Saturday, February 25, 2017

What's going on recently

Anonymous wrote:

"New post please

Keeping tabs on what's going on

Thoughts on the strategic plan? (second link)
http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/Page/1305

Guesses on which schools will become community schools? (Last two links)

Also info about the changing coach positions. "

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Dashed hopes?

Anonymous wrote:

"**New post please
I was hopeful that a new superintendent would bring about good changes but it appears to be 'same old, same old'. With all the central office appointments Hamlet has made they also cut over 100 teaching positions just in the last month. 2 programs that schools relied on were the Wilson itinerants and the Early Literacy Specialists. Pittsburgh as we know, is facing academic and racial achievement gaps. These gaps are apparent at the beginning of kindergarten and begin to widen in 1st in second grade. Research has proven that students who cannot read on grade level by the end of second grade will never 'catch up' Linda Lane's initiative to close these gaps by creating a program where reading specialists, and highly qualified teachers were placed in the building working directly with these students has been stomped on! Both programs have proven to be effective and have shown through data that students who were well below grade level in reading were beginning to read. Instead we are going to squash what was working and put all of our chips in one basket. The so called Reading and Math coaches are going to be able to turn around schools and close the gaps. These coaches in part will be rated on the schools scores which means teachers will not want to work with them because they will not be supportive they will be demanding since their rating will be reflected by that teacher. We've already done this in Pittsburgh Public schools and it wasn't effective. Instead of coming around to the building and having real conversations with principals and teachers to see what is needed they are spending their time like all other central administrators posting their pictures with our kids on Facebook showing how involved they are. The ITL2 taught classes now they are getting rid of them and hiring a close number of reading and math coaches who will NOT teach at all. This means we will need to pay more teachers to fill the positions that were being taught. This is like every other administration who came through. They are more worried about getting their own people in and getting rid of the old without ever looking at what IS working. This is why we continue to fail our students."