Is the glass half full?
Student: My school district hires too many white teachers – The Washington Post is a really thoughtful first-person piece from a student in the New Orleans school system that was posted in a private teacher discussion group which I’m part of. Since it’s a private group, I’m going to talk pretty generally about that aspect of it. When I first looked at the discussion I thought it looked pretty goo
Why Tenure?
In the aftermath of the initial Vergara decision, there are lots of questions about effects. Having taught in a public school under a turn-around model, where hiring and being retained, was based solely on the discretion of the site administrator, I think I already have a pretty good idea of what that will look like, and it’s not good for kids or the communities they live in.
This was at a low-performing, high-poverty school, with a large non-white, and English learner population. Just the sort of school that the Vegara suit claimed to want to “help”. With the turnaround model, we had many resources, and many programs. When implementing new programs, there are lots of bumps and honest feed-back is needed to make sure that things are on the right track.
There were many new teachers at the site, some who had come on in the prior year before the change, and others who had been at the site anywhere from three to over 10 years. Those that stayed on were pretty clear in supporting the idea that change was needed, and that would require a better focus on academics and teaching. These were not folks who wanted things to stay the same. One of the first people asked to leave was the union site representative, which was ironic, since he was a big proponent of a more rigorous academic focus while maintaining but Reflections on Teaching » Blog Archive » Why Tenure?: