He is as much a toady to the phony "standards" crowd as our beloved dictator was.
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Considering the School District of Philadelphia may be the most corrupt school district in the entire United States, with the exception of New York's, of course, it is hard to take the superintendent's ideas of education reform, always pinning it on the teachers, seriously.
Contrary to popular belief, school districts do NOT want "excellent" teachers, especially older teachers, regardless of how many years of experience they have; they want very young teachers who will work for peanuts and then quit after a few years or be thrown out by principals in favor of still more cheap hires. Principals LOVE hires from the Bimbo Brigade. I would look at the school district's individual school web pages and at their staff photos, and I would find very, very few teachers over the age of 40, let alone 50, in these schools, especially in the elementary schools, and doubly especially in elementary schools with male principals. Age discrimination is rampant in public education, and districts will build a false case against "tenured" teachers hiding the fact their dismissals are illegal, as happened in my case. Never, ever underestimate the evil school administrators pull--I didn't think such crap existed when I went into the education field and didn't until I had a sociopath as an administrator a couple of years ago. Everything went downhill after that. Teachers only need one bad administrator, and their careers are over because of the "blacklist," which doesn't just apply to felons and child abusers, by the way. Nobody talks about administrator abuse, which is the biggest reason our schools are going into the crapper. A decade or so ago, the education "crisis" was mostly fabricated for political ends, but No Child Left Behind has exacerbated the deterioration of public schools and has increased administrator abuse of teachers, especially special education teachers. Nobody in his or her right mind should even entertain teaching as a career.
Choice comments of the article:
Posted by legend1 10:39 AM, 06/14/2009
Say you have an excellent teacher who has been teaching for twenty years. What makes anyone think they would be willing to teach in a difficult school? I have heard many, many teachers say they would simply find other work. That experienced twenty year veteran will have many other options outside the district. I just have not seen a rationale idea to recruit EXPERIENCED teachers as opposed to those just out of college who get eaten alive in the city schools?
Posted by Magistra 11:10 AM, 06/14/2009
Some teachers do opt to teach in the inner city and work with special education students, including the profoundly impaired, the autistic, the emotionally and mentally ill, the incarcerated and those needing learning support. Many of these teachers are just plain heroes and do a lot of unseen and unmeasurable good. Some teachers stay all their careers with "regular classes" that always have special students who are mainstreamed. There are few classes of overachievers, unless you go to a special admissions school like Central or Girls. There are some classes withing schools for gifted students also. Most kids fall in between these extremes. And yet THE SAME TEST IS GIVEN TO ALL THESE STUDENTS AS IF THEY ARE ALL ON THE SAME LEVEL OF INSTRUCTION. It is absurd nonsense. Schools thrive with stable faculties of veterans who welcome and mentor rookies who are also professionally trained and not amateurs like Teach For America, doing it for tuition reimbursement. The state tests do not reflect all the authentic work being done in the classroom. They do reflect hours of drudge work teaching to the test and all the strategies to make the highest score. Meanwhile, no one is holding accountable the legislature that underfunds the schools, or the socio-economic condition within the school community, or the parents, or even the students themselves who figure out early how to game the system.
Posted by MacMaven 11:20 AM, 06/14/2009
Unbelievably touching. Boy, can this woman play the media or what? In the last week alone, hundreds of teachers responded to the recent articles by Dean and Graham and where's the follow up? Nevertheless, "nancee" you bring up a valid point; however, there is something called due process. If a teacher isn't up to par, supports must be provided first to try and bring the teacher up to snuff. This is an administrator's job and if they do not or cannot tell the teacher in question what's going wrong and provide the supports to strengthen the teacher's method of instruction (with documentation of the efforts), then an unsatisfactory rating is wrong and a poor reflection on the administration. [Blogger's note: My district didn't do that--they illegally fired me, and my evaluations were all good. My principal didn't do ANYTHING required by Nevada law, but the arbitrator, paid for by the district and its union, or by the state--in any case by Nevada taxpayers--sided with the district in a fraudulent case.] Further, I'm personally in disagreement with the "no snitch" policy of teachers when it comes to the few colleagues that are as you say, "slackers". As professionals, I believe if we police ourselves then there should be no need for the likes of Dr. A. to pressure our administrators to write up more teachers - this could lead to a quota of capricious negative observations and ratings, whether deserving or not. However, policing ourselves can be difficult... how do you tell a co-worker that he/she is a "slacker" and pulling the profession down? Until good teachers unite together and develop a method to uphold the integrity of the profession and exclude the few truly undeserving, we will continue to be bundled as a whole and slammed by the public, the media, and countless administrations.
