In addition to advocating government transparency, I believe our government must assume fiscal responsibility. What I don't like to see is unemployment. That is why I started my annual community service project, Dress 4 Work. I collect clothing suitable for job interviews, which in turn is donated to Capacity Developers, a non-profit that provides systems of support to ensure self-reliance, healthy families and economic stability.
Now I am seeing our School District in dire straits; holding town hall meetings in empty rooms, raising taxes, and facing a $113.3 million project during a time when our governor is proposing deep cuts in education.
New legislation would, for the first time in decades, allow teachers and other school professionals to be laid off to help close budget shortfalls.
Read more here: House bill would allow non-seniority teacher layoffs
The U. S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said in the "Chronicle of Education" that the United States could be number 1 in the world if we could eliminate the bottom 5%-8% of bad teachers the unions are protecting. What would our teachers choose to eliminate if jobs had to be eliminated on a non-seniority basis based upon performance? Good teachers could take larger classes in the secondary grades. Teaming could be eliminated in the Middle Schools making it possible to fire one teacher on a team instead of the whole team. Elementary music could be reduced to two days per week. Reduce the number of smaller athletic teams. Coaches could be eliminated. Fees could be charged to students for parking, athletics and fine arts. Parents would pay for team transportation costs. Freeze technology spending. Do not replace retiring teachers unless laws require you to do so (K-2 would be exempt). Eliminate some in-service days to reduce salaries. Eliminate supervisors and put them back in the classroom. Reduce librarian time in the elementary schools. Reduce elementary principals in the schools with smaller enrollment. Reduce clerical time at all buildings. Lengthen the school day. Have four-day school weeks. Eliminate August school days because cooling costs are higher than heating costs. Close the schools in February or March to save heating costs. Use the traditional seven per day class periods. Eliminate instructional facilitators. Increase air conditioning temperatures 3-5 degrees to save energy. Eliminate paying teachers for lunch duty. Eliminate elementary counselors. Parents can teach their own children proper behavior. Pay school psychologists on a per test basis only. District pays health coverage for employee.Employee pays family health coverage. Eliminate early retirement. Why are we paying people not to work here? This would save retirement healthcare costs. Sarah Morris
ReplyDeleteFew parents, administrators, or teachers agree that all teachers are effective at helping children learn. Yet formal teacher evaluations show nearly all tenured teachers are deemed above average, concludes a report issued in May 2009, conducted by the “New Teacher Project.” The report analyzes the results of a survey of more than 15,000 teachers and 1,300 administrators across four states and 12 districts. It also incorporates records maintained by those districts' human resources departments.
ReplyDeleteThe Study suggests that norms of egalitarianism are powerful in the teaching profession to the detriment of students. Because distinctions in effectiveness aren't formally documented, districts are missing out on opportunities to link the evaluation systems to professional development, to decisions for granting tenure, and to salary-ladder movement.
The districts that employed a binary rating system granted 99 percent of tenured teachers a "satisfactory" rating. The evaluations also appear to have failed as a method for offering professional development tailored to individual teachers' needs. Seventy-three percent of the teachers surveyed said their evaluations did not identify an area for development. Only 43 percent said the evaluations helped them improve. The rating system did not remove ineffective teachers. Sarah Morris