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Stay connected… Updating our education plan: The quality of our teachers and how to insure it is at the top of our priority list.
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008, at 2:48 PM<< Previous | Read comments | Respond | Email link | Next >>
This is the fifth article in a series concerning the health of the community and obstacles we must over come in today's changing environment as it applies to us personally in Clay County.
Good teachers, bad teachers, all corporations have some of each. No sense even discussing that fact. What is this corporation doing to reward the good ones so that they will stay here and retain their fortitude and get rid of the "dead weight"? In my opinion, not much. Who is to blame? Well, at this point there is really no need to go there as just like the way the health care benefits were written up in the teachers' contract; it is ancient history. What you have right now is a school board who sees the problem and a teacher's contract that prohibits any simple way to evaluate the teacher's performance with admittedly maybe a little "good ole boy" culture thrown in that is really a hard thing to change but like other aspects of education, it's necessary in order for us to be competitive. In another piece I eluded to my age. I was in high school over 35 years ago. While in high school, my mom went back to work full time. She was a home economics teacher. What we now call consumer ed. I distinctly remember her stopping by the main office on her way to class to physically file a two week lesson plan in order for a substitute teacher have it available should she call in sick. In retrospect, this also allowed her principal to review her lesson plans to make sure that she was on track with the current school curriculum. Here we are 35 years later in Clay County and we are not doing this. One might say, "sure you were in New York where schools were huge and the principal didn't know the teacher well." But I disagree. We lived up in the Hudson Valley which except for a few bed roomers from IBM across the river, most made their living with dairy cows and apple orchards. A lot smaller than what Brazil is today for sure. Now I ask, how many of you have asked that your child have a different teacher because you grew up here and knew which ones were the better ones? How can leaving a poor teacher in place from the time he taught you to the time he is to teach your child be good for the health of our community? When you do this are you being socially responsible to the rest of the children in the community? Are you even being fair to the community? Are you being fair to the exemplary teacher who must continue to work beside this slack teacher, take up where their slack performance leaves off by catching their former students up after they leave him/her? Let's think about that good teacher even a little further. With today's budget crunch where there is no monetary reward in the good teacher's pay check that reflects their commendable performance, even documentation and eventual dismissal of a continually poorly performing teacher would be a reward of sorts. How can we fire a teacher when they've been here for years, who has not done their job but someone in the past has granted them tenure, or they had good performance until they were tenured, thinking that once tenured, they were untouchable? Documentation. How can the principals document them if they cannot keep track of what their lesson plans are and drop into their classrooms to make sure that they are actually teaching what is in their lesson plans? How many have had a math or Social Studies or other teacher who discussed football or basketball instead of teaching their course material? Sure as a student that would be neat but as a parent, would you want your child not to get what you've been paying for? What he/she needs to make a decent living out in the world today? Why aren't we requiring the teachers to file a lesson plan )this can now be done electronically so they don't even have to go to the office like my mother did)? The teachers have been asked to do this and some were quite willing to comply. After all, if you are teaching a course, you already have a lesson plan so you know what material you have to get done each day in order to get all of the material to the class in the time allowed. Wait though. There's the antiquated contract….it doesn't specifically say that the teachers have to file a lesson plan so there are a group of them who are sticking to their contract wording. Yes it does require an extra step to get that plan into the school's office one way or another. Even electronic file transfers do take precious time away from other things on the 'to do' list. Again, what are we going to do? Do we let our community continue to be shortchanged compared to other communities around us or do we need to find a way to make two sides of this contract come together? At what level do we need to intervene? Comments Showing most recent comments first [Show in chronological order instead] |
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This is how I feel Child have to take The ISTEP test if they fail they need summer school why in turn do teachers not take a test to see if they aren't teaching right? But For the teachers there are some great teachers who really care & go the extra mile to them I give my greatest respect. Then there are the who you are teachers I think they need to go. Just my opion/
Lots of commentary on this one and I'm glad to see people talking.
The Boy Scouts have an inclination as to a place that they have been. They try to leave it better than they found it. Some people, when it comes to the Clay County Schools Corporation, take the attitude that if they can solve what they determine is a problem for their child by removing that child from the situation, then they have solved the problem. They have solved the symptom of the problem that they became aware of while leaving the root cause of the problem in place.
