I had to read the Buffalo News story, "Buffalo Plans to Move 200 Teachers" a few times wondering how it's all going to play out. Yet, the teachers and administrators being removed seemed fearful of what's going to happen to them concerned and troubled by the drastic changes. And the children left behind fearful as well in a building where half of the staff will be gone, having to adjust to a cadre of new teachers they don't know. Compounding the problem are the 15-minute interviews teachers have to submit to in order keep their jobs to stay in their schools, presenting a lesson to a principal that might not be at the school because their jobs have been posted too.
The school reform plan the Buffalo Public Schools chose for seven of its persistently lowest performing schools required they remove the administrators and half of the teachers as stipulated in guidelines of the U.S. Department of Education. Why this one chosen? Don't know except the Deputy Superintendent Folasade Oladele was quoted in this same Buffalo News article saying it came from the input of the joint school intervention team that earlier reviewed the schools. Dr. Oladele told the News, "one recommendation said that unless there were structural changes in these schools that affected teachers and administrators, they did not believe these schools could be changed."
Yet, those involved making the "turnaround" decisions from central administration in city hall remain intact, a school leadership team that many say is the cause of the structural problems in the district. A building administrator wondered when the Buffalo Board of Education would likewise review these folks and start asking the same questions. What about them? Who turns them around?
Yet, those involved making the "turnaround" decisions from central administration in city hall remain intact, a school leadership team that many say is the cause of the structural problems in the district. A building administrator wondered when the Buffalo Board of Education would likewise review these folks and start asking the same questions. What about them? Who turns them around?
But "turnaround" has taken on a different meaning here as a teacher anonymously spoke to the Buffalo News education blogger Mary Pasciak said how a city hall administrator told them they had to "step up" if they want to be agents of change and "willing to work 12-to-14-hour days" if they want to keep their jobs. And some of the teachers in these schools pointed out that other issues are involved here such as poverty, the high number of students in special education classes, and lower attendance rates as examples they cited in the Buffalo News article. For example, teachers believe that "in many of the struggling schools, student attendance tends to be very low. In one school, during a recent two-week period, for instance, attendance ranged from a low of more than 25 percent of students absent on a given day to as many as 55 percent absent on another day." The Buffalo News published a data base of the attendance rates of other districts and Buffalo Schools. Here are the attendance rates of the seven persistently lowest achieving Buffalo Public Schools. The question is of what benefit is it to "turnaround" a school with persistently low attendance rates when the district laid-off most of the attendance teachers in 2005?
Buffalo | Bilingual Center | 89% | 89% | 89% |
Buffalo | Harriet Ross Tubman Academy | 89% | 88% | 90% |
Buffalo | PS 37 Futures Academy | 89% | 90% | 90% |
Buffalo | Buffalo Elementary of Technology | 88% | 82% | 89% |
Buffalo | East High | 84% | 83% | 80% |
Buffalo | Burgard Vocational High | 76% | 78% | 74% |
Buffalo | Riverside Institute of Technology | 76% | 74% | 77% |
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