In two-year Race to the Top update, feds express serious concerns with Georgia’s lack of progress on teacher evaluations
Troubling news for Georgia today after the U.S. Education Department issued a progress report citing grave concerns about the state’s Race to the Top progress. Here is a link to the newly released 17-page report.
What has the U.S. DOE concerned is Georgia’s struggles with introducing and implementing a new teacher evaluation, a central piece of the state’s $400 million Race to the Top grant.
In a press call Thursday, the US DOE said that while most Race to the Top recipients were progressing satisfactorily, they were concerned with the stumbles in Georgia, the District of Columbia and Maryland.
“Race to the Top has sparked dramatic changes, and in only the second year of the program we’re seeing those results reach the classroom,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “Most states have made tremendous strides and met aggressive timelines on work that has the potential to transform public education for years to come. Comprehensive education reform isn’t easy, and a few states have faced major challenges in implementing their plans. As we reach the halfway point, we need to see every state show results.”
The fed’s focus on Georgia’s stumbles is not a surprise. In July, U.S. Department of Education officials said the $33 million in Georgia’s grant dedicated to the new evaluations is ”at high risk.”
Federal officials feared that Georgia has strayed too far from its original plans to create a teacher/leader evaluation system with four key components: classroom observations, student growth, a reduction in the student achievement gap and student surveys. They also worry that the state is proposing changes before it finds out how well the proposed new evaluations worked. They were tried out in 26 school districts from January to May of last year.
Here is an excerpt from the report:
Georgia experienced significant challenges related to implementation of its educator evaluation system in Year 2 of its Race to the Top grant. The Department is concerned about the overall strategic planning, evaluation, and project management for that system, which include decisions regarding the quality of the tools and measures used during the educator evaluation pilot and the scalability of the supports the State offered to participating LEAs.
For example, during Year 2, the State piloted the educator evaluation system in a portion of schools in its participating LEAs, but did not complete the statistical analyses to determine the degree of correlation between the key components of the system—i.e., student growth percentiles, student surveys, observation protocols—in time to inform the design and roll-out of the evaluation system in subsequent years as originally planned. As a result of these concerns, the Department placed the
educator evaluation projects in the Great Teachers and Leaders section of Georgia’s Race to the Top plan on high-risk status.
Across its Race to the Top plan, Georgia has faced difficulty developing and implementing a comprehensive communications plan that illustrates how all of its Race to the Top projects are complementary and cohesive. In addition, strategic planning across Race to the Top projects was a challenge for the State and affected participating LEAs’ ability to implement key components of the State’s plan, including CCGPS and the educator evaluation system.Further, Georgia must revise its processes for monitoring and assessing the quality of implementation of Race to the Top projects at both the State and LEA levels. The State must amend its Race to the Top Scope of Work to reflect these challenges and their implications. Georgia also experienced delays in implementation among its Race to the Top projects. For example, Georgia released its benchmark assessment request for proposals (RFP) roughly nine months later than planned because it was determining how best to approach the project without duplicating the work of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). As a result, Georgia was several months behind in securing a contract to complete the work for the benchmark assessments. The State was also delayed in the implementation of several STEM activities by over one year.
The second annual report on the recipients of $4 billion in competitive grants under the Obama administration’s signature education redesign program reveals that the majority of winners are struggling in two areas: implementing teacher- and principal-evaluation systems, and building and upgrading sophisticated data systems that will do everything from inform classroom lessons to identify students at risk of academic failure.
And Education Department officials say they are most worried about three recipients for which second-year performance took a nose dive: the District of Columbia, Georgia, and Maryland.
Georgia and Maryland have both struggled with implementing their teacher-evaluation systems, while the District of Columbia’s sluggish pace on school turnarounds means it has only worked with one persistently low-achieving school with its grant funds so far.
“This is really hard work, and there will always be bumps in the road,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a call with reporters.
Georgia and the District of Columbia are perhaps in the biggest trouble right now, as department officials say they are encouraged with the new state leadership in Maryland.
Part of Georgia’s $400 million Race to the Top grant is on “high-risk status”—an official designation that can lead to losing grant funding—for weaknesses in implementing its teacher-evaluation system. Their second-year performance, in particular, concerned the department.