We have a lot of good people in the corporation, yet any population of that size will always fit the bell curve of probability. You will always have a small group that exceed expections, a large group that will be close to the average, and a small group that are below the average. We need to be able to reward those employees who exceed the average greatly and have a means to prod those who are greatly below our average. That means that we must identify where the individual stands within the population.
While there may be procedures in place to identify our weaker employees, if they have had time and opportunity to improve and have not done so, what are our administrators doing about that situation? Every manager faces the same situation, that of culling the workforce of the employees that do not make the grade. No one likes to do it, but it is part of the responsibility that goes with the position.
I have not met any teacher that I felt was below our highest standards. I have heard of such, even to the point of ensuring that my son was not in a certain person's classroom. I have dealt with several situaions since the early 1990's concerning relatives within the schools, yet I found only one instance where any teacher actually did something that was out of line or failed to try to help the student. That incident happened within the last year and, when I spoke to the teacher and the administration, she freely admitted that she had stepped over a line. She could not change what had been done, but she would do her best to never do it again. That was the best that anyone could do in that particular situation. I have heard of other situations, of things that I simply cannot believe that any of our teachers would do or say, that I am not in the position to document. That responsibility lays with the people involved, not me that heard of it third hand. Will those people step forward and inform the administrators? I do not know.
Now, some people say that everything is working as it should, Jenny and I agree that is not the case. I, for one, have looked at our corporation and found that it is like a man treading water a thousand yards off of a beach. He, and our corporation, is keeping his head above water, but making little progress towards the shore, the goal of every child graduating. We have budget problems, building problems, teacher problems, bus problems,and operational problems, etc. We have no long term plans beyond a few years.
The sad part is no one, excepting the very few, want to change for the better or even try something different that just might work better. We are butting our heads against a wall, trying to knock it down when there is a hammer laying on the ground, the knowledge that is contained within our community or available to us on the Internet and elsewhere. A few people came up with a plan for our buildings, however that plan does not concur with what much of the information and data available indicate. Even worse, the data that is available on our school corporation and the rest of the corporations within the state appear to indicate that we can do better with the assets at our disposal.
However, many people do not want to see progress, they do not want to change. They will not even look at the data and try to shout you down when you speak of it. This really worries me about this community and the future of the school corporation.
Audreycat, Backhomeagain, Mrs Positive: Granted the two week plan might be an outdated one. My bringing it up was to emphasize that there needs to be something to compare current timely progress in the classroom when building administrator does his observations. How can he know that course material is getting covered if he has no "notes" to compare what he observes on his walk throughs? For most of the teachers who actually work towards getting all or most of the material covered within the semester/year I admit this direct correlation would seem a waste of time. I perfectly understand that. In the case of the teacher who is not doing his job however, by the time one realizes that less than half of the designated curriculum as described in course handbook is not being covered, the semester is over and the student can never get it back. contact me personally and I can give you specific cases. I do not want to malign a course/teacher publicly if they truly plan to follow performance improvement plan in future. I hope fervently that this type of thing my child has had to deal with gets corrected for future students, but what tools do administrators have to monitor class progress before it's too late for that specific class? It's one of those cases where there are teachers who don't need this kind of supervision as they are committed to quality teaching, but how do we monitor the few who will not or cannot get the course material at least nearly completed? I am open to suggestions and if there is in place a plan, why then are the administrators not doing this already? I can give examples of where this very thing has happened to my own children and examples of specific others as well within the past year. My child would have better spent her time in study hall or as an aid to one of the exemplary teachers and received no official credit but instead she got the credit but little useful course material.
As to the ranking of public school systems in the US, yes there is a ranking according to state and then within the individual state. It is sometimes hard to figure out as is all research. One criteria is graduation rate, one is on test scores, another is on per capita spending for each student. These ranks come out in print or you can ask one of the people in central office or school board member for that information. They might find it more quickly than googling it. Knowing the rank however isn't as important as always trying to make the school better unless you are deciding whether or not to move to a certain location and have your children attend school there. Of course our chamber of commerce and local government know that these rankings can determine outside investment in our community and we should all be trying to better our rankings through improving our school.
