Good News! EBR Drops Teacher Firing Quota; Decimation Still Looms
The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board revised its strategic plan last night and dropped its 25% teacher firing quota. This was a sensible action that will remove a misguided threat that would have really damaged the morale of teachers in this large school system.
I had stated that such a policy would have decimated the teaching force for EBR. But there is still an intentional decimation of teachers coming from our state level. My friend Herb Bassett informed me that the term "decimation" is really a Latin term that comes from a practice of the Roman army of punishing an entire unit (you really need to read this Wikipedia account of decimation) of mutinied or disobedient solders by executing one tenth of the group using a lottery system. I guess this is sort of like what White and his DOE are doing with the imposition of the 10% VAM quota. Sadly VAM is almost as indiscriminate as the execution lottery used by the Romans.
I want to remind everyone that this 10% teacher "ineffective"
I had stated that such a policy would have decimated the teaching force for EBR. But there is still an intentional decimation of teachers coming from our state level. My friend Herb Bassett informed me that the term "decimation" is really a Latin term that comes from a practice of the Roman army of punishing an entire unit (you really need to read this Wikipedia account of decimation) of mutinied or disobedient solders by executing one tenth of the group using a lottery system. I guess this is sort of like what White and his DOE are doing with the imposition of the 10% VAM quota. Sadly VAM is almost as indiscriminate as the execution lottery used by the Romans.
I want to remind everyone that this 10% teacher "ineffective"