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

May I ask what is your profession?

Rocket River

 

Respect is a huge part of the problem - the other part is parental involvement. Most parents in low income areas do NOT respect the teachers at all & this is reflected in the students. Teachers have no way of making a kid study at home or do their homework. Many parents have the "Not My Child" syndrome whereas when the child Is disciplined at school, many times the parents will take the side of the kid. Or if their is a problem, often the parents won't respond to calls home or will not come to Parent-teacher meetings, etc. Children won't listen to a teacher if their own parents talk bad about the teacher to the kid.

I grew up in a lower income area, and it was amazing how DEAD open night was at the school. Nobody came..those kids whose parents were there..were the kids that did well.

I realize some parents have 2 jobs..etc, etc. But my mother worked OT each week and went to school at night - she was rarely around-but ANY time a teacher had an issue with me, you can bet she responded quickly & she always kept up with whether or not I did my homework.

My wife's been teaching in a upper-middle class district for 15yrs, but she still has a few parents who don't respond to her & its amazing the difference in the kids who have that parental help. Wheareas she has friends in lower-income districts and there is not a lot you can do with a Middle-school kid who throws a DESK at the teacher, meanwhile the parent does little to back up the teacher.

The problem is not going to go away by throwing more money at it (or at the teachers in that situation). Its only going to go away by somehow attracting the parents in the community to become a partner in their childs education and by finding a way to pull them into the kids school life.

 

Aside from the fact the new superintendant want to score some poltical points.

It really sucks that rampant individualism, pull your self up by your boot straps and libertarian/conservative fallacies about the role of a decent society in supporting families produce such poor results for American's children.

Let's blame the the teachers. It is much cheaper to fire them and pretend it is all their fault. Kids with one or no parents because a million are locked up for drug offenses. No free afterschool programs so kids go home to crime-ridden apt complexes and neighborhoods while their parents work at minimum wage jobs that pay less than in other advanced economiess, starting the slide to JV offenses and prison where American leads the world. etc. etc. etc.

Pray for the kids, have them read the bible more and pretend it is all the teachers and some incentive pay and a bit of tough love for the teachers and all will be hunky dory.

Too bad our kids can't get a good deal like other economically advanced countries.

 

That was my first thought:

There's a HUGE difference between 28.80 an hour and $90 an hour.

 

Maybe off a little - ($60,000 / 52 weeks / 40 hours per week).
I think they get off 12 weeks a year
and
according to some of the children of teachers and teachers
the 40 hour week is a bit of myth so it may balance out.

Rocket River

 

Actually, teachers only get paid for the days they have students..so their hourly rate is actually much higher. They can get paid only during the 9 months, or they can spread their paychecks through the next 3 months (which most teachers do). so - avg. salary in RI is 54K / 40 weeks/40hours is 33.75 an hour. (although, my wife usually puts in over 9hrs in each day, not 8)

interesting stat I found - While the Avg. Starting salary in RI is 33K, the average Salary is 54K
In Texas - Avg starting salary is 33K as well, but the average salary is only 41K.

Only thing I can figure is that since Texas is continuously adding schools, we have a lot more teachers with less experience, therefore making less money.

 

They are making an extra $30 per hour, not making $30/hr. If they are making $28.85 per hour and getting an extra $30 per hour, that's better than time and a half. That's better than double time!

 

That's not really clear from the article - if you put the emphasis here, it reads differently:

it only offered them an extra $30 per hour for the extra work required by the plan

So for the extra hours being added, they get $30/hr. It's not real clear what they tried to say, though.

 

Of course, you're just making wild assumptions about the neighborhood these kids are in, the crime levels, the parental involvement, etc. It's interesting that you automatically assume the school is not at all at fault and teachers shouldn't be judged at all.

 

Yes sir, they will have to put more effort next time around.

 

Sixty-five percent of the students are Hispanic
_____

Rhode Island... wut ?

 

25% are English as a Second Language students

Rocket River
I wonder how many Spanish Speaking Teachers they had

 

Its pretty much all the kids not giving any effort, the teachers have little to do with the failure rate in most cases. Those who don't think so obviously haven't been in school a while

 

You know how to help solve illiteracy in today's high schools? A mandatory filter on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace that won't allow a message to be composed or sent without passing a built-in spelling and grammar checker.

I'm only half kidding.

 

We should have one of those for Cluchfans as well.

 

If I was teaching I wouldn't want to spend more time with the crap kids that don't want to learn, so make it worth my while by paying me.

 

Excellent question. Imagine if 25% of the people in your office were unable to speak with the other 75%. How much would it slow down your productivity? How much time would you spend every day just trying to facilitate communication between staff members? There are a whole lot of issues in this district that go beyond just lazy teachers. I'm not saying the teachers were 100% right, or that the district is 100% right. But it's way too easy to just say "We'll fire all the teachers and bring in new ones." That doesn't address all the issues that have caused this situation. It strikes me as a Superintendent trying to make some headline-making move to keep his job.

 

Of course, you have no idea how much of this is already accounted for when looking at the performance of the school. And you have no idea what other steps were taken outside of the restructuring plan. For all we know, there's another school in the same district that gets the same level of students and performs substantially better, for example.

On a side-note, the teachers'-union-friendly US Dept of Education has come out in strong support of the district, going so far as to call the decision "courageous".

 

And for all we know there isn't. Your point? There is nothing in the article that indicates what steps, if any, were taken by the district to remedy this situation before it came to this point. It irks me to no end to hear people vilifying teachers for not trying hard enough when they A.) have no idea what goes on behind the scenes in the day-to-day operations of a school district and B.) have never taught a class in their life. Tell me, Major, how long have you been a teacher?

Puh-lease. The DOE may be give the appearance of being "union-friendly", but when a pissing match occurs between a district and it's teachers, they will always side with the district. Why? Because teachers cost money, while districts are willing to cut just about anything to save money. And the DOE is all about money. Always has been, always will be.

 

My point is that you're making a bunch of assumptions about the Superintendent without having the facts to back it up.

The point is that if the school sucks, why retain the teachers? They may or may not be any good. 3% of the students are passing the math proficiency requirements. In the worst case, that number goes to 0% - big deal. The teachers may or may not be part of the problem - but they were given the opportunity to stay and played a game of chicken with the district and lost. That was their choice.

If the school is a complete failure, there's no harm in starting over. Even if the new people suck, you're still at complete failure. If they don't, maybe you make some progress. The bottom line is that these teachers are adding no value to the school right now because the school isn't accomplishing anything. There's no point in having people there who aren't able to help the students, no matter how good they might be. (By the way, it wasn't only the teachers that were fired - all the staff, principal, administrators, etc go also)

The district isn't cutting teachers - it's just changing out teachers. Besides which, it's all local money - the DOE's finances aren't affected at all by this.