All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

[Blackstar*]

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'"><span style="font-size: 11pt">All educators fired at underperforming RI school</span></span>

The Associated Press
Wednesday, February 24, 2010; 9:58 AM

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. -- A Rhode Island school district has voted to fire all the teachers at an underperforming school.

The Central Falls School Committee voted Tuesday evening to fire every educator at Central Falls High School, including teachers, guidance counselors and the principal.

It's the only school in the tiny, impoverished city north of Providence. Only about half its students graduate, and only 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.

The plan was developed because of a federal effort to makeover failing schools.

The Central Falls Teachers Union says it is reviewing legal options and hasn't decided what action to take.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan applauds the decision and says &quot;when schools continue to struggle we have a collective obligation to take action.&quot;

Source

[CeaBee]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

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CRCT cheating details revealed
AJC Exclusive: Records obtained by AJC provide closer look at how far educators might go to ensure good grades

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:23 a.m. Friday, February 12, 2010

On a late June day two years ago, two DeKalb County school administrators panicked.

A few dozen of their elementary school students had just finished high-stakes summer retests — exams first taken in spring but not passed. With just a glance at the answer sheets, Atherton Elementary School Principal James Berry and Assistant Principal Doretha Alexander saw they were in trouble.

“We cannot not make AYP,” Alexander said. Not making AYP, or adequate yearly progress, meant not meeting a required federal benchmark. These students, all fifth-graders, also faced being held back if they did not pass.

“OK,” Berry answered. He pulled a pencil from a cup on Alexander’s desk. “I want you to call the answers to me.”

With that, he began to erase the students’ answers.

State officials announced Wednesday that 191 schools — 10 percent of Georgia’s public elementary and middle schools — will be investigated for possible cheating on state tests. It was the second time in as many years that the state’s testing program has come under fire.

The first was last year, when Berry and Alexander got swept up in a groundbreaking audit by the state that included an “erasure analysis” of student answer sheets. In the subsequent scandal, officials found tampering at three other elementary schools besides Atherton, including those in Atlanta and Fulton and Glynn counties.

The state sanctioned 13 educators, banning them from its public schools for at least 90 days. None of those cases, however, was resolved as fast as Berry’s and Alexander’s. Both were the first to be investigated and both received among the harshest penalties. The state banned Alexander for a year; Berry’s ban lasts for two years, the harshest sanction the state imposed.

Neither appealed. Now, their case files are public. Obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under Georgia’s Open Records Act, the files reveal details for the first time how Berry and Alexander cheated — and how cheating may have occurred in other schools.

Both Berry and Alexander signed affidavits. Berry admits to erasing and replacing answers; Alexander says she called out the correct answers to Berry but did not personally alter tests. Both also initially denied that they had knowledge of improper activity during the administration of the tests at their school, according to the files.

Berry’s attorney, Jackie Patterson, said Berry acted out of a misguided belief that he was helping his students. “He acknowledges he made a major mistake,” Patterson said. Neither Alexander nor her attorney, Don Samuel, returned calls for comment.

Read the rest here

[julie*mango]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

wow...


i can just hear the teachers


we are educators dammit...not god...you give us crap to turn into gold....we start molding then they go home and turn right back into the crap we started working on...



eta...mi read weh dem seh di board did ask di teachers fi do longer sch hours an tutoring pon di side widout raise an di teachers refuse...

[evanovitch]

A Vote to Fire All Teachers at a Failing High School


By KATIE ZEZIMA
Published: February 23, 2010 NYT

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — A plan to dismiss the entire faculty and staff of the only public high school in this small city just west of the Massachusetts border was approved Tuesday night at an emotional public meeting of the school board.


The board voted 5 to 2 to accept a plan proposed by Schools Superintendent Frances Gallo to fire the approximately 100 faculty and staff members at the chronically underperforming Central Falls High School on the last day of this school year in June.

The plan will also create a new school governance structure and requires the high school’s new teachers to take part in “professional development” that meets federal standards.

As soon as the meeting ended, the board went into a closed session and members were not available for comment.

Dr. Gallo said during the meeting that she chose what she called a “turnaround” plan, one of four offered by the state, after the teachers’ union rejected conditions in another state plan that called for increased hours without the promise of salary increases.

“Union leadership went too far because I would not commit to monetary incentives,” Dr. Gallo said.

Teachers and union members said Dr. Gallo and the board had not bargained with them in good faith.

“We have been at the table,” Jane Sessums, president of the Central Falls Teachers Union, said at a premeeting rally at a local park attended by hundreds of teachers, students and supporters. “They have not been willing to bargain.”

Dr. Gallo said she had been instructed by the state commissioner of education, Deborah A. Gist, to choose one of the four state reform plans, which were modeled on federal recommendations and included the school’s closing. Central Falls High is one of six of the state’s lowest-achieving — the only one not in Providence — and has a four-year graduation rate of 48 percent. It has 800 students.

Dr. Gallo has 120 days to submit a more detailed plan to the state.

On Tuesday night, several hundred teachers and students, many wearing Central Falls High’s colors of red and blue, packed into the meeting, shouting at Dr. Gallo and school board members. As a board member read the names of people slated for termination, many people were crying.

Joe Travers, 44, a longtime physical education teacher, said after the vote: “They sat up there, looked us in the eye, told us we were not good enough. That’s an embarrassment.”

