The teacher who wrote this post reequired anonymity, for obvious reasons:
I am writing to tell you about a situation at my school — Shea High in Pawtucket, RI.
At the start of last year, both Shea and Tolman High (the only two non-charter public high schools in Pawtucket) were told that they had failed to make AYP as per NCLB and would have to undergo transformation. Note that since RI has accepted RttT, last year was the last possible year that this could have happened.
Despite high poverty, transience, ESL population, etc. the only AYP target that Shea had failed to meet was for graduation rate. It had remained stagnant at about 59% for three years, just barely failing to meet the target of 60%.
When the announcement was made last year that we were to undergo transformation, we were told that this would involve at the very least the removal of our principal (a fantastic, very bright, and driven man who had been principal for about ten years and whose leadership was one of the greatest reasons we had managed to make AYP in every other required category). As we had only failed to make AYP by a fraction of a percent, and we knew that a high transience rate contributed greatly to our low graduation rate, teachers and other stakeholders scrambled to locate students who had simply disappeared over the years.
At this point I should interject that under NCLB, RIDE [Rhode Island Department of Education] had been given some leeway in determining how many years a school had to make AYP before transformation was necessary. The decision to limit the number of years to three had been made AFTER our three year stagnation streak had begun. Think of that what you will.
I was one of those teachers scrambling to locate lost students in the hope of finding some who had actually graduated but had been labelled dropouts because the school system had lost track of them. Every student counted as we were only off by a fraction of a percent. I was able to find one, a boy from Ethiopia whose sister had taken an ESL class of mine. The family had moved from Rhode Island to North Dakota and he had graduated from high school there.
In the end, we were able to prove that our graduation rate had actually risen above 60% for one of the three years of stagnation. Unfortunately, RIDE refused to accept this new data, claiming that it was “too late” to take it into consideration (my first thought was to wonder if it would also have been considered “too late” to consider new data if we had been caught cheating, but I digress). Transformation would go ahead as planned. Our principal, Dr. Christopher Lord — an excellent, dedicated administrator with a great reputation in education circles around our small state — was out.
At a recent meeting with our transformation director, I learned that the baseline graduation rate used in our transformation plan was 67%. This seemed very strange to me, as our school was in transformation specifically because its graduation rate was below 60%. At first I had thought that the graduation rate for the third year of stagnation had been altered upwards due in part to the work teachers had done locating missing graduates, and I was livid.
When I asked at the meeting, our transformation director originally indicated that this was the case. However, after further research it seems that the transformation director (who was not in the system last year and could not have remembered the mad scramble for data I mentioned above) may not have fully understood my question.
After consulting several officials and reading the transformation document, I learned that the baseline was 67% because that was the most recent year data was available for — 2011, the year AFTER the three year stagnation. I also learned that the sudden “jump” in graduation rate was due to new methodologies being used downtown which resulted in a more accurate picture of who had actually graduated from high school.
I still have some serious issues with our transformation situation.
First, there is the fact that RIDE’s decision to limit the number of years schools had to raise their graduation rates to three years came sometime in the middle of our three year stagnation. I know that “fair” is a four-letter word, but something doesn’t smell right about this.
Second — why did Pawtucket decide to implement a new, more accurate system for determining graduation rate at the WORST possible time? One year earlier and we would have shown more than adequate growth and been off the hook; one year later and we would have had a much lower baseline graduation rate from which to determine a transformation target. Whoever made this call was either asleep at the wheel or not interested in seeing Shea and Tolman succeed at transformation.
Finally — given our baseline of 67% graduation rate, it was decided that our transformation target should be 78% by 2014-2015 and 80% by 2015-2016. To put this into context, the RI state average graduation rate is currently 77%, and this is almost sure to go down as we implement Gist’s plan to require all students to get a 2 or more on the NECAP in order to graduate. Even if the average graduation rate does NOT go down, it is possible that Shea — one of the poorest and most challenged high schools in the state — will raise its graduation rate to higher than the state average but still fail to hit its transformation target because it doesn’t beat the state average BY ENOUGH.
We have been told, over and over, that if we do not meet the transformation targets then it is likely that we will all be fired and only 50% of us will be hired back. I do not personally believe that Pawtucket or RIDE wants to do this, because if they had wanted to do it they could have done so last year when they chose instead to go with transformation. What I fear will come to pass is that Shea will fail (by design) to meet its transformation targets and teachers will be taken aside and told that Pawtucket and RIDE have agreed to do them a BIG FAVOR — they will be allowed to keep their jobs, but only if some MAJOR concessions are made.
Or maybe they will fire us all and agree to rehire 100% of teachers who will sign a new contract that the union hasn’t been consulted on. Of course these last thoughts are just idle ones, but they do concern me.
Here’s a hint for those who haven’t seen this game before —
The pea is always under the other nutshell.
Great information and very sad. We have a FEED market for the DEFORMERS.