I don't think it useful to continue to respond to Mrs Positive on line as she is getting off topic and has been invited to get in touch with me directly as to my personal experience in management as well as my husband's if she feels our spouse's position gives credence to our own knowledge of the subject matter. She does not seem to be reading what I write as is starting to put statements on the page and erroneously crediting them to me. Best we quit right here and now within this forum as our "fencing" is not the purpose nor the topic of discussion and only fuels personal animosity which is impossible from my standpoint as I do not even know from where it comes. Contact me openly and take full credit for your statements and I will share on equal basis. Have a good day.
A couple of points.
If you want to really help the students of our community you must first engage the parents and make them value an education and instill to them what it will provide for them.
Research shows that parental involvement and socio-economic factors are the two most important criteria that determine a students success regardless of their school atmosphere. I have not heard you address any of those 2 factors even though the research clearly shows it.
Lastly, we disagree on management style. My husband is in a position of authority with many employees under him (my husband has a military background also). The way he would handle and motivate his adult workforce is greatly different then your sledgehammer effect. He works a like and respect angle with a dose of humor,humility and assertiveness. He knows that if his workers like and respect him then they will want him and thus the contracting business to succeed. He would never blanket a whole group as being imcompetent (except a select few) and attack with a sledgehammer affect to try to motivate adults.
Have you ever ran a business or have you ever been in a position of authority or are you just throwing darts from the cheap seats. It is not an easy job in today's environment.
I would challenge you to get your teaching and or administrative license and put all of your ideas to work.
Mrs "Positive":
I will attempt to respond to your concerns:
If my "elitist tone" is caused by my failure to accept the status quo, so be it. Your assumption however that I think everything in the school has been done incorrectly cannot be backed up. Repeatedly I have stated that the schools need to be improved and that there are some wonderful people working in them. I will not however be blinded to the fact that there have been some long term problems that have not been dealt with effectively in so long a period that they have escalated out of control.
I actually agree with you that the amount of parental involvement greatly determines the success rate of the student. The fact is however that many parents do not realize this and think that all is in place to give their child the optimum educational experience. This is impossible in ANY school. These students would benefit greatly if we as responsible, caring, and moral individuals of the community make an effort to constantly strive to improve things whenever possible for our fellow citizens. That is the purpose of my writing. If an individual sees a problem, it is their responsibility to try to correct it. Not just for their own child but for all of the students in the county. We've said it's not my job and let someone else do it for too long. That is why our country is having so many problems. We must impower ourselves and together we can accomplish great things. If we all think someone else is going to do it, it will never get done.
I do not make excuses for my children. I do not remove them from a class when I feel a teacher is not doing their job. I tell my kids that they will come upon people all through life who do not do their jobs...but unlike you, I then try to identify a problem so it can get better for the future students so they can have the benefit of a more well taught course. Does it always work out that way? Of course not. Does it take years to improve at times? Sure, but if no one ever says anything, it will never improve. My kids have had some wonderful teachers here and my compliments about them have not only been directed to the teacher at times but I make positive comments to the principal so hopefully it will be recorded in their personnel file.
If you were a teacher and had one of my children in your class you would only have to worry if your teaching was inneffective, or you weren't covering what was in the course description. Hence if you would do everything you could to get my kids out of your class, you would be making excuses. The very same thing you just said was NOT the thing to do. It works both ways.
Putting on a "positive" face all the time does nothing to improve things and in my opinion only demonstrates that the individual doesn't truly care about striving to get the best possible educational experience for all the students in the community.
As to widening the gap between the teachers and the community...Maybe some of the teachers do not appreciate that my comments have enabled some to remove their blinders and made some realize that they are no longer in the comfort zone of denial. I'll wager however that an equal number are thankful that at last we are finally talking about a problem that the community has been in denial over for a very long time..In some cases from when many of today's parents were in the classroom themselves. I'll repeat what I've said several times in this forum. We have some wonderful teachers here and we have some who should have been removed a long time ago. I still feel that way. It's when we stop trying to improve things that we become complacent and start to slide down the slippery slope. By your comments it sounds like you are satisfied to do just that and the people that have commented about my statements to you, may feel similarly. If these are teachers, maybe it is their performance that they do not want being judged, for simply one woman's blog alone is not going to jeopardize their position; only multiply people bringing forth legitimate complaints over a period of time can accomplish that.
