Archives for category: Teachers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Arthur Goldstein: The Myth of NYC’s “Bad Teachers” CORRECTED!

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2017 //
47

Arthur Goldstein is a veteran New York City high school teacher and blogger.

He went slightly ballistic when he read an op-ed article in The New York Times by Marc Steinberg, who became an instant principal during the Bloomberg-Klein regime and left to join the rightwing billionaire Walton Family Foundation, as director of its K-12 program. The Waltons despise public education and spend hundreds of millions backing charters, vouchers, and other modes of privatization. The WFF claims credit for funding one of every four charter schools in the nation. The Waltons individually spend millions on political campaigns to support privatization and undermine the teaching profession. They are avowed enemies of public education, the teaching profession, and collective bargaining.

Sternberg was a golden boy in the Bloomberg-Klein era. He graduated Princeton in 1995, joined Teach for America, picked up an MBA and MA in education at Harvard. Only nine years after finishing college, he was a principal in New York City. He quickly became a Klein favorite and moved up to become Deputy Chancellor in a few short years.

Now, at the pinnacle of rightwing power, with hundreds of millions to dispense every year, what really annoys him is that Mayor de Blasio plans to place hundreds of displaced teachers into classrooms. These are the teachers known as the “Absent Teacher Reserve,” where teachers are assigned when they have been accused of misconduct but are still awaiting a hearing or where they have been placed because their school was closed and they haven’t found a new job. Why haven’t they found a new job? If they are experienced, their salaries are at the high end of the salary scale, and principals don’t want to hire a permanent teacher whose salary is $90,000 instead of two young teachers for $45,000 each.

[ADDITION: Arthur Goldstein wrote at the end of the day to tell me I had confused “the rubber room” and the “Absent Teacher Reserve.” He explained:

[ATR teachers are not rubber room teachers. Rubber room teachers are those who are awaiting hearings. They don’t have rubber rooms anymore, so those teachers are placed in offices or schools. We had one in our school last year. He was given a job running our tutoring room.

[Teachers facing charges are generally not allowed to teach….ATR teachers are often displaced from schools. Some of them have been through hearings. They may have been found guilty on minor charges and fined. None of them have been found unfit. Had they been found unfit they would have been fired.]

As it happens, a friend of mine lost his job when the large school where he taught was closed and replaced by five or six small schools. He has a Ph.D. in history, but that didn’t help him find a new job. This highly educated, highly experienced teacher involuntarily became a permanent substitute, assigned to the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), bounced from school to school in a humiliating fashion. Marc Sternberg considers him a “bad teacher,” although he was never given a bad rating as a teacher. Mayor de Blasio wants him to get a permanent job. Sternberg thinks he should be fired.

Arthur Goldstein responds here to Marc Sternberg:

“I’ve never been in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), so I can’t speak from experience here. My experience is limited to being an occasional substitute teacher, not one of my favorite things. I was in my school a few times this summer, and one day a secretary asked me to cover a class. I thought I’d maybe help out, so I asked, “Which class?”

“She told me she needed a teacher for a day, and that there were three classes, two hours each. I told her thanks but no thanks. Six hours is a long time to work as a substitute teacher. It’s far different teaching students you don’t know. A classroom culture takes time to build, but goes a long way.

“Now imagine that you’re an ATR teacher, and your stock in trade has been showing up and teaching whatever to whomever. Physics today, Chinese tomorrow. And then there are the principals, quoted in the press, who say how awful ATR teachers are. I’d only hire 5% of them, maybe, they say. And there are two issues with that.

“Issue number one, of course, is if I were teaching Chinese or physics, I’d be totally incompetent. I know virtually nothing about either. Even if a teacher were to leave me lessons all I could do would be follow instructions, watch the kids, and hope for the best. On this astral plane, I get lessons for subbing well less than half the time I do it. Sometimes I hear that ATRs should simply give lessons in their own subject areas. Mine is ESL, so it would be ludicrous to give such a lesson to native speakers. But even if I were to give one in ELA, imagine the reaction of a group of teenagers when a sub they will likely never see again gives a lesson on a different subject. And even if it’s the same subject, it’s ridiculous to compare the class culture of a regular teacher to one of a sub.

