“ They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized,” said guidance counselor Lori Tauber. “That’s how they get the message.
I write about education for a living. About cute kids and their projects. About local government in the form of school boards. About budgets that are squeezed or bloated. About the programs that money can't buy. About inequality and fairness, and how kids learn the difference. About triumphs and tragedies. About life, where pass/fail isn't an option, and the future is on the line.
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Indiana is one of the other states picked for this. From the Dispatch’s story, note especially the last quote here because I’ve heard that from so many people:
Although it’s unclear how the change will affect districts — new test scores and yearly growth data will be released this summer — it’s clearer why the changes were made. Some suburban school districts felt their good standing was being tarnished by a few students and wanted more flexibility in how to fix problems.The federal No Child Left Behind law dictates how schools must be punished when not all students in a school are making progress. Ohio was one of six states offered the chance to veer from the law and try a different set of sanctions. The state legislature still must approve the new plan.
“Quite frankly, I think it’s one of those things where suburban superintendents and suburban lawmakers have thrown their hands up and said, ‘This is stupid. We’re being punished by what happens to 11 kids in a high school of 1,000?’ and that resonates with lawmakers,” said Terry Ryan, vice president for Ohio programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Indianapolis Public Schools students would get Wednesday afternoons off next school year so teachers could attend training sessions under a new district plan.
Superintendent Eugene White said teachers and administrators would use that extra 90 minutes to better learn fresh teaching methods and collaborate with colleagues.
“Teachers need a common time to plan each week,” White said. “We have teachers next door to one another who never talk about instruction. … And we can’t afford to have teachers out of class during the school day.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Friday is payday at KIPP DC: KEY Academy, and some sixth-grade girls gather at the makeshift school store trying to decide how to spend their hard-earned money.
They received paychecks for behaving well, doing their homework or making academic gains. The money is pretend. But it can be used at the store for genuine items such as pens capped with fluffy feathers, pencil cases shaped like animals and colorful erasers.
Schools, under pressure to boost student achievement, are offering incentives - field trips and cash, for example - to motivate students.
Now that he is retiring, Cleveland teacher Gene Tracy says he will be less diplomatic in criticizing the district.
That’s hard to imagine. Tracy, 57, has harangued school officials for nearly three decades. And if he ever exercised restraint, it wasn’t apparent.
Tracy, whose last class was Wednesday, began staging dramatic displays of displeasure as a new teacher in 1981. He tossed a sickly pre-wrapped sandwich on the table at a school board meeting and dared administrators to take a bite of their cafeterias’ fare. They declined.
He went out in similar fashion at a board meeting last week. The Lincoln-West High School math teacher accused the district of child abuse for letting teenagers reach his ninth- and 10th-grade classes without mastering basic multiplication. He then handed his retirement notice to Chief Operating Officer Daniel Burns.
… for more of his history, click the <a href=”http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/06/cleveland_teacher_retires_his.html”>link to the story</a>
In April, Seattle Public Schools settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of two of Hill’s victims for $3 million. Depositions, personnel files and other records from that lawsuit expose a school’s culture of fear and confusion, and they explain how Hill managed to remain a teacher for so long.
At least 30 times since the late 1980s, teachers and staff warned administrators at North Seattle’s Broadview-Thomson Elementary School of their suspicions about Hill, lawyers for the two girls say. The Seattle School District disputes that figure but does admit to five warnings.
State law requires school personnel to report suspected abuse to police or Child Protective Services, but teachers kept their concerns in-house, hewing to a school policy that says go to an administrator. Once passed along, their complaints almost always died, with no investigation, no discipline, no calls to outside investigators.