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In reply to the discussion: A 13-Year-Old's Slavery Analogy Raises Some Uncomfortable Truths in School [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)In this interview with Broad super Brizard, his account of "what rochester needs" is all about firing teachers.
CITY: What prevents you from firing incompetent teachers? There's a process to help poor-performing teachers improve, and if that fails, to terminate them. Yet the rap is that all of the teachers get good reviews.
Brizard: They do. The problem is national in scope, but we add some issues locally...
When you look at teacher evaluations, for instance, the legislature passed a law a couple of years ago that states that we can't even use student achievement as one of the measures to deny a teacher tenure. That's crazy...The process discourages principals from terminating ineffective teachers...So what you get in urban schools across the country is the dance of the lemons...
Why hasn't any superintendent, and we've had some really bright people, been able to deal with it?
Because the problem goes beyond us and into the real issues that people are often afraid to talk about. I've had colleagues who have lost their jobs because they have tried to tackle these underlying issues... You allow me to do what needs to be done, and then hire the people I need, and you're going to get magic...
Can superintendents of large urban school districts expect help from President Obama and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan? They don't sound eager to coddle the teachers unions.
When you see the Obama administration with the Race to the Top forcing states to lift the cap on charter schools and change the laws on the data attached to them, they are trying to dismantle laws created to protect various special interest groups... We need to hold teachers accountable...
Are you saying then - leaving aside the concentration of poverty issues - that there is a problem with teacher quality?
In general, across the country, the answer is yes....When you have leaders who walk into a classroom and don't know what good teaching looks like, then you have young teachers going unsupported. Then you have a model for failure. The issue is self-made...
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/news/articles/2010/03/Brizard-Schools-need-radical-change/
and on and on.