In my student teaching in this district I worked under a teacher that has no support from the administration. Last year she had been assigned the students with the worst behavioral problems in the school. Daily there were disruptions and strife between the teacher and students. The solution she used was to send the students away or to “demote” them to a lower grade for the day. She constantly demeaned the students and was sarcastic when speaking to students. The principal was almost never on site during the time I was there. While the principal complained that students were sent from the room, nothing was ever done to change the situation. The principal came in once during a prearranged time to observe and evaluate my “Master” teacher, but the visit was so short that it was irrelevant. Plus I happened to be teaching at the time so I’m not sure how an evaluation could have taken place. Perhaps instead of just trying to force this teacher out by giving her the “worst” students (her words not mine), real evaluations could take place and if not dismissal then retraining.

This year, as a sub, I worked in a classroom where the teacher had called out but left no plans for the days I was there. I had to improvise all of the first day. Luckily I’m good at that but my level of preparedness or lack there of was evident to the students and their behavior reflected this. That night, instead of focusing on my Masters homework, I planned lessons for a classroom that wasn’t mine. The principal appreciated my efforts and I felt her presence on the campus. Once again I could tell that the administration did not support a teacher but instead of creating poor working conditions for this out of touch instructor, the principal was documenting every infraction and even asked me to document the lack of lesson plans and general disorganization of the classroom. I am sure that soon this teacher will be asked to retire and I wish that more principals would follow her example.

When I worked my student teaching supervisors would visit every other week to watch me teach and interact with students. They could show up at anytime and make decisions about my effectiveness as a teacher. Principals have the same power and I wish they would use their time to drop in at unexpected moments to inspect their staff. Maybe if more teachers were truly evaluated and held to best practice, this “young” teacher would be able to find a job next school year.

Oakland North reporter here -

I think Katy’s question about whether young teachers in Oakland feel differently about tying pay to performance, the way this study has said Gen Y teachers do in general, is very interesting.

I’m also curious how that would look. Young Teacher says that he/she hasn’t heard of anything that would work. Have any of you heard of a possible solution?

Private schools don’t usually do this (enable the psych patients) because they actually expell students for insubordination much less truancy and violence.

To the extent some commentators bemoan the fact that these damaged & dangerous people “drop out” they do not understand the concept of expelling waste.

I believe it’s wrong to mark down a teacher or an administrator because these kids aren’t being retained. They are supposed to drop out/be expelled.

We are not talking about a high number of people but they can wreck havoc way beyond their numbers and can carry a following of other marginal students with them.

Public schools need to identify those “students” who belong in locked psych facilities (often called juvenile hall) or locked down schools (called reform schools, special schools, etc – they do exist). While kicking these kids to the curb they can be referred to those facilities which are designed to contain them. They cannot be safely managed in open public schools.

Given that California as a state has few teachers actually fired each year, I find it hard to believe you know several, but of course “pushed-into retirement” is pretty vague and might be a much larger number.

I hear you on mediocrity, but that is not only an Oakland problem. That’s a nationwide epidemic. Teaching has never been 38 hours a week and everyone knows it. I’ve seen kids that got 35 or so hours from their teacher. It was horrible. Mediocrity is clearly the larger problem, but ought we not address that head on instead of dancing around it?

I mean, “the truth hurts,” but let’s deal with it.

Yes, I am dealing with that issue now. I have a great kid who was finally catching up. Another student with two incarcerated parents being raised by two naive grandparents who has stolen from other students, the school and the teacher (caught with stolen items), used scissors as a weapon in the classroom and has been in three fights in the last moth is pulling the student who is finally on track in the other direction. OUSD does nothing to protect other students from this student. I wonder how many drop outs we could avoid by taking violent, anti-social students out of mainstream classrooms. Of course they should be given an opportunity to redeem themselves, but when they use weapons, steal almost daily and beat up other students it is time to remove them from the classroom.

I deal with criminals and the mentally ill (among a lot of other things). Often we have probation reports, psych reports, social worker reports and access to family history data.

Yes they were retained in school, yes they were sent to alternative or special schools, yes they have histories of early psych evaluations for such things as running away, promiscuity, stealing, lying (pathological kind), firesetting, bedwetting, animal cruelty (McDonalds Triad?). This is at the extreme edge of the group. Typically we have underclass behavior from underclass genetic line. That doesn’t mean the parent doesn’t love the kid although sometimes they don’t. What all this does mean is that there is something very (medically/genetically/culturally) wrong with the family line. On occasion it just something sort of wrong with the line and the appearance on the family tree of disfunction is not pervasive but sporadic (say, one in 4 of each family grouping).

The point I am trying to make is that it is not the school that did this – even if the school didn’t help the problem. Many people used the same schools at the same time and they didn’t turn out this bad.

Bad schools are not “bad” because of the earth they sit on. They are bad because of the people who go there. And people are not created equal. Some of them are Bi-Polar, subject to addiction or borderline personality, of low IQ, the list goes on. A lot of people have a lot of atypical problems. The schools are never set up to detect and manage physical or mental abnormalities early. And part of the reason is this obsession with “freedom” and comfort. The public schools can hardly tell people what seat to sit in anymore.

What I do blame the public schools for is not segregating the students and schools by ability and performance so the presence of discipline and ability impaired people doesn’t drag down the education of those who do not have these problems. That’s why families flee for charter or private schools and even to other cities.

Any normal school that tolerates the presence of a child with a conduct disorder who is 3rd generation anti-social personalty disorder is not much of a school at all. And you shouldn’t feel regret when such a child is truant or drops out. THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DROP OUT.

