|
|
9486 in the collection
Schools of merit: Principals, staffs at 12 in Memphis system to cash in on improved grades
Ohanian Comment: What thought comes to mind when you hear about the Gold-Gain Club?
Las Vegas? Wall Street?
"Next year, they have to give a platinum award because we plan to achieve and achieve and achieve indefinitely."
--Flora Childres, principal at Winchester Elementary
Take a look at a story about the restructuring [cleaning out of staff] done on this school.
The "restructuring" came at the order of then-superintendent Carol Johnson (who has since moved on to Boston). It included this proviso:
Once schools remade their staffs, Johnson offered bonuses of up to $3,000 a year to teachers for meeting several criteria. Their schools had to improve test scores, report card grades, and student and teacher attendance. Also, more students had to be enrolled in extracurricular activities, and expulsions had to decrease.
I very much appreciate the emphasis on extracurricular activities and expulsions. But can a school achieve this only by a recruiting spree at local colleges where "people were young, didn't know any better and wanted a job real bad."
Hmm. Quite a formula for professionalism. And of course new teachers are paid a lot less than longtime teachers, but surely that's not what they mean by the Gold-Gain club. Surely not.
Contributed by a Memphis teacher
Judas
I don't need your blood money
Caiaphas
Oh, that doesn't matter
Our expenses are good
Judas
I don't want your blood money
Annas
But you might as well take it
We think that you should
Caiaphas
Think of the things
You can do with that money
Choose any charity
Give to the poor
We've noted your motives
We've noted your feelings
This isn't blood money
It's a fee nothing more
--From Jesus Christ, Superstar
By Jane Roberts
It's payout time for Flora Childres, principal at Winchester Elementary, and every single teacher, counselor, coach and librarian on her staff, thanks to a merit-pay system even the teachers union supports.
Staff from 12 city schools are splitting a $1 million reward today for racking up the biggest gains in attendance and test scores, or as Childres likes to say, "for going from F's to A's."
Each principal gets $7,500; each teacher gets $2,500.
The money -- from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund -- comes through a grant written for Memphis City Schools by New Leaders for New Schools, a New York nonprofit group that has received national acclaim for improving the quality of school principals.
Private funders, including The Hyde Family Foundation, contribute.
Childres and a handful of other administrators in the money for the second consecutive year -- members of the Gold-Gain club -- will get an extra $2,500 when videos of their best practices are posted online at epic.nlns.org.
"Next year, they have to give a platinum award because we plan to achieve and achieve and achieve indefinitely," said Childres, who set a standard for turning around a school.
"But it wasn't overnight. The second year, we had F, but it was a high F. Then we got a low C; then a high C," says Childres, who went from teaching third grade to principal -- a rare leap.
"But you've got to believe you are the chosen one," she said. "... This is my season for my children to achieve."
The money is affirmation, and reimbursement in a small way, staff say, for all the belts, shoes and underwear Childres buys for children who don't have any.
"She's tough, but she'll cry in a minute when she's talking about the children," said third-grade teacher Kimberly Hamilton.
"And everybody knows it. So, if you're doing something for the children, there's nothing you can't ask her to do."
Winchester Elementary is in the middle of a pocket of homes and apartments off Airways left standing like an island when the airport authority bought out about 100 homes in the area for noise abatement.
The condemnation cut into the school's population and turned the neighborhood into an industrial corridor, now rife with apartment complexes where many Winchester students live.
By 2004, when Childres came to the school -- the only elementary school in the city where state officials actually cleaned out the entire staff, including the principal -- enrollment had gone from 600-plus to 367 students.
Sherrie Nash, PTA vice president, remembers the bad times. "I didn't like the atmosphere. The school was dirty, the principal was unavailable, and I didn't see any positive outlook.
"We don't have any of that now," she says, running through a list of improvements including grass in the schoolyard, new windows and Winchester Wednesdays, the daytime forum Childres initiated for parents.
"We talk about the children and how they are doing and building self-esteem," she says.
But she means esteem in the parents, who are so used to their children failing and being in the news for what they can't do that the school and all it symbolizes comes to be a point of sadness.
"Now, parents are able to come up and spend time in school, helping in the cafeteria or being hall monitors."
Childres hired only two of the former teachers back, then went on a recruiting spree at local colleges where "people were young, didn't know any better and wanted a job real bad."
By Christmas of that year, about one-quarter of the new staff were gone.
"They said, 'It's too difficult; the children are slow; they're not performing; it's too much,'" Childres said.
She understood, but didn't believe it.
"We had to strategize ways to make children successful, how to boost children's morale and thinking, 'How can we get our community back? How can we get people to believe in themselves and their children because their children are smart?'"
Gold-Gain Schools
Winchester Elementary
Hamilton Elementary
Ida B. Wells Academy
Hollis F. Price Middle College
Kirby High
Principals get $7,500 (plus an extra $2,500 when special videos go online), assistant principals get $5,000 (plus an extra $2,500 when special videos go online) and teachers get $2,500.
Silver-Gain Schools
Lakeview Elementary
Delano Elementary
Evans Elementary
Keystone Elementary
Robert R. Church
Dunbar Elementary
Cory Middle School
Principals get $7,500, assistant principals get $5,000 and teachers get $2,500.
— Jane Roberts
Commercial Appeal
2009-03-13
http://commercialappeal.com/news/2009/mar/13/principals-payday/
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
|
