Reply to Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was teacher in a low performing DCPS school for several years prior to Rhee. Had she come into position while I was there I might have been able to stay. The culture of dysfunction is deeply ingrained. Trying to buck it at any level is suicidal. Teachers who sleep on the job, leave early every day, don't teach ONE. SINGLE. BIT. of the curriculum, teachers who sleep with students... my stories could go on and on. One biology teacher refused to teach the class and instead preached Christianity the entire year. No biology. 
I never once had enough text books.
I bought ALL of my own chemistry supplies.
I was out sick with the flu for a couple of days and no sub ever covered my classes- they just roamed the halls. 
The librarian locked the library and would only allow teachers she liked to come in and socialize and eat lunch. Students were not allowed in there.
The counselors routinely lost students' transcripts. I was contacted for 2 years after I left to recreate grades for kids.
The athletic director changed a failing student's grade so she could play basketball.
We had a homeless kid live in the stockroom for a month of two because he broke in every night.
We had a couple of building service personnel who pimped out a couple of girls in the chorus room in the evenings and weekends.
The principal embezzled nearly a hundred thousand dollars from a technology grant from AOL, held a gospel concert that lost nearly all the money and NOTHING happened to him- even after being investigated and the involvement of the mayor.

I have hundreds of other stories of the culture of dysfunction. I was told early on when I went to that school that I landed the perfect job where everyone wants to end up because it is the easiest place to ride out your last years teaching. And so it was for 2/3 of the building. The rest of us got so burnt out from picking up the pieces that we couldn't last for more than 5 or 6 years. It would have been nice to have someone, ANYONE look at the school and notice just how bad and useless most of the adults were in that building.[/quote]
Interesting to me that you were a teacher and only found problems with other teachers. So the admin was fine? Parents fine? Thats amazing... and BS[/quote]

I'm not sure how you got that out of my post. The whole system was broken and some of it was truly corrupt. One teacher had students carry her bags to her car EVERY DAY after lunch and she then left, leaving her afternoon students unattended. There wasn't a single person who worked there (or attended school there) who didn't know of her doing this. In my mind, that is a complete failure of the system and an indication of corruption in the administration. 
I was told by an adminstrator that I had to dumb down my curriculum because I didn't have enough students getting A's. When I asked how I was supposed to do that and meet the standards I was told that "it didn't matter if I only accomplished one standard that year as long as everyone mastered it and got an A". But this was high school level and there were no standardized tests or any other measure of accountability for my subject areas (sciences). 
One year, attendance records weren't kept for about 5 months. I'm sure someone somewhere got a report of attendance numbers for the school that year- or maybe they didn't? Again, administrative failure. And wondering about how to fix families in poor, urban schools is the million dollar question, now isn't it? When kids need to sell drugs to feed their brothers and sisters you end up with a more problems than any superintendent can fix in any amount of time.

Sorry about typos and grammar issues- in between classes at the moment.

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