Have a good day.
Just a question... I was reading one of the South Florida newspapers where I used to live. They were also bemoaning the lack of funding, cutbacks, personnel freezes etc.
In the story they listed the ranking of various schools in the county. They apparently are graded on an A to F scale. My question is are the Indiana schools also graded? And if so where do our schools rank?? Just curious on how we compare.
If I am to "leave no child behind" as is mandated, a two week lesson plan would be useless by day three. We have curriculum guidelines that outline very specifically what we are to cover in a given time period. If I can provide evidence that I have completed these tasks that should be enough proof that I am doing my job. I don't see the point of filing a plan of what I intend to do if everything in my day goes smoothly. The individual needs of around 150 students tend to disrupt even the best of plans. Evidence of what I acutally got done would be more useful in evaluating my preformance. My principal already has access to that information in the form of my personal plan book(which is not detailed two weeks in advance), graded work, and student accounts. Isn't that how most employees are judged, by what they've done not what they intended to do?
I will be direct and to the point; Mrs. Moore seems to set an elitist tone on everything issue she spouts about. I think she has a bad case of superiority complex and frankly her views have chaffed and widened the gap between teachers and the community. She thinks everything that is done here is wrong and that all the people who work in the school corporation wake up in the morning to make life as miserable and as unstimulating as they can for students.
I have had 3 kids go thru this school system and all 3 will be successful because they have PARENTS who are involved in their education. I will say that we have had teachers who were better then others but that is life and they will have to work with all kinds of people and bosses. Don't let your children make excuses! Let them know they have to adapt and adjust to what life presents them. I say kudos to all teachers and thanks for choosing a tough career with little fanfare and appreciation.
My kids are better because of the teachers who have touched their lives and I just wonder if Mrs. Moore has EVER thanked a teacher or the school for anything that they have provided for her children. I know one thing; if I were a teacher I would do everything in my power to get Mrs. Moore's children moved out of my class. WHO would want the headache. THANKS AGAIN to all the teachers and the positive contributions you have made to our community.
I was told about a year ago that I didn't know the problems that our school corporation has. As I started looking into the corporation, I find more and more problems. I find people taking their children out of our schools. When a person points out a different solution than what is current practice, the argument is always made that we have a practice in place to take care of the situation.
We have "words on paper" in our policy books, but our practices do not seem to be working.
In a conversation today, a person told me that I have been referred to within the school corporation as a radical. When I see our education system concentrating on everything but education, I feel that we need radical change.
We are operating our buildings, budget, and classes like it is the 1950's. While we have Internet access and a telephone in every classroom, the teachers and administrators talk to parents like the parents do not know their own children.
Many questions that I have raised in the passed year came from my reading on websites of national organizationa like the American Association of School Administrators and much of the data that I have used to illustrate points came directly from the Indiana Dept. of Education website, yet most of the school corporation employees appear to be unaware of such things or are in denial that there are other methods of resolving our problems. When I had to explain to the school corporation that the Capital Projects Fund was for construction and challenge them to debate the issue publicly before they would read the words of the law, I knew we had a problem.
Jenny has been making her points on the problem situations. I hope that I have. The community needs to get involved with our school corporation. Not just as citizens, but as the owners. We need to start having public meetings and start going through the corporation from stem to stern, top of the mast to the keel, identifying what is working and what is not and do something about it. It doesn't matter whether the faulty problem is a building, building operating procedure, teacher, teacher practice, administrator, administration policy, budget practice, security practice or policy or whatever, if it needs to be changed, we need to change it.
A lot of people have said lately that we need to step into the 21st century, but they want to keep things as they are. How does that work? Isn't progress about change?
I dont take it that anyone is wanting to lynch anyone. As far as solutions, you must know what the problems are first.There are good employees and there are bad ones, it is like this any corportation, business, ect. Unfortunatly, the good ones must suffer at the expense of the bad ones. You would think if you are doing your job and trying to be the best at whatever or where ever you work, you would want the bad ones to be held accountable for their work.