“Issue number two is that administrators, already overworked, now have to do at three to six observations for most teachers. If I were a principal, it would not be a high priority to observe teachers who were just passing through. I’m chapter leader of the most overcrowded and largest school in Queens. My job is nuts (and believe it or not, I’m not complaining). The principal’s job is crazier than mine. There is no time to fairly assess teachers who aren’t around very long. Frankly, I question where principals who cavalierly toss out percentages even find the time to look.

“I wonder if any writers who attack ATRs ever had or saw a substitute teacher. To compare a classroom with a culture, developed over time, with one led by a total stranger the students expect to never see again is preposterous. Watching hedge funded “Families for Excellent Schools” organize a dozen parents to protest the ATR is beyond the pale.

“This year things will be different for a lot of ATR teachers. The new plan is to place a whole lot of them, provisionally at least, in schools. You’d think that the people who bemoaned the cost of the ATR would be jumping for joy. By making teachers, you know, teach, they’re no longer throwing away all that city money they claimed to be so concerned about.

“To the contrary, they’re complaining. What if they’re no good? A parent wrote an op-ed in the Daily News saying she didn’t want her kid taught by them. Some guy on the Walmart payroll wrote virtually the same nonsense in the NY Times. You read in Chalkbeat about principals threatening to observe newly place ATRs to death. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty, or incompetent, or at least something that merited a conversation?

“Let’s be frank here—it seems that ATR detractors simply want all of them fired without due process. That’s a slippery slope. We are all ATR teachers. It’s just a matter of being in the wrong place at the right time.

“Here’s something you won’t read in the papers—with the help of UFT and my administration, we’ve placed at least four ATR teachers permanently at Francis Lewis High School. Three are in my department, and one is an English teacher working mostly with ELLs. 100% of them are doing fine.

“ATRs need a chance, and Lord knows NYC kids need teachers. Yesterday, I counted 248 oversized classes in my school alone. It’s time for ATR critics to shut up until and unless they discover something worth talking about.”

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Walton Family Foundation stopped acting as an echo chamber for Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos and began to use its billions to address the real problems of students and schools?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Privatization, Teachers, Walton Foundation

Kipp Dawson: School Begins, Along with the Struggle for Our Students’ Freedom to Learn

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2017 //
22

Kipp Dawson is a veteran teacher in Pittsburgh. She writes here about the new school year and the ongoing struggle to teach her students without idiotic programs foisted on her and her students. Kipp was a coal miner, and she knows the meaning of struggle.

She writes:

“Teachers and other front-line workers in our public schools are also on the front lines of some of the biggest battles in this country right now, as we are fighting alongside our children for their future. As school opens this fall, we can feel this, as we are torn between what we can already see and feel in their eyes and words of their potential and real lives and beauties and challenges, on the one hand, and what is required of us to do with and to them, on the other.

“As I begin what may become my last year in this particular relationship to these struggles, I feel a particular obligation both to do all I can with and for each of the marvelous souls and brains with whom I am blessed to spend our teaching/learning brains, and the communities they build together in our classroom, on the one hand, and simultaneously, with my amazing collesgues, to work to make our schools shrug off the ridiculousnesses politicians and their conduits who run many things put in the way.

“This is a Report from One of the Front Lines, #1 for 2017.

“Yesterday, three of my 12-year-old boy students presented personal narratives to their classmates. Two of them had been called out to do so by their peer reviewers who were stunned and impressed by their stories. These boys came from different neighborhoods with different skin hues, and each presented well-constructed, dialogue-filled, literary-devices-well-used (mainly similes and colloquialisms), narrative structure in place and well used. Each of their stories was about overcoming a personal challenge (one, learning to ride a bike; the other, overcoming a fear of rollarcoasters). Each stunned me with the skill both of the writing, and the presentation (hats off Ms. Greco, their 6th-grade teacher!). It was marvelous to see their classmates enjoy, and celebrate, their writing.

“Among their classmates was a third boy who had shared his story only (so far) with his peer reviewer, and with me. This child has the same skin hue as one of the above-mentioned presenters. (To put it right out there: to armed police, both would look like Tamir Rice or Trayvon Martin). This boy’s story was much more bare — no literary devices, sentence structure lacking a bit. He wrote of having been with his uncle when the uncle was shot, three times, in the back, as they left a store. His uncle died, he wrote, was revived, and then died again, forever. The end. Unlike the other two stories, there were no adjectives or adverbs or literary devices. But he felt he had a story to tell, and a safe place in which to tell it.

“These three boys were among their 100 or so 7th-grade peers who noisily left school for a three-day weekend when our last bell rang yesterday. These three boys were going into three different worlds. These three boys will be back in this classroom community, together, on Tuesday. They will spend a school year together in our classrooms. They (hopefully) will grow up and keep going out into different and same parts of this world. For this next few months, we have them, and we have so so much we/they/all of us can do to grow together.

“But.

“When that last bell rang, we who teach these boys, and all of their classmates, gathered our thoughts and papers, did some debriefing with colleagues or rushed out to be with families or simply collapsed at home with fatigue, beginning a weekend of downtime and the first weekend of organizing our time to meet the needs.

“Needs imposed on us by a “data-driven district” (aren’t they all, now?)

“Data.

“I am not alone in having in my home now, the stories and letters to me and daily check-ins of my approximately 85 new 7th graders, on the one hand, and the demands of a frenzied, trying-to-stay-afloat public school district which is translating that frenzy into increasingly onerous distracting, time-consuming, mis-focused (in my humble, professional/human opinion) demands on the workers, especially teachers. I will spend as much time as I can reading every word these new-to-me students wrote (or did not follow directions and left blank — equally important!) this first week of school. I will spend as much time as I can communicating with each/all of the new-to-me (with, of course, some returning via siblings) parents of these children, as these relationships are essential. I will be pulled from doing that by meeting the demands of administrations, some of which are understandable and helpful, and some of which drive me (almost) to despair.

“Test scores are our source of data. We are data driven. Therefore, our children, and their teachers, are judged, grouped, approached, by data, and test scores. Therefore these personal narratives become important mainly in how they will be rated on the rubrics which will turn into data when these children take their end-of-the-year tests. And now we are to take precious time out of our classrooms each day to put them in front of computers so the machines can judge their skills and give them individual, screen-and-keyboard-responses-only, assignments and evaluations. Every day. I am not ok with this. At all.

“If you have read this far, most likely you, also, are a school worker and/or parent. Most likely you, also, are pondering how to respond to the wonderfulnesses and alarm signals of your back-to-school days. Most likely, you are looking for ways to make things better for our children. Let’s do this together.”

Categories Resistance, Students, Teachers

Arizona: Welcome, Unqualified Teachers!

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2017 //
50

David Safier writes in the Tucson Weekly about Arizona’s new idea to address its teacher shortage: Hire unqualified people to teach! He calls this “A Certifiable Strategy.”

He writes:

“Get ready for the first of a new breed of teachers in Arizona’s public schools this year. They haven’t taken any education courses. They haven’t worked on their teaching skills in front of students. All they have is a bachelor’s degree. Actually, if they’ve spent five years working in a field that’s relevant to subjects taught in middle school or high school, they don’t even need a bachelor’s. A high school diploma will do. Or a GED. Hell, if you read the law passed during the last legislative session literally, they could be elementary school dropouts and teach.

“But their lack of teaching qualifications isn’t what makes them a new breed. Except for the elementary school dropouts, all those people could teach in Arizona’s public schools on a temporary basis before the new teacher credentialing law went into effect. The difference is, for the first time, they will be presented with the newly minted Subject Matter Expert Standard Teaching Certificate, making them full fledged, credentialed teachers who can teach until they retire if they wish without ever taking an education course or having their proficiency in subject matter formally assessed.

“The Subject Matter Expert Standard Teaching Certificate effectively de-professionalizes public school teaching in Arizona. It’s the Un-credential. It’s like the certificates little kids get when they participate in “everyone gets an award” races. If you gave your teenage babysitter a Child Management Certificate when she or he walks through your front door, it would mean as much. It’s a teaching credential granted for showing up, yet it’s the equivalent of a standard teaching certificate people earn by going through a teacher preparation program, passing subject matter and professional knowledge exams and teaching for two years.”

Safier writes that Arizona’s low bar for entering teaching was already low; now it has fallen to the ground.

Some way to “reform” education.

Categories Arizona, Teachers

Mike Klonsky: Rahm Emanuel Will Lay Off Nearly 1,000 Staff in Chicago

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2017 //
9

Mike Klonsky reports that Mayor Rahm Emanuel intends to lay off nearly 1,000 staff, including 350 teachers.

The Chicago Teachers Union responded:

Once again, Mayor Emanuel has topped Governor Rauner’s ruthlessness towards Chicago’s public school students with his own savage, short-sighted response, by further stripping to the bone schools that he’s forced to function in a climate of civic abandonment and the violence that his neglect has caused. — CTU Blog

Mike Klonsky writes:

“Yes, it’s true that the lion’s share of the blame for the devastation of public education now taking place statewide, falls on our sociopathic Republican Gov. Rauner who just last week, vetoed the emergency school-funding bill. Then there’s a Democratic-Party-dominated legislature, has long been gutless when it comes to making the state’s wealthiest shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.

“But when it comes to racist duplicity, the buck stops at the fifth floor of City Hall. Why? Because this latest round of cuts, which hits hardest at predominantly African-American and Latino high school students, comes on the heels of Rahm Emanuel’s plan to make it more difficult for city students to receive their hard-earned high school diplomas.

“The mayor mandates that kids without a job offer or college acceptance can no longer graduate from high school. There’s an exception to the new rule. Enlisting in the military can fulfill the graduation requirement which could make CPS the nation’s number-one military recruiter of black and brown youth.

“Yesterday’s layoff of hundreds of staff, follows last year’s round of layoffs of 1,000 teachers and staff, including counselors, and will condemn that many more students to academic failure and loss of future college and job prospects. They’re losing the very support network needed to help them fulfill the new mandates.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Teachers

Los Angeles: Court Rules that Rafe Esquith May Sue LAUSD for Discriminating Against Him

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2017 //
16

Rafe Esquith, a teacher of fifth-grade students at the Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles who gained national attention for his Hobart Shakespeareans, won the right to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District for firing him in 2015. Esquith was accused of sexual improprieties, which he denied.

A state appellate court panel Thursday upheld a trial judge’s ruling that a former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher can move forward with his lawsuit alleging he was removed from his classroom for criticizing many of the school district’s policies and initiatives.

The three-justice panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal found that Rafe Esquith’s causes of action did not arise out of an employment investigation conducted against him and that therefore the district was not engaged in “protected activity,” which would have been grounds for dismissing the case.

“We agree that Esquith’s claims do not arise from a protected employment investigation,” Justice Audrey Collins wrote. “Rather, Esquith has alleged that defendants harassed him, discriminated against him, and retaliated against him, and to accomplish these ends they engaged in a baseless investigation and took adverse employment actions against Esquith.”

Zack Muljat, one of Esquith’s attorneys, issued a statement on the ruling.

“We agreed with the ruling in the trial court and we agree with the opinion of the Court of Appeal,” Muljat said. “We look forward to the opportunity to forge ahead and bring justice to Mr. Esquith.”

In his July 2016 ruling, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Mooney said he could not grant the district’s motion to dismiss Esquith’s entire complaint because some of his claims did not fall under what is considered protected speech and the right of the LAUSD to conduct an investigation of the teacher.

Mooney’s ruling meant that Esquith’s claims of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, the taking of items from his classroom, retaliation, age discrimination and unfair business practices remained in the case. He also is seeking reinstatement to his teaching position.

“Esquith alleged that he was an outspoken critic of certain LAUSD policies and he was nearing retirement, and as a result (the district) retaliated and discriminated against him by removing him from his teaching position and conducting a baseless, meandering investigation designed to damage Esquith’s career and reputation,” Collins wrote.

Esquith, 63, was removed from his Hobart Elementary School classroom in April 2015. The district began investigating him when another teacher came forward to allege that Esquith was using inappropriate sexual language with his students….

Esquith says he never received a complaint from a parent or teacher during his 30 years as an educator.

Categories Los Angeles, Teachers

Arthur Goldstein Refutes Attack on Teachers by Campbell Brown and WSJ

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2017 //
17

Arthur Goldstein teaches English language learners at Frabis Lewis High School in New York City.

