Message from a Florida Teacher on the Discriminatory Impact of High Stakes Testing on Students in High Poverty Communities
But there is something about teacher accountability that everyone seems to be missing. I worked at a school with an extremely transient population for two years. We had more than a 50% transiency rate in a highly impoverished neighborhood. For purposes of teacher accountability, the only students that "counted" toward our evaluation were the ones at school for the 20-day count. That mean
Why Teachers Need Tenure and Due Process:
Teaching is an incredibly "political" profession. The content of curriculum, as well as school budgets and hiring policies are the subject of intense debate from local school districts through legislators. Public officials, given a chance, will use schools as centers of patronage or places where they build political machines, and they will attempt to make teachers serve those ends if tea
Keeping Great Teachers is More Important than Getting Rid of Bad Ones
I have been a teacher and a coach now for 50 years, with extensive experience working in public schools and neighborhood sports programsas well as universities. And what upsets me about the Vergara case is that the strategy for improving schools of those who filed the suit is focused on getting rid of bad teachers rather than attracting and retaining great ones. Two things happen when you do that.
6-10-14 With A Brooklyn Accent:: My Reponse to the Vergara Decision
With A Brooklyn Accent: My Reponse to the Vergara Decision: My Reponse to the Vergara DecisionIt is just amazing that politicians, billionaires and significant portion of the general public seem to think you can improve schools by attacking teachers, undermining their tenure protections, depriving them of due process, and generally viewing them as an enemy of children and families who have to be w
