Please my posts about the (OEA) union. There are a number of places where I write succinctly between lines large enough to accommodate first grade handwriting practice.

Someone needs to put their reading glasses and thinking cap, but I won’t mention any names!

Thanks for your apology. I’m sorry too.

GO RAIDERS! Oops!

I apologize for misinterpreting your words.

Now might you apologize for:

a) Insulting PE teachers.
b) Insulting gardeners.
c) Shouting in all-caps.

?

Given this/your gross misrepresentation of what I “think” I hope none of your “nine OPS job offers” have anything to do with teaching reading comprehension.

PLEASE TELL ME YOU TEACH P.E.!

HERE’S A JOB SUGGESTION! Skyline needs a gardener.

Here’s the deal: If districts like OUSD could fill their ranks with respected young-ish veterans, they would not use TFA (or there own even less impressive “Oakland Teaching Fellows” program).

TFA is what it is — a stopgap that at least produces some wonderful teachers and steers a few kids into teaching who wouldn’t have gone there.

The same lack of logic applies to those like John who think the unions are the problems because they protect burntout or incompetent veterans. Let me ask you: Do you see a line of people trying to fill these rooms being held down by mediocre older teachers hanging on until retirement?

Last summer I put my resume in the Oakland system and was offered nine jobs within 24 hours. Some of these schools had lost 80% of their teachers in turnover.

What happens when a TFA or Fellows teacher is not recruited to fill a class? Subs or illegal overcrowding, for months or even the whole year.

TFA as a solution is certainly overhyped by its fundraisers, but it is no way a PROBLEM.

People need to realize this is triage.

If I was the new superintendent, I’d put a spending freeze on all curriculum purchases and fancy pilot programs until you had found a way (ahem, higher salaries) to solve the turnover and recruitment issues.

IT ALL STARTS WITH THE TEACHERS.

I remember extraordinary attention compared to a normal class at high school where there was typically 1 instructor with 28 or so kids. It was a great experience. I’d love for kids to have this model but the schools now would probably have to say they just couldn’t afford it.

From what my daughter in college has told me, the TFA positions are highly coveted these days and it’s harder than ever to get in. (Those two years will sure look good on that millennial’s medical school application!)

Although I didn’t start out being this cynical, and I have liked most of the young people I have met (what’s not to like?), I have become suspicious of the rescuer mentality promoted and reinforced by TFA. At its core is a presumption that these individuals are going to “eliminate educational inequity” because they are the “nation’s most promising future leaders.” (TFA web site). To me the program is just another one of those short-sighted cures that people want to believe.

The program is based on the assumption that enough people doing a two-year stint in “ghetto” schools will correct the problems. Of course, the first year will be a sink-or-swim, on-your-own, learning-on-the-job year, and the second will be just slightly better (if the baby teachers can stand to return). Then their nightmare, but socially eye-opening enlistment will be over and they will be free to go on their way. Of course the teaching positions get filled and that makes the school districts happy, but the students aren’t really getting any closer to being taught by a set of teachers who have built up their professional excellence year after year.

Also, because there are so many of these young teachers filling the ranks (they’re cheap), I see this model contributing to even more teacher turnover, a lack of respect and understanding for what it takes to be a truly successful teacher in this difficult setting, a weakening of worker protections for all teachers (at their age these teachers are not thinking about health insurance for their children, sane and sustainable work hours, or retirement benefits yet, so they aren’t likely to be interested in pressing for them), a perpetuation of the myth that teachers have the ability to close the achievement gap on their own (and in fact, are supposed to), and an assumption that the people who have been working in these “failing” schools all along are deficient in some way (many of the naïve youngsters are quite judgmental, you know).

Nextset’s idea is one way to go, but I like my daughter’s suggestion even more. She made it through Bret Harte and Skyline and had her share of bozo classmates who wasted everyone else’s time (although she ultimately prevailed). Being someone very familiar with this school environment, she said that each of the inexperienced, upper middle class, never-set-foot-in-a-“ghetto”-school-before, TFA-type teachers should be given a tough, young-adult, former Oakland public school student who would be their enforcer of proper behavior in the classrooms. Then, maybe that paired set of two young adults could make a dent.

Students reading at 6th grade level should not be in a room (or on a campus) with students reading at 12th grade level. When that occurs you don’t get the results you should for the classroom time.

As far as the blog goes: Education policy and education results affect real estate values (and always has) as well as employment in a community. It is important to have a dialog going. Katy: If you really want to have some fun post pictures of the Educrats along with their bios and article about their duties, policies and philosophy. Run more stats about OUSD and it’s students, and run stories about what happens to students after OUSD, college bound, work bound and jail bound (A,B & C track!). I’d like to see dialog about to what extent OUSD shaped (near term) the outcomes of their lives.