For their part, Georgia officials said they’re working to straighten things out with federal officials. State education department spokesman Jon Rogers said Georgia has made “quality progress” in four of the five conditions federal officials placed on its grant—which included things like improving the overall management of the teacher-evaluation system. The final condition, which is using feedback and data to improve Georgia’s educator-evaluation systems, will come after teacher and leader evaluations are done this school year, Mr. Rogers said.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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150 comments Add your comment
Lance
February 1st, 2013
11:23 pm
You teachers brought this on because you decided to vote for that fat do-nothing Sonny Perdue and his kiddie-corp policy advisors because you thought Roy Barnes had disrespected you. Maybe so, but teachers keep taking a beatingnow…pay, class size, furloughs….each day of Perdue and now onto Deal. You asked for it…you got it!
Retired recently
February 1st, 2013
11:38 pm
This is exactly why I retired last year after 32 years of teaching! If the powers that be would just let a teacher teach, instead of continuously adding to the paperwork teachers and students would be much better off! In the past 10 years or so, the curriculum has been micromanaged to the point that a professional teacher is not given the right to make decisions based on the students she is assigned as to when and how to teach a given objective. Those who make the rules are too quick to jump on every new bandwagon that comes along and that only hurts our students and our teachers.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
4:37 am
Starting to wonder if it is a good idea to flee Georgia altogether. So much poverty here and hillbilly poverty-enforcing predatory government. If there’s a bad idea in Georgia, someone in government will make it triplicate and get paid for it. The weird part is the whole vacantness from the political class on the responsibility to produce as opposed to stealing. Georgia contains major dishonesty and screwy fake justification reasoning from government at every level (?). The citizens act like dumb passive peasants and the make-work governing people are like thieves on the loose, but they’re not intelligent enough to realise the priority of producing value, not just forcing people to be busy.
Burnt out...
February 2nd, 2013
8:35 am
“It starts at home and most AMERICAN parents are not doing what needs to be done before their children ever get to school…YES YES YES
Education is not what it once was..take a look at society. A comment from the LA riots many years ago comes to mind, “Look what we are doing to ourselves.” Society does not value education nor does it respect teachers.
Many of us (yes, I am a teacher) are told that the parents are our “customers”. Meaning keep the parents happy…doesn’t matter if Little Johnny can’t read, write, do basic math, has behavior issues just -keep the parents happy. Glorified babysitters, yep that is how we are viewed. Am I burnt out, yep, can I leave just yet…nope. I have too much time in education to change so I left the classroom and took a different position which was a 50% pay cut. I’m doing whatever I can just to make it one more year. It is sad…you start out hoping to make a difference and you end up babysitting.
Mikey D.
February 2nd, 2013
10:13 am
@Burnt out:
I agree. I’ve never been able to buy into the whole “keep the customer happy” argument. I’ve always had the idea that honesty was the better option. A few years ago I had a parent who registered one complaint after another with my administrator because she said I was too negative and told her too many things that her child dind’t know. Finally, in a conference, I explained to her that if she took her child to the doctor and that doctor diagnosed a problem, she would want to know what the problem was and what could be done about it. She would be angry if the doctor lied to her and told her that everything was fine, just because that’s what she wanted to hear. I explained that she was wanting me to do just that, and that I couldn’t lie to her just to make her feel better. Things got a little better after that, but she never really warmed up completely (even though I devoted about 3 times as much energy and effort to her child that year than anyone else in the class).
Dr. Monica Henson
February 2nd, 2013
11:03 am
Rick L posted, “Teacher evaluation panels should consist of a principal, a parent and an outside expert approved by both parents and the district, and there should be extensive use of video in the process so that termination (or bonus) decisions can be documented.”
The use of videotaping can be tremendously helpful in teacher development. However, bringing in a parent “evaluator” would violate FERPA law. This recommendation is an example of why parents who think they know how to run a school better than those who are educated and trained to do so really don’t know what they’re talking about.
There is certainly a place for parent input, in the form of a survey. Authorizing parents to approve “outside experts” is ridiculous on its face. If a parent isn’t himself or herself a school administrator, holding graduate degrees and several years’ experience plus knowledge of the research base, what on earth qualifies that person to “approve an outside expert”? Concomitantly, to suggest that a parent should be brought in as a panelist to evaluate professional practice is quite simply one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever seen posted on this blog. And that’s saying a mouthful.
