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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Nope. There are plenty of slacker teachers in lower-performing schools. The fact that those schools also, at times, may have to focus intensely on SOLs just to get their kids to pass doesn’t mean the teachers are especially passionate about teaching or committed as professionals. It just means the teachers are more likely to live in fear that they’ll be blamed if their kids don’t pass the SOLs. That’s a non-issue in the top pyramids, where the kids easily pass the SOLs, and it frees the best teachers up to go beyond the standard curriculum. The teaching at our GS 9 high school was better than at our GS 6 school, and the expectations were higher as well.[/quote]

OP here. I have to respond to this because it's not really true.

Title I schools in FCPS tend to get many, many new and new-ish teachers. These teachers tend to struggle. Not only because it's a hard population of students to serve, but because the expectations are much, much higher. Maybe that was the point I was trying to make? A Title I school teacher is expected to have records of her or his efforts to reach every single student. And they are challenged, pushed and held accountable if they aren't doing more to reach their kids.

In my experience, all of these new and new-ish teachers run for the hills and transfair to a higher achieving school. They usually bail because they clear the 3-year review cycle barely and decide that they don't want to deal with the extra work.  People who don't do this and can't handle the work are actually de-staffed. I've seen it many times, fwiw.  I work with a woman who left my old school after three years in a different grade and she's chilling. She tells "horror stories" about how hard it was to work at our old school. Spoiler: It wasn't the kids. It was the paper work, the extra observations, the extra oversight that she complains about.  I don't say anything, but the lack of rigor is something I see as problematic.

One interesting point. I had a really great admin team and talking to friends in other schools it seems that the county puts a lot into putting strong admins into Title I school, struggling schools. I can't speak about the process for schools like mine (we haven't had a principal search), but admin is much more hands-off. The expectations around here are lower.[/quote]

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