Posts Tagged ‘lay offs’

Act on Acting Out

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Do you know the jingle?  “When she is good, she’s very, very good, but when she is bad she is horrid.”

In my 4th grade class I have a child who is like that, so little self-control.  Now that it is the middle of the school year, her outbursts are close to habitual and I’m running out of strategies to modify her behavior.  By now she is often “sent to the office” for a “time out.”

When reading through articles, I get answers like ‘teachers must be able to remove disruptive students immediately’ suggesting that charter schools and parochial schools are better because they have that policy.  Perhaps those schools are quieter, but I can think of a number of reasons why all is silent, not necessarily kind and helpful reasons, and not simply because they get rid of disruptive students.

Of course, all teachers want their students to be quiet, studious, busy in productive activity-that’s what I learned in my credentialing classes.  After all, this is an intense phase of the school year when state tests are coming up in a month and students must have mastered all the subjects to be tested on California’s current criterion-referenced assessment tool.

At the same time, this is a school year of instability.  Though the Education Foundation is trying to cobble together funds, our school district deficit is large which means 102 teachers, including me, face lay offs.  In addition, guidelines for accountability are going to change due to new California legislation, and articles advocate a variety of evaluation mechanisms to lift up the highly qualified teachers and weed out the poorly qualified, all of which will take money, lots of money.  How will that happen?  The state is facing a budget deficit of $20 million for 2010-2011.

Do you see what I mean?  The ground is shaking under us and it’s hard to think of one more way to get this child to have a successful year.

Never give up.  We hold daily morning class meetings to review the business of the school day, remind ourselves how to act to help the class get through a successful day, talk over problems that might come up, defining over and over what happens if you choose to act out.

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Posted in California budget crisis, highly qualified teachers, layoff notices, public schools, school accountability |
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Is It a New Day?

Friday, June 5th, 2009

School reform can be hashed over until the end of time, but here and now a few changes have flipped to the top of the pile.

In the February 2009 stimulus package authorized by Congress, a $54 million “stabilization” fund was established to protect schools and school districts against teacher layoffs.  As any current or former teacher knows, laying off and hiring again at the last minute is the worst hindrance to stability in a school, certain to add an obstacle to classroom academic achievement, the improvement of which is every school’s goal.

Next reform of importance is holding down student-teacher ratios.  In spite of studies that support both sides of the teacher-student ratio argument, schools that have increased the number of students who are proficient in reading and math (the current standard), did so with the help of extra teaching personnel that reduced class size in the most important subject areas.  Data from Success for All, originally developed at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University, provides an example of the improvement possible.

Of course, the one issue that is up front in any discussion of education reform is the need for “highly qualified” teachers.  See, for example, George F. Will’s “The Last Word” opinion in Newsweek (March 23, 2009).  Now, much research has delineated the best practices that teachers should use to benefit their student’s achievement.  In California, teacher preparation programs have improved since the concept of best practices has been introduced and new teachers are well- equipped for the instructional goals in today’s schools.

Complaining about bad teachers doesn’t help.  To make sure new professionals continue to receive staff development and that experienced teachers have access to new practices, funding is necessary.

Careful planning and use of funding resources helps.  An example is the interactive DVD which allows for training in multiple staff development situations and doesn’t require the cost for trainers to come to the school site.

So, three reforms that every state governor in the union must address if the stimulus money is directed to him or her: stop laying teachers off, reduce the student-teacher ratio, provide resources to keep teachers on top of the game.  A good place to start.

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Posted in school reform, stimulus funds, teacher preparation |
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Devil in the Details

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

Just a glance at the websites for the White House and the Department of Education tell you big changes are emerging.  The sites affirm that students learn when teachers are retained-not laid off; that the day is long, the work is hard, and mentoring helps; that planning time can’t be ignored if reform is the goal.

As you’ve heard in the news, the sites declare the intention to improve early childhood education, high school graduation rates, student loans to help college attendance.  Sounds like the new administration is addressing the problems being flogged by various education blocs over the last eight years since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was authorized.

The biggest change is the amount of funding for programs mandated by NCLB, a highlight of the federal stimulus package (February 2009) as well as the federal budget legislation (March 2009).

Interesting that governors on behalf of state school boards, if they want the funds, must agree to assure certain provisions: improve the quality of standardized tests and raise standards; enforce the requirement that the most highly qualified teachers are assigned equably among all students, rich and poor.

If Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, and Barack Obama have been listening, why are so many in the education field upset?

The devil is in the details.

Some like Diane Ravitch in a mid-April post on the blog Bridging Differences, part of Education Week’s online magazine, say the administration is not doing enough to change NCLB faults (and there are many).   Dorothy Meier in the same blog says that there is national denial about the problem among voters as well as state governments.  The mantra is teachers are incompetent, unions are only thinking about pay, parents don’t care, public school districts waste money and so on.

On the other hand, Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers (AFT), in an article in the New York Times (April 15, 2009) is quoted as saying “They’re trying to do reform with teachers, not to them.”

In California, however, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) demonstrated at a school board meeting mid-April 2009, after 6000 teachers had been sent preliminary layoff warnings (pink slips).  The board members wanted to split the stimulus money over two years.  Only lay off 3000 school personnel next year?  How does that make sense?

And, on the NBC Nightly News, May 5, 2009, a short news clip outlined the problem with dividing up education stimulus funds among states based on existing government demographic formulas so that, for instance, Utah, which needs substantial additional funds, gets far less than Wyoming, which has a huge education budget already and spends much more ‘per pupil.’

It seems “how” changes are going to be designed and implemented bedevils the mind.

What have you heard in your state?

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Posted in highly qualified teachers, public schools, stimulus funds |
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