriculum but how the material is taught. A new approach isn't about the curriculum itself, but how that material is transferred to the kids. Sometimes having new people can lead to a new approach in how to teach the material, etc.

We don't really know this for sure, though, unless we have more info than just this article. For all we know, the kids are doing fine in their 8th grade tests and then failing at the HS level. Or it could just be a bunch of kids that are coming in unprepared. We really don't know based on the article. We know that the kids are poor and minorities, but there many well be other poor/minority schools in the state that are doing much better.

 

'The Approach' is set by the school board.
How is it fair to uncuff the NEW Teachers but judge the OLD Teachers who had the restrictions on them.

I think we need to look at a system wide issue as someone state.

Are we ok with 20+ year old high school students?
I think school are just pushing some of these kids along.

How expensive will high school be if you must have teachers
teaching classes from k - 12?

maybe we need to go back to the one room school

Rocket River

 

That's not at all true. Every teacher has their own method of teaching. No school I ever attended instructed the teachers on how to teach, what homework to assign, how to interact with students, etc.

I'm not suggesting that the HS teach everything. I'm saying if the HS is getting a bunch of kids who can't read - and thus can't learn Chemistry, it makes more sense to just teach them to read instead of trying and failing to teach them Chemistry.

At the end of the day, whatever level the students are going into the school, they should learn something in 4 years. If they coming out of the school knowing no more than they did 4 years ago, the school is a failure.