Blog Week March 3, 2010
On March second, President Obama said that it was right for all the teachers and the principal to be fired in a school when, in 2009, only 7% of their junior students passed state math tests. Only 3% of the juniors had passed in 2008 and test scores remained a problem throughout the school. 3% and 7% is totally unacceptable, all of us would quickly agree! Yet, according to the media reports the union was outraged.
Well, I am outraged too.
The school's superintendent had compiled a list of proposals to remediate the problem. The proposals included: Increased workload without much extra pay for adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.
It seems to me these were modest proposals. very modest.
The local paper reported that that Superintendent said that the union leaders "knew full well what would happen" if they rejected her proposed conditions. Yet the union refused to go along with the superintendent's proposed plan. So the firings were put in place due to "callous disregard" by the union of the situation for the students.
I, who tend to be on the side of teachers most of the time, made a 180 after I saw an interview with some of the fired teachers. When asked why the school was failing so badly one of them answered that the reporter had no idea what kinds of kids they were dealing with.
Could this mean this is all the kid’s fault, that 93% of these students are unable to learn math? Perhaps the union was right in refusing to do the extras the superintendent asked for, because clearly nothing would do any good as long as they have “those kids.”
If there is such a thing as malpractice in teaching, this is surely it.
The local paper further reported that one teacher said, “Teachers are not opposed to working harder — or longer; they simply want the opportunity to negotiate the details of their contract, not have it imposed from above. The issue is having the right to negotiate. Once we allow the superintendent to get her foot in the door, where will it stop?”
If political power is the only issue here, then where do student learning results fit in this situation? How many months and even years have these learning results been a reality in that high school? Is that not an issue? What have these teachers been doing? It is hard to imagine a sales operation when only 3 to 7% of the sales calls pay off and nobody gets fired. Harder yet to imagine a restaurant where only 3 to 7% of its tables are ever filled and it stays open. How about feeding your children 3 to 7% of the time. What were these teachers thinking when so many of their students were consistently failing? Did they meet together, even over coffee, to talk about other ways they might approach their teaching? And if not, why on earth not? Is it because no one can do anything with “Those kids?” Those kids are all our kids. 3% and 7% learning results are not about politics!
I have addressed hundreds of teacher groups in my career and I always show them Glen (Max) Magee’s* research on two children in two different schools, no more than 25 miles apart, here in two Chicago suburbs. I repeat this data here for your examination.
The children names are Victor and Valerie. They were in the 3rd grade when he compiled this data.
Victor’s School Valerie’s School
Enrollment 469 478
Grade 3 class size 15.3 21.5
% of students meeting state standards
Reading 15 97
Math etc. all the way down to % of students from low income families
I ask my teacher audiences to explain to someone sitting nearby why they think these two school learning results end up so differently. What is you answer? And how would you fix it? Would you fire the teachers, move the students to a different neighborhood where the taxes pay for more expensive resources? What would you do? What should we do? Why aren’t we doing it?
One thing is sure, it’s not just about achievement tests, is it?
*Max McGee is currently the president of the Illiois Math and Science Academy appointed in June 2007. Prior to this post, McGee was the superintendent of Wilmette SD 39. Prior to that, he was the was the Illinois State Superintendent of Schools.
