DCPS teachers are quitting at an alarming rate, how can parents help?

[Anonymous]

I agree the recruitment team has done a great job over the past 5 gears of replacing the dead weight with quality teachers. DCPS now needs to focus on retention.
The disrespect from administrators that has become the cultural norm since Rhee needs to die.

Anonymous wrote:It's all about the administrators in the schools. Every school has behavior problems, but if you're in a school with administrators who are both supportive and competent, those issues can be managed. Until DCPS manages to hire decent principals, they will have this problem. Their problem is not the quality of teaching. It's keeping the teachers who are good. I've been Highly Effective for the last five years, and I'm leaving at the end of this year. I just can't take the dysfunction anymore.

[Anonymous]

I see fights in my school numerous times every single day and there is zero behavior plan. As a teacher with a large class, it's exhausting to have no admin support with behaviors. Good classroom management can only get you so far in the toughest of the toughest school.

I do not blame those teachers at all.

[Anonymous]

Schools like the one in the article are trying to lower the suspension rates so misbehavior is often not dealt with appropriately and teachers are stuck with misbehaving kids. The schools are also trying to increase the graduation rates so teachers are under pressure to pass kids even if that means providing a packet to represent an entire quarter of work to a student who didn't bother to show up.

My former roommate taught at Ballou for 5 years before moving out of the city and did some of the following things: took groups of boys and girls separately out for pizza to talk to them about birth control options, visited students in the hospital who had been victims of gun violence, brought in snacks and lunches for kids who didn't have food, helped students secure public housing after being emancipated from negligent parents, hosted weekend study sessions to help students pass exams and complete work in classes other than her own...the list goes on. I have no idea how she gave that much of herself but teachers can't be expected to last putting in that kind of time and emotional investment...especially when they are treated like crap by administrators and by DCPS in general.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools like the one in the article are trying to lower the suspension rates so misbehavior is often not dealt with appropriately and teachers are stuck with misbehaving kids. The schools are also trying to increase the graduation rates so teachers are under pressure to pass kids even if that means providing a packet to represent an entire quarter of work to a student who didn't bother to show up.

My former roommate taught at Ballou for 5 years before moving out of the city and did some of the following things: took groups of boys and girls separately out for pizza to talk to them about birth control options, visited students in the hospital who had been victims of gun violence, brought in snacks and lunches for kids who didn't have food, helped students secure public housing after being emancipated from negligent parents, hosted weekend study sessions to help students pass exams and complete work in classes other than her own...the list goes on. I have no idea how she gave that much of herself but teachers can't be expected to last putting in that kind of time and emotional investment...especially when they are treated like crap by administrators and by DCPS in general.

+1000 that's the way it goes, many teachers EOTP do this but demoralized when all they hear about is how wonderful schools and teachers are WOTP, also who thought that norming curricula at schools like Banneker and Deal makes sense when they are the anomaly most students are years below grade level in English and math. Where are the reading and math specialist, why is everyone rated on the same rubric for IMPACT, oh that's right - because admin don't know content so lets get rid of it it and rate teachers on being able to "get piggy with it" and have a happy class. Overall treatment of teachers at tough schools with high turn over is disgraceful

[Anonymous]

DCPS micro-managing every school and teachers to death. Teaching to the test and not the individual child. Every classroom should try to emulate the "model" classroom. Blech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools like the one in the article are trying to lower the suspension rates so misbehavior is often not dealt with appropriately and teachers are stuck with misbehaving kids. The schools are also trying to increase the graduation rates so teachers are under pressure to pass kids even if that means providing a packet to represent an entire quarter of work to a student who didn't bother to show up.

My former roommate taught at Ballou for 5 years before moving out of the city and did some of the following things: took groups of boys and girls separately out for pizza to talk to them about birth control options, visited students in the hospital who had been victims of gun violence, brought in snacks and lunches for kids who didn't have food, helped students secure public housing after being emancipated from negligent parents, hosted weekend study sessions to help students pass exams and complete work in classes other than her own...the list goes on. I have no idea how she gave that much of herself but teachers can't be expected to last putting in that kind of time and emotional investment...especially when they are treated like crap by administrators and by DCPS in general.

