December152009
brief summaries: my school and the city.
First, the school update: You remember the hope (this is where I would link to another post if I knew how?!) about the survey and the possibility of feedback, etc. Here’s what happened after that:
1. small changes: principal feedback on meeting notes, a suggestion box in the main office, announcements emailed to the staff
2. heard from another meeting that I put my spies (kidding) in: teacher morale is low on the high school, according to members of the administration, because teachers are spending all their time BEING negative instead of DOING something positive. read: its our fault.
My grade team was actually called out as the bright spot of the high school because we’re proactive and create magical solutions (We’ve started calling ourselves the dream team. Even asked the AP for matching jerseys). Had I been there, I might have said something to the effect of: HA! We’re trying new things out and working ourselves to the bone creating solutions that are making you smile, but we’re the least happy OF EVERYONE. Some of these things ARE NOT OUR JOB AND WE’RE GOING TO BURN OUT AND LEAVE.
sorry for the all caps. I’m a little disgruntled today for a variety of reasons, one of which is wondering why school is still happening for another week aka break needs to be here now.
and here’s what you might have missed in the city:
**The governor is withholding schools aid because of the state budget shortfall:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/nyregion/14budget.html?_r=1
**new york is trying to win a lot of obama/duncan education money (called Race to the Top, or RttT), through the aforementioned teacher tenure linked to test score initiative and substantially increasing the number of charter schools:
http://gothamschools.org/2009/12/14/regents-urge-legislature-to-double-number-of-charters/
**the mayor/chancellor team is closing down 20 SCHOOLS! including some of the last large high schools in the city.
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/145920
… to be replaced by those charters from the RttT proposal? Doesn’t that timing just work out so nicely for the new initiatives of Bloomberg and Klein! God, now if only they were good for educating all of the city’s students….
Tags: /small reforms /blame the teachers /The Reformers /Race to the Top
