The reason we are having the disasters in the urban schools that we have here is that the Educrats miss-match incoming students to class assignments so that the dulls become enraged and frustrated – tearing apart the once-functioning schools. Now we propose to grade and punish or even “re-train” the instructional staff because this abusive miseducation doesn’t produce college ready blacks and browns? And make no mistake this is all about libs and minority students. Also don’t ever interpret what is being done to the black/brown students as reflecting any special love. The educators know exactly what they are doing and they do not mean well for the minority students (who they regard badly).

And exactly why should the staff hang around for this treatment when they can go work in a real school?

If OUSD continues in the vein they are in they will erode to little or nothing with each passing year of Charter Television ads. Ditto the similar ghetto school districts.

And the sooner the better.

Brave New World.

However, I want to encourage Nextset to avoid the shame/blame spiral. While I agree that pointing a finger and blaming teachers for poor student performance at best oversimplifies a very complex situation. On the other hand, simply pointing a finger at a student or a parent is just a unproductive.

I find that when I talk with parents and students about a student’s poor academics, we get a lot more progress when we look at the situation as a problem we can solve together. When each of us, myself as the teacher, the parent, and the student, each commits to making changes that s/he can control, together we can create a real solution.

I like to use the same thinking when I think about the current and this proposed teacher-evaluation system. I need to focus on what I can control:namely my craft as a professional educator.

It is certainly possible that my coach and principal may observe my craft and judge me to be an exemplar on all five or six criteria, then my student performance data comes back and it is atrocious. While this is certainly possible, I wonder how likely it might be? If it is likely, then I hope we would jump at the chance to analyze this. Does this discrepancy point to fundamental flaws in the student assessment tool? Am I, and are my coach and principal, mistaken in what we observe?

As a teacher, I welcome coaching, especially good coaching. You can read an excellent essay about five elements of good coaching from Ms. Lillie Marshall here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/teach-plus/5-teacher-evaluation-must_b_1446778.html?ref=education

If we choose to revamp our teacher evaluation system, or if we choose to continue to use our current system, this I believe remain true: Teacher observations and evaluations should be used to help teachers to improve. The “gotcha” game serves no one.

One of the games being played in the failed urban school districts is that if the chillun fail it must be the fault of the teachers.

Well that’s not true.

If the coursework is beyond the ability of the kiddies no amount of good teaching is going to turn them into “good” students. Dullards should not be in a classroom or on a campus that is inappropriate for them. Since that goes against the canon that “all students are created equal”, instead we get teachers subjects to a random draw of students no matter how dull and how unsuited to, say, 8th grade reading or math levels.

Then the district wants to blame the teaching staff for the results.

Until the schools first put in a comprehensive grading and sorting of the incoming students at each year, this kind of anti teacher measure is nothing more than an anti worker campaign that should be recognized and denounced as such.

And the best way to handle it is for the good teachers to simply quit and go to work at school districts with good students. That’s pretty easy to find. Demographics are your destiny.

This wouldn’t be required is schools in the urban areas IQ tested or otherwise sorted incoming classes and assigned students to tracked programs suitable for their ability and their wishes. No college prep for those who don’t want it or can’t perform. Vocational education on demand. This is what worked. We should never have stopped these programs.

Previously, students were assigned to programs that were not calculated to produce failure because they were appropriate to the student’s ability. Now frustration and rage turns urban campuses into dangerous places and “graduated” unemployable people. And to coverup their deliberate failure the school district campaigns to blame the teachers for the failure the district programmed. That’s what we have here. A cover up designed to find false blame in teachers.

Brave New World.