Many public schools are broken, and there certainly are some incompetent administrators running them even further into the ground. But that doesn’t qualify parents to take over the process and begin directing it themselves. Good grief.
Dr. Monica Henson
February 2nd, 2013
11:18 am
cris posted, “Administration is drowning just trying to keep up with the number of evaluations and the online TKES site is quite possibly the most user-unfriendly I have ever come across.”
If administration in your school is “drowning” keeping up with the minimal number of evaluations in TKES (which, by the way, mirrors best practices documented in the research base on teacher supervision and evaluation, going back for decades), then they need to reconfigure their time management strategies. TKES is not an oppressive system if administration has been conducting evaluation all along the way it should be done, which is a series of classroom observations throughout the school year.
The online platform IS user-friendly and quite intuitive, in fact. Those who scream and yell about the platform are simply engaging in knee-jerk resistance to change.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
11:20 am
Teachers treating children / parents as “customers” is a perversion. When it is official doctrine, maybe better to avoid.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
11:22 am
“Perversion is a concept describing those types of human behavior that deviate from that which is understood to be orthodox or normal.”
“1. To cause to turn away from what is right, proper, or good; corrupt. 2. To bring to a bad or worse condition; debase.”
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
11:33 am
Dr. Henson, I see your point, but I also see so much official attention, if not resources, given to evaluations, while other areas of importance such as curriculum supplies-materials appear to be completely ignored by big power. One may ask, “At the end of the day, what have we done?” There has to be some type of term or idea-history for focusing on worker-evaluations in an environment that is difficult for workers, and showing no interest in the tools to make for quality work environment and worker efficiency. This is not what you are doing, but I think it is what big power is doing. I’ve attended a district level academic subject meeting with dept. heads from several schools and we all sat around a table with the leader person who did not belong and had just bumped-off the real academic leader, and literally all of the school dept. heads had sad puppy-dog faces like out of a horror movie and several of them flatly said, “Where are the materials? What are we supposed to do?” The newly hired assistant of the new director said, in effect, “Go steal stuff from the internet from other school systems who have posted materials.”
So the message is: “Teach from the internet. Locate your own supply materials.”
Speaking from experience, this is highly inefficient and is time consuming. In this type environment, who would want to “get on board” with the evaluation emphasis from big power? It is understandable that there may be a lack of enthusiasm. It brings to mind the term “lying by omission” when it becomes a “focus” requirement for school management and employee meetings.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
11:34 am
If anyone has an answer for this, I’m interested: “Where are the materials? What are we supposed to do?”
Georgia Coach
February 2nd, 2013
12:06 pm
@William Casey, You come across as a reasonable individual, and I don’t doubt that you were a good teacher;however your assertion that no administrator is qualified to evaluate you is utter and complete hogwash.
Some administrators spent many years in the classroom and have kept up with pedagogy.
Please abandon this lame contention.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
1:44 pm
GC, Some administrators spent many years in the classroom and have kept up with pedagogy.
The last principal I’ve seen who is like what you describe got totally subverted by the state and the school was called out and penalised for high performance and, like all schools, told to lessen addressing errant student behavior. Sounds weird. As a teacher who delivered good results, I was certainly blind-sided by it. It is kind of standing on an ice shelf doing your work and just about the time things get momentum and are going well, due it large part to the organization and work of the type principal you describe – experienced teacher turned into capable school director / manager, the ice shelf starts splitting and you realise you are going into the icy waters. There is no question for me that some unnamed forces within the state, who are probably redelivering an instruction from the fed, can and do meddle in the productivity of local schools. -Would make a good essay – How productive principals can be subverted by official state-level intrusion and meddling.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
1:49 pm
And shortly thereafter, they tore the whole school apart, re-assigned the school to a new themed initiative, and told the faculty to reapply for their jobs. I’m glad I got out when I did, when the ice shelf split, but before the earthquake.
And the school building is like an old horse, a dumpy building with a bad foundation and moisture problems and broken worn out door locks. Only place I ever worked where I would go home and clean the mould out of my ears with a Q-tip.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
1:58 pm
At least in Japan they have warning sirens for when the tsunami is coming. Georgia teacher, better keep your eyes open and know when to run for the hills on your own. When you look back on your tax return you may ask, “I did how much work for what?”
