In two-year Race to the Top update, feds express serious concerns with Georgia’s lack of progress on teacher evaluations

should have been “the shortened school year”

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I could really care less whether or not the administrator who has no knowledge of what I teach is impressed with what I do.

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“I could really care less whether or not the administrator who has no knowledge of what I teach is impressed with what I do.”

AMEN!

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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. I think the state DOE jumped into this with their eyes closed (and their noses plugged) and now maybe they understand how us “little people” feel when this gigantic new evaluation AND common core have been dumped on teachers. No fun, huh? Waste of time, money and resources, huh?

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most waste of taxpayer money on all these “evaluation” grants & programs — it just never ends in DC–all this money gets squandered on useless consultants and new “models” that get shelved in 2-3 years and the process starts again.

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Why are administrators doing the evaluations? They have no idea what teachers do…same with parents. I think other teachers need to come in to evaluate teachers. Other teachers understand what is real teaching, versus whatever buzzword garbage the administrators are currently concerned with that week. Our observations by our administrators for TKES are a joke. Very biased, and they don’t really understand what’s going on in classrooms. And I’m not complaining based on my results – I’m judged as one of the “exemplary” ones. However, others that are also just as good as me are giving proficient or lower because of biased administrators.

It’s a joke, it doesn’t work. Have teachers do the reviewing, or get rid of all this junk altogether and actually pay teachers. Better teachers will appear if you offer decent pay. Oh, and allow for a way to fire teachers, like any other job…don’t make hoops to jump through when someone has proven to be worthless. Granted, for that, you would need a way to easily remove worthless administrators as well. I think the percentage of worthless administrators is higher than the percentage of worthless teachers.

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Has any parent out there actually tried to teach his/her child how to read? How to subtract? Being able to do something yourself does NOT necessarily mean you know to TEACH someone else how to do it. What can parents say about a teacher that is meaningful from an educational standpoint? “I like her?” “She goes to my church?” “I didn’t like the way she told the students that the Civil War was about slavery!”?

I will be the first (and oftentimes am) to acknowledge that Schools/Colleges of Education are too frequently where students end up after they FAIL in an academic major. (”Gee, I didn’t know I would have to pass Statistics to be a Psychology major — guess I’ll major in Education instead.”) There certainly ARE incompetent teachers out there. There are also burned-out teachers and over-burdened teachers. But to think that parents are equipped to evaluate professionals is ludicrous. Would you place parents on the licensing/evaluation board for physicians? The ugly truth is really very simple: We will have good, talented, professional teachers when the Schools of Education cease to be dumping grounds for students who can’t succeed anywhere else.

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Unintended consequences: the state DOE and powers-that-be saw that Race to the Top Money and said “Yay!” as they cut Georgia’s education budget beyond reason. But they didn’t ask the front lines if we even have the infrastructure to meet the requirements. Case in point: at Dunwoody High School, teachers have had to commit valuable instruction time for pre- and post-evaluations, teacher evaluations, etc. without supporting technology, internet access, sufficient computer workstations for each student, etc. Many teachers had to just give up because of the impossibility of the available technology.

You can’t fix stupid.

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[...] Go to this article [...]

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To USG Professional: Yes, I am a parent “out there” who has taught my daughter to read AND subtract. I work at least 50-60 hours a week, then come home and spend all evening helping my 1st grader in hopes of enabling her to excel at what she is not getting in the classroom. Not saying the teacher is incompetent, but busy with the number of students in the classroom…so yes, I feel I could fairly evaluate the teacher. Have to say, I think you need a new profession as it sounds as if you are one of the “burned-out” teachers.

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Why would anyone want to be a teacher anyway? (I am in my 32nd year of teaching in public school in GA.) We get very little respect in the community. Everyone SAYS they respect us and support us, but at crunch time the support vanishes. We are required to have more education than any profession other than those in the medical field or lawyers. Our pay is no where near those professions. Worst of all, our society does not value education. The majority of my students (and I teach in a properous community with excellent schools) are, at best, indifferent to getting a high level education. The level of apathy toward education in our society is soaring. Parents do not do their part, students come to us unprepared to learn, and we are most often seen as the enemy when we try to discipline unruly students. The apathy, and its resulting frustration on the part of teachers, is the worst thing with which I deal on a daily basis. It starts at home and most AMERICAN parents are not doing what needs to be done before their children ever get to school.

Sorry for rambling. I fear I am approaching burnout.

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@ Concerned Parent. When your daughter is older, you will not be able to walk into a Calculus class, AP Economics class or a British Lit class and evaluate the teacher’s content delivery. I am not sure you can do a fair job at it in the first grade.
Yes we go to school for our content area and to study pedagogy (and it is an art).
Unfortunately most parents think we are camp counselors, high end baby sitters and maybe some are but most I know are not.

