<p>Desperate times call for desperate measures. I applaud this bold act.</p>
<p>I think this Rhode Island schools best hope might be a conversion to a charter school, like KIPP or Harlem Village Academy, where union restrictions do not hinder their ability to enact policies that actually work for low SES students.</p>
<p>I agree with #10, and I’m no fan of teachers’ unions, as most of CC knows. They do excuse incompetency and mediocrity out the kazoo, but the fact is (backed by the research), which I’ve stated a dozen times on these discussions:</p>
<p>Parental literacy – actual and functional – is the single most essential factor in the success of any student. With the exception of boarding schools, students in this country spend way more time at home than at school. It has been assumed from the outset of public education in this country, that the home environment would extend, support, enrich the basic skills presented in the classroom. That is the model of US education, not education in India, China, Japan, or various countries in Europe.</p>
<p>This factor has tripled since the dumbing-down, increasingly time-wasting school day of the last 20 years, with its minimalist style – emphasizing flash-in-the-pan instruction and very little practice & application leading to mastery. Go from that, to homes in which hardly high-level English is being spoken, let alone written, and see how much will be mastered and carried over, year to year.</p>
<p>Secondary important factors are poverty (yes) and at-risk household situations. However, poor students in compromised households can function academically & improve with parents who at least know what the heck they’re doing and can answer a homework question, are interested in taking the child to the library, etc., when they can’t afford books. </p>
<p>Tied for second place are motivated parents, even when not literate. (Structure is provided at home, even when not at school.)</p>
<p>The modern U.S. public non-charter school is characterized too often by insufficient academic structure and insufficient disciplinary structure (basic rules of compliance, enforcement of expectations) for the school to provide a model for success. In poor communities, the only model which has partly to greatly worked (depending on longevity & funding of school) is the immersion model of some charter schools, replacing the affected home environment with a literacy-saturated full school day (often 7 to 5). These are no-frills schools staffed by the same kinds of hard-working, focused teachers & administrators I grew up under. (I was fortunate enough to have frills as well, without a long day, but the frills never replaced the rich and thorough core knowledge- and skill-based teaching.) Such charter schools are not the template model of U.S. education, but their form should become so in affected communities at minimum. Further, to get the most bang for the buck (should the chartering body require this), families wishing to enroll in those charters can be required to attend adult schooling within the community, which can be made available.</p>
<p>Regarding the disciplinary structure, that is another difference between these immersion charter schools and ‘traditional’ site schools. So folks, don’t blame everything on the unions, even though I also mostly despise them ;). Public (popular) policy prioritizes permissiveness: How’s that for a mouthful of peas? The site school will literally or practically have in place an assumption of lax discipline; the charter school doesn’t give two figs: it can do most anything short of corporal, and does. There are same-day consequences and delayed consequences for students who misbehave. Everyone knows the score and there are no scenes or surprises about this, because parents signing up for such charters must agree to these contractual terms ahead of time. (I have taught in them; the atmosphere, although not the population, resembles the atmosphere in the classrooms of my youth.)</p>
<p>Effective teaching requires basic order in the environment. Today’s site public school, especially in anything but a high-achieving one, is not conducive to learning and is a highly inefficient model, with its over-tolerance of generalized noise, frequent disruptions, and much more that fits in the category of absurd self-parody. The entire package – school site expectations, school personnel expectations, home expectations – is a recipe for failure. Students, even middle-class ones, who succeed, are succeeding despite the environment (mostly), not (mostly) because of it. There are exceptions, I know.</p>
<p>We, or Rhode Island, can choose a scapegoat, but it will probably be only one element in a decaying system that needs a radical restructuring. That is not to say that I have any intimate knowledge of the RI school staff involved here: maybe they are all incompetent, but competency itself, again – in this country, is insufficient to sustain the education without some kind of home environment that mirrors, supports that competency.</p>
<p>[Edit: after posting, I see I cross-posted with #21! Yay! :)]</p>
<p>
This is a dubious formula for increasing quality, but an excellent formula for replacing top-of-scale workers with bottom-of-scale workers. As the saying goes, follow the money.</p>
<p>
This depends on the student body. When you’re talking about a student population that’s substantially composed of kids from poor immigrant families where English is not spoken in the home and there are probably low literacy levels even in the first language, proficiency goals and timetables that are reasonable for most school systems may be flatly unrealistic.</p>
<p>And if you read the article, the teachers weren’t asking for more money in the sense of a pay raise. They were asking to be paid for extra, out-of-contract work they had been asked to take on. In no other profession that I’m aware of are workers vilified for asking for more money when they’re asked to do more work.</p>
<p>To those who support this, I look forward to YOUR employer deciding to fire everyone–including you–whether or not you are good at your job, and then inviting you to reapply for your job. But of course only 50% of you can be rehired, so who knows what your chances will be…</p>
<p>Of course, the financial insitutions that hold YOUR home equity lines or mortgage will be SO understanding. You won’t miss a wink of sleep agonizing about it, will you?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ding, ding, ding…we have a winner!</p>
