They Fired all the Teachers!

I heard a story on the radio today and decided to look it up online for some more details. Here's the scoop according to ABCNews:

The school board has decided to fire all 74 teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. Here's some stats on the school:

- about 800 students

- only 48% graduate in 4 years

- 96% are eligible for free or reduced-fee lunches

- 65% Hispanic, 14% Black, 13% White

- 25% receive English as a second language instruction

- Secondary teacher's in Rhode Island are paid on average $60,000, the national average is $50,000

The school is considered chronically underperforming by the state and the superintendent had a choice among four federally guided models to choose for the high school in an effort to improve. The choice was one that would lengthen the school day by 25 minutes, require teachers to receive additional training during the summer, eat lunch with the students once a week, provide more tutoring to students, and submit to more rigorous evaluations. The plan would pay the teacher's $30/hr for the extra time. The teacher's wanted to be paid $90/hr for the extra time so they rejected the proposal. The superintendent then recommended a "turnaround" model which means firing all the teachers and restricting the school to hiring back no more than 50% of the ones fired.

So what do you think? Is this the right course of action given the circumstances? Do you have an alternative solution that might be helpful?

Here's a few comments from teachers at the school that I heard on the news report, I've included my responses to these people in green. I don't mean to be too insensitive but I feel the need to write responses. You are welcome to respond if you want to.

"I've been at Central Falls for 28 years and I have done nothing to deserve to be fired, I give my heart, my soul to my job" - Consistently not producing the results that are demanded is a reason people get fired all the time. If you truly are giving your heart and soul to the job and you still aren't getting good results then you are not a good fit in that job.

"I'm heartbroken, I would do anything for this school system, I've done everything I can" - You would not do anything for the school because you rejected the plan to put in a little bit more time to try and improve.

"I'm disheartened, I feel like after 20 years I can see some progress beginning to be made and I'm sad that we're not gonna be around to follow that through, to push that forward." - 20 years! 20 years and you are just starting to see some progress. I'm sorry but no one gets a period of 20 years to turn around job performance.

Speaking strictly about this situation I think it is reasonable to fire the teachers. Obviously they are considered responsible for the school's graduation rate and it is not at an acceptable level. If you don't perform at the expected level you get fired, that seems in accordance with most workplaces. They were offered a different solution and said no, so I think the superintendent doesn't really have another choice. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have offered to pay them for the extra time, I thought the extra $30/hr was a generous offer.

I'm curious if this will re-ignite the tough questions that surround our education system. Like, should we have stricter evaluations of our teachers, and if so how do we do it? Should we make the extra efforts to educate students that don't speak English? Should we keep pouring effort into kids that aren't willing to try in school? Should schools be privatized or remain public but be managed by charter school type companies? Should teacher's go through more rigorous training to prepare them for the challenges they are going to face? Do we need longer school days?

The list goes on and on. It seems like it is easier to just ignore these questions and keep trying with things as they are. But I'm not sure that's the best thing for us to do.

Sorry for the lengthy post, hopefully it wasn't too dull. Feel free to comment, I'm curious about your thoughts on this stuff.

Vocabulary I Should Know

Anytime I hear or read a word that I feel like I should know I make it a point to look it up. Sometimes these words are common knowledge and I feel stupid for not knowing them and sometimes they are uncommon words that I've never heard before. In some cases I will hear a word and am familiar enough to know what the person means and I could even use the word myself but I couldn't give a true definition for it.

So without further delay, here are some words I have looked up in the last week or so. If you know these words already then good for you. If you haven't then maybe you can try to use them in the next few days.

Dogmatic - Root word dogma - 1. A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.
2. An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true.
3. A principle or belief or a group of them

Psychosis - 1. a mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate impaired contact with reality.
2. any severe form of mental disorder, as schizophrenia or paranoia.

Anorexia (I saw this one in a medical dictionary and it occured to me I had never thought of it independent of anorexia nervosa) - 1. loss of appetite and inability to eat.

Allay - 1. to put (fear, doubt, suspicion, anger, etc.) to rest; calm; quiet.
2. to lessen or relieve; mitigate; alleviate: to allay pain.

Dissemble - 1. to give a false or misleading appearance to; conceal the truth or real nature of: to dissemble one's incompetence in business.
2. to put on the appearance of; feign: to dissemble innocence.
3. Obsolete. to let pass unnoticed; ignore.

Somewhat common words but I couldn't have defined them for you. Hopefully one or two of them are new to you, I'll be sure to give you more as I hear or read them in the future.

Cool Little Shop

On Sunday Amy, Brittany, Tim and I went out to LA for an exciting little adventure. We went to Galco's Soda Pop Stop (http://www.sodapopstop.com/). It is a pretty awesome store. This guy has over 500 types of soda and none of it is coke and pepsi products. He gets stuff from all over the world and it is all in glass bottles which apparently maintains its flavor and carbonation better than plastic bottles. The guy who runs the store is pretty cool. Here's a link to where I found out about the guy, its a cool little video, http://videos.komando.com/2009/10/11/amazing-soda-shop/

I Included some pictures up above of some of the sodas we bought, but here's a list.

Double Cola

Bubble Up

Rat Bastard Root Beer

Leninade

Mr. Cucumber "The Original Cucumber Soda"

Route 66 Orange Soda

Izze Sparkling Clementine

Virgil's Black Cherry Cream Soda

Dr. Pepper - The Original Flavor

Moxie

Jack Black's Blue Cream Soda

Kickapoo Joy Juice

Sioux City Sarsaparilla

Sweet Blossom "The Original Rose Petals Soda"

Chocolate Soda

This was a pretty cool little shop and I recommend it to anyone who happens to be out in LA. You'll certainly find a soda you like and if you don't, you'll at least have fun searching for one. They also have like 400 varieties of beer and a bunch of old fashioned candy brands.