Why not just have a good lynching and start over with a chosen few! GEEZ And you wonder why the schools are in the mess they are in. SOLUTIONS>>> NOT PROBLEMS!
After having several incidents with a particular teacher, I tried to set up a meeting with her, only to be told I needed to set up a "team" meeting. I registered a complaint with the Principal, and also with the superintendent.
We met with the team, and they proceeded to inform me of every thing my child had done wrong from Lying(which they could give no examples and proof) to laughing in class (often an involuntary process) and to even having a rolled up ball of paper on his desk. (No he didn't throw it, but he could've been thinking of doing that.)
When I tried to turn the discussion to the actions of the teacher, I was told by the principal that that was a private issue that he would handle. I was also told that I didn't have any right to know how they handled the issue, (teachers privacy act) which really infuriated me as I pay her salary and in effect, am her boss.
I even asked to have my son removed from her class, only to be told that was not possible because of the "team" he was on. My son spent several miserable weeks under her damaging influence where he tried to get along with her and realize that "not every teacher will like you or be nice." End result was a lack of learning because he spent all his time trying to avoid getting in trouble and none of it learning.
In this instance, after visiting the school several times, volunteering in the school, speaking with school board members and the superintendent, I truly felt that they weren't going to do anything positive, and so I removed my son from the school.
There certainly is a need for some plan of action for dealing with parental complaints, however, you may have noticed the attitude of the entire district, "Well, it gets better when they get to Northview." great attitude, and not much help for children who spend THREE years in that environment.
I agree that a peer review board or a board review by randomly selecting parents for a survey might be a good idea. When teachers have to account for their own actions or inaction, like most employees do, maybe we will get some improvement.
tbrackman1:
Our experience with team teaching at NCMS was not a good one either but for different reasons. In theory the "team" coordinates efforts for melding subject matter together but in reality some teachers did not coordinate work load nor work with the other teachers who were not part of the core subject teams. All the way through middle school my kids went from boredom to homework overload depending upon the day of the week and where they were in the marking period. The bulk of the teachers did not assign work for the week but most of the time "due next day". They did not coordinate this so many nights there were no homework assignments and then one night there was homework for every class. Coursework was not paced, and piled on even more towards the end of the marking period in some classes. In other classes the coursework was far below the grade level and agonizingly tedious [Yes I did document this and bring it to the attention of the administration 2 years in a row]. It was quite frustrating for the student. A more explicit course syllibus for each course that includes assignments is needed for both the administration and the student so that they can plan out their work load to make sure that they have time to complete the work for all of the courses. Initially I had thought that the team approach was going to take care of this but it does not and does not take into consideration the work assignments of the art, phys ed, consumer ed, etc. course work on top of the core subjects. I did bring this to the attention of the administration but for whatever reason it was not addressed when my kids were there. The administration in that building has been changed quite a lot. One can only surmise that there may be more underlying issues present that are being faced??
The poor teacher issue is another matter. You "fixed" it for your child by removing him from the school, but what did you do to try to correct the situation for the other children of the community? This is the main point of my writing these pieces. We cannot blame the teachers, the administration, nor the school board because we are not making our presence known to address the problems. WE are the ones who need to be actively seeking change. If we are complacent, thinking that others will see the problems and initiate changes, why would those others not feel the same; thinking that they should do nothing as well? You cannot correct the past but maybe next time things aren't right, you and others will approach the problem in a different manner. Again, at NCMS there are some great teachers but having great teachers is not enough if the system under which they operate is not working for the student.
More of us need to show up to meet with building administrator with documentation of teachers deficits and to follow up to make sure something has been done. We need to meet with the administrator, the building union rep, and the teacher, preferably along with our child so all views can be heard and sorted out. We need to ask that our complaint be recorded in the individual's personnel file explicitly as one complaint may well be a personality conflict but a pattern of complaints over several years will show a pattern of deficiency that cannot be ignored. For the most part effort has not been made on the part of parents and administrators to make sure this has been done; so along with the stellar teachers in our corporation, all have had to bear the ones who should have been removed years ago. Some may say I am quite callous saying this, but I feel that for every ineffectual teacher we let remain, we are being ever so much more callous to those students and teachers who have to bear them continually on a daily basis year after year.