<p>It looks like Epiphany at #22 and I agree on most points, including the proven successes of some charter schools.</p>
<p>Yes, parental motivation is important, but when the parents only have ineffective schools as options for their children, its hard for them to find motivation to fight against the dysfunctional educational system. And teacher unions are at the heart of the resistance for more charter schools as alternatives to ineffective schools; certainly we see this in NYS. Therefore, I find them to be a major obstacle in solving this problem. So this mass firing seems to me a positive first step.</p>
<p>
But there are plenty of professions in which you may be asked to do more work for the same money. If you decline, what happens?</p>
<p>
Depends on whether you have a contract or not.</p>
<p>I don’t thing one needs to agree with the decision to fire EVERYONE without understanding why that decision was made. First of all, it’s virtually impossible to fire any one teacher here in the land of milk and honey. (Exactly one teacher has ever been fired in our school system of 300 educators … and that was for getting caught having sex in the school during school hours.) Even if it was possible to fire a teacher, there’s no institutional mechanism for identifying which teachers are good and which aren’t … which marginal teachers can be made into good teachers and which can’t. Third, teacher pay isn’t tied to ability or accomplishment. And finally, it isn’t like poor student performance is a new issue here in the northeast … over the past three decades ALL approaches have failed to reverse poor student performance. Though it pains me to say so, teachers here (as a group) have taken the position that change (or accountability) is something they’re not willing to embrace.</p>
<p>Central Falls High School teachers were asked by the school board to meet these six conditions in order to keep their jobs:</p>
<p>Increase length of school day by 25 minutes to provide more instructional time for students.</p>
<p>Formalize tutoring schedule so struggling students have extra help for one hour before and after school.</p>
<p>Agree to eat lunch with students one day a week to build stronger relationships.</p>
<p>Attend two weeks of professional development in the summer at a rate of $30 an hour.</p>
<p>Stay after school for 90 minutes one day each week to work with fellow teachers analyzing student work and test data and discussing ways to improve teaching at a rate of $30 an hour if Gallo can find grant financing.</p>
<p>Accept more rigorous evaluations by a third-party starting March 1.</p>
<p>The teacher’s union refused all of the conditions.</p>
<p>The Central Falls School Board must follow these federal mandates:</p>
<p>Education Secretary Arnie Duncan is requiring states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and turnaround which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall.</p>
<p>
That’s flatly untrue. Did you read the article?</p>
<p>(edit–at least, it’s untrue if the CNN reporter can be trusted at all.)</p>
<p>“Union officials said Gallo refused to negotiate with them and instead demanded they take on extra tasks. In some cases, teachers objected because they would not be paid for duties such as eating lunch with students once a week, or formalizing a tutoring schedule. In other cases, teachers said they already freely did those things, and resented being ordered to do so.” - Providence Journal</p>
<p>The union says that the $30 hourly rate isn’t enough - they want $90 for the extra time, so yes, they refused all of the conditions because they can’t agree on the rate of pay.</p>
<p>
Wait, taking a negotiating position regarding compensation for something is the same as refusing to do it? On what planet?</p>
<p>Union & employee issues can be very tricky. Lawsuit likely brewing somewhere about this.</p>
<p>I find it so sad that the biggest news articles on education this past week were one district that is struggling so much they resorted to firing the teachers to try to start over and another district that has so much excess cash they can buy laptops for every student and have an administrator who spends the entire day just keeping an eye on the laptops. That is a monumental tragedy and a statement about the inequities and misplaced money and the roots of the problem.</p>
<p>Nightchef -</p>
<p>On the planet that is Central Falls an additional $60 an hour is the same as “no.” This is especially true because the job of educating the youth of Central Falls is a dismal failure - a graduation rate below 50% and for many of those who do graduate, barely acceptable basic skills.</p>
<p>From what I could piece together, the teachers were asked to work an extra day per week without extra pay.
The SD probably does not have the extra monies to pay overtime, since it is in a poor district; but I can also see how gargantuan the task is to educate children who move in and out of the district, have limited English and difficult home situations. 1/3 of the students are new to the district every year. 63% qualify for F/R lunch.
And yet, the school was making progress, albeit not as fast as the powers-that-be want.</p>
<p>“To those who support this, I look forward to YOUR employer deciding to fire everyone–including you–whether or not you are good at your job, and then inviting you to reapply for your job. But of course only 50% of you can be rehired, so who knows what your chances will be…”</p>
<p>An employer doesn’t owe anyone a job for life.</p>
<p>^ I agree.</p>
<p>^Me too, but I’m not sure what relevance it has either to the post it supposedly answered, or to the thread topic in general. Nobody’s suggesting that anybody is “owed” a job “for life.” That’s a strawman.</p>
<p>My spouse and I graduated from Central Falls High…over 30 years ago. We are now both professionals who are very comfortable financially. I was shocked to see the story last night on the national news. When we attended the school there were many good teachers. Most of the students came from poor but good families. I was the first in my family to attend college. I can thank some of the teachers for believing in me more than my actual family. As time went on most of both of our families moved from the area due to high crime rates and drugs. I can’t really take a side since I don’t have all the facts. But I hope they do find a solution and help the children in this poor neighborhood who need help the most to escape poverty, drugs, and welfare. Rhode Island now has one of the highest unemployment rates ever.</p>