What should be done about urban schools that continue to perform poorly? Who, or what, is to blame? CPS has a controversial new strategy, detailed in this story from today's Chicago Tribune. See what you think.
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3 comments:
Firing all these teachers, 80% of whom have a Master's degree or are considered on paper as highly qualified teachers, will not improve the failing scores of these schools. If it was just the teachers, 90% of the students wouldn't be below the standards for their grade and scoring 5-10 points lower on the PSAE tests. Their ACT scores are horrible and are in the low teens.
If it were my choice, I would have master teachers (those with success and teach in class rooms that make AYP in the subject they are observing)and have them provide feedback on the deficits in the class. If they come back and say everything else is amazing,it is the teacher than fire them, but there has to be a deeper problem in these schools. My question is what are the neighborhoods like that surround the school, the background of the students, what is the copyright date on the text books, and are the resources there for teacher to use in their classroom? Even if they follow through and fire all the teachers, it will be at least 5 years before progress can be measured. The students that have been undereducated at these schools are going to high school without the necessary foundation and ACT scores aren't going to open the doors at colleges. The district needs to fire the 15.6% of teachers, that they say are under qualified on their report card and spend money where necessary. What the they need is more help in the classroom, more technology in the classroom, newer textbooks, and a clean and inspiring building. Classrooms, bathrooms, cafeterias, hallways, gymnasiums, libraries, and common areas need to be in good shape, freshly painted, and taken care of. A demonstration of pride in the appearance of the school, will foster pride in the students and improve the moral.
I was wondering how and when this sotry would be posted onto this blog. My mother works for Orr High School, but through the infant center as a family development coordinator to the teen mothers. She basically helps the parents in any way from finding medical assistance for the infants, financial assistance or planning ahead with college visits etc. She called me about a week ago talking about Orr High being all over the news, which, honestly is nothing new, but usually not for a good reason. I went on NBC5's website and watched the story's video online and called my mom back. She always tells me about the conditions of some of the girls that come in her office, there are girls who are "seniors, getting ready to graduate with 2 kids already, very bright, onthe honor roll etc." then there are girls who can barely read or spell and are doing poorly in all of thier classes, but are taking classes that are beyond their "reach", so to speak,she said that far too often the school just passes students along to become another teachers issue. There is no tracking, so you have students who might have done very poorly in Pre-Algebra, taking classes like Calculus and Trig and failing. I honestly do no believe that the solution is to fire the teachers and do a "sweep". there are SOO many other factors playing in here and like Sharli said, there are deeper issues here that CPS needs to look into, and not necessarilty blame it all on the teachers.
It appears to me that CPS is trying to clean up things from the inside-out. But because of the sociological factors which engross these schools (poverty, unemployment,inadequate funding), I don’t think such an approach is the right approach. Firing all teachers is an act of putting the blame solely on them for the struggles of their school. I don’t feel the blame can be placed squarely on anyone. The reason why I think CPS is taking this inside-out approach is because an outside-in approach is not plausible. Blaming the outside factors of society for these schools problems leaves them with a world of problems and no real place to start, no one to blame. In fact, it would appear to be a cop out. But singling out the teachers gives them a target. I think it also gives them a bit of false hope.
This article troubled me not only for its content, but also because of my personal reaction to it as a future teacher. I imagine this reaction would be similar to many other prospective educators. My thought was this: if the previous teachers were all fired in one fell swoop, what’s going to stop CPS from doing the same for the new round of teachers if dramatic improvements are not made? CPS’s objective here appears to be bringing in new educators, but they could be accomplishing the opposite: they could be scaring them away.
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