"My students have NO grammar books, NO workbooks, seven year old, worn OUT, reading books, and I am out over $300 bucks already this year on paper, ink, and classroom supplies. There are days I have sent my girls into the bathroom with Kleenex because there's been no toilet paper! I buy soap and the had the students bring in paper towels for the days when there there's none." - a Shelby County teacher
VERSUS:
from a Commercial Appeal article from Oct. 27, 2013:
"Each of the 236 principals in Shelby County Schools now has a coach, a former principal or central office administrator whose full-time work is making sure the corps improves. SCS budgeted about $1.5 million to train and dispatch 10 executive-level coaches. They make $105,000-$108,000 a year — about what a middle school principal makes — and spend 70 to 80 percent of their time in schools. If the experiment works, administrators say test scores and principal skills will improve. Nationally, there is not enough data to show a correlation between principal coaching and student achievement, according to research released last week by the Wallace Foundation. SCS is paying the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington $478,000 for technical support, including training for the coaches."
The executive-coach and principal "also fine-tuned (“recalibrated”) what Shaw (the Principal) should be seeing when he observes teachers. He saw them performing at Level 4 (high). Whitelaw (the coach) suggested it was closer to Level 1 or 2. “As part of my growth plan, I need to be evidence-based. If those teachers were a Level 4, we should have been seeing growth,” Shaw said. That’s the part that bothers him the most. “I talk about the scores on the way to work and on the way home. It stays on your mind,” he said.
(This was posted anonymously, with permission, to protect the employment of this frustrated teacher in Shelby County)
The wasteful spending to improve ridiculous scores on ever-changing tests must stop. Give teachers & students what they really need in their classrooms. Let teachers teach. Stop micromanaging our teachers & principals.
Our teachers are not numbers,
and our students are not test scores.
VERSUS:
from a Commercial Appeal article from Oct. 27, 2013:
"Each of the 236 principals in Shelby County Schools now has a coach, a former principal or central office administrator whose full-time work is making sure the corps improves. SCS budgeted about $1.5 million to train and dispatch 10 executive-level coaches. They make $105,000-$108,000 a year — about what a middle school principal makes — and spend 70 to 80 percent of their time in schools. If the experiment works, administrators say test scores and principal skills will improve. Nationally, there is not enough data to show a correlation between principal coaching and student achievement, according to research released last week by the Wallace Foundation. SCS is paying the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington $478,000 for technical support, including training for the coaches."
The executive-coach and principal "also fine-tuned (“recalibrated”) what Shaw (the Principal) should be seeing when he observes teachers. He saw them performing at Level 4 (high). Whitelaw (the coach) suggested it was closer to Level 1 or 2. “As part of my growth plan, I need to be evidence-based. If those teachers were a Level 4, we should have been seeing growth,” Shaw said. That’s the part that bothers him the most. “I talk about the scores on the way to work and on the way home. It stays on your mind,” he said.
(This was posted anonymously, with permission, to protect the employment of this frustrated teacher in Shelby County)
The wasteful spending to improve ridiculous scores on ever-changing tests must stop. Give teachers & students what they really need in their classrooms. Let teachers teach. Stop micromanaging our teachers & principals.
Our teachers are not numbers,
and our students are not test scores.
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