Just damn.
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Posted on 05/06/2005 5:11:21 AM PDT by beaureguard
The Gwinnett County School Board voted early Friday to fire a Dacula High School science teacher who refused to raise the grade he gave a student athlete who appeared to be sleeping in class.
At the end of a Thursday night hearing that stretched into the early morning hours of Friday, the board decided by a 4-1 vote to terminate veteran physics teacher Larry Neace, school system spokeswoman Sloan Roach said.
Neace left the building after the ruling and would not comment.
His lawyers said they planned to appeal the dismissal to the State Board of Education within 30 days.
"These students lost a teacher who cared not only about their academic growth, but their growth as individuals," said Deidre M. Stephens-Johnson, who represented Neace.
While the board agreed 5-0 that Neace violated school board policy by using grades as a disciplinary measure, board member Carol Boye, who represents Dacula High School, voted against the termination. She declined to comment on her vote.
School system spokeswoman Sloan Roach said she did not know when the termination would take effect. "He was already suspended with pay until the outcome of this hearing," she said.
More than 200 students, parents and teachers packed Thursday night's hearing to see whether Neace would lose his job.
Gwinnett school officials said Neace was barred from campus for insubordination after he repeatedly refused to comply with the district policy that prohibits using grades as discipline.
Neace, who has taught at Dacula High for 23 years, was removed from class after he refused to raise the grade he had given a football player on an overnight assignment. Neace said he cut the student's perfect grade in half because he thought the student had fallen asleep at his desk the day the assignment was made.
"What we have in this case is a case of a pampered football athlete sleeping in class and being given favored treatment on an academic grade," said Michael Kramer, another of Neace's lawyers. "What we have here is the principal essentially attempting to coerce and intimidate a teacher."
School officials said they gave Neace a chance to restore the football player's grade. When he refused, they sent him home. He has not been allowed back at school since April 14, when he was told he could resign or face being fired.
Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks recommended to the board that Neace be fired. "He cannot have a policy that supersedes board policy," Wilbanks said. "He had no right to do that."
Neace said he had a practice of reducing the grades of students who waste time or sleep in class. His course syllabus warns that wasting class time can "earn a zero for a student on assignments or labs." No administrators had previously complained about the practice, which he adopted more than a decade ago, Neace said.
Neace said during the hearing that he also noted another student appeared to be sleeping in class on the same day. It was not clear Thursday what happened with the other student's grade.
School officials said Thursday that it appeared Neace allowed students to sleep in class. "He said it was not his job to wake up students," Assistant Principal Donald Mason said.
When asked Thursday if students sleep in his class, Neace responded, "Very rarely."
As school administrators presented their case to the school board, supporters of the teacher spilled over from the hearing room into a hallway outside. Some wore buttons saying "What's Up Doc?" and Dacula junior Clark Hurst wore a shirt bearing the acronym SADD, for "Students Against Dumping Doc."
Neace said he has been overwhelmed by the support he has received from students.
Posters calling for his return decorated the high school's halls. Some students wore T-shirts protesting the principal's action and passed out fliers saying, "Forget the whales, save Doc." Students also circulated a petition asking administrators to reinstate Neace.
"It's overwhelming -- the support, the phone calls, the e-mails, the [editorials] in the paper," Neace said Thursday afternoon. "I am getting support from all over the country. I got an e-mail from a professor at Rutgers University that said he wishes more teachers would do what I was doing, because it would make his job so much easier in the classroom if kids were prepared to take responsibility for what they do."
Neace said he got the nickname "Doc" years ago because of an exercise he led in class. That day he wore a lab coat and a stethoscope as he took the blood pressure of students. "Somebody said, 'Mr. Neace looks like a doctor,' " he said. "That was 22 years ago, and the name stuck."
Dacula High parent Nancy Penn said she supports Neace's methods. She said her daughter, a former student of Neace's, understood and respected his practice of penalizing students who fall asleep in class.
"As a parent, if my student was falling asleep in class, I would be upset," Penn said. "I do not have a problem with him using tactics to bring my student to attention in class. A teacher needs authority to govern his students. If someone takes away his authority, how can he manage his classroom?"
School officials said the issue was not that a student fell asleep in class. Instead, they said, Neace refused to abide by a school district policy that says, "Grading is not to be used for discipline purposes."
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
The kid actually got a good grade on an assignment but then had the grade cut as punishment for some other behavior?
Doesn't sound kosher to me.
That school board is nuts...................
He deserves it. He was power hungry and using a students grade to punish the student. The article said he halfed the students perfect score, that means the student did the work and did a good job on it. The teacher was just PO'ed he fell alseep.
No wonder outsourcing is a serious problem. Sports is more important than science.
If the teacher thinks the student is behaving in an inappropriate manner, then it is the teachers job to correct it.
In any case, simple question: Did the kid do the assignment? And if the kid could sleep through class and still do the assignment well, is the teacher really challenging the student to learn?
I don't know. According to the article, the syllabus stated that a grade could be cut for wasting time in class. The students had to (or should have) known this. Also appears that he had had this policy for at least 10 years.
I don't know about that - the kid was made aware of the rules:
His course syllabus warns that wasting class time can "earn a zero for a student on assignments or labs.
Me either, especially because there's plenty of ways to deal with it without basically admitting that you're using grades as a disciplinary measure. For crying out loud, just make class participation part of the grade, and give an F on that portion to the kid who falls asleep.
That was my thought too. It states the kid got a perfect score on the assignment, but his grade was reduced for falling asleep.
Having fallen asleep in my share of HS classes, LOL, and still maintaining a high GPA, I tend to side with the kid.
The teacher states that his policy is to reduce grades of those that fall asleep in class (you'd have to look to see if he followed that consistently), but the school board says that it has a policy that does not allow a teacher to punish a student by lowering his grade, for such behavior.
So the question is: Which policy should stand? The teacher's or the school boards.
This particular under achiever had a perfect score on the assignment in question...
>>So the question is: Which policy should stand? The teacher's or the school boards.
In this case, the school board's policy should stand. Now, which should stand afterwards, is certainly up for debate.
I'm for results over process on this one.
There is also a school board policy in place that the teacher didn't follow.
On the surface, teacher's actions of lowering the grade on one homework assignment might seem like a reasonable punishment, particularly since he made it clear at the beginning. However, the school has a stated policy of not using grades for punishment and he should abide by that and adjust his own. Why didn't he just give the student detention, or send a note home? Sounds like he thought he was above the rules.
Using grades for punishment really doesn't make sense when you think about it. That's what detention, in-house suspension, revokation of athletic priviliges, etc. are for.
BTW I've seen firsthand, on more than one occasion, college teachers leave a sleeping student alone and asking the class to leave quietly at the end. Students were left to wake up in next class!
For crying out loud, just make class participation part of the grade, and give an F on that portion to the kid who falls asleep.Exactly. This teacher is being pig-headed and stubborn on what should be a very minor issue. The fact that he now has a lawyer makes me dislike him even more.
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