Reply #68: Recommend. I'm one of few here who know a principal AND several teachers in the Ocean State, (RI)

[NYC_SKP]

While nobody there is happy, or proud, neither does anyone I've spoken with have the idiot streak that would blame the administration for this.

Union busting LOL. The school had to choose from four reform models:

...Weingarten said the local school superintendent abruptly halted negotiations with the local teachers' union. Weingarten said she personally appealed to Rhode Island's new education commissioner, Deborah Gist, to restart talks but was rebuffed.

The shake-up at Central Falls High School came after Gist identified it as among the worst 5 percent in the state. She ordered local school officials to pick from one of four reform models, including mass firings.

Superintendent Frances Gallo said she initially wanted teachers to agree to changes including a longer school day, offering more tutoring and receiving extra training over the summer. She offered the teachers more pay for some, but not all, of the changes.

Gallo said she resorted to firings when talks with the teachers' union broke down.
...

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/education/22713048/detail.html

The four reform models:

Final Rules Set for School Turnaround Grants

States, Districts Must Pick From Four Models for Grants to Fix Lowest-Performing Schools

December 4, 2009

-snip-

To get their money, states must target schools that rank in the bottom 5 percent in student achievement. In one change from the proposed regulations, the definition of lowest-achieving schools has been expanded to include high schools with graduation rates below 60 percent for a “number of years.”

The money will flow to states based on the Title I formula for aid to disadvantaged students, but states will award the money competitively to districts.

School districts must agree to one of four turnaround models: closing the school and sending students to higher-achieving ones; turning it around by replacing the principal and most of the staff; “restarting” the school by turning it over to a charter- or education-management organization; or implementing a mandatory basket of strategies labeled “transformation.”

During a 30-day public-review period for the proposed regulations, 180 comments were submitted, many of them critical of what was described as highly prescriptive reforms from the federal government. Critics said the models might not work in communities where teacher and principal shortages exist, where teachers’ union contracts pose barriers, or where closing an entire school isn’t feasible.

-snip-
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/12/04/14brief-b1.h29.html?tkn=QUVFjtaZOAG18XUc%2Fn90N6akQTBVdMIpNL9d&print=1

In preemptive defense of the plan lets keep in mind that schools don't HAVE to try to get these grants.
I think that the fourth option, "implementing a basket list of strategies", creates a lot of opportunities for schools that don't wish to apply the other three.

Blame Obama, blame Arne Duncan?

Nah, bullshit.

:patriot: