Thread: RI school fired all of It's teachers, students 69% hispanic

Mayday wrote:

You are being a little quick to judge bigtex. I commend him. He does not have an easy job! I was the Mom who was always involved in the schools by being in PTO and always helping out. Then I became a para(teachers aide). What an eye opener! Unless you have worked in the schools you really have no idea as to what is really going on.

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I was PTA President of my son's middle school, and of his High School. I have volunteered in the classroom at high school level. I was on the District wide PTA counsel.

My son went to the inner city ghetto school, with socio economic demographics that are even more challenging than those in that Rhode Island school.

Yet, my son's school, and in fact, the whole school district, is succeeding with these tough to teach kids. Their scores are improving, and the drop out rate, as compared to similar demographic districts is far, far less. I don't have the figures at hand, but if my memory serves me, it is somewhere in the 9% range, compared to 37% statewide.

My son received an outstanding education at his school. My son's classmates had every disadvantage, including many parents who not only did not support education, but were actively against it.

In his class, 50% of the kids (the kind Bigtex refers to as "street rats", does not want his children to associate with, and assumes will fail because of bad parents) were taking at least one AP level course.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for almost all teachers and school administrators. Those in our district are superstars.

But these teachers in Rhode Island, were way, way out of line and deserve to be fired. The school has a 50% drop out rate. The adminstration quite properly, was told to clean up its act or else. The administation creates a program to try and improve the situation. What do the teachers do? Refuse to implement it. Hey, in my world, you defy your boss, you get fired. Bigtex's opinion is the reason these kids failed was because of the parents, so the teachers were correct to refuse to implement any changes.

You would think this Rhode Island school, administrators and teachers, would have, long ago, before being rated a failed school, called districts like the one I am in, who have the same category of kids, but who have found a way to succed and ask them how they did it.

No, as much as I admire and respect most school administrators and teachers, there are people in the education business, who are just coasting, are not doing their jobs, and who, when given the chance to change, refuse to do so. Our kids deserve better.

You still haven't answered Mayday's question, Bettybb. What makes you think conservatives represent a small percentage of our population? Personally, I believe there is a large population of folks in this country (Americans) that favor traditional views and values and tend to oppose change simply for changes sake. For the record, you don't have to be a Republican to be considered conservative. Many Independents and Libertarians consider themselves as conservatives.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW6AKVyi ... PL&index=1

Originally Posted by MW

You still haven't answered Mayday's question, Bettybb. What makes you think conservatives represent a small percentage of our population? Personally, I believe there is a large population of folks in this country (Americans) that favor traditional views and values and tend to oppose change simply for changes sake. For the record, you don't have to be a Republican to be considered conservative. Many Independents and Libertarians consider themselves as conservatives.

The poll I cited.

But the way you define conservative, it is so broad, it could include everyone.

I could do the same thing, defining progressives as people who favor Christian views and values of peace and concern for others, and tend oppose trite and simplistic answers to complex questions.

What most people think conservatives are, are a branch of the GOP, who are fiscally conservative, and conseravative on social issues, and who, at the present time, seem to be in full revolt against the Neo Cons and GOP establishment.

State investigating alleged leak of TAKS test
By ERICKA MELLON
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
March 2, 2010, 9:56PM

Share Print Share Del.icio.usDiggTwitterYahoo! BuzzFacebookStumbleUponThe Texas Education Agency is investigating allegations that staff at a Houston ISD elementary school had access to a secure TAKS test and perhaps shared an essay topic with students before the writing exam, which is scheduled for today.

The investigation centers on Jefferson Elementary, but in case the test question got shared with other HISD campuses, the TEA has issued a new secret essay topic for all elementary schools in the district, said agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe.

“The safest thing seems to be to provide a new writing prompt,â€

Originally Posted by Bettybb

Mayday wrote:

You are being a little quick to judge bigtex. I commend him. He does not have an easy job! I was the Mom who was always involved in the schools by being in PTO and always helping out. Then I became a para(teachers aide). What an eye opener! Unless you have worked in the schools you really have no idea as to what is really going on.

I was PTA President of my son's middle school, and of his High School. I have volunteered in the classroom at high school level. I was on the District wide PTA counsel.

My son went to the inner city ghetto school, with socio economic demographics that are even more challenging than those in that Rhode Island school.

Yet, my son's school, and in fact, the whole school district, is succeeding with these tough to teach kids. Their scores are improving, and the drop out rate, as compared to similar demographic districts is far, far less. I don't have the figures at hand, but if my memory serves me, it is somewhere in the 9% range, compared to 37% statewide.

My son received an outstanding education at his school. My son's classmates had every disadvantage, including many parents who not only did not support education, but were actively against it.

In his class, 50% of the kids (the kind Bigtex refers to as "street rats", does not want his children to associate with, and assumes will fail because of bad parents) were taking at least one AP level course.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for almost all teachers and school administrators. Those in our district are superstars.

But these teachers in Rhode Island, were way, way out of line and deserve to be fired. The school has a 50% drop out rate. The adminstration quite properly, was told to clean up its act or else. The administation creates a program to try and improve the situation. What do the teachers do? Refuse to implement it. Hey, in my world, you defy your boss, you get fired. Bigtex's opinion is the reason these kids failed was because of the parents, so the teachers were correct to refuse to implement any changes.

You would think this Rhode Island school, administrators and teachers, would have, long ago, before being rated a failed school, called districts like the one I am in, who have the same category of kids, but who have found a way to succed and ask them how they did it.

No, as much as I admire and respect most school administrators and teachers, there are people in the education business, who are just coasting, are not doing their jobs, and who, when given the chance to change, refuse to do so. Our kids deserve better. Did your son go to school with a 69% hispanic population that has very little grasp of the ENGLISH language ? You see, If all of these teachers are spending all of their time trying to make the non-ENGLISH speakers UNDERSTAND the curriculum,then they cannot spend enough quality time with all of their students. It's really quite simple. The teachers are the scapegoats for the childrens problems,and the dismal lack of parenting skillls that are on full display. If you do not understand the language you are not going to EVER be successsful at anything In this country..... TS

T. S wrote in response to Bettybb' post.
Did your son go to school with a 69% hispanic population that has very little grasp of the ENGLISH language ? You see, If all of these teachers are spending all of their time trying to make the non-ENGLISH speakers UNDERSTAND the curriculum,then they cannot spend enough quality time with all of their students. It's really quite simple. The teachers are the scapegoats for the childrens problems,and the dismal lack of parenting skillls that are on full display. If you do not understand the language you are not going to EVER be successsful at anything In this country..... TS

Yep. Actually, it was more like 80% Hispanic, with 11 % white, 9 percent other. A large number of these kids had, initially, little grasp of English, or sorely deficient. There is a huge turnover of kids each year, as many are migrants.

As I mentioned in my post, the socio demographics of my son's school, the statistics that break down the student population into racial groups, and percentage of English learners, and income tec, is right up there with the worst schools in the state, and from the little info given in the article, were actually worse than the Rhode Island school.

I am not saying that it is easy to teach these kids, in fact it is much, much more difficult to do so, and it is true that many of these parents are not supporting their kid's education.

That is why I support giving extra pay for those who take on this challenge and succeed.

But the school, and school district my son was in, has proven it can be done.

My son's school and school district is not alone. Others are also succeeding with these kids. Why on earth schools that are failing do not contact the schools that are succeedingand find out what there are doing is beyond me.

TS

I forgot to add, that kids should be able to learn enough English in 3 months to start to work at grade level.

This is the standard required by an education abroad group, made up of language teachers world wide, uses. My son was in the program so I know. He went to France for his first year of high school. The expectation was that he would have sufficient knowledge of French in 3 months to be passing his courses. He was at that level in 6 weeks.

This is a well known fact about language acquistion. But there is a major teachers union push for what they call bilingual education, which somehow always takes years and years, and yet never produces bilingual students. It is teacher's full employment ploy. What the school districts should be done is an intensive 6 month English language acquistion program, for non English speaking kids, then mainstream them.

Good news.

The paper this morning reported the teachers have agreed to support the changes and the Superintendent is willing to negotiate with them.