Cash for closing schools
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Should teachers at schools destined for closure double down and teach with greater vigor — or slouch into oblivion? An article by Jennifer Medina in today’s Times highlights the apparently contradictory (and surely embarrassing) fact that the DOE gave significant cash awards, linked to the school progress reports, to teachers and administrators at five DOE-designated ‘failed’ schools.
The core question — how can DOE both reward and punish the same schools? — is well worth asking. And some of the players, notably John Hughes of the newly-renamed Hunts Point School (which was, last year, MS 201), do force questions of ethics and judgment. But for a moment, consider the teachers, the folks in the classrooms, and recognize the dedication that keeps them coming back, despite a school being shuttered around them and the pressure to find a new job.
Teachers who help students learn are to be celebrated. Teachers who help students learn even when the school they share is on the DOE chopping block deserve medals — and loud praise from the communities they serve.
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This is a difficult debate to have, because the city has applied a business method and/or philosophy to the “business” of running a school and/or system that is unfamiliar to the public. After years of this approach people are having a hard time accepting. It is the model, standards and philosophy applied to the running of American companies. Only recently have we begun to have serious and public debate about why we have accepted the well established practice of not just rewarding executives of financial institutions - even when they fail, but rewarding them handsomely.
Did the students have academic advancement, even though it was not significant enough to keep the school open? Then, I would have to agree that the Administrators met the goal and the criteria set forth and should receive the bonus. Does this sit well with me - NO. The closing of a school is a sign of failure for the institution and in implementing the program this way, we are indeed rewarding that failure.
So then the real question is: Is this business model appropriate in an academic environment?
Comment by BklynKMLF — September 25, 2008 @ 8:16 am