9486 in the collection
Facing 'incredibly insulted' teachers, schools superintendent changes course to praise the
This is so incredibly stupid, comment seems superfluous. And note: Getting the Gates grant will mean changing the way teachers are paid, evaluated and promoted. Obama/Duncan are operating the same way as Gates/Broad: offer barrels of money and you'll get what you want.
By Laura Green
Facing a throng of angry teachers, Superintendent Art Johnson issued a letter today praising them and backing away from an earlier contention that 70 percent of district teachers are ineffective.
The data was included in a grant proposal designed to secure $120 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a program to improve teacher quality.
In a letter to staff released Tuesday afternoon, Johnson wrote: "The past and current research shows that the teacher in the classroom is the single most important factor in the education of a student."
In a phone interview this evening, Johnson said "teachers are doing great.
"How are we doing as a system to help teachers to be able to understand this challenge and improve their skill set to be able to do that? We're not doing so great," he said.
The letter was a departure from the grant proposal, released last week, which on page 10 listed only 30 percent of teachers as being effective.
The district defined an effective teacher as one whose students improved academically by an average of 1.3 years during the course of a school year, which Johnson acknowledged today as a lofty goal. The 30 percent figure was reached by calculating the performance of math and language arts teachers using their students' FCAT scores.
That figure was chosen because it would allow a student who is a year behind to catch up over three years, said Marc Baron, chief of performance accountability. The point of the Gates grant is to improve teaching overall, which will ultimately result in better student performance.
Teachers are not currently evaluated based on that measure and had not been told that it was a goal.
"I cannot tell you the hundreds of emails I have received from people who are just plain angry," said Robert Dow, president of the teachers union.
The Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association, which was represented on the Gates committee, did not receive a copy of the proposal before it was submitted to the foundation, Dow said. But he had seen an earlier power point presentation that included the 30 percent effective figure.
"I told them right across the table if you don't change that you're going to insult 9,100 of your teachers," Dow said.
Johnson's letter today blamed The Palm Beach Post in part for what it construed as a misrepresentation of data. The Post drew information directly from the proposal.
But this evening, Johnson said: "As the head of the organization, I have to take responsibility for what goes out, and I do, but we have a lot of people who are involved in drafting the documents."
Union representatives and district administrators must negotiate the specifics of the Gates plan, should the district win the grant. They include changing the way teachers are paid, evaluated and promoted.
The way district officials characterized teachers could hamper negotiations, Dow said.
"I think that what (Johnson's) saying now is a day late and a dollar short and he's still going to wind up with thousands of teachers who feel incredibly insulted," Dow said.
— Laura Green
Palm Beach Post
2009-08-11
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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