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« Feuding sisters unlikely to settle fight over their mother | Today | BIF-3: Mark Cuban wants to buy Cubs -- and Verizon » October 11, 2007Carcieri appoints Brown U. official to urban task forcePROVIDENCE -- Governor Carcieri has appointed Warren Simmons, the director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, to chair a new task force that will try to figure out how to build a successful urban school system. Carcieri made the announcement during a speech today before a group of business leaders attending the annual economic outlook breakfast, sponsored by Sullivan & Company at The Hope Club. Carcieri underscored something that Rhode Island Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has been saying for many years: there are two Rhode Islands, the haves and the have-nots. Students from suburban and rural schools are performing as well as their middle-class peers around the country, with an average of 75 percent of elementary and middle school children reading at proficiency. But those figures drop dramatically in urban school districts, where only 40 percent of students are reading at grade level. “The big issue is the disparity between the urban schools and the non-urbans,” Carcieri said. “If we can’t get all of our youngsters (to graduate) with the skills they need, we’re all in big trouble.” While there are pockets of excellence in urban school districts, the high-performing schools aren’t sharing what they know with their colleagues. According to Simmons, one of the greatest problems is that each school district exists in a vacuum: public schools aren’t talking to charter schools; city schools aren’t talking to suburban schools and innovative schools like the Metropolitan Regional Career & Technical Center aren’t sharing what they know with everyone else. “We have to break down those boundaries,” Simmons said. “We need to create a new vision for our urban education system. In Rhode Island, we have a fractured vision and a fractured system.” -- Journal staff writer Linda Borg Posted by Mike McKinney CommentsThem that can't, teach | October 11, 2007 4:41 PM link Post a commentPlease be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. Name and email are required; email address will not publish. |
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ProJo 9 to 5 News Blog
Oct 2005 - March 2006
The REALLY big issue is that too many teachers go into teaching just because it's an easy way to get money without working, and they have no interest in whether they actually produce anything of value. I knew a woman some years ago who was a teacher (not even a "real" teacher, and "art" teacher) at a middle school in Pawtucket. She sniffed, "I may have to teach there, but at least I don't have to live there." How do people with that kind of attitude get, and keep, their jobs? It isn't something new, either. I had a beefy history teacher who bunked class 2-3 times a week so he could hang out in the gym. "There's a big football game this weekend. Read the next chapter," he would bark at us as he left the room. Another guy, an alcoholic, was supposed to be a history teacher, but they needed a physics teacher so the administration put him in that class. (He must have been tenured.) The guy didn't give a hoot about physics, so most days he just mucked around with the kids. Insane. And to think not only did the kids not learn anything and the taxpayers footed the bill, but some of these guys are now sucking down pensions for the rest of their days, again paid by us taxpayers. Unbelievable.
The answer is simple: give the taxpayers a methodology for getting rid of losers. Start by establishing a policy of zero tolerance for teachers who don't want to be there in the first place. You don't like it, there's the door. If any teach doesn't view these kids as a personal challenge, like a mountain to be climbed, then they have no business being in the classroom.