Meanwhile, the kids are stranded in hype and propaganda and the remaining teachers are themed and re-trained, and re-conceptualised, and the experienced ones are discarded to be replaced with 20-something new hires who will sit through and agree with anything because they arrive at the door of their new job with a sense of trust, oh do not each of us so clearly recall.
Truth in Moderation
February 2nd, 2013
2:00 pm
Parents, you can stop these Federal thieves. Let’s not forget that they just awarded the MOST CORRUPT STATES IN THE UNION, New Jersey and New york, $50 BILLION! because their mansions on JERSEY SHORE, and their TRILLION DOLLAR Wall Street businesses got some Hurricane Sandy water damage. THIS MONEY IS NOT A LOAN! Let’s not forget that the former Goldman CEO, U.S. Senator, and New Jersey Governor, Jon Corzine, got off SCOTT FREE from the MF Global scandal, thanks to the friendly Feds. Pull your children from this corrupt system and home school or send them to private school. THROW OFF THE SERF’S COLLAR. Ignore their idle threats. Tell them to get new jobs…..pounding sand.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
2:39 pm
Litmus Test: If Arne Duncan stubbed his toe, would you feel a pang of compassion?
KIM
February 2nd, 2013
5:02 pm
RT3 built in a rediciulous goal of having a new teach / principal eval ready for roll out in three years. If the goal is to truly have an effective way to measure teacher / princ effectiveness AND fill our classrooms with highly competent and effective teachers and leaders, then the time table should have been eliminated from the begiinning…It is artificial and based on no reserach. Work on the evals until they are solid. Additionally, people outside ed. do not understand the time it takes to get a legally defensable document.
KIM
February 2nd, 2013
5:10 pm
@Dr. Monica Henson, you clearly have no idea how much time the evaluations, done according to guidlines, take. In a traditional public school each admin has about 30-40 people to evaluate. With several evals and the necessary conversations that result, it IS NOT a time management issue, and on behalf of the high performing principals I have worked with, I resent your stating that unqualified opinion. You do not work in a traditional school. You have no idea how much time the principals and assistant principals put into doing thorough evaluations of their staff. How you can talk about “management” when our principals are instructional leaders and take their responsibilities seriously is beyond me. An apology to all the professionals leading schools is in order.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
5:23 pm
KIM, Ugh, you sound so happy.
Time for vacation to Paris, where the workers are not expected to treat customers as special, “understood by many French service staff to mean that they should never be friendly to a customer lest that be fatally misinterpreted as submission.” http://http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7908a22e-65be-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a.htmlhttp://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7908a22e-65be-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a.html
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
6:38 pm
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7908a22e-65be-11e2-a3db-00144feab49a.html
Ed Johnson
February 2nd, 2013
6:51 pm
“In two-year Race to the Top update, feds express serious concerns with Georgia’s lack of progress on teacher evaluations”
Sounds like good news to me.
Pathfinder
February 2nd, 2013
8:03 pm
@Georgia Coach – Thanks for your comments. I’m an administrator that spent many years as both a special education teacher and later as a social studies teacher and AP World History teacher for years before I went into administration. I was a great teacher and know how to use the TKES system. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but better that the old STEP Evaluation System. For those of you that have incompetent administrators, I’m sorry. In my school, my principal assigns administrators to the departments in which they have experience with the curriculum, so we go into the observations with the requisite background. Maybe those that are stressing the new evaluation system are those teachers everyone is complaining about. You know the ones that are just coasting along with tenure.
Pride and Joy
February 2nd, 2013
9:09 pm
To No Such Thing as Tenure…
You make me laugh…
There doesn’t need to be tenure in Georgia. No teacher ever gets fired unless they are caught on camera having sex with a student.
Teachers have a job for life in Georgia. Don’t get all ruffled up over someone’s misuse of the word “tenure” in GA.
Pride and Joy
February 2nd, 2013
9:14 pm
Private Citizen, I have your answer.
The materials you say you’re missing and you need are supposed to be IN YOUR HEAD. That is what an education is.