Notice it’s now a numbers game and the fact that schools are making strides is meaningless. Deformers don’t care about progress, They keep using fuzzy math to get their way. Very sad that a well-respected principal is being kicked out. So much for Teacher Appreciation Week and to the dedicated public school employees. btw, some teachers got pink slips today. Nicely timed to coincide with Teacher Appreciation Week.
And now for more news….Bloomberg and his top attorney Klein found a way to make all those pesky lawsuits disappear. It seems you can’t sue the city or the DoE. You must sue the Board of Education which was abolished many years ago. Catch 22???
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/a-surprise-in-court-a-school-board-thought-to-be-obsolete-still-exists/?ref=nyregion
Dear author of this post, please contact me. I work with the Coalition to Defend Public Education here in RI–we’re putting on workshops at 10am on Saturday, May 11 at the RI College Student Union Ballroom, and the topics include high-stakes testing and the fight against charter schools and EMOs. Sounds like they might be trying to put an EMO into Shea–and I can put you in touch with Providence teachers who’ve suffered through that with United Providence and Cambium!
Good luck–and let’s get ready for this fight!
Start collecting every piece of dirt you can on the charters in your area. Surely there are plenty of disaffected teachers who can tell you a plethora of stories about the horrors of working in charters. Note to all teachers in Shea: How do you increase the graduation rate? Fail no one. You will be amazed at how high your graduation rate climbs. Don’t you wonder how the charters get their rates higher? They use fear and intimidation to force teachers to pass students (no lie). Also, they put kids on NovaNet and presto, they passed classes in a week despite the fact that this student couldn’t pass in an entire semester. They also magically don’t require the student to complete the entire course. It’s amazing what a charter can do when it is run by a dictator. Why don’t you all walk out? Why do people sit back and take this? You are being played.
Yes, it is about union contracts, but more likely it is about Deborah Gist and State Treasurer Gina Raimondo (whose husband is a high paid education consultant for McKinsey and a college buddy of the Achievement First crew) bringing in charter schools. Stand up to these bullies.
Absolutely. They are picking the teachers and principals off one by one. If you don’t fight back they’ll destroy them all.
This situation is intolerable. I don’t know which is more to the point–Kafka or Orwell. How does anyone justify to themselves the twisted and unfair decision-making that has resulted in this unconscionable state of affairs?
“When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”
― H.L. Mencken
And who is the superintendent of Pawtucket and what is she doing about this dismal state of affairs? I can tell you, she has a lot to answer for during her time at Washoe County School District in Nevada as a superintendent of secondary education before she retired. One of the people she promoted before she took off helped ruin my career before he was finally demoted because of alleged sexual misconduct. That was three years after I was illegally terminated by another principal at a different school.
Just saying…
Please contact me via amarie59@cox.net. The teachers in Rhode Island, especially Pawtucket, can learn a lot from you.
This teacher has clearly explained a complicated and awful situation. Those behind this dishonest scheme are beyond disgusting. They should be barred from education and especially anything to do with children, ever!
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch, for using your blog to expose the dishonest tactics of the “reform” scum and offer hope and answers to those suffering because of these “edu-criminals”.
Note from RI friend who suggests that ” the last two alternatives will probably happen. ” She asks: “When will all see that education must be reformed to accommodate all the immigrants that they will give legality to in the near future?
It must be uniform and transient as they are. They will be granted all opportunities , and compete for the same jobs, possibly receiving an edge due to the current legislation already on the books.
One can’t just look at education without viewing the rest of what is going on politically. This is why the biggest problems and school closings are happening in the cities. Public schools are to educate the masses. The problems started with mass migration…..”
More from my source later, perhaps. She is deep inside the RI system.
From the point of view of a Providence resident, when I saw Shea and Tolman come up on the “Persistently Low Performing” list, I figured that some fiddling with the numbers had taken place to find some non-Providence schools to put on the SIG list to spread out the pain a bit. Pretty much all the same kind of funny business with numbers has been taking place in Providence (and Central Falls High) for the past few years.
You won’t have to wait too long to find out what happens when SIG schools fail to meet their impossible targets, as that deadline is approaching for the first group. At this point, I suspect the answer will be “nothing,” since neither any of the individual schools or for that matter the state as a whole are meeting really any of their goals aside from juked graduation stats, which are probably going down because of NECAP anyhow.
Tom, you bring up a question I have had for a week or so now — does ANYTHING have to happen, legally, if the targets are not met? As I understand it, RI is no longer operating under NCLB rules because it agreed to go with the RttT waiver. I do wonder if we’re being handed a line when we’re told that the next step is turnaround, since as I understand it that would fall under the aegis of NCLB.
I’ve asked several people about this and not gotten what I would consider a definitive answer. I wonder if this question will be asked in a courtroom in the near future.
I’d say it is certainly more of a political question than a legal one. It isn’t like any of these districts or schools have tried to resist RIDE thus far.
I think politically there’s not going to be much will to force these schools into a second round, although it will depend a bit on who is governor and who is on the state board of education or whatever they call it now. CMO’s don’t think we have enough of a rubber stamp process under Chafee to bother with us.
Tom, I just realized why I know your name. Great Blog!