The non-profit known as the Charleton Education Network (CEN) is being disbanded, and its representative to the Charleston County School District, Jon Butzon, is out of his job.
Despite our differences with CEN in the past, our first reaction is, did Superintendent McGinley have anything to do with its defunding?
Lately Butzon hasn't been completely on her page.
Monday, April 01, 2013
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Maybe it had something to do with the bogus study on teacher evaluation that he tried to sell to the League of Women Voters.
Or would it be better to embrace the bogus teacher and administrator evaluations promised by the superintendent?
Don't worry. Perhaps no evaluation will be the outcome. So far, no evaluations have been applied to senior management even as the new pay for performance bonus goes into effect for the associate superintentents and other paper pushers.
Now that's brilliant. Skip the evaluations all around and just given everyone a gold star. Gee, that was easy.
At least Jon Butzon put something on the table for consideration.
I did not see much difference between Butzon and Zais on the teacher evaluation. Both echo the corporate reform agenda. Pay for performance is another waste of time and money, as is the Race to the Top grant. It would help to first correctly identify the problems in education before spending a bunch of time and money on experimental solutions to fabricated problems.
What are these "problems in education" that have gone unidentified?
Not knowing what constitutes a highly qualified and effective teacher is the first problem. So far no one in the educational establishment seems to be able to define, quantify or place a measurable value on having a good teacher in every classroom. So why talk about evaluations when the people running the system don't have any idea what they are evaluating? The superintendent has so far failed to deliver a meaningful evaluation process to the board in spite of spending the better part of two years talking about it. She hasn’t even provided teachers or the public with an intelligent explanation of how an evaluation process is supposed to work.
Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Why implement “pay for performance” among the administrators when no evaluation instruments exist yet, much less actually completed evaluations? Without a credible evaluation process, it is still "same old, same old", no matter what Nancy McGinley might try to say to the contrary.
Test-based accountability is flawed and has a negative impact in our schools. My kids are in the "good" schools and have endless test prep and worksheets.
This push for better teacher evaluation to weed out the "bad" ones is ridiculous. Even if you got rid of the mass amounts of "bad" teachers who must be filling thousands of poverty stricken schools, who will replace them? The bad teacher theory is just not true and our principals and parents can tell you that.
That said, ccsd can do a better job to recruit certified experienced teachers in the poor area schools.
Other reforms that actually help students and not the Sup's numbers are smaller class size and better preschool programs. But most importantly, communities will have to lift these kids up.
Look for Mr. Butzon to become a lobbyist for charter schools.
He is perfect for KIPP, or even Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst.
Yes, CCSD could do a lot better by recruiting more highly qualified and experienced teachers for all of its schools. It needs to do a much better job. Right now it is could be described as looking for warm bodies. As well-spoken as Teach for America is in some circles, it is little more than an intern program with few of its teachers remaining in place for very long. Just what our most challenging schools need...more change for change sake and inconsistency.
The real reform will have to come in the ed-schools like the College of Charleston, Winthrop, SC State, etc. You could include 100's of other US colleges and universities that grant Ed degrees in this list of culprits responsible for dumbing down US public schools. Until they do a better job of attracting the best students instead of "just average" and until local school systems decide to demand and pay for better prepared professionals, our worst classrooms will remain little more than ineffective day-care centers. Our best classrooms can't be much better.
Give no praise to anyone, not the superintendent or ed-school deans, for maintaining the status quo and expecting test results to show progress. Political leaders share the blame. They gave us endless tests and thought that would produce better teachers. Wrong. It gave us school bureaucracies that learned how to manipulate the tests. Teaching to the test is no way to measure success, not the superintendent's, not the student's and certainly not the teacher's.
Jon Butzon has put a good topic on the table for discussion. Now, what's the solution?
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