In this post, he refutes attacks on teachers by Campbell Brown and the Wall Street Journal.

New York City has something called the Absent Teacher Reserve pool, consisting mostly of teachers whose jobs disappeared when their school was closed, through no fault of theirs. The ATR pool was created during the Bloomberg-Klein regime in 2005.

Outsiders like Brown and the WSJ are certain that these displaced teachers must be criminals, perverts, or incompetents.

Goldstein says they are wrong and explains why.

Categories New York City, Teachers

A Teacher Who Often Criticizes His Union Says It Is Time to Stand Strong Together

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2017 //
17

Arthur Goldstein, a high school teacher in Queens, New York, has often criticized the UFT for not taking the militant stands that Arthur prefers. But now, he says, it is time to stand together and fight. Unions are facing an existential threat to their existence. The Rightwing billionaire Robert Mercer is behind an effort to call a state constitutional convention. Arthur knows what Mercer has in mind: stealing the hard-earned pensions of working people.

Goldstein writes:

“This is problematic for those of us who envision a retirement in which we don’t have to check prices of canned cat food before purchasing it for lunch…

“This is a very real threat, and not just for senior teachers. Our pensions are already under attack by national reformies, and folks like Mercer would probably like nothing better than to do away with them utterly. Right now, the only solid entity I know that’s fighting this is our union and AFL-CIO. That’s why I went before my staff and made my own pitch for COPE this year, and that’s why I signed up another 80-plus members.

“I would not be able to sleep at night if I weren’t doing my bit to fight Mercer and like-minded reformies. While some of my friends disagree, I will continue to push COPE for now. Hey, if we win in November, maybe we can reconsider. But a country controlled by Donald Trump and his thugs is a very dangerous place for working people. While I frequently disagree with union leadership, this is one area in which I don’t want their hands tied.

“To them, I say fight this vigorously. Too frequently I see UFT leadership fall down when no one pushes them. They can’t afford to do that now. We need to not only support them in this, but also to monitor their actions and progress.”

Categories Billionaires, New York, Pensions, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

New York: Charter Schools Win Power to Hire Non-Professional “Teachers”

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2017 //
50

Blogger Peter Goodman reports that a last-minute deal was struck in the closing hours of the legislative session in New York State. Charter schools authorized by the State University of New York (which includes Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools) will not be required to hire professional, certified teachers. This is yet more evidence that charter schools are not public schools. Teachers in public schools must be professionals, with appropriate professional education and certification. To become a public school teacher, applicants must pass three different tests.

Goodman writes:

“Within days of the end of the special session of the state legislature the SUNY Board of Trustees approved a new regulation – teachers in SUNY authorized charter schools are no longer required to be certified by the State Department of Education – charter school networks can now self-certify teachers: no college courses, no student teaching, no pre-service tests. Politico writes,

“New York City’s charter school sector appears to have secured a significant victory in the 11th hour of the Legislative session Wednesday night, with a set of regulations that will make it much easier for large charter networks to hire more uncertified teachers.

“All other teachers must complete a program approved by the state education department as well as meet CAEP Standards (Council on the Accreditation Of Education Programs) and pass three separate tests: the edTPA (a self-assessment developed by Stanford), Educating All Students (multiple choice and essay test emphasizing teaching children with disabilities and English language learners) and a Content Specialty Test, also multiple choice and essay testing knowledge and literacy within their area of expertise. SUNY teachers would not have to meet ANY of these requirements.”

Charters are already free to hire as much as 30% of staff from uncertified persons.

Bottom line: the public schools have genuine standards for teachers. The charters authorized by SUNY have no standards at all for their teachers.

Categories Charter Schools, New York, Teachers

Stuart Egan: North Carolina Legislature Attacks Teachers’ Benefits Again

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2017 //
2

Which state legislature is working hardest to destroy public education and reduce the status of the teaching profession?

Unless you can make a better case, the winner is North Carolina.

The state legislature was swept by Rightwing extremists in 2010, and they promptly gerrymandered the state to protect their supermajority. Even when the public elected a Democratic governor in 2016, the legislature set about stripping the governor of his powers. Recently, the Supreme Court of the United Dtates rejected the state’s gerrymandered districts, clearly intended to disenfranchise black voters.

