Teacher Angie Sullivan wonders why her school is being turned around yet again and how many staff will be fired again. This is, of course, the idea embedded in Race to the Top, the idea that scores will go up if part or all of the staff is fired, and the whole school is disrupted and “turned around.” This approach negates the values of stability, consistency, and other old-fashioned notions in favor of disruption and chaos. “Creative destruction” usually turns out to be just plain old destruction, and it destroys trust.
Angie writes:
33 schools in Vegas are being considered for “turnaround”.
My principal announced Standford Elementary was one. No one could really understand why – because most of the staff turned over last year and most of us just got there. The former principal had turned it around – and then they moved her out and someone new in.
In 2013-2014 we taught one set of standards – and tested in another because at the last minute we became the test school for SBAC. Our old computer lab computers could not even run the SBAC tests. So we lost all our stars – mainly due to confusion, new staff, old technology, and general disruption.
So I’m out with all the holiday shoppers buying a suit – because tomorrow I have to not only do parent conferences and my regular busy day . . . I have to interview for half an hour in the middle of the day.
Very disruptive. Congratulations! And Happy Holidays!
Are there about 2,600 (80 x 33) Vegas teachers going through this interview process right before the holiday?
I guess if you are one of the 800 long term subs (they have driven off the licensed teachers) – you probably get to skip the interview?
Pricey Teach for America get to skip it too I bet.
Which suit will help me keep on teaching my at-risk kids that I love? Red? Purple?
What is the official color of destruction, disruption, and devastation?
I hope I don’t cry – I need all the self-respect I can get.
They keep saying not to worry – why do they call it an interview? Interview means . . . Worry.
Angie
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Churn and burn, churn and burn…
Where does the incompetence end, and the malice begin?
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The heavy hitters in the self-styled “education reform” tend, in practice, to adhere to what W. Edwards Deming called “management by fear.” One of its most salient features: that you can fire your way to excellence.
One of its variants: consider how stack ranking/forced ranking/rank-and-yank/churn-and-burn actually—not theoretically—work. Think about “kiss up kick down.”
How badly can things turn out? Take a truly humungous business and its most famous person, Bill Gates, and then click on the following link. A sample:
[start quote]
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
Supposing Microsoft had managed to hire technology’s top players into a single unit before they made their names elsewhere—Steve Jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—regardless of performance, under one of the iterations of stack ranking, two of them would have to be rated as below average, with one deemed disastrous.
… And the reviews had real-world consequences: those at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no cash or were shown the door.
Outcomes from the process were never predictable. Employees in certain divisions were given what were known as M.B.O.’s—management business objectives—which were essentially the expectations for what they would accomplish in a particular year. But even achieving every M.B.O. was no guarantee of receiving a high ranking, since some other employee could exceed the assigned performance. As a result, Microsoft employees not only tried to do a good job but also worked hard to make sure their colleagues did not.
…
There was some room for bending the numbers a bit. Each team would be within a larger Microsoft group. The supervisors of the teams could have slightly more of their employees in the higher ranks so long as the full group met the required percentages.
…
In the end, the stack-ranking system crippled the ability to innovate at Microsoft, executives said.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
Sound familiar? Read the entire piece and consider how the Gates Foundation, one of the leaders of the “education reform” charge, is forcing a massive proven failure on the vast majority of public school staff, students, parents and communities.
Caveat: only to be applied to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN. For THEIR OWN CHILDREN? Bill Gates & Lakeside School, Chris Christie & Delbarton School, Barack Obama & Sidwell Friends, Rahm Emanuel & U of Chicago Lab Schools, Michelle Rhee-Johnson & Harpeth Hall, and the beat goes on…
😎
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Yes. Stacked ranked environments are like a bad reality TV show. Employees constantly undermine others. Projects are sabotaged, innuendo and lies are taken as truth. People steal work, patents, property. Everyone is entrenched in CYA mode. Managers are afraid to make decisions. Employees overwork projects and never take risks. Ideas are shot down till none take hold. Crisis are self made and never really addressed. More time is spent avoiding responsibility than finding solutions. Promotions are less on merit than on connections or relations. Been there, done that, watched it spiral down.
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That sounds very familiar. I work for Denver Public Schools, and this year we had to write S.L.O’s. Now I know where they came up with that idea…so ridiculous.
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Here’s a thought…
Perhaps, since ‘stack ranking’ has been proven to be a disaster that damages the institution, this is the very reason for forcing it on public schools. Hmmmm….
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They have to keep firing and hiring until they get the compliant do-as-your-told teachers they are looking for who also create miracles with difficult to teach at risk children or juggle the books to make the children look successful so the corrupt leaders at the top can brag in the media while Rome burns behind them, and they tell the reporters, “What fire?”
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I know when this happened to my school I felt just like Angie. Then the new principal sent out all the waivers she was applying for and a bunch of us decided to not interview. She wiped out a whole school of veteran teachers and hired alternatives. The school was rated green until she came and turned into chaos. Now it is rated in the bottom 10 of DPS. I am glad I was not a part of that mess. If I would of stayed, I would be interviewing yet again. That school will be closed or turned around. No way would I keep applying for the same job ever year or two continue to and I wouldn’t continue to work where teachers were treated so badly…..like idiots. No voice is all there was left. Now I see articles on how DPS can retain effective teachers. More merit pay would not do it for me. They need to get rid of the yearly RIBs.
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Lisa,
One of the things the idiots cannot comprehend is that the best teachers don’t respond to the usual carrots and sticks. Treating teachers like lab rats will simply drive out the best and leave the lab rats in the classroom. Ahhh! Educational Excellence!
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This is quite the wild ride. None of it makes any sense. And it is terrible for kids.
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I am not an educator and do not have any children in school as mine graduated years ago. I am concerned with allowing corporate giants and profit minded billionaires to determine how our public education system works. I do not favor this testing for national standards I favor providing education in critical thinking skills, reading, writing, math, and social studies that prepare our children and grandchildren for life and not to make a billionaire more profit. I know I was a hard kid to educate when I was growing up and I would not have cooperated with being taught to take a test to measure my knowledge against an arbitrary national standard. I believe that teachers who work with the kids day in and day out learn how to reach to kids on an individual level and type of education really educates. We need to provide enough money to public schools to have smaller classes, to pay for school supplies that teachers provide out of their own pockets and to teachers enough to keep them in the career field as they should be valued very high in society for they are one of the greatest influences on our future.
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How many times will they turn around a school before they admit they can’t? Some of these schools are on their third turn around cycle. I see the Las Vegas review journal no longer touts the excellence of the turn around schools.
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Seems like a lot of work . . . And never addresses the real problem. Our schools do not receive adequate funding.
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