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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm the pp.  I also want to mention that in my current school, in a classroom of 15 kids, 80% EL's, 65% below the poverty level, 25% refugees, that 80% of my students left reading on grade level.  Only 40% came in with the skills they should have had at the start of they year and my other two grade level colleagues had 25% of their students (same demographics) on grade level by end of year.[/quote]

great job

wouldn't more pay increase the caliber of teachers choosing the profession so they would get results like yours instead of your coworkers?[/quote]

I don't think there's a causation between higher results and more pay.  I could be wrong of course.  I think a lot of people believe that most teachers are of average or slightly below average intelligence who only chose teaching because they had no other options.  (I have never found this to be the case in any of the schools I've taught in and think this is just a caricature stereotype.) I also think a lot of people believe if we could pay teachers more they'd a) work longer and harder and or b) we'd attract folks with higher intelligence.  Perhaps, perhaps not.  I'd be so interested to read some studies comparing the results of students from similar demographics with teachers who had higher ACT scores,  higher GPAs and who took harder coursework.  I do believe in letting go of teachers who are underperformers, but not without significant support first and it is how you define under performers that can be problematic.  I do think my suggestions about smaller class sizes, more RTI help, more psychs and social workers, etc, and more reading specialists would go a long way towards success in high poverty schools.  
I'm not totally clear on why I regularly get higher scores than my colleagues.  I do know that I look at test scores frequently, target my instruction in really specific ways and double up on reading group time for my lower performers.  Unfortunately, my lower performers need for more time with me in small groups means that my high performers get the bare minimum on small group help.  I have yet to find a way to ensure my kids who have the potential to perform well above grade level to do so while ensuring everyone else gets to grade level.  [b]High poverty schools, in my experience, are like triage.[/quote][/b]

Exactly.

-a Baltimore City schools teacher[/quote]

I'm not totally clear on why I regularly get higher scores than my colleagues.  I do know that I look at test scores frequently, target my instruction in really specific ways and double up on reading group time for my lower performers.  Unfortunately, my lower performers need for more time with me in small groups means that my high performers get the bare minimum on small group help.  I have yet to find a way to ensure my kids who have the potential to perform well above grade level to do so while ensuring everyone else gets to grade level.

Two very revealing statements

1.  Great job on doing real differentiation in instructions
2.  Thanks for admitting top performers get the short end of the stick

3.  Wouldn't tracking fix these issues[/quote]

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