The stats above don’t consider this. Some students are supposed to fail. They are biologically programmed for it. Later in life if they live and their disorder settles they might do something with adult school. Many of them will be dead by 30. Behavioral Science is getting to the point where we can identify these people by 14. If you want to “save” them you need to do so away from normal kids – do it at alternative schools.

http://www.dropoutprevention.org/resource/major_reports/communities_in_schools.htm

Poor school performance. An individual’s school experiences have been found to have a major impact on the likelihood that he or she will graduate. School performance and engagement with school are two of the primary experiences. Poor academic performance is one of the most consistent predictors of dropout, whether measured through grades, test scores, or course failure (Alexander, Entwisle, & Kabbani, 2001; Battin-Pearson et al., 2000; Ensminger & Slusarcick, 1992; Rumberger, 2001; Wagner et al., 1993). It has been found to impact dropout starting in the 1st grade (Alexander et al., 2001) and continuing throughout elementary school (Lloyd, 1978), into middle (Battin-Pearson et al., 2000; Cairns et al., 1989; Gleason & Dynarski, 2002; Ingels, Curtin, Kaufman, Alt, & Chen, 2002), and on into high school (Alexander et al., 2001; Ekstrom et al., 1986; Elliott & Voss, 1974; Gleason & Dynarski, 2002).

Other evidence that poor school performance is a major factor in leaving school early comes from dropouts themselves. Poor academic performance was given as one of the major reasons that dropouts left school before graduation in several surveys (Bridgeland, Dilulio, & Morison, 2006; Ekstrom et al., 1986; Jordan et. al., 1994). “Got poor grades” (Ekstrom et al., 1986), “was failing in school” (Bridgeland et al., 2006; Jordan et. al., 1994), or “couldn’t keep up with schoolwork”(Jordan et al., 1994) were reported by at least one-third of dropouts surveyed as primary reasons for dropping out in three surveys.

Another aspect of school performance that is related to achievement but a major factor on its own, is being retained and having to repeat a grade (Alexander et al., 2001; Cairns et al., 1989; Janosz, Le Blanc, Boulerice, & Tremblay, 1997; Rumberger, 2001; Wagner et al., 1993). As for low achievement, beginning in 1st grade, retention at any grade level has been found to impact the chances that a student will drop out. What makes retention so powerful is that its effects are additive, where multiple retentions dramatically increase the odds that a student will drop out (Alexander et al., 2001; Cairns et al., 1989; Gleason & Dynarski, 2002).

A student who drops out of high school can expect to earn one-half of the salary of a high school graduate and just over one-quarter that of a college graduate. To support increases in teacher pay, we need an increase in the tax base. This is why Oakland teachers are paid less than say, Piedmont or San Ramon Valley School District – not because of the quality of the teachers – although that may be part of it – it is the tax base issue. The state pumps the same amount of money into students in these areas as Oakland (maybe a little less) but they have the tax base to support their student population and the teachers who educate them.

In speaking to some parents earlier this weekend to parents of students in Piedmont here are some differences I heard in parent-teacher relationships and behavior: All teachers are required to respond to emails from parents within two school days of receipt. Teachers are required to have all assessments and test scores of their students available at all parent-teacher contacts (not just semi-annual parent teacher conferences) and all teachers must have a written plan for student improvement when the student is at the “Basic” level or below.

My experience with my own child is that not one of her five elementary school teachers in Oakland has done those three things – not even one year. We have had two teachers who had the assessments and scores – none of the five were willing to respond to emails and only the two mentioned above even respond with a written communication when a written communication is sent to them (kindergarten and first grade teachers).

For an increase in pay would OUSD teachers be willing to be held to the same standard?

– Are you saying the unions should evaluate the teachers they represent? This is a radical idea, and one I’ve never heard before. Maybe it would be good, but man, that is not even on the table. Or are you saying they should just believe the district? The “word on the street”? Hey, there are some unlikeable teachers who are actually quite good — this shouldn’t become a popularity contest.

– I don’t know much about cop unions, but I do know that cops are famously secure; you have to kill somebody in front of a bunch of videocameras to even get fired.

By the way, I have seen SEVERAL tenured teachers fired or pushed into early retirement when a principal wanted to make the effort to document their shortcomings in a serious manner — i.e., with student and parent interviews, pouncing on a particularly egregious quote, etc.

The real problem is mediocrity — mostly born of trying to do a 60-hour-a-week job in 37.5 hours a week. This is NOT whining, it is simply a fact: Teachers spend 30 hours a week with students, 3-4 more in mandatory meetings and then are supposed to do all their prep, grading, parent contact and managing the room in the other 3-5 hours A WEEK.

A few years back, Berkeley Unified teachers tried to “work-to-rule” and stick to the actual hours of the contract and it broke down after a few weeks — the teachers simply couldn’t stomach short-changing the students.

I wonder if the bad teacher had been properly evaluated in the past?

Regarding tenure: I have seen both sides of the equation at my school. On the one hand, my first year there was a veteran teacher at my school who was no good (obvious even to a newbie such as myself). The principal tried to fire her. In response, the union hired a lawyer and aggressively defended the teacher, who was transferred to another school and is still teaching in OUSD (echoing MDUSD Mom’s concerns). On the other hand,I observed that same principal unjustly harass two of my colleagues, and give them pink slips. They did not have tenure, so she did not have to provide any sort of reason. In fact,she had given them both positive evaluations throughout the year, and then fired them without warning for political reasons. Fantastic teachers, both. This decision was subsequently overturned when the principal herself was removed from the school. I believe that we need to find some middle ground between “firing without cause” and aggressively protecting bad teachers. But until we do, and until the day that OUSD ensures a high quality principal is in place at every school, tenure is a necessary protection.