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."
Grades should be used as leverage over student behavior. When I was a TA teaching 3rd year undergraduate chemistry labs, I had a very strict safety policy. At the end of the lab period, if the lab wasn't as clean as it was at the beginning of the lab, all the students took a 5% hit on their grades. It needed to be done. Even after demonstrating proper chemical handling and explicity going over the lab safety requirements, the students still managed to get strong acids and hazardous solvents over everything through sloppiness. I could not believe how they could contaminate and entire room in les than 10 minutes! It was very fortunate no one was injured. After I put that policy in place, the lab was spotless from then on. One student complained that they were being treated like kids and I simply told him that they were acting like kids the way they handled things and I was punishing everyone for what only a few people did. I had to remind them that lab safety resides with everyone and it is only as strong as the weakest link. If you se a safety problem in the lab, even if you did not cause it, you are responsible for getting it corrected. Also the university I taught at had a very strict policy on safety. If you didn't have your safety gear with you, you weren't allowed in the room and you got a zero for the assignment.
Sounds like that's what he did.
If half your grade is class participation (I've had several like that) and you turn in your A-level work then take a nap - VOILA! - your grade is cut in half.
The question is not which policy should stand but why did the school board pick this time to make their stand? Was it just because this kid plays football or would they have made this stand for some geek who didnt mean anything to the Football team?
Which policy is giving taxpayers the best return on their money?
I've visited a few high school classrooms recently and they have slipped badly as learning places since I was in high school over 30 years ago. The biggest problem I saw was a complete lack of discipline and focus by a significant number of students who constantly disrupted the class by ignoring the teacher, talking to each other loudly, wandering in and out of the class, and, yes, even sleeping. I felt pity for the good kids who were there to learn because the net effect of the "I'll do whatever I feel like doing" disrupters was adversely impacting the good kids' learning experience as well.
Maybe this high school has similar problems and this is the way this particular teacher decided to deal with it. If you have problems like that, piecemeal solutions and half-measures generally don't work. Neither does docking students in ways that don't bother them, like giving them demerits for citizenship.
By the time kids get to college the disruption problem generally solves itself. The really undisciplined kids tend to self-select out. Sometimes it only takes one tough, demanding teacher to light a fire of self-discipline in a kid. Paradoxically, by firing this teacher the school board may denying scores of kids a real chance to succeed in life.
Indeed. I understand what he was trying to do, but when there's a smart way and a stupid way to accomplish something, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who choose the stupid way, especially when they refuse to back off of the stupid way when confronted. Don't make stupid choices, and don't compound your stupid choice by s***ing where you eat - don't continue to insist on the stupid way when da boss calls you on the carpet. Anyone who's been in the system for ten years and still doesn't understand how the system works basically deserves to lose his job for that stupidity alone.
Teacher had an attitude problem. Grades should be based on how well you do on assignments and tests not whether you occasionally fall asleep or student does something he doesn't like. Where does that stop? What if a classmate argues with the teacher about evolution or global warming? sheesh.
I agree, but that policy is different, IMO. You can certainly make a case that safety and equipment care is a necessary and proper part of chemistry lab, and that students who do not learn that lesson should be penalized for not learning the material. However, reducing the grade for an assignment for something that's fundamentally unrelated to the assignment is improper, and not justifiable. Talking during the chemistry lecture is certainly rude, and worthy of punishment, but there is no reason for that punishment to take the form of a deduction on the gas chromatography lab assignment. The one thing has nothing to do with the other thing, and it appears - is, really - blatantly arbitrary to mete out punishment in such a fashion.
I homeschooled, and my son didn't go to high school, but started in full time at the local community college when he was in 10th grade.
He says students sleep in class, and he's always amazed at the attendance, or lack thereof, of some students.
But a grade on an assignment shouldn't be tampered with, unless for cheating, IMHO.
If you want to include class participation, or lack thereof, in your evaluation of the student, factor it into the final grade for the class.
My son has had prof's who wanted good attendance, or class participation to be part of the grade, so they factored that into the final score (i.e. attendance in class counted as a tenth of your grade, or attentiveness in class counted as a percentage of your final grade, etc.)
If this teacher handled it like those profs, then I don't think there'd be an argument.
Why is the assumption made that the student actually did the work ? If the kid sleeps in class, how does he get a perfect score on an assignment made in a class period that he probably slept thru ?
My question is, is this kid really an exemplary student (in all his other classes) or did someone "help out" this kid with his homework assignment(s) ?
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.
If the teacher thinks the student is behaving in an inappropriate manner, then it is the teachers job to correct it.
I have a friend who teaches Algebra at a junior college. When he notices a student napping in class, he keeps talking, but writes a "test question" - and its clear, concise answer - on the board. It's always something totally unrelated to Algebra - the name of his dog, his favorite sports team; but it becomes a legit test question for those awake and listening. For those sleeping, it'll be out of the blue and unexpected, and points lost!
The problem is, it doesn't sound like he did that. It sounds like he just took some random assignment and cut the grade based on something external to the assignment. No can do - assigned work should be graded on the criteria set forth for that assignment alone. If the teacher takes class participation and makes it an "assignment" unto itself, and the kid winds up failing the course because his participation wasn't up to snuff, so be it - I have no problem with that. But I don't think that's what he did, because if he had, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place ;)
LOL
I side with the teacher. She may not be able to prove the cheating on the paper, but she can take off points for sleeping in class.
But I have had no experience with high schools. Perhaps he is bright and it's a very boring class. But I tend to doubt it.
Meanwhile, people prattle about global competitiveness.
What a hoot.
Maybe he just nodded off? I have nodded off for short periods of time in class but was awake if not at my best for the rest.
Many teachers I know give a class participation, or daily, grade. That might be a more 'un-attackable' method of penalizing. If a kid sleeps through class, his daily grade would be a zero.
My son's seventh grade science teacher, who is a wonderful teacher, takes polaroids of kids sleeping in class and they are included in his montages that decorate the hallways at school, right in there with shots of the dissection of frogs, geese tagging field trip and class experiments. It is a very humorous way to get their attention.
Good question. Is this a case of a star athelete being helped to get passing grades?
I think he should be judged by the long-term results he has achieved, and not just in the case of one student, but all the students.
I consistently tell my high school aged son that school is his "job" at this point in his life. And it really is. The skills and disciplines he perfects in school will carry over directly into the work environment, where employers still generally have the right to hire and fire according to who contributes to the bottom line, and who doesn't. Sleep on the job or disrupt the work of other employees in the private sector and you'll make the unemployment line your steady date.
One day about a year ago my son came home from school and said, "Dad, if school is a 'job,' then half the kids at school should be fired." He told me about how discouraging and frustrating it was to have to fight above the noise and in-your-face ennui of a hard-core group of disrupters whose bad attitudes and behavior were infecting other students in adverse ways.
I don't know how effective this particular teacher's methods have been in turning out disciplined, well-educated young men and women. The story is thin on such details. If they have been effective, then speaking as a taxpayer (like a shareholder in a privately owned company) I believe he deserves a raise, not a sacking, for earning me a good return on my money.
I'm with the hapless kid on this one...he get's a perfect score and then has it halved as punishment for falling asleep in class. That's just wrong, whether the teacher's written policy has been in force for ten years or not. I can see him taking a hit in terms of a class participation grade, but his classroom sleepiness should have nothing to do with his performance on that homework assignment. It sounds to me like this particular teacher is nothing but a petty tyrant, and believe me, I had my share of those way back when I was in high school. So, I'm sympathetic to the student, and agree that the teacher needs to go if he in fact refused to budge on this issue. Just my .02
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