The bolded describes exactly what is going on. Student achievement has not improved since the old days and Rhee getting rid of "dead weight". There's just a lot of passing failing kids along and data manipulation going on. That's why the graduation rates may have soared but scores on standardized reading and math tests have not. Behavior has not improved. Schools simply no longer suspend or even deal with those issues so that on paper there's a lower suspension rate, which is supposed to correlate with a safer school with better behaved students.

You can replace teachers with younger, older, smarter, newer ones all day long. But you can't replace poor parents or ill-prepared, poorly mannered kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree the recruitment team has done a great job over the past 5 gears of replacing the dead weight with quality teachers. DCPS now needs to focus on retention.
The disrespect from administrators that has become the cultural norm since Rhee needs to die.

Anonymous wrote:It's all about the administrators in the schools. Every school has behavior problems, but if you're in a school with administrators who are both supportive and competent, those issues can be managed. Until DCPS manages to hire decent principals, they will have this problem. Their problem is not the quality of teaching. It's keeping the teachers who are good. I've been Highly Effective for the last five years, and I'm leaving at the end of this year. I just can't take the dysfunction anymore.

You don't get it. The problem was never "dead weight" teachers. That's the reason the newer, younger, more qualified teachers are coming and going in droves.

Many bought into the hype that former teachers were just "dead weight" who didn't care and they could do so much better because they're smarter, more emphatic and dedicated--only to get into the classroom and see the reality. So huge turnover year after year is what you get.

[Anonymous]

^ Truth.

[Anonymous]

You can replace teachers with younger, older, smarter, newer ones all day long. But you can't replace poor parents or ill-prepared, poorly mannered kids

Yes! You can't take away suspension as an option but replace it with NOTHING.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You can replace teachers with younger, older, smarter, newer ones all day long. But you can't replace poor parents or ill-prepared, poorly mannered kids

Yes! You can't take away suspension as an option but replace it with NOTHING.

DCPS cannot discipline or eject these students because doing so would create data that would show they are doing so, which would reveal an "inequity" in the eyes of the public education pencil-pushers. Others would say it would be racist. So better not do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree the recruitment team has done a great job over the past 5 gears of replacing the dead weight with quality teachers. DCPS now needs to focus on retention.
The disrespect from administrators that has become the cultural norm since Rhee needs to die.

Anonymous wrote:It's all about the administrators in the schools. Every school has behavior problems, but if you're in a school with administrators who are both supportive and competent, those issues can be managed. Until DCPS manages to hire decent principals, they will have this problem. Their problem is not the quality of teaching. It's keeping the teachers who are good. I've been Highly Effective for the last five years, and I'm leaving at the end of this year. I just can't take the dysfunction anymore.

You don't get it. The problem was never "dead weight" teachers. That's the reason the newer, younger, more qualified teachers are coming and going in droves.

Many bought into the hype that former teachers were just "dead weight" who didn't care and they could do so much better because they're smarter, more emphatic and dedicated--only to get into the classroom and see the reality. So huge turnover year after year is what you get.

So what can parents do? Don't believe the hype and demand better for all students in DCPS not just the one that your child attends! Start by hiring qualified people at head-office and admit the truth that most students in DCPS are reading, writing, and at a math level that is extremely below grade level and allow teachers to teach meet them were they are at. Stop trying new initiative after new initiative after new initiative - oh and admit the truth and stop blaming teachers for everything.

[Anonymous]

i've seen teachers punched and kicked by parents and students. Admins do little to nothing. morale is in the toilet.

[Anonymous]

The best thing parents can do to support teachers is to actually parent their children. This includes modeling appropriate behavior (e.g., stop yelling "I'm gonna beat your ass" to your five year old at the playground), read to your child every night, make sure they get enough sleep, don't feed hem crap, don't expose them daily to rap videos and violent games etc. doing less than this means the teacher has to parent your brat instead of actually teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ Truth.

absolutely

[Anonymous]

Where can we see what actually goes on in these troubled classrooms? Can they secretly film the kids in a class?
A lot of talk about how badly they behave, but why don't they film them? Then show the video to their parents and ask them to parent or remove their kid?
There might be some kids willing to learn and nobody can learn in a disruptive classroom.