Response From: Jane Doe
08/05/2007 3:06AM
Quick Note:

St. Hope Public Schools
Teachers/Staff

80% turnover rate from 0506-0607
95% turnover 0607-0708

Most of the analysis I've read is incredibly shallow, especially when reporters cite statistical measures used to compare apples with oranges; akin to cherry picking style cross-sectional analysis. No reporter actually does longitudinal analysis, with multi-year moving averages, where a student cohort's progress was tracked to determine the quality of an educational program.

Second, the conditions I work in every day would make most people get up a cry and leave the profession, which many DC Teaching Fellows do every day. We don't need a new educational chancellor, we need a top flight construction company to rebuild the physical and technological infrastructure that we work in, which has widows, no air conditioning, no healthy food, and for a while no water supply building; not to mention I have roaches and rodent in my classroom. In what conditions do you work in fellow Washingtonian?

Third, the child to teacher ratio that you posted on the Washington Post web site is all wrong. The size of a teacher classroom is determined by how many students are in that given grade, for that given year. So, I've seen 35 students in a kindergarten and 32 students in first grade, while only 15 students may be in 3rd grade for example. It is this kind of nonsense that DCPS permits, as per the weighted student formula, which is creating a recipe for failure. So, the published ratios on the fancy Washington Post new enhanced java page data resource are virtually useless.

Fourth, the de facto segregation of this city is a major obstacle. All my students being ESL, grow up hearing non-standard English i.e., Ebonics which creates whole host of language problems that result in poor language performance on standardized test. You write how you speak! I cannot solve this problem short of taking the child out of the home environment in which they are being raised, unless Michelle Rhee and Fenty get their way.

Fifth, the solution to this problem is tantamount to parental outsourcing whereby the student spends more time in school than he or she does at home. This is fast becoming a reality, because our aftercare programs are going to serve dinner in the near future. Congratulations. the solution to poor student achievement is me becoming the full time parent and educator of 40 plus kids (not kidding about the number), making a fraction of the amount of money I made in the private sector. I am not a masochist, but I get treated like one every contract renegotiation and performance review.

By the way, Ms. Rhee's organization of which I came from as a DC Teaching Fellow coupled with NCLB have crippled the union and driven out a lot of teachers that can't pass Praxis 1 and 2. Do you have to take a test to prove you ability to write in a newspaper? I'm sure the answer is no. But, I did have to take a test to prove my competency, and I get paid half the amount a veteran teacher gets due to the seniority system.

These are the facts. Not opinion. I can go on and on. But no one will ever ask me how to fix problem because I am just a lowly ESL teacher not hardwired to the DCPS’s bureaucracy or Fenty’s blackberry universe of political animals that make it a calling to slam everyone else ideas, but their inner circle of sycophants and political animals trying to make a living AKA “feed on the carcass of DCPS”, after years of neglect just to get 4 year contract at $250,000; while plagiarizing everyone else’s idea and selling them to the electorate as their own.

I love the kids, but the majority of parents, the principals, the DCPS bureaucracy, and the media (Washington Post, The City Paper) can all learn to stop talking out of their ass and come inside an actual classroom, not at a brand new school, and see how they would survive on the frontline of a war to get kids to college.

I shove bottles of Jalapenos up the asses of our leaders until they spill their guts with the truth.

That is:

Whether it is the DC Public Schools or other school districts, two things they all have in common are: 1. Each school district has been given more than enough money to fulfill its needs for keeping buildings up to par, teacher and other salaries and more; and 2. Schools have been crumbling and teachers leaving.

So if our school districts have had the past twenty (20) years all they needed to run effectively and in state of the arts facilities, then what is going wrong?

The answer is quiet simple; namely, gross misappropriations with most of it being in the form of exorbitant salaries to school chancellors, school administrators, awarding contracts for building and supplies to gougers, an over-hiring of support staffing, buying things not needed and failing to downsize when schools are only have the size they use to be.

So far, Mayor Fenty is following in the same foots steps of those who have destroyed our schools if you look at what he is agreeing to pay, who he is paying it to, what is on his table to do and it is all a new formula for failure.

Sadly, we have to question the intelligence of the members of the DC City Council who seems to rubber stamp all that Fenty does, and this is clearly the result that each of them is extremely ignorant of what is needed to be done and thus they are allowing themselves to cover up for their sheer ignorance by trusting in a man (Fenty) who was a very poor student himself and barely passed the bar examine to tell them what is best along with a ho hum former school board member (Victor Reinoso) who was a part of the problem, and an absentee former leader of D.DOT (Dan Tangherlini) who deceived taxpayers by being away most of the time in Pennsylvania attending college to get his MBA and used the modern invention called the cell phone to make most think he was at work but busy on the Hill.

Paraphrasing Gary Imhoff of DC Watch, we’ve been here before and I think when 2010 rolls around we will be no better off.

At any rate, D.C. needs Michelle more than Michelle needs them.
I hopr sshe and Allen, with mayor's help, set new standards for D.C.
After all, this is our nation's capital. I just hope that D.C. people do what is best for their kids and their future. Additionally, people like Barry or other blacks who want status quo must resign. I think I know why Fenty did NOT bother to consult them.