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duh

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I have mixed reactions to this. I recognize a need to improve the educational process; however,an underlying premise of reform that students and parents are consumers and education is a product disturbs me. There is a good reason why we have teachers and students: teachers know more, students know less. If teachers need to know more, then we need to see that they get proper training. It is not a democratic system and should never be evaluated as such, nor is a classroom a micro-market governed by rules of the market place. Besides, the schools do an outstanding job of satisfying goals the public truly expects of them and is willing to pay for: we turn out some of the greatest football players in the nation.

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A Concerned Parent,

Congrats on being one of the few who can.

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A Concerned Parent,

I retract the previous statement. We don’t have “Unions” in this state. Please go back North and complain about their unions.

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@ Concerned Parent; You state “Instead of looting the taxpayers for more money, the teachers unions need to be busted” as a cause of the state of education in Georgia but how come the states that are unionized are the states that continually perform better, in general, than the states that where unions are illegal i.e. Georgia?

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Could we please have someone show our elected officials a presentation using really small words and pretty pictures showing that no company or business would want to move to Georgia if they cannot get a smarter work force who can do the required job. A new dome is not going to pick up the lost revenue. I pity the “legacy” that the politicians are leaving us.

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Enter your comments here

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Fiasco would be an improvement. This is a race to the bottom. Republicans niether know nor care about urban education, Democrats the same. Teacher must organize. Join MACE

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A decent teacher evaluation program in GA??? Forget it. It will not happen because the “system” prefers to keep the incompetent teachers in the classroom. When my children attended public school there were many, many times I would find problems with homework assignments, memos sent home, etc. When I discussed this with the teachers, I always received the same answer – we are only allowed to teach the material assigned to us. What a freaking cop out. My response: Mr./Mrs. Teacher how about reviewing the material before you teach it???

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Teacher Evaluations? Sure. They should be broken down into two parts

How well does the teacher know the subject matter that he/she is teaching.

How well does the teacher present the subject matter to the students.

Nothing else should matter. Not Student performance (that would be evaluating STUDENTS). Not student opinions. Not parent opinions. If the teacher knows the material and is able to present it well, then they are a good teacher. Whether the student learns is controlled by other factors beyond the teacher’s control.

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Maureen Downey

February 1st, 2013
11:21 am

@Skinner, I asked her about that yesterday as we are also aware of the speculation, fueled by frequent meetings behind closed doors of the school board.
She said, “I can’t comment on that.”
Made me wonder as I expected a clear denial that any such discussion was under way.

Maureen
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Thanks MD. I know you’ll stay on it. There’s plenty of us here, with ALOT invested in DCSS. We don’t mind doiing the hard work of restructuring and rebuilding, but there’s got to be a light at the end of the tunnel to motivate us enough to continue the fight for these kids.

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Good riddance! The Feds are trying to force Georgia to implement portions of teacher evaluations that are known to be unreliable and are a waste of money. Our state superintendent knows this and has alerted them to the problem. Yet they insist on full implementation of their plan. Test-based evaluations and student-survey-based evaluations are a waste of taxpayers’ money.

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Not sure why any Georgia residents are surprised by this. Typical Georgia. Last in most all things this state is involved in. And this is what happens when a state is ruled by one party. Especially when that party does not believe in government, rules, regulations, standards, math and science. Couple that with a party who hates state employees and is head strong on reducing as many of them as possible all the while not giving raises in 7 years does make for quality teachers in the classroom as a whole. When you look at all this, are you really surprised that Georgia remains one of the most backwards screwed up places in the union? Oh I forgot, citizens here still want to susceed even though this state remains one of the largest takers of federal money. I don’t think that worked out for this state too well in the past….they lost and will continue to lose until they join the 21st century, and that means education is important more so than political cronies and lining your pockets while in office. Thanks Governor Deal. You’re doing a fine job it looks like.

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Meaningless paperwork is part of the price traditional public school teachers pay—for the near-total exclusion of market forces in K-12 education.

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All of these programs are great, but when budgets are cut and class sizes increase none of these program work as they were not designed for 30+ students in a class room. Let’s work to reduce class size and maybe some of these programs will actually work. All they are doing right now are frustrating teachers and making them feel worthless.

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Also, Principal Skinner. ALOT is not a word.

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beanster, ha ha ha. You’re killin’ me.

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The whole evaluation system is a joke as is our President who put the crap in.

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The federal department of education should take its multi-billion dollar budget and divide it equally among all classroom teachers for two years then go out of business completely. “Arbitrary, mandatory and counter-productive” describes most programs they push, race to the top, TKE’S SLO’S etc. Give the teachers the money – they are doing the work !

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so mountain man, let’s just close all urban schools. why pay teachers, if they have no chance of making a difference. And re Richt, yes, he gets evaluated on results regularly.

Oh, and coaches of “non-athlete” schools shouldn’t ever be measured on the game score…since they are working with zero talent and have no chance. Yeah, that makes sense.

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My wife’s a private teacher and she gets evaluated by a VERY experienced level coordinator who spends a lot time meeting and observing her classes, giving her feedback weekly. At the end of the year, her raise (a measly 1.5-2%) is a combination of the coordinator’s review, her own self-review, the director’s own opinion (definitely more involved than a principal is) and maybe a student survey (can’t remember for sure on the latter). Why can’t we employ this very simple idea into our public school system, to have experienced coordinators that actually know what is going on in the class rooms and have them do that actual reviewing, if principals and vice principals are too busy? Most of us workers have supervisors that do our reviews and teachers should be no different. Fire the bad ones, promote the good ones. I don’t understand why this stuff is so hard to implement.

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Ignorance is bliss in this state. Wait until all these private (charter) schools start sucking all that Government money from the public schools.. Can you say race to the bottom, oops, were already on the bottom, well almost, thank goodness for Mississippi. Republican run state Governments, aren’t they just special…NOT!

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I have serious concerns with the Feds of just about everything so that should make us even.

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but P Skinner, he’s right! “a lot” is never ever one word!!! It wasn’t until I was neck deep in university that a kind professor pointed out to me the difference in “it’s” and “its.” The grammar basics really are an indicator of being educated and as professionals, it is appropriate to attend to the basics. He is doing you a favor. You would most definitely not want to publish “Alot of what you are doing is good…” on someone’s evaluation. PS Standard English also does not use contractions. Just an FYI, if you want to writer proper.

Hey, here’s a curve. Some of the clearest strongest writing I’ve seen in the last year is from an interview transcript with typed answers from the Korean music artist “PSY” (music hit: “Gangnam Style”). That guy is no peasant and had some superb education. His writing in English is incredibly elegant and crisp. Not sure about the cover songs, drag outfit and cone boobs. I guess it works in Korea – they are a little isolated. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrlr5K8aguY I tell you, though, dead serious, that guy was taught Standard English as good as I have seen anywhere.

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“From Pres. Obama on down, leading Democrats school their kids in private schools far, far from the influence of unionized teachers or the economic underclass. ”

Typical liberals ! They want your children to go to the government indoctrination centers but send their darlings to private school so they can be productive citizens. They don’t want school vouchers so you can be given the option of sending your kid to a better school where he or she might have a chance for a better life.

After what happened at Newtown and Price Middle I hope your children are wearing bullett-proof vests along with their backpacks!

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dc – If you are going to use that flawed analogy involving coaches and teachers, let me let you in on something. Coaches get to cut players who are not up to par. Teachers have to teach whomever is on his/her roster! If I got to try out my students and cut them when they don’t perform, I’d always have a winning team!

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At most jobs, the end product is a direct reflection of your job performance. Why are teachers not wanting test results to be a part of the evaluation process? Yes, there are different levels of learning ability, but testing the subject knowledge being taught has to be a major component of teacher evaluations.

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Zell Miller is the ONLY governor who ever supported teachers.

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dclark….”Give the teachers the money – they are doing the work !”
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Thought everthing would change after NCLB ….Unfortunately RTTT continues the ‘devastation’!!!

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If quailty teachers are important enough to make evaluation a majoy part of the system then why rush in to a system that would promote and demote teachers that is untried and very suspect. no know seems to know what the evaluation is or how it is calculated. My class is compared to some ghost class that some formula says is simmular but no one seems to know what the formula is. That is no way to improve education

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Teacher evaluation is hard for a lot of reasons such as different styles, different kids in classes, different levels of experience and training, etc. This is complicated by pressures from the teacher unions/associations and the tenure issue.

