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Here is what I have seen over the years:
1. In the early 1990's, a friend of my dad's was going to move back to Wisconsin from Hawaii. he had been awarded Hawaii teacher of the year and had a letter of recomendation from the Governor of Hawaii. At the time MPS only wanted black teachers, so this guy received a form letter saying he could be a substitute, while MPS hired a black male from the south who was a nice guy, but couldn't teach his way out of a paper bag. Now, he is teaching in Las Vegas with one of the most successful PE programs in the district.
2. Another teacher I know spent five years trying to get a job in MPS. He too, eventually moved to Las Vegas, where is was nominated for teacher of the year in his first year.
3. Every year I see the worst teachers get promoted and even moved up into administration roles because they are such a huge detriment to the kids in the classroom. The good, hard working teachers are sent the worst kids and have the hardest jobs. Bad teachers are moved up to high paying jobs.
4. The union makes sure that when budgets call for teachers to be cut, age is the only thing that matters. Many times the best teachers are cut from MPS schools and many times take jobs in the suburbs.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Refine hiring, MPS told
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8 comments:
MPS is so fixated on race and not education. Hire the best people and don't just focus on hiring role models. Some of my best teachers and profs were from different races.
MPS' decisions border on ridiculous.
They don't do that as much now, because they will take anyone they can get. I'm sure in a few years, when the gap is still huge, they will come up with a new theory as to why certain kids seem unable to be successful in school. Maybe the racist hiring practices will return.
GAME...The day is coming when MPS
will hire a quota of what will be
the minority in the school system..
the same minority of the current studeny body.
Milwaukee is apparently behind us on the curve on this one.
During the late 1960s there was a showdown between the board, the teachers' union, and the community on busing, community control, and self-determination issues. Most of the experienced, mostly Jewish and white teachers left shortly thereafter and the plan that was pushed was teachers from the community the schools served, and students bused hither and fro to presumably integrate schools (Ocean Hill/Brownsville vs. Canarsie, for example).
In other words, the plan operated in reverse from what would have accomplished their aims, and Brownsville is still a teeming ghetto, while white middle-class Canarsie is now a suburbanized ghetto.
There are actually far more white teachers now in all of the districts mentioned, because the black community failed to turn out and develop enough black teachers to pick up the slack, so lower-grade white teachers were accepted into the school system, generally paid at a mutually-agreed upon lower salary that was to have been adjusted as the white teachers adjusted to the conditions and alternative universe of teaching in the ghetto, which of course rarely happened and was not really rewarded when they did.
In general, the white teachers deal substantially better with ESL issues and with more patience than the black teachers tend to, so there will be no wholesale movement to harass the white teachers out, but working conditions and compensation will not substantially improve for them because the boards are well aware of the fact that these teachers are not desired by the better suburban school districts and are, in essence, trapped, if they wish to continue working in education at all (Dwight Morrow High in Englewood, Morristown, and Manalapan vs. Freehold Borough are decent examples of this dynamic at play), as black families continue their reverse migration back down south and the newer students and teachers become progressively more linguistically challenged and the continued decline becomes more obvious to even the most disinterested bystander.
I do not understand where you get this notion that inner city teachers are of a poor quality. You have to be a better teacher to simply survive. I found that out at the end of the last school year when I found out 10 teachers were being cut from my HS and since I was only there for 3 years, I would be one of them. I was offered a job by a rich, suburban district outside of Madison THE SAME DAY I interviewed. To get anything done in an inner city school you have to have a lot of damn good strategies and methods to get through the day. I was agreeing with you until that stupid crap came up again.
There is no doubt that bad teachers can hide better in an inner city school district. However, the ones who get the job done work a hell of a lot harder than those of a rich, white school, period.
Oh, and my school district pays me 10K more than the rich suburban school district would have, so you are wrong there as well.
"I do not understand where you get this notion that inner city teachers are of a poor quality."
I did not say ALL...but a substantial number, now a majority, have subpar skills.
Teaching in the inner city is not a rewarding experience for most. There is little there to see or hear that edifies, rather the experiences coarsen and brutalize the spirit.
"Oh, and my school district pays me 10K more than the rich suburban school district would have, so you are wrong there as well."
I don't know about Milwaukee, but I DO know about New York City, and the northern 'burbs.
I do believe the corruption is widespread and universal, however.
Damn it, I agree with Hash.
Wait a minute...
Jay comes to my blog and then doesn't comment on an MPS story...what?
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