D.C. school system fires 241 teachers

[The Vegan Marxist]

This is an absurd action by the DC schooling bureaucrats. Why are they not giving estimates on who, of those fired, were performing poorly? Too many loose ends, too many questions left unanswered, too many holes in the story. These anti-worker actions are just the beginning within the States. Be prepared to witness more to come in the near future.


D.C. school system fires 241 teachers
By Sally Holland
July 23, 2010

Washington (CNN) — The District of Columbia public school system announced Friday that it is letting 226 employees go for poor performance under the education assessment system IMPACT.
Another 76 employees will be terminated because of licensing issues, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said in a news release. Of the 302 employees who are losing their jobs, 241 are teachers, she said.

“Every child in a District of Columbia public school has a right to a highly effective teacher — in every classroom of every school, of every neighborhood or every ward, in this city,” Rhee said.

Rhee said on CNN’s “John King, USA” that she thought the cleanup was a long time coming.

“We want to get along with the union. We want to get along with this person or that person. We don’t want to fire anyone,” she said.

“But in the meantime, children have been done a disservice every single day. We have graduated a generation of Washingtonians who don’t have the skills and knowledge that they need to be productive members of society because our schools have failed them.”

Rhee did not break down the number of teachers fired for poor performance versus licensing issues.

Under the IMPACT program, teachers were judged on five classroom observation visits by principals and outside education experts. The system also rates teachers based on their students’ achievement.

In response to the firings, the Washington Teachers Union released the results of a membership study showing that “a large majority of teachers believe that IMPACT is not a fair evaluation system.”

Washington Teachers Union President George Parker said, “It is evident from this survey that our members agree that IMPACT is a flawed instrument with many loopholes.”

The union claims that teachers under the IMPACT system need clearer communication on expectations, among other things.

The teachers union has no say in which evaluation system that the D.C. public school system chooses to use, and by contract, teachers can be let go for low evaluations.

Parker added that the union plans to challenge the firings of about 81 of the teachers.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told CNN’s Rick Sanchez that the IMPACT system needed more evaluation itself..
“Everyone who teaches gets better with time and gets better with experience, just like ballplayers and others,” she said.

” … All we’re saying is that if an evaluation system is thorough, competent, comprehensive, measures how we’re doing as teachers and how students are learning, then it’s fine,” she said. “But the thing is, in the whole year, we have raised, and the teachers have raised, lots and lots of different issues about the evaluation system, and the person who turned a blind eye to it was Michelle.”

Rhee told King that she had heard the teacher’s union say teachers with poor evaluations should have been given more time to improve.

“But the question that I ask to them is ‘Whose children are we going to put in the classroom of ineffective teachers next year?’ My two kids go to DCPS. I’m not willing to put my kids in those classrooms, and I don’t think any parents anywhere in this city should be forced to make that decision,” Rhee said.

The 2009-10 school year was the first full year of implementation of the IMPACT program for the D.C. Public Schools.

Also Friday, the district announced that it has notified 737 employees that if their performance doesn’t improve, they will be terminated after the upcoming school year.

Source (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/23/district.of.columbia.teachers.fired/index.html?hpt=T2)

[Jimmie Higgins]

Fucking hell. This is actually part of a much bigger attack that has been going on for a while in DC. Basically it's a testing ground there because the ruling class wants this to be happening in every city.

In Oakland right now, 80 cops have been laid off and the media and politicians are shitting bricks and warning of armageddon like TV evangelists. The cops too: they shot 3 people in 3 days in Oakland after the lay-offs. Yet the media and politicians and so on all praise the "maverekness" of politicians and bureaucrats when they fire teachers for being "poor performers". I'd like to throw this "logic" back at the local elites: if students getting poor marks on standarized tests means that the teacher should get fired, then why don't we fire police when a crime happens in their area while they are on-duty? Why are teachers considered "poor performers" when police who shoot unarmed people are "heroes".

This crazy bullshit society makes my head spin sometimes when those in power so nakedly praise killer-cops while demonizing teachers that actually can potentially help working class kids.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

As strange as it may sound, the US public education system, despite its faults, (which are many) is the only element of "socialism", that is working class or community democratic control over an institution that exists in this country. Public school systems are locally controlled and responsible to the community they are part of, though school boards, PTAs, and other institutions. For this reason, and of course the need to subordinate the education of young people to the needs of corporations, the ruling class is working hard to dismantle the US public education system.

The dismantling began under Reagan, continued though Clinton, and accelerated under Bush I and Bush II. Charter schools, funding for "faith based" programs, standardized testing, forcing teachers to "teach to the test' and forgo teaching critical thinking skills,merit based pay, flooding schools with unhealthy junk food in return for corporate sponsorship of the football team, and now mass firing of teachers are all part of this.

[Jimmie Higgins]

For this reason, and of course the need to subordinate the education of young people to the needs of corporations, the ruling class is working hard to dismantle the US public education system.Yep, and pretty much only the teacher unions are what stand in the way of their project now - hence the firing and hence the relentless talk on AM radio about 10-yeared teachers who "are the source of the education problem". If districts can get away with fireing teachers who have union-protected jobs, then the union is effectively broken because if they can't defend that part of the contract, then how are they ever going to put up a fight on anything else.