You shouldn’t even NEED a text book to teach. You should already know your material and you should know how to teach it and when you don’t…well, it perfectly explains why you are a private citizen and no longer in teaching.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
9:22 pm
Pathfinder, I object. In my last school, there was not a teacher in that building was not both competent and working their butt off (pardon me). I keep seeing reference to “the bad teacher” and maybe they’re somewhere but what I have seen are excessive meetings and initiatives and re-theming and re-shuffling and very few bad teachers, in fact I can not name a one. I don’t buy the lemonade you’re selling and (a jab) enjoy your nice $100k salary while you are using your charges as an object of put down. If this is your idea of managing talent, it sure is not mine.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
9:30 pm
Pathfinder, Maybe where I worked anyone who was “coasting on tenure” got ground up and disposed of. I simply have not seen it. I have seen a lot of administrators… I wouldn’t call it coasting. They’re certainly attentive, to something… mainly following outside numerous directives that they then come back and play house with “very serious” with the staff. I have often said I wouldn’t want to be carrying all of those pails of water the admin. is required to carry back to the school house.
Plenty of school systems well know how to grind up and discard anyone they choose. And similarly elevate and care for anyone they choose. Call it politics. Georgia is the very Horn of Plenty for this stuff. If you want to use “bad teacher” for a prop, hey, I guess that’s your business, free speech and all of that. Yeah, where I worked, the most glowing work review I ever saw was when a colleague of mine designed a full week of lesson plans around “character training” embedded with the content material. If this does not sound an alarm for you, you are very very ignorant of world politics and what occurs in dictatorships and communism.
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
9:43 pm
Pathfinder is EXACTLY the kind of boss I do not want to get within 100 miles of. We’ve got different brainwave rhythms, different blood types, and I am certain different salaries, and likely different formation although Pathfinder, named after a Nissan motor vehicle and using the “seeking answers” motif while getting paid double and chopping their peers that conveniently they have bounded to the fore to “supervise” in the money-based caste system. “Pathfinder,” what you have done is successfully jumped caste, which seems to be your aim. When you think of “peer” it is the fellow managers and no longer the teachers, which you “formerly” did. Anyway, do you even know the word “formation” in context? You probably one of those administrators that when I clearly state, “I am here to build a student’s formation” you get all edgy and it’s all downhill and to hell for me from there wherever you are concerned, which turns out to be everywhere since your profession is now hob-nobbing with the other playahs who run things, when all you eggs hunker down together in the picnic basket, Oh yes, oh yeah. See your game from a thousand miles off. You’re like the Sears Tower. (this is an expression of feeling, I do not know you, but I feeel that I know of you)
Private Citizen
February 2nd, 2013
9:53 pm
Pride and Joy, A purely practical question then, how do you occupy 120 students for 5 days a week with what is “in your head?” I don’t want to sound callous, but in my own formation as a student, I had my own books for every class.
And seriously, if this is your concept of responsibility to the young people, maybe I need to move to Oregon, as if that was far enough. I didn’t come here to parry, but it does kind of turn my stomach, the modern age’s idea of what is a serving of goodness to the youth. As a student/kid, I had it better in public school in Georgia and I am willing to state it plainly.
Truth in Moderation
February 2nd, 2013
9:58 pm
The Federal thieves are at it again, and (surprise) NEW JERSEY is in the SLIMELIGHT!
“A cloud of scandalous allegations is rapidly growing over Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), putting Democratic leaders in a difficult position as the integrity of their immigration point man in the Senate falls under question at a critical time.
The bad news keeps coming: a Senate Ethics probe, allegations involving underage prostitutes, an FBI investigation of a key campaign donor, undisclosed flights on the donor’s private plane, and now, reports linking Menendez to an existing multi-million dollar contract he urged officials to enforce for the disgraced donor.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/280691-menendez-scandal-creates-headache-for-dems#ixzz2JngSSO67
DON’T FORGET, $50 BILLION in YOUR tax dollars went towards “bailing out” the sea water from this corrupt state. The FEDS want to use YOUR tax dollars to make teachers PUBLIC SCHOOL SERFS.
Parents, send Arne a message: home school your children. DEFUND THE CORRUPTOCRATS!
Dr. Monica Henson
February 3rd, 2013
1:02 am
KIM, my dear, I have in fact worked far more years in district schools than in charter schools. I have been an administrator in district schools with anywhere from 30 to 100 teachers, never with more than one principal and two assistant principals, along with a few department chairs who held administrative credentials, to share the workload. I did my doctoral research and dissertation on teacher supervision & evaluation while I was a full-time public school administrator.
I think I know just a little bit whereof I speak.