I agree also, Jenny. One other thing that bothers me is the "Team Teacher" mentality at NCMS.
On the surface having a group of teachers that team up daily or weekly to discuss problems, etc. sounds really great. However, when you have one of the "problem" teachers that has a personality conflict with your child, I have found that this opinion can infect the rest of the teachers on that team, and your child is unfairly targeted for censure.
I moved my child to Clay City and my results have floored me. My child that hated school, wasn't involved in any activities and did poorly, now enjoyed school so much that when summer break came, he was upset. He had joined the YFC and wants to go out for basketball. His comments about the difference are that at CC everyone is for you and at NCMS everyone is against you. What a lesson to teach our next generation.
Unfortunately, his attitude is because of two "bad apples" spoiling the whole pie.
Granted that the two week time span may not now be appropriate, but correct me if I'm wrong, the CCSC teacher is not required to have a lesson plan on file unless specifically requested by building administrator. I would love to find myself to be incorrect about this but have been told by two building administrators that this is not a standing requirement.
I do not mean to be demeaning Russ. I just was stating that it's bad enough that a good teacher can't get compensated financially on merit. It's worse when they end up "covering" deficits for poor teachers in order for the student to get the most out of the subject matter. I've seen the gifted teachers here be assigned more and more until they are burned out and leave. They are given so much to do because others know that they will get the job done. If the poor teacher was given an improvement plan in a more timely manner in this corporation, they would either improve or be gone. Then the good teachers NOR the students would have to deal with the deficit. My kids have had great teachers helping them with courses outside of class because the class in which they were enrolled had a teacher who couldn't or wouldn't do the job. No, disciplining one teacher isn't a legitimate subsitute in lieu of merit pay for another, but better than what's been happening in many instances in this corporation for many years. Again can only blame ourselves for not pushing the issue and only blame the administrators when we do push it and nothing happens. We already have a discipline and improvement plan for teachers in place as has been stated before, it's just not being used to the extent it should be. The corporation can get rid of a non performing teacher. It just takes documentation, at least two failed improvement plans and about 2 years time. Parents historically have been only worried about their own kids, not the others in community and some of the administrators have not been able to reach out of their comfort zone to deal with the issues when they get a complaint. We have let quite a number of non performing teachers continue for a lot longer than 2 years due to our attitude of thinking someone else is going to take care of it. It just doesn't happen that way. We are all responsible for trying to make things better. Whether we call it our civic duty, our religious belief, our hometown pride.
My article is not to put down the teachers in Clay County, but to more firmly support the good ones so that they will stay here and have more support from better fellow teachers. It's a win/win situation.
I hesitate to support a peer review system outright as historically I've seen that SOME administrators even have come up from the ranks of the teachers and have enough trouble as it is disciplining their former peers in favor of improving conditions for the students and fellow teachers. I am hopefuly that in some buildings at least this has been identified and the administrators can get out of their comfort zone to do their job effectively or they will be the ones needing an improvement plan...Just as in the teacher ranks, we have some administrators who are better than others at their jobs as well.
There is already an evaluation procedure within the teacher contract. Making plans for a two-week time span seems a bit antiquated to me. If a teacher is assessing and teaching to the needs of the students, such a lesson plan would be unsuitable. Principals can require lessons plans for review. My principal requires lesson plans to be easily located. Teachers without appropriate lesson plans can find this documented on their evaluation as a weakness if the principal so chooses.
I find the following comment made by Jenny to be demeaning: "With today's budget crunch where there is no monetary reward in the good teacher's pay check that reflects their commendable performance, even documentation and eventual dismissal of a continually poorly performing teacher would be a reward of sorts."
Good points, Jenny! I had teachers who were easy to throw off track with discussions of sports at Clay City in the 1970's.
I chose to put my son in a different class during his schooling due to an opinion expressed by another parent who happened to also be a teacher.
I would like to recommend a peer review system within our teaching corps or a fitness review by administration. Either would identify problems, however, people must also be given the opportunity to disagree with a poor review and given time to make improvement before termination.