Posted on 05/13/2015 2:14:34 PM PDT by MichCapCon
When Gov. Rick Snyder recently proposed creating a new school district organization to serve Detroit schoolchildren, he cited a “lack of educational success” and “failing academics” and pointed out that Detroit is the “nation’s lowest performing urban school area.”
However, the Detroit Public School district's most recent evaluations of its own teachers paint a picture of success in 2013-14. The district gave 8 out of 10 teachers the highest evaluation possible — “highly effective.”
Full email response from DPS Spokeswoman Jennifer Mrozowski. Starting with the 2011-12 academic year, school districts have been required by state law to report on their teachers, classifying each into one of four different categories of effectiveness: highly effective, effective, minimally effective and ineffective.
According to data filed with the Michigan Department of Education, 2,542 DPS teachers (79 percent) were rated “highly effective,” 541 teachers (17 percent) were rated “effective,” 73 teachers (2 percent) were rated “minimally effective,” and 52 teachers (2 percent) were rated “ineffective.”
The percentage of teachers rated highly effective by DPS was twice the state average of 38 percent in 2013-14, the latest year statewide data is available.
“Detroit Public Schools administrators seem to believe they have twice as many highly effective teachers as the statewide average,” said Audrey Spalding, the director of education policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “And yet DPS is in academic and financial array. How can the state justify taking $50 from each Michigan student to bail out DPS when the district won’t even acknowledge that its teachers are underperforming?”
Snyder’s plan to reform schools asks that the state fund a new school district at a cost of $72 million a year. According to an analysis by the Citizens Research Council, the proposal would cost each school district in the state about $50 per pupil.
Jennifer Mrozowski, spokeswoman for Detroit Public Schools, said the district has been working on improving its evaluation tools since they were first used in 2011-12.
"DPS teachers are a passionate, hard working group of individuals dedicated to providing the students of Detroit Public Schools with the a quality education," Mrozowski said in an email. "Our teachers face a multitude of issues such as poverty, homelessness, and hunger that affect their students' ability to learn and achieve academically. That being said, the state of Michigan has mandated teacher performance evaluation, and DPS is in compliance with that mandate."
Average salaries would be bad for their self-esteem!
All major studies have pointed out that blacks have lower IQs than whites. Add to that fatherless homes and a environment where superior black children are blackballed for “acting white” and you could have the best teachers yet still have crappy scores.
You know sometimes it is the kids. Most don’t care about going to school except for social reasons.
Last I heard, Michigan teachers are among the highest paid in the Nation - it is probably the Detroit war-zone pay that pulls Michigan’s average up.
Even if we accept that premise, the failure of those "best teachers" to convey measureable knowledge to the students would mean the teachers were NOT "highly effective." "Effective" means "achieving the desired outcome."
Of course, this raises the question of what is the desired outcome for Detroit teachers. We're only assuming that conveying measureable knowledge to the students is the goal. I'll bet 80% of Detroit teachers are highly effective at paying union dues, agitating for Democrat causes, using students to agitate for Democrat causes, concealing the financial misdeeds of administrators, and so on.
I’m not going to defend the teachers one way or the other. they can defend themselves but I would say these troubled school districts problems start with the students and their failed families and homes. until that gets fixed I wouldn’t expect miracles from these teachers
I see. If producing kids that don’t know math or reading and can’t write means “highly effective”, then the grades were gimmees.
So what’s the scorecard on the parents? It takes a village to raise idiots.
Add in a culture where black students who excel are derided by their peers and you have a truly hopeless situation.
Exactly. It’s possible that no teachers could be “highly effective” with this population, although the results of private and charter schools strongly suggest otherwise.
Based on personal experience, these are probably the students that private and charter schools (rightly) reject. The students don’t care, nor do the parents. I teach in a small, urban public high school. I’m teaching third generation welfare recipients. Their grandmas and moms have lived on our bounty, and they know that they will also. Why study or try to do well? Why go to a private or charter school that’s just going to kick you out?
At the same time, in Ohio we have a new teacher evaluation system. It’s a joke. It’s too much trouble for the school system to deal with an ineffective teacher, so they just get ranked artificially high. Sigh.
The one distinctive factor in a student’s attendance at a private or charter school is a parent who makes the effort to send him there.
This is one where we really need to see the data. The Detroit Public Schools deal with kids from a broken city full of broken (or never formed) families. That it has horrible outcomes on standardized test scores compared to the state-wide norm is hardly surprising. The question is whether the teachers honored as excellent are actually doing a good job in lift their students up, so that without them the deficit in performance would be even more dismal, or are being honored for nothing. Without real data we can’t tell.
There is something to be said for doing a good job when handed a nearly impossible task.
Indeed. And if grandma/mom/aunt doesn’t have the desire to get out of bed and transport the child, then the child his happily stuck where he doesn’t have to do anything. In return he will recieve the best life a welfare check can buy.
Blacks are merely the canaries in the coal mine. The same dysfunction seen in their culture and communities is growing in White America, too. The government's K-12, godless, single-payer, and socialist-entitlement schools will tend to produce citizens who are comfortable with godlessness and single-payer entitlement.
This is from an article about the documentary “Waiting for Superman”.
“The film also shows Steve Barr, who transformed Lock High School (in Watts, LA) into a charter school. Barr explains that the kids at Locke read at around 1st to 3rd grade level, and its 15 years of existence before the transformation approximately 40,000 out of 60,000 students didn’t graduate.
Guggenheim narrates, “We use to blame failing neighborhoods for failing schools, but now reformer thinks it’s the other way around.””
http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/waitingforsuperman.html
Two words: unions and “educators”.
Is anyone paying attention? This is Detroit, for crying out loud. I think the teachers should start out with at least a “B” for just showing up every day. I’ve read about student behavior in Detroit.
I consider government owned and run K-12, godless, single-payer and socialist-entitlement schools to our nation's most serious threat to our continuing freedom. I honestly don't believe that the fabric of our culture withstand the indoctrination of the next generation of voters. There is still time to stop this.
We must get the nation's children out of the government K-12 indoctrination camps and into private settings for their education.
It is why I am so active on these education threads.
Ugh.
But this brings up the point of how we go to where we are now. The people who insist that the "best welfare life" must be provided to the "underprivileged" are the same people who are running the public school systems. They are ideologically committed both to these processes and these outcomes.
If the system was committed to education, they could do what private schools do with similar populations: First, establish discipline. Second, teach phonics. Third, teach arithmetic. And so on. Even if you posit a lower than average intelligence level, the majority could achieve basic competence, just as they did under a system of discipline and 3-Rs instruction several generations ago.
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