Pathfinder
February 3rd, 2013
8:52 am
@Private Citizen. You are right, you don’t know me or the staff in my building. I make no where near 100k a year. In fact, about 5 years ago, my contract was cut by 20 days. That being said, your personal attack tends to indicate to me that you were one of those teachers that lectured for 55 minutes, 5 period a day and if the students failed, “It was their fault”. Enjoy your retirement. I’m sure your students, parents, and administration wish you the best.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
10:18 am
Pathfinder, your tackiness and projections exceed your charm. I perform in likely the top 5%, the rest of it you mention can simply go to hell. Enjoy your politics. You’ve got it down. I’m glad you’re listening and good luck to you. And here’s hoping you produce lots of engineers, doctors, and dentists.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
10:35 am
And as far as failing students, I’ve probably done more accommodations, pass alongs, and repeated parent counselling meetings than the waitress at IHOP has arms and coffee cups. I think I’ve failed two kids ever. One was a team decision because the child simply refused to do their work in every single class even after we had five heart felt encourage / guilt / threaten / you name it / refer for counseling, for some reason this bright kid was about three years behind in psychological maturity. Anyway, it was a team decision. I probably would have “arranged” (fabricated) a passing grade, but the other core teachers had REALLY had enough of this yahoo. It was probably due to that mom had not ever disciplined the angel once for anything. The other kid I FAILED and sent on his way for a 55, similar situation except he was mature, maybe too mature. He missed half the class days and when he was there completely refused to do anything. I did not pass this student, if I had it to over, I probably would have. However, he was transferring out of the school and and the parent wanted a free grade and I looked at the situation and it was just so dishonest that I wouldn’t do it. I can only imagine the “free pass” mentality that may be a part of the rest of their lives. They were really nice people, too. I’m sure you’ve met plenty of charming people in the parking lot of the grocery asking if you’ve got a spare dollar because they “just got out of the hospital and need to buy their medicine.” Maybe I was trying to head off a future life of similar activity, of assuming that is how the world works, the great buffet. Fun, isn’t it? 55 minutes lecturing? I don’t think I’ve ever “lectured” a single class I’ve taught ever, at least in K-12. One of the reason I’m a little ruffly rooster is you should have some basic respect for the people who put in the 80 hour weeks for months on end. Maybe you just do not work where high achievement happens. In current circumstance, it does not happen by itself, the tools are too sparse. If you want to serve your teachers, well it is too big for you to address. I was going to say, “try and make sure they have materials to teach with.” But that is not your gig, to provide books and computer software. It appears to be no one’s job. It’s not happening. It’s not coordinated. A little here. A little there. Rich school, yes. Poor school, no. It’s a mess. How many hours have you spent with a Sharpie striking through the exciting profanity graffiti on your remaining textbooks? How many rolls of binding tape have you purchased, I wonder? But I’m just talking. After all, it is the hour to “share.” Point is, if I am doing all of that, too, a little respect maybe? A little less projection? Even seen a teacher use personal money to buy ALL of the tables and chairs in their classroom? I have, and only bought some of them to replace the ones with sharp edges from broken off metal. Acquisition order? The reply would be “ha ha. Who does this person thing they are?” Better buy a file and flip the desk over and put some elbow into it.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
11:32 am
Maybe one of the best kid tricks is to write in the textbook in the margin in pen, “Go to page 81″ then on page 81, “Go to page 121″ on and on. ha And the kid who would leap like a Mongoose from his seat and cut the telephone line with scissors. Makes sense, telephone is used to call mom. Except he didn’t have a mom, he had been passed around eight times between family members and currently lived with some community member with a big heart who cared for kids, while not legally adopting any of them. He did it twenty times. Same kid would h-e-a-v-e a textbook into the air to ceiling level to see it crash to the floor, hopefully? breaking the spine on the book (what was left of the classroom set). And he was a nice kid, but highly deranged, disconnected. Like the phone. This was from before the “Air Force One” (same phone) voice over IP phones in use now that connect with a Cat5 computer cable and all of the calls are logged/stored on a server. Call your dentist from work? The call is stored on a server, just like looking at the your time punch-in from the ID based time clock machine.
KIM
February 3rd, 2013
12:12 pm
@Dr. Monica Henson, You are not working in public schools at this time–rather you are associated with a charter organization. You do not know what you are talking about. Only current principals know what the issue is with the new eval system.
KIM
February 3rd, 2013
12:13 pm
Oh, and your doctoral reserch was done for what institution???