In California, they can also get around the unions by having the state take over "low-performing schools". They did this in Oakland and froze wages for teachers and made the union contracts void while the state was controlling the school district. Now that it has been lifted, Oakland teachers are the lowest paid in the state with a 30% turnover rate.

[Yawn]

Haha, funny. I actually live in D.C., they fired a couple teachers earlier in the year. It caused a mass protest from most of the schools in D.C. :thumbup1:

[The Vegan Marxist]

Haha, funny. I actually live in D.C., they fired a couple teachers earlier in the year. It caused a mass protest from most of the schools in D.C. :thumbup1:

If just two firings sparked a protest, over 200 firings should spark a revolution!

[jake williams]

There's a pretty broad attack on public education in the United States and it's terrifying. We haven't seen a lot of it it this side of the border, but it's coming. Just a few months ago there was a story that some pop intellectual gave a well-praised speech to the Liberal Party that what they really needed to do to fix education was, basically, fuck over teachers and break their unions.

[CaldroMaginer]

As strange as it may sound, the US public education system, despite its faults, (which are many) is the only element of "socialism", that is working class or community democratic control over an institution that exists in this country. Public school systems are locally controlled and responsible to the community they are part of, though school boards, PTAs, and other institutions. For this reason, and of course the need to subordinate the education of young people to the needs of corporations, the ruling class is working hard to dismantle the US public education system.

The dismantling began under Reagan, continued though Clinton, and accelerated under Bush I and Bush II. Charter schools, funding for "faith based" programs, standardized testing, forcing teachers to "teach to the test' and forgo teaching critical thinking skills,merit based pay, flooding schools with unhealthy junk food in return for corporate sponsorship of the football team, and now mass firing of teachers are all part of this.

Indeed. School is probably the most directly unhealthy aspect of society for young people. It is depressing and soul-crushing. It is a perfect miniature model of society. And, like society there is no fixing it. The mandatory torture of young people must end!

[danyboy27]

If just two firings sparked a protest, over 200 firings should spark a revolution!

Wait Until they start lay off national guard and more cops, that should make the shit hit the fan pretty quick.

btw is there any plan to lay off more cops or soldier?

[synthesis]

As strange as it may sound, the US public education system, despite its faults, (which are many) is the only element of "socialism", that is working class or community democratic control over an institution that exists in this country. Public school systems are locally controlled and responsible to the community they are part of, though school boards, PTAs, and other institutions. For this reason, and of course the need to subordinate the education of young people to the needs of corporations, the ruling class is working hard to dismantle the US public education system.

The dismantling began under Reagan, continued though Clinton, and accelerated under Bush I and Bush II. Charter schools, funding for "faith based" programs, standardized testing, forcing teachers to "teach to the test' and forgo teaching critical thinking skills,merit based pay, flooding schools with unhealthy junk food in return for corporate sponsorship of the football team, and now mass firing of teachers are all part of this.

I think you pretty much underlined the difference between actual socialism and the mainstream perception of socialism right there.

What I mean is that you say that the public schools are under "democratic/worker/community control," which is true in some respects. However, no public institution is ever really under a community's control until that institution's budget is also under the community's control, which isn't the case, though there are certainly mechanisms in place to make it appear so.

This could be a good opportunity to remind people about the true nature of bourgeois democracy.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Looks like there was more to the story than first told:


Chancellor Michelle Rhee fires 241 D.C. school teachers
Thursday, August 5, 2010
By: Mark Sadler

District among 19 finalists competing for a share of ‘Race to the Top’ funds

Michelle Rhee, chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools, recently fired 241 teachers just prior to the beginning of the school year. According to her office, 165 teachers were fired for poor performance, and the other 76 were removed because they lacked the proper teaching credentials.

D.C. is among the 19 finalists competing for a share of the $3.4 billion “Race to the Top” funds distributed by the Department of Education. This program rewards school systems for mass firings aimed at “improved performance” and heavily incentive-based teacher contracts that tie teacher pay to student performance. Many consider the D.C. school system to be a model for “Race to the Top” and Chancellor Rhee an educational “pioneer.”
The Mathematica Policy Research firm has analyzed Chancellor Rhee’s new IMPACT evaluation method and found that if three years of this data are used, there is a 25 percent chance that a teacher would be misidentified as a ‘worse than average performer.’ The error rate is 35 percent if only one year of data has been collected. According to the Washington Post, not all fired teachers even received the full evaluation.
Rhee’s efforts at reforming schools have so far been mixed. In both reading and math, less than half of elementary students pass the D.C. CAS standardized tests. While from 2007-2009 there was growth, scores in both areas dipped between 4 and 5 percent on the 2010 tests. These results do not necessarily prove or disprove anything factually, but given that Rhee’s proposals have only been partially implemented, it is hard to determine how much her methods have correlated negatively or positively with student performance, despite being widely hailed.