Now the legislature is back to attacking the teaching profession, in hopes of making it extinct in the state.

NBCT high school teacher Stuart Egan reports:

“The powers that rule in the North Carolina General Assembly have been waging a war against public schools in our state for the last four years. Under the guise of “reform,” GOP conservatives driven by ALEC-crafted policies have successfully enabled and instituted privatization efforts in many forms: unregulated charter school development, expansive growth of unproven vouchers, underfunding traditional public schools, and even propped an educational neophyte as state superintendent who has passively allowed the very department that is set to protect public schools to be heinously undercut.

“However, the latest move against public schools in North Carolina might signal the next step in overhauling education in the Old North State – the systematic elimination of the veteran teacher.

“Let me rephrase that.

“A gerrymandered lawmaking body has passed a budget that further indicates that many lawmakers in Raleigh will go to any length to poach the educational profession of veteran teachers.

“In the last four years, new teachers entering the profession in North Carolina have seen the removal of graduate degree pay bumps and due-process rights. While the “average” salary increases have been most friendly to newer teachers, those pay “increases” do plateau at about Year 15 in a teacher’s career. Afterwards, nothing really happens. Teachers in that position may have to make career-ending decisions.

“Without promise of much pay increase and no graduate degree pay bumps, those teachers may have to leave a profession they not only excel in and love, but serve as models for younger teachers to ensure professional integrity, the kind that was allowed to shine in a North Carolina of yesteryear when Republican governors and lawmakers were in the forefront of making sure public schools were a strength. And those teachers will not have due-process rights that would allow them to speak up about issues like compensation for fear of reprisal.

“Student will suffer; communities will suffer.

“The taking away of retiree state health benefits for teachers hired after January of 2021 is a step to create a system where students are more or less taught by contractors because the endangered species known as the “veteran teacher” will come to the point of extinction.”

Categories Education Reform, North Carolina, Privatization, Teachers

D.C.: Whether Public or Charter, Teachers Are Leaving at High Rates

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2017 //
5

Thanks to G.F. Brandenburg for pointing me to this important post about teacher attrition rates in D.C. by Valerie Jablow.

D.C., lest we forget, is one of the epicenters of corporate reform. In 2007, D.C. established mayoral control of the schools. Mayor Adrian Fenty hired Michelle Rhee and gave her full authority to remake the schools. Rhee stayed until Fenty was defeated at the next election in 2011 (largely because of Rhee), and Rhee’s deputy Kaya Henderson was put in charge. Henderson stepped down and was replaced by another reform cadre, Antwan Wilson. So, D.C. has been in the hands of the privatizers for a full decade.

The Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation all invested millions in Rhee.

Wendy Kopp, in her last ghostwritten book, pointed to D.C., New York City, and New Orleans as examples of TFA success. D.C. today is the shining star of the reformers.

But teachers don’t last long. They sign up and they leave in startling numbers. Why don’t they stay if the system has had the benefit of reform for ten years?

Read Jablow’s post here.

She writes about D.C.’S dirty little secret. It turns out that reformers don’t know how to create good schools, whether public or charter:

“Quick: Did you hear about the DC public school that lost more than half its teachers after the start of school year 2015-16?

“No, I am not talking about DCPS’s Ballou high school–which, as the Post recently reported, lost 28% of its teachers this just-completed school year.

“Rather, I am talking about a whole host of DC charter schools with high teacher attrition rates in the previous school year, like Achievement Preparatory Academy (57.8% teacher attrition rate) and Friendship’s Tech Prep (Tech Prep Middle, 63%; Tech Prep HS, 52%) and KIPP’s AIM (63%), Lead (58%), and WILL schools (62%)–not to mention Perry Street Prep (62.5%), SEED (52.6%), and Washington Global (60%). Then there are a few charter schools whose reported attrition rates I find difficult to believe and that I hope were mis-reported teacher retention rates: Inspired (70.3%) and Richard Wright (87%). The annual reports indicated that the teacher attrition was determined after the start of the school year.

“Hmm: Didn’t hear about those?”

Categories District of Columbia, Teachers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »