The crux of the problem, [state Rep. Alan] Seabaugh said, is that the jobs of some teachers could be in jeopardy because even high-scoring students who show drops from the previous year can result in the teachers being rated as ineffective.State Education Superintendent John White tells The Advocate that he believes the South Highlands evaluation problem may be a unique situation, but he’s planning to meet with teachers there Oct. 18.
Seabaugh said red flags went up when officials at South Highlands, while planning for the change, tried to see how teachers might fare this year by comparing test results from the 2010-11 school year with the 2011-12 school year.
Earlier this year, Seabaugh said, 92 percent of fourth-graders at the school scored at the highest or second highest level in English on the LEAP test, 89 percent in math, 85 percent in social studies and 84 percent in science.
But all three fourth-grade teachers who received ratings were judged to be “highly ineffective” and among the lowest performing teachers in the state, Seabaugh said.
“This is nothing short of ridiculous,” said Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, in an Oct. 2 email to education officials around the state.
JUNE 17 If anyone ever wonders why Saints fans hate Atlanta with a capital H, here's a good indication. Radio "professionals" at an Atlanta station created an entire segment around making fun of former Saints player Steve Gleason, who is now paralyzed by ALS. Listen, nobody's ever accused DJs of being rocket scientists. But how could someone think it is amusing to pretend to ask a man with a degenerative, fatal disease if he will be alive next week? The DJs have been fired, and are now whining about how gutless their former bosses are. Wow.
JUNE 18 Here's the latest from the Advocate on the fatal hit-and-run accident allegedly involving the president of the Livingston Parish School Board. He's accused by police of hitting a 21-year-old man on a highway early Sunday and driving away. The man died at a hospital later. On Monday, police seized the president's truck and towed it away. But he's available for board meetings: apparently a $500 bond is sufficient for this type of thing over in St. Helena Parish.
JUNE 18 Former broadcast journalist Griffin Scott has posted this plea on his blog for financial assistance from his readers. Scott, who says he was fired after he wrote something fairly innocuous (for Facebook) on his wall, is suing a media giant for his job back. He's framed himself as David going after a bloated media giant, and he's probably not far off.
JUNE 18 Here's a fairly absurd column posted on DIG Magazine about the completely absurd practice of naming killer storms. Tornadoes don't have names. Blizzards don't have names. But hurricanes do, and there's a big process to bestow them, Jacques Cormery writes. He's right about the crazy assemblage of names -- this year, there's everything from Tanya to Humberto -- and his idea that we don't waste good names on killer storms is a good one.
JUNE 17 Political columnist John Maginnis has some advice for Louisiana Republicans: grow up. After the schism that occurred in this past session - fiscal hawks teaming up with Democrats to spank the Republican "majority" and hand Gov. Jindal his, er, aspirations for continued solon control -- they need to figure out how to get along with each other, Maginnis writes.
JUNE 17 Here's the Picayune's obit story for Dorothy 'Miss Dot' Domilise, the lady who made poboys at the uptown restaurant that bears her name. Miss Dot moved to New Orleans during World War II, where she met and married her husband Sam. When she passed away Friday she was 90, and had spent more than 60 of those years working at the restaurant on Annunciation Street.
JUNE 17 This editorial in the Advocate speaks in favor of the consent decrees that have federal judges overseeing police operations and the sheriff's parish prison in New Orleans. Mayor Landrieu and Sheriff Gusman can't get along, so outside forces, like the Inspector General and the judges, are needed to make sure things run right, the editorial opines.
JUNE 18 Here's a post from Manny Schewitz on Forward Progressives that is good for a chuckle. Manny had an epiphany back in November, and is sharing it with us today: he believes that Fox "News" is killing the GOP by pandering to right wing nuts. Now, don't get it twisted: Manny's not broke up about it. He says he enjoys watching the downward spiral with a shot of whiskey and "a schadenfreude chaser."
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The real flaw that is highlighted here lies in Seaburgh's idea that all you need to know about how well a teacher performs is how well their students test.
It seems obvious to Seaburgh that if the students have high test scores that they must have good teachers. That is an embarrassingly poorly thought-out idea. Of course there are poor teachers of good students. Always have been, always will be. What Seaburgh is actually offended by, of course, is that one of his "good" schools is getting caught in the grinder. A school where all the best people go! That was not the plan, Seaburgh thinks. The plan was to punish all those bad schools with the worst people in them and make them available for some educational profiteer to take over and relieve the public of as much as possible of the price of educating "those people."
To be fair though, Seaburgh et al. were actively mislead; Jindal and White do leave everyone with the impression that somehow their reforms are intended to only fix the poor schools (in both senses of the term poor) when in actuality their program is an assault on public schooling and teachers in general.
The fact that we in Louisiana have a disproportionally large share of students who are poor (academically) is directly tied to the fact that we have a larger share of students who are poor (financially). Nobody is willing to deal with that; everyone wants to pretend that it is _teachers_ and then somehow _schools_ that are failing. NO. Really, no. Anyone who troubles themselves to read the national statistics will immediately find that Louisiana is right at the national average when income is taken out of the equation.
So-called failing schools in this state are one whose parents are making less money than schools that are "succeeding." Local researchers have amply demonstrated that—so well that the state department of education no longer wants to release the numbers.
There is a real issue, which Seaburgh does not think hard enough to notice, with students who are effectively at the top of what their context and native capabilities make easily achievable. Yes, good (well-off) students who are trying hard and have had good teachers will not be able to uniformly show the big advances every year that the foolish teacher assessment demands. It isn't fair. But by the very same reasoning poor (fiscally) students with the continuing challenges that their out-of-school context have made and continue to make every year will find it hard to put out the well-focused effort to make the big advances every year that the silly teacher assessment demands. In both cases teachers are being punished for the extraordinary circumstances under which their students labor.
I work with teachers at both ends of the struggle: one who teach financially poor elementary students and ones that work with highly-motivated at least middle class students at a successful tech-themed magnet. Both groups will be unfairly injured by the current teacher assessment tools. And both know it. And they are increasingly bitter about it.
The combination of hypocrisy on the part of the state promoters and blindness on the part of the public is toxic and is no track to destroy the public school system both from the top down by delegitimating schools and from within by destroying the morale of the teacher corp. A real and valuable social resource is being destroyed.
Seaburgh—and all of us—should be embarrassed. And ashamed.