I remember how it was -- JR
Ida Byrd-Hill hung out at gas stations and McDonald's, passing out fliers that looked like party invitations, to recruit Detroit's high school dropouts back to school. She hustled up funding and donations from Compuware Corp. and others, and opened a small program that caters to dropouts and supports them through graduation. In return for her missionary work to help the students that they failed, the Detroit Public Schools and the Detroit Federation of Teachers are threatening to close Byrd-Hill's school.
Byrd-Hill's story sounds like a morality tale of how not to act unless you want to bring ruin upon yourself -- as the teachers' union and school system continue to do. The school has become a hostage between the two players, while the school district tragically collapses. Byrd-Hill, a former businesswoman, good-naturedly named her program Hustle & TECHknow Preparatory School to lure students to her classrooms housed at Compuware's headquarters. As she puts it: "Corporate America is the ultimate hustle." The school, which opened last year, is a contract program with the Detroit school system and thus is covered by the DFT contract. To keep costs down and classes small, Hustle & TECHknow and other alternative schools like it do not offer the benefits package that unionized teachers have.
As an alternative school, Hustle & TECHknow receives 80 percent of the per-pupil state funding for its 86 students. The district keeps 20 percent, arguing it has to pay for administrative costs. That 20 percent is the issue at hand. Union officials say since the district is saving millions of dollars by contracting out to nonunion alternative schools, it should use those savings to give DFT teachers the raise they haven't had in four years. Unless its gets that raise, the teachers' union is threatening to shut down Hustle & TECHknow and other such schools. These "last chance" programs for dropouts need a waiver from the union to continue receiving their funding from the district.
Byrd-Hill worries her school will run out of funding by spring. "Personally, I have no problem giving teachers what they want," she says. "But then they have to perform. ... The reason why you're seeing a mass exodus from DPS is because of nonperforming teachers." Byrd-Hill is a die-hard loyalist to the union teachers at her children's school, Duke Ellington Conservatory of Music and Art on the east side because they are high-performing professionals. "We love our teachers," she says. "We'd do anything for them."
Her story illustrates the painful reality of today's Detroit schools: The union protects poor-performing teachers, undermining itself, while the district strives to protect its franchise rather than serve students. Hand-in-hand, the two are destroying the city's schools.
In a district that has one of the worst graduation rates of any urban school system in the country and is bleeding students, Detroit Public Schools desperately needs "recovery programs" like Byrd-Hill's to bring back dropouts to its schools.
New union President Virginia Cantrell says she wants her union to take a more practical, conciliatory approach to the district's crisis. In the DFT's recent newsletter, she writes: "We have already begun to build bridges between the DFT and the school district." Byrd-Hill hopes that includes her school. For the sake of her students and the district, we do, too
Source
Australia: Standards for teachers coming
Are we REALLY going to get teachers who can spell and add up?
Teacher graduates will have to meet uniform standards of literacy and numeracy for the first time under a national system to accredit education courses. The draft framework, approved by state and territory teacher registration boards and obtained by The Australian, sets out mandatory requirements that education courses must meet for teachers to be registered in government, Catholic or independent schools across the nation.
The framework, developed by the Australasian Forum of Teacher Registration and Accreditation Authorities, will specify required levels of literacy and numeracy as well as content to be taught in teacher education courses - a minimum four years of full-time study and a minimum amount of practical classroom experience. Institutions will have to provide evidence of "a mix of professional studies, discipline studies and embedded professional experiences (and) ensure appropriate subject content studies," it says.
A spokesman for AFTRAA said the policy would, for example, specify the level of science a student must study to qualify as a science teacher. "At the moment, there aren't explicit requirements that are national and in some places there aren't explicit requirements at all," he said. Teaching courses that fail to meet the standards will not receive accreditation, and the qualifications of their graduates will not be recognised by schools.
The framework comes amid a national debate over the need to increase the standards and professionalism of teachers and moves toward a common school curriculum framework for all states and territories. The Federal Government and the Labor Opposition have both committed to introducing a core national curriculum as a way of improving standards and avoiding syllabuses being hijacked by educational fads. National accreditation of teacher courses is the first step toward national teacher registration and professional standards, which AFTRAA is expected to go on to develop. With a shortage of teachers, particularly in maths and science, national recognition of teacher qualifications is an important step in allowing teachers to move more easily across state borders.
The AFTRAA comprises all state and territory teacher registration boards and was charged by the council of the nation's education ministers to develop national recognition. At present, the accreditation for courses varies widely between the states and territories and this framework will provide mutual recognition, so that a course accredited in one state will be recognised in another. The move effectively sidesteps the federal Government's process for accreditation of teaching courses through Teaching Australia, which is intended to be voluntary. It is considering a model ranking courses using a star system instead of ensuring standards.
The Australian Council of Deans of Education welcomed the framework and its president, Sue Willis, said the deans were strongly committed to a national system for accrediting courses. "We have nothing to fear; teacher education can only benefit from high common standards of accreditation," she said.
But Professor Willis said the council was "totally underwhelmed" by the idea of voluntary accreditation as proposed by Teaching Australia and by using rankings instead of standards. In its reply to Teaching Australia, the ACDE argues that rankings would "significantly compromise the value of accreditation" and that such a system should be separate to accreditation. Professor Willis said the council had argued for national accreditation for the past 10 years and wanted a one-stop shop, so was concerned about how the AFTRAA process would work with Teaching Australia. "We want one accreditation framework, one set of accreditation rules, which everyone applies," she said.
ACDE is also concerned by the lack of representation of teacher educators on the AFTRAA boards, particularly given its intention to prescribe the content of teacher courses. A spokesman for federal Education Minister Julie Bishop welcomed the AFTRAA framework for moving to a national system of accreditation. "The more work that's done in this area, the more likely we are to see a positive change and higher standards in teacher education," he said. The AFTRAA spokesman said that the forum welcomed the involvement of Teaching Australia in the process and there was no reason it could not help co-ordinate the work.
Source
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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.
The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"
For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.
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