Friday, May 24, 2013

Free the Ed White 7!

First some background. Ed White has the most disabled kids in the county. They have something like 350 kids who receive services including about a hundred severely disabled kids in the Intellectually Disabled Unit.

Next, teacher’s evaluations have two components, the principal observation and student data. These scores are added together and that score gives you a ranking, highly effective, effective, developing/needs improvement and unsatisfactory

Last year the intellectually disabled teachers did not receive the student data portion and as a result of only having half a score they were all deemed needs improvement which is credit to them because their principal thought so highly of them. If they would have gotten student scores they would have all been effective or highly effective  On paper because this score was omitted it seems like the whole department sucks. The reality however is nothing could be further from the truth.

The District has known about this for a year too and thus far has done nothing about it and now it is costing people opportunities. One teacher told me she was going to apply for the curriculum writing team but the first question was: what was your evaluation. Another may be blacklisted from teaching summer school because he too is unsatisfactory in the eyes of the CAST, the districts evaluation tool. Until this is fixed it is a beaming black mark on all their records.

People’s livelihoods are threatened and the district has been unwilling to fix what they admitted last year was a problem.

It is shameful and it is just one more example of a district which isn’t interested in taking care of the employees that carry out the one job, teaching, that the district exists to do in the first place.