The New Administrative Position-Educator Evaluater and Support Provider

The administrative position that I suggest is the Educator Evaluater and Support Provider. This position's sole purpose is to evaluate and support teachers (duh). If I were to set this position up, I would separate it into two semesters. The first semester would be spent helping teachers and supporting them, just as those support providers (through the BTSA program) helped new teachers through the first two years. The second semester would focus on evaluating the teachers using all of the information gathered from steps I through V mentioned in the previous blogs.

This new administration position would keep track of teaching practices and previous evaluations in order to make consistent and better informed decisions. The second semester would probably be the harder of the two due to the research that must be done for each teacher. One option would be to have each teacher evaluated this deeply every other year. This would cut down on the amount of admins needed and would allow more time to focus on the teachers being evaluated. The evaluation system that is currently around allows a longer break between evals. the longer you teach, but this is part of the problem. Plus the fact that the way they evaluate is so limited and based on one or two classroom visits per year for an hour at a time. Not to mention, even if you suck at that eval. if you are tenured, you keep your job and get no help for improvement.

Okay, moving on.
For those teachers who are given a poor evaluation, in order to protect their jobs, the union could allow a one-semester pass (for lack of a better word) in order for that teacher to get the support needed to improve on whatever they did poorly on. The admins would need to teach them how to improve, rather than say, "you sucked, you're fired!" This means that the admin. position would require a good amount (more than three!) of teaching experience at the grade level (elementary, middle, or high school) that they are responsible for evaluating.
I propose that almost everyday of the second semester those new admins. are in a classroom. The more time they spend there, the more they can see how the students' respond and how the teacher teaches. Otherwise, it's just a guessing game based on grades and test scores.

I hope I didn't leave anything out. If so, I will probably add it to the comments section like I have before.

More Money

I have been trying to find other ways that schools can raise money without putting more and more of the burden on the parents/students. Although the registration amount that I proposed wouldn't break the bank, there are other ways to add to that money. Apparently (I have never taught at private schools, so I have little knowledge of how they work), private schools do a good amount of fundraising. This is a great idea, even if you aren't paying $30,000 to have your child go there. I found an article on ways that schools have done fundraising at Education World
There are many examples in the article of how to raise money. If public schools could take just some of these ideas and run with them, then that would be extremely helpful!

Money

I may get some grief about the following post, but I hope you hear me out.
I have been seeing many angry blog posts about our education system and how we should privatize all schools. I know that many people are saying that they would rather have their students home schooled or in private schools. The problem with private schools is that they cost a lot of money. The point of our public schools is to educate everyone, regardless, for free. However, that doesn't seem to be working. The problem with homeschooling is that the student does not benefit from social interactions and there could be major discrepancies between what is taught at home and what skills are necessary at the college level. Public schools need to get more money without raising the cost of an education so high that the less fortunate cannot attend.

You may be wondering how we would pay for this plan of mine. The cost of running a more efficient, self-aware, accountable school district shouldn't be too much. The only cost that I can imagine would be for more administrators. I will address those administrator jobs in another post. In this post, I would like to focus on how we would pay for those few extra positions in order to better our schools, without the assistance of the government. I would imagine that if the government tried to help, we would be looking at raising taxes to pay for our shortcomings. Instead of raising taxes, I propose a minimal registration fee for all students in the public schools. If the districts could charge a small non-refundable fee per student, per year, that money would help tremendously. Of course, there would have to be some stipulations about how much and how high it could legally go. I don’t really recommend it be more than forty dollars, but I believe it would depend on the district’s size. In Murrieta, California, there are about 8500 students in the high school district alone. Imagine if they each had to pay a mere ten dollars per year to register for school. That would earn the district 85,000 dollars each year. That money would have to be designated for the new administrator positions for this to work. Perhaps for smaller districts, the fee may be more, however, the fewer teachers, the fewer additional administrators needed.

Okay, why would we want to ask more of the general population to help fund our schools? Because they place their kids in these schools and if they knew that the money would help create better teachers for their students, then I believe they would have no problem complying. Maybe I am wrong, but I do have a feeling that something like a registration fee of ten to twenty bucks would go over much better with the public than another hike in taxes. Can’t the districts try to help themselves? I don’t know.
Parents, does this sound like something you could get behind? I would love to hear what you think about this.

FYI

In order to help you understand my position, I have been thinking solely of our public middle and high schools in California. I have no idea what it would look like in other states or at the elementary level—although I know they need help too.

Student Feedback—Point V.

V. Visit the classroom more often
The group of students recommended that administrators visit the classrooms more often--say once every other month. I realize that their jobs require a lot from them, but something like this is too important to shrug off. They also suggested that these visits should be unannounced and should last throughout the entire class period.
I absolutely agree with this suggestion.
Reason one: I was told by school administrators that the best thing to do before a visit from an evaluator/observer is to prep the class. I was given tips on how to bribe my students to behave well in front of guests. I was also told that even those who evaluate/observe you are aware that this is just a dog and pony show. How sad I was to know these things!
Reason two: The teacher will not prepare a fantastic lesson plan specifically for this day—all their lessons should be great!
Reason three: the students will become used to the visitors and will be able to see how concerned the administrators are that the teachers are doing their jobs well. As it is now, students have this idea that their administrators don’t care and would never take their suggestions seriously. It is unfortunate that some students think of their principal as one who stays in their office and never interacts with faculty and students.
Besides visitng more often, the students also thought that it would be best if administrators from other campuses came to evaluate teachers in order to stay clear of any bias. The administrators could rotate campuses each year in order to see new teachers and be more aware of all the schools in their district and surrounding areas.

Summer School

Before I went into eighth grade, I took a summer math course so that I would be better prepared for the following year. I don't recall whether that was my mom's idea or my own, but I took the class. The idea of taking summer courses in order to prepare for the next year's course is no longer popular; maybe it never was. Now, summer school is mostly used to make up for failed courses. Obviously, summer school can be very important for students who could not quite "get" a subject or for those students who want to get ahead. But, what about those students who deliberately fail their regular classes in order to take it in the summer where it is "easier"? Too many times I have heard this as an excuse to not try. As a teacher, it has become easy to differentiate between the students who are trying and those who are not. One quick way to tell if they tried is by looking at their grade percentages. When a student has a 17% in your class, they are not trying. If they have a 57%, they probably tried, but did not fully understand the material. What is my point? Sometimes I think we should do away with summer school altogether. However, the ones who would suffer would be those who tried but failed anyway and those who want to excel by taking courses ahead of their scheduled time.
Instead of getting rid of summer school completely, I think there should be some change regarding who we allow to take summer school. Let me explain before your head explodes. I don't mean to say that all those students who don't try can never redeem themselves. Instead, I suggest that they redeem themselves at night school in whatever adult education center their district has available to them. Why? Not only could this cut down on that lousy excuse to just take the easy way out in summer, but it could save money. The fewer students who take summer school, the fewer teachers needed to teach it, which means less expenditure at the district level. Summer school is an option for some teachers, and while some teach it every year, others avoid it in order to not get burned out on teaching. The fact that almost half of all teachers leave their job within the first five years says a lot about teaching as a profession. It is a hard job!
I suggest that the teachers of these students be consulted as to whether or not summer school is the right choice--much like teachers do when students want to take an honors class. Teachers know whether a student has been putting forth effort in their work, therefore, they should have a say. Imagine if that poor excuse could be taken away! Imagine how much their effort could grow!