Posted by mindstorms 11:56 AM, 06/14/2009
Not only do all students deserve the best and brightest teachers but there are a lot of other things they deserve. They deserve a stable family environment. They deserve adequate health services. They deserve a crime free environment to live in. They deserve libraries in all the schools and neighborhoods. They deserve a clean and healthy environment to grow up in. There is a heck of a lot more they deserve then merely hoping that somehow the best and brightest teachers can overcome an environment that puts them miles behind others to begin with and expect them to catch up and compete.
Posted by rodney1 12:51 PM, 06/14/2009
First off who the f are the New Teacher Project? What is their expertise? Ackerman can't even read a budget. She thought that 440 Broad was the amount of people she could hire from that entity. All she does is pick someone that agrees with her agenda. What is her real agenda? I think the students need the best Superintendent and CEO. Bye Bye Arlene.
Posted by rodney1 01:03 PM, 06/14/2009
Remember the saying "those who can do and those who can't teach." Those who can't teach administrate" What do we do with those who can't administrate, Arlene?
Posted by appleworm 04:50 PM, 06/14/2009
Another fun saying has something to do with history repeating itself. From a Sept. 7, 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman resigned on Tuesday, marking an end to a tenure noted for rising student achievement and renewed fiscal health in the public school system, but marred by charges that she was autocratic and excluded parents and teachers from important decisions. In a private meeting with Ackerman Tuesday night, the Board of Education voted unanimously to mutually invoke a controversial "compatibility clause" in Ackerman's contract, meaning both the school board and Ackerman agree they are incompatible, according to board member Dan Kelly. I wonder how long it will take the School District of Philadelphia to realize the same thing. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/07/BAGM2EJIT11.DTL)
Posted by MCaesar 08:20 PM, 06/14/2009
By now it should be apparent to most people here that we have been had again. Nutter-Ramsey-Ackerman are much better at fooling the media, especially these papers, than they are making real change for the better. Since all 3 of them came on board it has been one long PR campaign with no real solutions.
Posted by phillysbest 09:03 PM, 06/14/2009
According to Ackerman, "THE VICTORY IS TO BE WON IN THE CLASSROOM." She has spent excessive monies bringing in "empowerment teams" of what are supposed to be "experienced and expert teachers" to many of the underperforming schools. She has hired other "resource" people, as well. Rather than supporting teachers in the classrooms, many of these resource people hide in their offices drinking coffee until noon. At what point does Ackerman realize it might be a good idea to visit schools unannounced and that this is about teamwork and collaboration in supporting the best interests of children; not her growing entourage. How effective can these countless initiatives be, when they change like the weather?
osted by Down in the Basement 12:27 AM, 06/15/2009
Am I the only one here who thinks that Arlene Ackerman says a lot of baloney...? She has the chutzpah...the nerve...to put the blame on teachers...let her start putting the pressure on some of these administrators...who are as dumb as heck and couldn't clean a cat litter box, let alone keep a school in order... Ackerman gets paid a half of a million to say this baloney... [Blogger's comment: They won't. Administrators including principals, especially the young ones, are dumber than a box of rocks but have almost unlimited, unchecked power--my last two were under 45 but had never worked for other employers or in other fields in their lives--but the district will keep them until they retire, regardless of what I told the district's lawyers in the frivolous action where I was named as a defendant. Nothing will happen to them. Districts don't care about wrongdoing--they merely sweep it under the rug. It is administrators--not teachers--who are almost impossible to fire.]
Posted by nealc3 11:59 AM, 06/15/2009
"All children deserve only the best teachers"??? This after Ms. Ackerman has spent the first few months of her "reign" (and yes that is an appropriate word for her tenure) alienating teachers and causing the most tumultuous environments in a school district possible. She plans on firing a large number of teachers and replacing them with "more qualified" teachers. Has she no understanding of the teacher shortage that already exists. Not only that, but she wants to ensure that the majority of teachers in the district are African American. Not that certain African Americans are not highly qualified and excellent teachers, but when you start putting quotas on positions like this, the quality of employees will definitely go down, not to mention the legality of her proposal. This woman has done absolutely nothing positive since taking over and has proven yet again why she has been continuously fired from similar positions. I hope that the SRC, teachers union, administrators union, and the community as a whole has the courage to ask this tyrant to step down beofre things get any worse. [Blogger's comment: There IS no real teacher "shortage"; it's all a revolving door system thanks to the structural problems of no administrator accountability.]
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