2014-15 Alabama Teacher of the Year Abruptly Resigns
Ann Marie Corgill
On October 29, 2015, as AL.com reports, the 2014-15 Alabama Teacher of the Year, Ann Marie Corgill, quit her job.
She is state certified to teach primary through third grade. Corgill is also National Board Certified to teach through seventh grade.
Corgill began the 2015-16 school year teaching second grade but was moved to fifth grade.
The state says that she now needs to renew her state certification to include teaching fifth grade.
But here’s the kicker:
When she was chosen as state teacher of the year, Corgill was teaching fourth grade– outside of her state certification.
On October 29, 2015, Corgill decided she had had enough and tended her resignation. Here is an excerpt:
After 21 years of teaching in grades 1-6, I have no answers as to why this is a problem now, so instead of paying more fees, taking more tests and proving once again that I am qualified to teach, I am resigning. …Please know that I wanted to give my all and share my expertise with Birmingham City Schools. …In order to attract and retain the best teachers, we must feel trusted, valued and treated as professionals. It is my hope that my experience can inform new decisions, policies and procedures to make Birmingham City Schools a place everyone wants to work and learn.
Corgill has over 20 years of teaching experience, much of it in Alabama, in grades 1 2014-15 Alabama Teacher of the Year Abruptly Resigns | deutsch29:
On October 29, 2015, Louisiana state superintendent John White released the 2014-15 school performance scores for Louisiana high schools enrolling grades 9 – 12.
In a story about the release, Danielle Dreilinger of nola.com included this table on the results (source: Louisiana Department of Education) (Click image to enlarge):
If one compares the percentages of A though D letter grades across the three years in the table (2012-13 to 2014-15), one sees that the percentage of B, C, and D schools is lower in 2014-15, and the percentage of A schools is notably higher.
Now, here’s the trick:
As Dreilinger reports,
Superintendent John White said 2015 should be considered a baseline year. Over the next 10 years, he plans gradually to raise the standard for what’s considered an A.
What White wants the public to believe is that receiving an A will become progressively more difficult.
But he just inflated the number of A high schools.
So, when the standard for an A high school is “raised” in future years, White is positioned to ride the optical illusion of rigor as that A-school percentage does nothing more than return to its pre-inflated percentage.
He just bought himself roughly 13 percentage points from the 2013-14 percentage of A-graded high schools (10.1%) to the 2014-15 percentage of A-graded high schools (23.0%).
Again, that means a 13-percent staged opportunity to lower the number of Louisiana high schools receiving A’s during upcoming years, call it “raising standards,” but Louisiana’s 2014-15 High School Letter Grades… So Many A’s….