In another mass firing in 2009, Rhee tried to explain her reasoning and methods behind the firings by claiming that a number of teachers involved had been child abusers, a claim true for only a single-digit number of over 200 teachers fired.

Given the ambiguity around her policy initiatives, it seems appropriate to question Rhee’s hard-line tactics that many claim are necessary. While her methods have been praised by many, Rhee has so far only delivered unclear test results and mass firings based on questionable evaluation methods. Support for Rhee rests on a belief that introducing capitalist business management techniques into education will improve schools, rather than actual data or results.

In one small example of the uneven data on performance pay, during the 2005-2006 school year, Texas introduced a merit-based plan for teachers. It offered $100 million dollars in bonuses at over 1,000 schools if teachers raised their test scores. However, the program was discontinued after it was discovered that it didn’t have any effect on the teachers’ overall job performance.

Chancellor Rhee and her supporters clothe their actions in rhetoric aimed at stressing their desire that all students receive the best possible education. Her policy response, however, focuses solely on demonizing teachers and establishing unproven schemes based on capitalist market logic. Rather than scapegoating and business school-designed gimmicks, our schools need comprehensive efforts involving students, parents and teachers to address the range of education and social problems affecting the quality of education.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=14315&news_iv_ctrl=1261

[KurtFF8]

I'd like to throw this "logic" back at the local elites: if students getting poor marks on standarized tests means that the teacher should get fired, then why don't we fire police when a crime happens in their area while they are on-duty? Why are teachers considered "poor performers" when police who shoot unarmed people are "heroes".

That's a damn good point.

This is an interesting subject: so many right-wingers will support cuts to anything that can somehow benefit society, yet when the Left talks about cuts (to military, police, CIA, private contracts for weapons manufactures, or whatever it may be), they instantly become the biggest defenders of "government intervention in the marketplace." The very thing they decried as an evil socialist act that should be avoided at all costs.

Pointing this out (especially if you apply things like the example Jimmie Higgins uses here) can demonstrate the class nature of these budget questions.

[TwoSevensClash]

This is the system trying to bring down the teachers union. The teachers union is one of the strongest unions in the US. With theses firings plus legislation for pay performance this is a full out assault against the unions. But the problem with the schools are (as usual)capitalism and the school administration. My mom was a teacher in a ghetto. Capitalist exploitation gave the kids she taught no shot in hell for an education or a future. They are constantly being evicted from the homes, harassed by police and thugs on the streets. Most of there parents don't have jobs or in jail. Imagine trying to learn when you have all this shit going on. The school administration won't let the teachers try different methods of teaching. All the school administration cares about is standardized testing. So they have to prepare the kids for the test. You don;t learn anything preparing for a standardized test. So then when the kids do poorly the school administration blames the teachers. Another thing they do to fuck the kids over is raise the passing grade of 64 to 75. Millions of kids have been fucked by this. Sorry kinda got off topic.

[Red Commissar]

I've always run into similar conceptions of this matter. It seems that people are falling head over heels for this approach most states are pursuing, focusing "under-achieving" schools by getting rid of underperforming teachers.

Some have also began to shift the blame to the unions' efforts to resist this, painting them as greedy and not caring for a child's education. This horribly oversimplified and twisted account wins acceptance by segments of the Real America™ who also tend to jump on the whole "We must take a stand against the Unions!" mindset.

[The Red Next Door]

In the school district, here in st.Louis. want to shut down a middle school and combine with the high school. We were able to stop them for doing it for this coming up school for my former High school, but next year they are going with the plans and going to get rid of the school art department. This plan was a rush experiement that could of cause problems and they are also planing to fire a lot of teachers there too. Plus too make matter worst, it is illegal for teachers to strike in this state. Missouri is one of the most anti union state, I know of. then in the city school district, there was a huge corruption scandal and etc. plus think it was so bad, that the superintendent need protection. The school districts here are mess up, plus we have something called the loop, a place with all the fancy restaurants and clothing stores and walk of fame, etc. just total hipster playground. people put more money into that than the schools. it the same with the town here called Ferguson, total yuppie playground, even though it a mix working class and middle class neighborhood.

[The Fighting_Crusnik]

I think over the next few years, we are going to see our education system crumble because of things like this. Now granted a handful of the schools are responsible for this because of reckless spending. But overall, this is because of cuts being made by the government and by unforeseen circumstances. Fact is, at the moment, teachers are not payed that well with many of them below the national average. But fortunately for them until recently, they received good health benefits and other things that helped to make their lives a little easier. But with these cuts and with schools failing... how are these people who are heading the cuts thinking this is going to reduce the drop out rate of 25% or to improve the overall quality of education, which is considerable below the quality average of the entire world? Right now our nation is stuck in wars that it cannot afford both financially and morally and our president has done some good things with the money he has used... but he has offered no realistic way to address the question and problem of paying the money back... overall, I think we are going the way of the Weimar Republic and unless something is done... things our going to get bad and quickly...