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
1:24 pm
Kim, You’re being kind of tacky. I think Dr. Henson is from Massachusetts, you know, the place where they have 300 colleges and universities in Boston (?). In other words, I think she got her schooling before the abbreviated study online for-profit mail-order Caribbean Tobago leadership degree credentialing became an accepted norm for many, particularly here in the South where, according the mayor of Atlanta, a $17./ton load of gravel during an ice storm is billed at $1000.
In a way, though, you make a good point. In a perfect world, it would be ideal to have access online to read anyone’s thesis (master’s degree) or dissertation (doctorate/phd), but I can tell when I got my master’s degree from a Georgia brick and mortar university part of the state system, there was no thesis required, but I recall some days when my hands were numb from required clapping in class to “celebrate the idea” from the professor who also told us how we were receiving a “world class education.” Hey, I should have gone to the carnival instead. The price is cheaper and it is more real. A brick and mortar Georgia government university doctorate/phd requires a dissertation as long as you do not mind handing over your soul in the process, as I know at least two people who were completely directed away from their area of interest and both of them, unrelated to each other, each wrote their 300 pages on some hockum from the department chief. In other words, they were 100% denied developing their own ideas. I even know a fellow who at a private university practically had to go to war with his department head in order to do his work in the area of his choosing. He is one of the few who stood up to it and is doing well today, but this is in the hard sciences, not in “education.” Pssst. Seen any of those “Phoenix” billboards lining the highway?
You know, in Georgia, there are superintendents with for-profit distance learning degrees as their terminal degree.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
1:50 pm
hey Kim, if I recall some bio information from the good Dr. Henson, this person worked in Georgia long ago and got some of that “it doesn’t matter what you do, you do it this way” treatment, left the state for a good long time to work in a more real environment, and has returned to do some good work. In my opinion, this person seems pretty real, which is why I speak up. I also like the fact that someone is providing some resources for kids out of grade level, because I can tell you it is not cool to have several students three years out of grade level parked in the general ed. classroom. These students do not belong there next to the dewey eyed kids who are where they are rightfully supposed to be, and these out of age students also are not having their needs met. It is a humiliating displaced situation for them and I practically got my head removed from my shoulders for being the only person in a school building will to mention this as an issued, as in “Hey! What’s the deal with so many out of age kids in the general ed. classroom?” I had one student, three years out of grade level, mom said she could not do anything with them, this students paced the back of the classroom and burbled rapper lyrics all the day long and flirted and obstructed other students as a full time job and basically, there was absolutely nothing I could do about. They had “the power” in the classroom more than me, the teacher, and I basically had to teach around them and their doings. It was a highly obstructed situation. And then the state is telling us to back it off with behavior reprimand and there is nowhere to send this type student, as they have just shut down the alternative schools. Get the out of age kids out of the general ed. classroom!!!!!
And to my top management and admin, well pardon me if I do not flatter you without ceasing and apologise otherwise, oh my dear Royal Masters.
!!!!!
!!!!!
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
1:58 pm
I really shouldn’t be talking about other people, but that out-of-age student thing is just heinous. They’re got 21 year olds in high school, too. Or something pretty close, as I recall. Usually most of the out of age students quit attending school the minute they are legally of age and not required to be physically required to get their corpus to the school house. …So much going on that is not talked about.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
2:07 pm
“the idea of a high school day care may still astound some. “For the average person, it may be shocking to see a girl come to school with a baby,” Roesser said. “But it’s different when you see it in action.” http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100221/NEWS0103/302190019/High-schools-offer-day-care-young-moms
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
2:08 pm
If you timed it right, Race to the Top could have mother, father, and child all filling out evaluations of their teachers.
Private Citizen
February 3rd, 2013
2:25 pm
Some urban students extended stay in high school: Good place to get free pizza and sell dope. Seen at least one high school student with more cash in a roll than I had in my bank account and they told me so, and I said, “You’re right!”
As long as street drugs are contraband, urban teenagers will have pocketful of cash delivering them in a “protected marketplace” with no official competition. Well, except for in Colorado and Washington state.
KIM
February 3rd, 2013
3:01 pm
I think the answer is eliminate the fed DOE…that comment from an earlier blogger may be right on the money. If I could wave a magic wand, I would lead a school full of energized teachers who had proven they knew the content and could inspire students. Then I would leave them alone to teach the approved curriculum. Students would take a criterion referenced test once a year. That would be IT. I would provide the resources teachers needed to support their creativity and I would encourage field trips. Let’s see, and on in my magic, I would … pay teachers what they are worth.
