Lousy school's staff to be replaced

[XU Fan]

Cincinnati Public Schools will replace the entire staff at the chronically low-performing Taft Elementary School in Mount Auburn. (http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080122/NEWS01/301220040)

"Tim Kraus, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, said nothing else had worked at Taft."


It must be the teachers. Put good teachers in that school and all the kids will become brain surgeons in short order. Yeah that must be it. Good luck with that.

[cinskyline]

I'm sure there are some teachers who probably should be replaced, but eliminating everyone just smacks of making changes so that the public will think they're doing something, regardless of whether or not it works. This is all a PR stunt.

[Fred Garvin]

How many students does Taft have for those 11 teachers?

[Snipe]

How many students does Taft have for those 11 teachers?

Taft Elementary (http://www.ode.state.oh.us/reportcardfiles/2006-2007/BUILD/036780.PDF)


They had 204 students. That school is miserable. Out of 17 basic state indicators they only met one of them, and that was for attendance. And guess what, public schools are funded in part on attendance figures, and it is the easiest one to inflate because you don't have to doctor any tests. All you have to do is report high attendance. Since they get funded based upon attendance, they have a financial incentive to do so.

Out of those 204 students, a whopping 24.4% were classified as students with disabilities.

Think about that. One out of every four kids is classified as disabled. I am not sure what that means. I am guessing obviously learning disabled, not that they have a multitude of cripples. But I still don't know what that means.

Some kids qualify for social security disability checks, I do know that. I remember a Walter Williams article about a woman who had the incentive to coach her child into a disability so that she could gain additional income. We have perverse incentives in society.

That is really a staggering number. 1 out of every 4 kids is reported to have some sort of defect or deficit that they are classified as disabled. You have to wonder how that type of "diversity" affects the normal kids in their quest to attain a decent education.

[PM Thor]

I have a soft heart for Cincy Public. Considering that my Ma taught in CPS, and my Pa was a Principal, not to mention I am a product, I can't help but think that at least CPS is trying something to fix this school.

I wonder though, why not freaking just close that school? CPS has been contracting big time over the last couple of years in size of the student body, so why try to overhaul this one school? This is especially true considering that just recently CPS has combined a couple of schools, announced the closing of the likes of Schwab (among others) and made it clear that the major rebuilding project is being scaled back.

Why not just close the worst Elementary school in the system?

I think the idea they put forth is flat out stupid. The CPS is big enough to absorb those bad numbers without a huge hit across the board. Instead? They do this? What?

[Snipe]

You were not a product of that school Thor. And the debate is not closed as to which school is the worst in the system. Hays has sucked for years. They just closed Heberle this year, which had a lower score. They closed Hyde Park last year or two years ago. Those disabled kids go somewhere. Hyde Park had a very high number of disabilities too. It closed and they fed into the system.

I am all for mainstreaming if you have a small number of defects, but 1 in 4 is way past the tipping point. Would anyone here send their kid to that school? Why should anyone have to? School Choice should be a civil right. Nobody should have to condemn their children to failed government schools.

I know that it isn’t just the teachers, the principals or the schools themselves. You have bad parents that abuse children and send them to school in a way that they will most likely fail. I think we owe it to the good kids and the good parents to try to separate the wheat from the chaff (sp?). I think we owe those parents who car school choice.

Teacher’s unions have proved over time to do a lot for teachers and much less for kids. They don’t exist for the kids, the exist for the teachers. We spend a lot on education.. Do we get our bang for our buck?

And what about gifted kids? They don’t get much funding. We seem to concentrate more resources on the failing kids with disabilities than we do with the truly gifted students who could have a much larger impact on society.

I don’t think it is the government’s job to indoctrinate our kids. I think if you took the government out of the equation and gave people a choice it would be better for everyone involved.

[PM Thor]

I agree Snipe. I don't think that it is a good solution to absorb these kids into other schools, but I do think it is better than going wholesale on the school.

Also, I really do think there are some exceptionally good schools in CPS, where the "gifted" kids can go. I speak about Walnut (or as I like to call us "The Nuts") and the Montessori schools. Those programs, while hard to get into, are pretty good.

Thing is, a system like Cincy is in a no win situation. They can shift kids around, work with numbers, hide stuff in programs, do stuff to cook the books, but it doesn't change the fact that comes down to the most base of problems.

Cincinnati public has to deal with all the kids, no matter what level, no matter how involved the families are, no matter where they are.

I am not going to say the Teachers Union is exactly great (outside of that Cincy is one of the first in the Nation to demand that all teachers must get their masters) but I won't say they are totally at fault either.

There are a ton of problems ranging from administration spending money on totally unrealistic programs, to the Teachers Union defending the indefensible, to the parents simply not caring....where do you start?

[Fred Garvin]

Oh dear gawd, to use Snipe's phrase du jour, we've reached the "tipping point."
So glad you finally discovered Malcolm Gladwell.

This is a turning point for this board. Someone has finally mentioned schools/vouchers. Great news for this board. Who doesn't tire of Snipe's regurgitating of Walter Williams and Milton Friedman?

Confession: I'm the one who introduced Snipe to Milton Friedman. The kid had an Econ degree from Xavier and had never heard of Friedman or the Chicago school.



Who wants to place bets on how long til we read a thread on media bias?

[Fred Garvin]

I think we owe it to the good kids and the good parents to try to separate the wheat from the chaff (sp?). I think we owe those parents who car school choice.


I love how the one time he questions his spelling is the time he's right.

[XU Fan]

If I had to take a guess it would be that the parents are primarily to blame, not the school.

[XUglow]

Snipe, one of my best friends is a psychologist, and he makes his living testing kids to see if they qualify for disability. He says the moms bring the kids in like it is a job interview whether the kid has any problems or not. The moms offer money and "favors" if they qualify, and they throw a fit if they don't. It is all about getting extra money for nothing. The first thing that they need to do is bring in outside experts and have them test the kids again to see how many really qualify. My guess would be way less than 1/2 of them have a problem that merits the designation of disability.

As for attendance, they probably do have good participation. It is where many of these kids go to get breakfast and lunch and socialize.

[Snipe]

I suspected that perverse incentives were a major part of the problem, but that story is just sad Glow. Parents have a financial incentive to make their kids unfit. Talk about reverse Darwinism.

When government spends money on something you are bound to get more of it. If we are going to give people money to have disabled kids it should surprise no one that we are suddenly producing more disabled kids.

Living in the hood it is staggering how many people are on social security disability. “I get a crazy check” one woman told me with a smile as she applied for an apartment. I don’t like renting to them.

Can you imagine the decent kids that get stuck in a school with kids that are coached into being unteachable?

The system is broke. Hurricane Katrina should have been a teaching point for this nation.

[Snipe]

If I had to take a guess it would be that the parents are primarily to blame, not the school.

I agree with that. I also think the good parents should have more choices to opt out of the system. They shouldn't have to be forced into sending their kids to the same school as the kids who are coached into failure.

As Thor said CPS has some good public schools and magnet schools, but those are not easy to get into. They fill up and have waiting lists. I signed my kid up for one CPS school as a backup plan, and I would bet my house that I was bumped down the list by people who had connections or knew someone. When you have a few decent schools in the mix the competition for them gets intense. Those slots are worth money, and I bet some money and favors changes hands. I have heard people say that they "know someone" that could get a person into a particular school.

We need more options for the kids that can make it. The kids that are left behind are going to be left behind anyway. With limited resources, we tend to spend a ton of resources on lost causes.

[Stonebreaker]

Cincinnati Public Schools will replace the entire staff at the chronically low-performing Taft Elementary School in Mount Auburn. (http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080122/NEWS01/301220040)

"Tim Kraus, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, said nothing else had worked at Taft."


It must be the teachers. Put good teachers in that school and all the kids will become brain surgeons in short order. Yeah that must be it. Good luck with that.

I would give it a college football analogy. You can't replace the students, so you get rid of the entire coaching staff.
I'm not familiar with the situation, but if parents and the local community has lost confidence in the faculty, there's not much else for the board to do. Granted.....firing everyone seems excessive. However, if you're trying to change a culture, that's one way to do it.

[Stonebreaker]

One answer: vouchers.
Give parents a choice, and FORCE public schools to be competitive.

[XU Fan]

There are surely poor teachers at that school, as there are at many city schools. But it is the parents, or in many cases parent, who are/is to blame in most cases in my opinion. The teachers can teach, but they can't force kids to learn. This stunt is a combo PR/desperation move, and either way it isn't going to work. Until parents do their job you're going to have the same results form their kids.