[Gen]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

yes pretty much-yuh did see randi response to that


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: _____</div><div class="ubbcode-body">wow...


i can just hear the teachers


we are educators dammit...not god...you give us crap to turn into gold....we start molding then they go home and turn right back into the crap we started working on...



eta...mi read weh dem seh di board did ask di teachers fi do <span style="font-weight: bold">longer sch hours an </span><span style="font-weight: bold">tutoring pon di side widout raise an di teachers refuse</span>... </div></div>

[Blackstar*]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

February 24, 2010
<span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">A Jumble of Strong Feelings After Vote on a Troubled School</span></span>
By KATIE ZEZIMA

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Like many other teenagers in this troubled city, Sheila Gomes said she found a surrogate family outside her home at Central Falls High School.

But with the school board’s decision on Tuesday to dismiss the entire faculty as part of a turnaround plan for the chronically underperforming school, some say they are losing one of the few constants in the state’s poorest city, where 41 percent of children live in poverty and 63 percent of the high school’s students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

“My teachers, they’re there for me. They push me forward,” said Ms. Gomes, a 17-year-old senior whose father is largely absent and whose mother works long hours at a factory. “My parents, they tried to, but they don’t know how. I don’t think they fully know me as a person to help me.”

This former mill town of about 19,000, where unemployment is 13.8 percent, is now embroiled in a battle over school reform similar to those that have taken place in troubled districts in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, where officials have tried to fix failing schools by starting over with new staff members. Seventy-four teachers and 19 staff members in Central Falls will lose their jobs.

“The status quo needs to change,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview. “This is not the kind of stability I want. I’m looking for improvement.”

Teachers acknowledge that change is needed — the school’s graduation rate is 48 percent, and only 7 percent of students are proficient in mathematics by 11th grade — but they say they are struggling against difficult odds.

“We’re carrying this immense burden here,” said George McLaughlin, 60, a guidance counselor at the school. “We have a bag of bricks on our back that you don’t get at places where it’s taken for granted that everyone will succeed.”

Central Falls has always been a city of immigrants, and boasts that it crowds “the whole world” into just over a square mile. Densely packed with triple-deckers, Central Falls calls itself “a city with a bright future,” but the poverty rate has consistently been high and the budget low.

In 1991, Central Falls transferred operation of its schools to the state. The city maintains the buildings, but state and federal financing pays for the schools.

The system is under the direction of Rhode Island’s education board, which deemed it one of the state’s six worst-performing schools, instructing the superintendent, Frances Gallo, to choose one of four federally mandated models for school turnaround. Dr. Gallo said she chose the model called a “turnaround” plan after the teachers union rejected conditions in another state plan.

While teachers and students at the close-knit school said they considered one another family, Dr. Gallo said the current model was not working.

“If it’s such a family, then how do you account for losing more than half your family each year?” Dr. Gallo said, referring to the dropout rate. “We are about to change the culture of Central Falls.”

But many in the school think the culture of the school is one of its biggest assets.

“I leave here at 6, 7 at night, working with kids, coaching, getting lesson plans, doing interactive literacy. That’s what people don’t see,” said Frank DelBonis, who teaches history to English as a Second Language students in a school where 70 percent of students are Hispanic.

Other teachers said progress was hampered by the high turnover at the school, where one in three students leaves each year.

“They’re a transient community. It’s more than test grades,” said Kathy Casalino, a math teacher. “We give them a family. We show them how to live.”

Theresa Agonia, 18, a freshman at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I., is one of dozens of former students who are returning to the school to protest the move. She attended a rally before the board meeting Tuesday night.

“I feel like they’re saying my education, my certificate, was worth nothing,” said Ms. Agonia, who graduated in 2009. “I worked for my diploma, as everyone else did. To be just a statistic is hurtful.”

Hope Evanoff, a French teacher, said she felt the decision was undermining her career.

“It makes you feel like all of your expertise, all that you know, any degree you might have, is worthless,” Ms. Evanoff said. “I’ve never been fired from anything, and to be fired, it’s devastating.”

The faculty members have been offered counseling by the district, according to one of the fired teachers.

The Central Falls Teachers Union plans to fight the plan, saying it comes in the middle of a three-year contract.

Dr. Gallo said the district was “looking for partners” like Teach for America to provide teachers for the school, which has also been receiving “résumés from all over the nation” as news of the plan spread.

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican and a former math teacher, said he supported the board’s decision, calling it “courageous,” and he criticized the union as being an “obstacle” to change.

“We can no longer stand by as our schools underperform,” Mr. Carcieri said in a statement.

But Ms. Agonia and others said they would keep fighting.

“These teachers mean a lot to me,” she said. “They didn’t turn their back on me, and I won’t turn my back on them.”

Source

[Blackstar*]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

It looks like the problems go way beyond what the teachers can do. 70% of the students are Hispanic, and the school has courses for students earning English as a second language! After reading this latest update, I don't know what to think.

[CeaBee]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

from i read the first article i thought that the teachers were being treated unfairly.

How could EVERY SINGLE teacher in the school, be incompetent?

Also, looking at the article that I posted regarding the pressure to achieve testing standards, I have to wonder if this is really the best way of assessing the teachers and children.

but if not this, then what? (not a rhetorical question, btw )

[Blackstar*]

Re: All Teachers Fired at Underperforming School

When I see children from &quot;underprivileged&quot; neighborhoods they are no more stupid than those from &quot;overprivileged&quot; areas. I do think that even more than book learning, they need instruction on manners, self-control, and adjusting their conduct to suit different situations. They need space to spread out their books and study. They need a bed to get enough sleep that regenerates their minds and bodies. They need to be amongst people who won't mock them for striving. Even the best teachers can only do so much.

I'm not really answering your question, CB, but I don't know what's to be done.