Teachers, your thoughts on this

The article is from The College Fix - which is rated as a conservative site. The author quotes someone from Liberty Unyielding which is rated as a very conservatively biased site.

So, you can take this as some Republicans using this as a way to bash public schools.

I teach in a school that has at least 50% of the students from Korean descent. We hire as many Korean staff (admin, teachers, paras) because, not only does it provide good role models for the students to see staff who look like them, but because the teachers and admin are able to communicate and form good partnerships with the parents/caregivers of the students. 

Truly good teaching also involves these working partnerships with the parents/caregivers of students whenever possible. Sometimes cultural similarities helps form these partnerships. 

I think that if one grows up in the majority culture, it can be hard to grasp the impact of a shared culture because it is taken for granted and therefore not thought about.

For the purposes of RIF? None. They’ve been using seniority alone.

You seem familiar …

This is why I do not like the language that race is a factor in retention. It will rile up people. You can fire the worst most awful teacher and if they are white they will sue based on this.

There have to be better ways to fix the issue. I don’t know, like start by paying teachers as if they are the licensed professionals that they are. It’s crazy if you compare teacher salaries to other professionals.

No it has not. Which is why I’ve been asking people here what other metric they would use.

Not necessarily directed at you, but some general thoughts for the group:

How are employees evaluated at your job? Are they evaluated in such a way that people are ranked based on a "quality" score, or is it a more holistic evaluation designed to help you improve? If the latter, you might understand why it's difficult to rank teachers based on quality and simply cut from the bottom.

My very large district attempted to roll out a "value added measure" score based on test scores for teachers about a decade ago. For a few years we even had bonuses based on those scores, and some teachers cashed in. One problem was that it made student test scores competitive between teachers and discouraged collaboration. A more important problem was that it discouraged teachers from wanting to teach the most struggling learners. Another issue was that the algorithm used to calculate the "VAM" was so opaque that the PhD-holding head of the math department at one of our top high schools wrote a scathing critique of its validity.

Now we use student improvement over the course of the year as one measure of teacher quality, and we also have multiple admin observations and are required to set goals for ourselves each year and report on progress. We have meetings with admin to discuss the observations and target areas for improvement. These things result in teachers being assigned a score from 1-4 at the end of the year, with 4 being "highly effective." My understanding is that this more holistic approach is similar to what some other professionals experience.

It's tempting to say, oh, just RIF the teachers who get a 1 - but the thing is that teachers past probationary status who get a 1 more than one year are already going to be non-renewed. Few people doing that badly at the job stay in it.

For the rest, a high 2 is a typical score for a newish teacher, and it doesn't mean you're a bad teacher. A 3 is typical for a more experienced teacher with developed skills, and 4 means you're really above and beyond. Admin is encouraged to give 4s sparingly - there are a lot of hoops to jump through to reach that level that don't necessarily indicate higher quality, but rather a willingness to spend hours putting together written and video evidence in various areas. Many older teachers like me don't see the point.

Our society seems so eager to rank teaching and learning as if teachers are students are widgets. But we are all human beings with strengths and weaknesses. We shouldn't rank the quality of our students based solely on test scores, and we shouldn't rank teachers based on test scores or evaluations. I'm not sure people in most other careers would put up with being ranked against their peers that way, either - it feels quite dehumanizing.

So in deciding RIFs, districts have defaulted to seniority as the only truly objective measure. And that measure has had some unintended consequences that are contrary to the district's laudable diversity goals, so they've put an imperfect mitigation measure in place. And yes, conservatives will scream and cry about it, but what else do any of them suggest? 

Another option, of course, would be to allow districts to operate with all hired staff for the duration of the current contract year at least. Requiring school districts to operate with what are basically skeleton crews is a big part of the problem here. Believe me, there are plenty of things for "extra" teachers to help with. Excessing teachers after the year has started seems unnecessary.

Affirmative action is a legal corrective to racial discrimination. If the school district here was hiring teachers for the sole reason that they’re white, then that would certainly be illegal.

I’m assessing this from the specific issue of layoffs. If an employer told me, “We’re not laying you off, Liz, because you’re black” instead of basing my retention on, say, exemplary performance, then that IS pandering. How does that encourage excellence in the teaching profession?

The extremely long fight of black people for civil rights has always been about fairness and equality under the law. It wasn’t about constraining the civil rights of others in pursuit of preferential treatment.

Thank you for your insights. Do you think the fact that RIFs right now are currently done based on seniority and not merit changes the perspective at all?

Do you think it matters that some number of the more senior white teachers retained (while newer black teachers are RIF’d) may have benefitted from racial discrimination when they were hired?

At first glance, this doesn't sit well. However, learning more about the goals of the district and the history of hiring over the years, it makes sense. I don't think seniority should be the only criteria being looked at, and I also don't think that race should be the only criteria. Given the fact that 60 black teachers, and 30 were tenured (I am not sure if that meant 30 of the 60 black teachers were tenured, or 30 of the 250 total teachers were tenured) shows to me that those are not the only criteria that they are looking at.