I think there is another way to approach teacher evaluations relative to an attempt to improve our schools. Eliminate mandates/guidelines from the state and feds altogether. Instead, evaluate the progress of the school as a whole, as well as the unique populations within a school(special ed or exceptional children and ’slow learners’) and make it the basis for retaining or keeping a principal. Included in the evaluation of the principal should be imput from staff and parents. In return, the principal should be given complete control of hiring and dismissing staff members. If a tenure option remains due to political pressure from the union/associations, then tenure should only give the dissmissed staff member the right to consideration at another school in the system instead of a guranteed job. Furthemore, in order to increase the ability of our principals to be more effective managers, then they should be given greater freedom to remove intractible students from the school. Requiring schools to serve disruptive students has been the greatest undoing of public education. Presently, schools end up classifying these kids as having an emotional/behavioral disorder and doing their best to maintain them in special education classes. The problems related to this are enormous and the topic of a book, not a post on a website. When possible, they also send these kids to alternative environments. Our society has to get real about the problems we have created in our attempts to protect the rights of these children and their parents. What we have ended up with is a system which allows behavioral and emotional disorders to incubate until the child becomes an adolescent and is no longer a candidate for viable treatment even if it were available. Our ‘nanny’ state has removed parents from the equation in dealing with these students and this has to change. One of these kids being ‘mainstreamed’ in a regular classroom presents enormous challenges for any teacher and most teachers have 4 or 5 of these children in their classes. The school systems have to stop being considered a closed loop whereby total responsibility of these children are placed with them. Communities have to involve all agencies, particularly law enforcement, to make sure parents are doing their part, in getting these kinds of kids appropriate help. Principals need to have the flexibility to manage a reasonable situation for their teachers as opposed to expecting improvement from teachers who are overwhelmed with children beyond even the most talented specialists’ abilities, and yes, there are many children who meet this criteria. The end result is that management, principals, will have the authority to pursue their vision of managment, just as businesses in a free economy have this flexibility in deciding how to make money. I think we will find that exceptional managers will rise to the top and that school environments will reflect their individual visions as opposed to a regimented, cookie cutter state model. We may end up with the Steve Jobs as principals instead of stressed out control feaks who are too scared to try anything novel.

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MOUNTAIN MAN @11:37 nailed what should be evaluated: subject matter knowledge and ability to deliver instruction.

Here’s how to do it at the high school level. Get administrators out of the evaluation business. They are managers and can’t possibly have the subject matter knowledge necessary to do a good job. Evaluations should be done by an outside agency to prevent bias. Evaluators could be retired teachers. Evaluations should be based on at least 10 observations and several conferences. Evaluations would be required every third or fourth year. This might actually improve education. I think that quite a few retired teachers would do this for their normal teacher rate of pay. Of course, you would have to train them as evaluators.

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Can we please understand this point; a. teachers are not given “tenure” we are not guaranteed a job, we sign one year contracts. What we are afforded after we sign the 4th contract is a fair dismissal hearing. Teachers can be fired for cause, if the administration is strong enough to document and actually follow through with the firing.

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I am a teacher and my students were to be tested at the beginning of the year and then again at the end of the year to measure the growth for my evaluation. However, the beginning of the year test was given in December. Will I still be responsible for a full years growth at the end of the year or will they look for the 4 1/2 months growth left after the first test?

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if y’all so smart why yo so dis’respected an underpayed?

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another program, hailed by those at the top, that well, is designed by people who have no idea what they are doing.
I mean, seriously, in my kid’s classrooms, they are implementing yet another math program because it’s ‘better’ than the last one. and they do that every few years. it only confuses the kids MORE. I think it’s more telling for math, but really – each kid learns math differently, so when you implement yet ANOTHER program, some will do okay, some will excel, and still some will do awful. While some kids will learn something like math no matter what – all kids can be put into any of those categories, depending on how it’s taught. and the kids don’t know how they learn ‘best.’

How long will this be out before we see how much money we’ve wasted on administration that could have actually gone to education? or Gd forbid – not be spent at all because it’s a waste of time and money?

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It still baffles me that Georgia ever signed on to this ridiculous boondoggle anyway. (Good ol’ Sonny’s outstanding educational “leadership” in action!) For a relatively tiny amount of money, our state chose to cede total control to the feds, and now you have an ignorant beaurocrat like Duncan calling all the shots. We should tell Duncan and Obama where they can stick their bribe money, but of course we won’t. That’d make too much sense and that goes against our southern values. BTW, I thought republicans were against the overstepping of federal authority. I guess Sonny was absent when they taught that lesson at conservative school??

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The new teacher/leader evaluation system is intended to be fair and to allow for growth over time for teachers and administrators with the new expectations. I can speak from experience that it does take a lot of time and effort with the new work but the only way anyone gets better is to receive fair and honest feedback. The student achievement piece of the evaluation is very important as we try to move all students to college and career readiness. Without checking for results, most will not move. All of this is new and many teachers and administrators are struggling with the expectation but given the time and support we will have better teachers and leaders. The results will be better educated students who have a chance to do the things they want with their life.

Without education, the students do not have a chance and the real losers after the students will be the respective counties and the State of Georgia. Parents need to get in their school, support their students and demand that school do what is necessary for their students. While in the school, support the teachers and administrators because we all want the same thing for the students of Georgia

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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Teachers treating children / parents as “customers” is a perversion. When it is official doctrine, maybe better to avoid.

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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.

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@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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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!

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@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.

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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.

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@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.

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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.

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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.

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If you timed it right, Race to the Top could have mother, father, and child all filling out evaluations of their teachers.

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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.

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Hi Maureen, Very interesting and very well done post. Quick question, does anyone if the Title 1 funding has been frozen in Georgia?

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Folks, look it all up…

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@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.

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