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.
5 comments:
I'd really have to see the long-term stats on this school before deciding one way or the other. As I understand it nowadays public education standards are very much predicated by passing certain tests. If you don't pass each test you don't move on. With their large population of ESL students they're probably playing catch-up with a lot of the students so it's no surprise to me that only 48% pass in 4 years. How many end up passing long-term? If tons were passing in their fifth year I might give the teachers more leeway. With regards to the pay for extra time: if you pay them an average of 60,000 a year and full time work is considered 2000 hours a year that breaks down to 30/hour. 90 seems like a bit much but labor laws usually would call for them to receive at least $45 an hour. Might they have been highballing to start off negotiations, figuring they'd end up somewhere in between? Firing all the teachers seems a bit hasty to me. Surely they're not all underperforming and either way this means you're now pensioning 80 additional people. Even if newly hired teachers make significantly less they're probably breaking even after paying for the fired teachers retirements.
I agree that they probably shouldn't have fired all of the teachers-some were probably good at what they do. I think if teachers are mostly being evaluated based on test scores, those evaluations are not necessarily reflecting how good of a job they are doing. Looking back at my own high school experience, there were definitely teachers there who had been there 20 plus years who didn't seem to care at all about me learning. I think those types of teachers should be let go. But, on the other hand, I think my husband is a great teacher, but he consistently comes home and tells me MOST of the students have no motivation to be involved or try and perform well. So is that his fault? I don't think so. I don't know how to fix this problem. I enjoyed public education for the most part..but I actually cared about doing well. If we could somehow get students to want to learn, participate, and have long term career goals, that may at least be one thing that would help.
Thanks for your comments guys.
Erik - I agree that a lot more data would be helpful but I would hope the administrators had that info available and factored it into the decision. The ESL situation seems to come up a lot in underperforming schools. It seems like no one has really found a good way to handle that to good result.
Marcella - I'm not super familiar with what goes on in classes for liberal studies majors that want to be teachers. I wonder how much time is devoted toward training teachers for students that aren't motivated/don't care. You always see those movies where one teacher finds some unique way to reach out to those kind of students and get good results out of them. Could that ever become the norm in our schools rather than a rarity?
Good topic Miller! Being a teacher, this is a tough one. However, it does open up some thoughts for me as far as the situation I currently find myself in. I was pulled into the principal's office the other day and told that they would most likely be either laying me off or reducing my load next year to 60% or 80% because I have the least seniority in my department (5 years). The principal said if the decision was based on results that we would not be having this conversation. His reasons for saying this was because my student's test scores (which is another topic for another time) have increased the last four years while my fellow teachers have seen significant decreases, I am the only teacher in my department that coaches or is involved in extracurricular activity, I spend my breaks and lunches supervising students, etc. However, because we work in an environment that is run by seniority, I am the one who is looking at a possible lay-off or reduction. Miller, we both know with the lifestyle these Andersen girls are used to living a salary reduction will not work! :)
Finally to my point, if the only way this school can get rid of low performing teachers who have been around for many years, but are untouchable because of seniority, is to fire them then I am all for it. They can hire back almost half of their teachers and will be able to pick and choose the best. They can let the others graze out in the pasture.
Ryan - Thanks for commenting.
Yeah, the whole seniority system among teachers seems to be a bad setup. I understand seniority to a point but it should never supercede quality. I've never really talked to more veteran teachers that have been at it for 20+ years, but I'd be interested to hear what they have to say about the teaching profession and these issues that often times don't seem to affect them.
That sucks about your situation. Maybe you need to throw yourself into your t-shirt business or just move to wyoming and get in the cattle business.
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