During the state of the union address, Obama praised the Bruce Randolph school in Colorado for turning themselves around rather dramatically in a few short years.
Three years ago, Bruce Randolph was one of the poorest performing schools in Colorado. In 2010, 97% of the seniors graduated. Many of the graduates were the first in their families to get admitted into college.
How did they do it?
Sen. Michael Bennet and the school's principal Kristin Waters, convinced the Colorado government to give the school almost complete autonomy from the state's education bureaucrats over budget, staffing, schedule, school calendar, and curriculum.
One of the first things they did is terminate all of their tenured teachers and told them they could re-apply for their jobs. Only 5% got their jobs back. 95% of the tenured teachers weren't up to par.
The Gate's Foundation has done significant research into why public schools fail. Their conclusion is that it's all about teachers. The producer of the movie "Waiting for Superman" came to the same conclusion. Good teachers succeed and bad teachers fail our children. It's not any more difficult than that.
In the private sector a business can: A.) fire bad employees and B.) pay good employees a lot of money. You can't do that in government. That's the problem. It has to change.
If we're really serious about fixing the public schools, we need to give principals the ability to terminate bad teachers and reward great ones with substantial performance bonuses tied to international test scores. We also need to get schools out from under their state's education bureaucracies and let the principals and the parents who have kids in the school have a greater say in how the schools are run.
This is how the Bruce Randolph school was able to succeed. It's how other schools will be able to succeed as well.
Unfortunately, the teacher's unions have viscously blocked every attempt to implement these types of common sense reforms.
The big question is whether or not Obama and the Democrats are willing to do battle with their largest specialist interest group (the NEA) so that our kids can have a fighting chance in the global economy?
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4 comments:
1/2 of the delegates at the Dem convention in NC in 2012 will be teachers - and you're seriously wondering whether Obama will side with the kids over the teachers' unions? Get real. He'd personally cut kids' hearts out and burn them on an altar to Moloch rather than oppose the teachers' unions.
Love the conclusion, but do you have reliable sources? Can you cite some? *waits with giddy anticipation*
@mbdil
I think this is what you're looking for:
http://www.dpsk12.org/news/press/2008/02/14.shtml
Check the Archives section for more articles.
More importantly - 3 years ago, Bruce Randolf did not have a graduating class because they were only a K-8. They were able to be selective with their first 9th grade class to attend their NEW high school 3 years ago. 97% graduation rate is worth applauding, but since they didn't have a high school (or high school teachers) to begin with, I don't see what firing teachers has to do with their ability to turn around.
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