Reply to Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Those third graders are another perfect illustration of how social promotion fails, especially when it's in combination with a weak curriculum and failures at every grade level below that.[/quote]

When Rhee came in they threw out the old but did not create the new. We had standards, a list of things to teach - that was it. I was in shock as a new teacher, that was all you received, and no I did not get any textbooks, I bought my own as do many teachers still. I could never understand why the public didn't object to the fact that there was no curriculum It is only now with the new Common Core that we have a DC Curriculum, and they are being rolled out monthly. We are on the 3rd unit right now, we are waiting for the 4th right now. The DC CAS is not aligned to the standards, never was, and neither is the new PIA. It all sounds good, but those on the inside have never swallowed the Kool-Aid. It was all smoke and mirrors, yes she got rid of some lazy teachers but progress has been slim to non-existent due to the constant chaos, turmoil, continual overall of teachers and principals and new teachers every year (so you can never get the ball rolling), and constant roll out of new initiatives that have to be implemented NOW. As for IMPACT, if only you knew what we have had to "dog and pony show" over the years, to the detriment of students. IMPACT has gotten better, but if they'd listened to the experts they wouldn't have wasted time implementing all that nonsense (that they've now had to take out) in the first place. Do you really want a teacher making the kids demonstrate 5 learning styles in 30 minutes!!! [/quote]

I agree. As a former dcps teacher, I could not believe what I saw. We had no library. We at times had no paper. We were given no textbooks. Handed standards days before we started And told to post our unit tests that met those standards and to find and create material along the way.  We had an infestation of rats. We had police officers come to speak to our kids about trusting the police--one 5th grader said that same cop came to his house after his dad was mugged and told his family to move if he didn't like where he lived. We had kids selling drugs in the stairwells--when we tried to expel them, we were told it was a classroom issue. 80% of the 5th grade could not read at a proficient level, but passed the DC-CAS the year before. We had students who were expelled from the charter schools show up days before the CAS. Some of them were expelled for truancy. HR was a mess. The 5th graders had no recess. It was all really sad. All this, with being told, almost daily, that we could lose our jobs at any time. Thus, we could not just stop and go back to try to teach 1st grade reading to our students who needed the instruction so badly. Thus, we taught strategies for the test. We thought we were good teachers (at least trying to be) so we wanted to keep our jobs. [/quote]

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