Dr. Monica Henson
February 3rd, 2013
10:33 pm
KIM posted, “You are not working in public schools at this time–rather you are associated with a charter organization. You do not know what you are talking about. Only current principals know what the issue is with the new eval system.”
I am both a “current” superintendent AND principal, KIM. I am a Georgia public school employee working in a statewide public single-school district authorized directly by the State Board of Education. Member of the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia since 1985. My charter school/district is a member of the pilot cohort of TKES/LKES, and I am credentialed to evaluate both teachers and administrators in Georgia. I am actively evaluating both this year.
I began my teaching career in Georgia, and spent several years in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where I moved into administration (all in district public schools). After returning to the Southeast, I worked in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and now Georgia again, in district and charter public schools. I’ve been evaluating teachers and administrators since 2002.
“Oh, and your doctoral reserch was done for what institution???”
My master’s degree in school administration was completed at Seton Hall University, a private, Roman Catholic institution in New Jersey. Schools of education, law, business, & nursing. NCAA Division I sports program, pretty decent men’s basketball team.
My research and dissertation were completed in my terminal degree program in educational leadership at Nova Southeastern University, a private, nonprofit, Tier 1 research university in south Florida. SACS-accredited, Carnegie-recognized. Schools of medicine, law, business, pharmacy, educational leadership, dentistry, nursing, on and on. NCAA Division II sports teams. Not the for-profit diploma mills I’m sure you were hoping for. I actually attended the universities in person.
Let’s leave it to the readers of the blog to determine who knows what they are talking about.
John
February 4th, 2013
10:53 am
Hi Maureen, Very interesting and very well done post. Quick question, does anyone if the Title 1 funding has been frozen in Georgia?
Ole Guy
February 4th, 2013
5:38 pm
Just let us teach…you’ve all seen my admonitions before; you’re gonna see em again. STOP SNIVELING AND ORGANIZE YOURSELVES. If you’re afraid you’re gonna piss somebody off…too damn bad.
Every time I read your type of comment, I picture (probably not too inaccurately) scared rabbits huddled in a corner waiting for the big bad wolf administrator to go away. Pull yourselves together; put a stop to this crap, and start developing some professional spheroids. Every time I read the mantra “it’s for the children”, what you are really doing is hiding behind that mantra as a shield against (heavens) incrimination from the big bad wolf.
MAN-UP (or lady-up, as the case may be); assume a little voice; maybe even a little control over your profession.
KIM
February 4th, 2013
9:32 pm
Folks, look it all up…
james
February 5th, 2013
1:47 pm
you guys don’t get it the whole idea of the local school boards is the continuation of confusion, the poor students are more important than the high achievers because in order to qualify for the knucklehead…..ooops i mean race to the top grant money from the federal government the bad, disinterested, poorly motivated, and project kids are necessary to offset the high achievers test scores in order to be eligible for the federal money….
KIM
February 5th, 2013
8:03 pm
@James, you may be right. What I know is RT3 lacks in planning that affects all students. Focus is on new evals (much needed), accountability (much needed), and on having successful districts share their tools and knowledge with smaller distrcts that cannot provide the services/support to their teachers and admins that the larger districts can. All that is noble. BUT it is a false noble when time restraints keep the likelihood of a quality and valid instrument at farther-than-arms length. My concern is that something is being put together that has huge time implications and principals, who are working their rears off to be instructional leaders, are once again expending time figuring out how to do that while managing the new eval. Schools with 1500-3500 students have enormous staffs and doing the eval justice as it is designed now is strangling. So, once again, the focus of interventions will be on the emergency situations: low ses kids and their achievement. They deserve the attention but so do the higher income students. Actually, I detest referring to the ses at all. I prefer to say: release our leaders to lead all. Period. Encouraging more teacher leaders and admins in the classrooms to identify and then tap the highly talented teachers will turn any school around, It will bring back the high energy and synergistic effect. Schools are almost forced to play the game with the feds because education is so costly. Maintaining infrastructure and providing current staff development to support innovative integration of technology in the classroom is hammering on districts…and in a time of a relatively eroding tax base.