teachdade.com

What is a sensible salary strategy for the United Teachers of Dade in the current negotiations?

Laying off thousands of school employees so that the union members can receive their step raises makes no sense at all. The School Board and administration should firmly oppose union demands to receive step raises if this means layoffs for any district employees.

What makes good sense would be an agreement between the union and management that when Florida’s revenues increase and more funds become available to the MDCPS, those who were laid off in the recession will not be rehired until teachers have received a 20% raise.    Read More...

Some argue that students should not be rushed through high school and college, but that they should instead be allowed to have plenty of time for both intellectual and emotional growth.

In particular, young people need to go through a meaningful initiation process, such as the bar mitzvah and the bat mitzvah in the Jewish tradition.

It is said that children need to know about their own ethnic culture, and they need to have a formal process of learning this culture that is followed by a ceremony where they prove their mastery and are accepted as adults.

Let’s try to sort this out.    Read More...

Today’s Washington Post story marking two years of leadership of the Washington, DC school district by Michelle Rhee reminds us of the experience of the MDCPS with Rudy Crew.

A strong leader comes in from the outside with an elaborate plan for change, but then meets massive resistance from the established system. Crew was run out after four years, while Rhee has still not been able to implement her main proposal after two years.

In both cases, the key objective of the reformer was to oust ineffective teachers from low-scoring school and to restaff the schools with effective teachers who would be paid more than the traditional salary.    Read More...

A story by Kathleen McGrory in The Miami Herald this morning tells us that Central High is being partly restaffed. Over 200 veteran teachers have applied for positions. Ineffective teachers are being pushed out.

This is the most comprehensive restaffing of any school in the history of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, as far as I know.

One big test here is    Read More...

As of very recently, several comments submitted to teachdade.com have attacked specific TD readers. These will not be published unless the comment offers a non-libelous critique of a public figure. Other comments have criticized TD's editorial policy. While I take web site suggestions seriously and might act on them, I will only publish them if they appeal to the wider readership. The purpose of the commenting forum is to foster constructive debate on education issues. Allowing spitting matches or in-house policy discussions would only cloud the air and, I fear, clear the room.

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The new book by Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb, "Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education," needs to be taken seriously because it describes grave threats to teacher unionism – online classes and schools, plus the evaluation and training of teachers based on student test results.    Read More...

Imagine a storefront school in a low-income neighborhood that could hold 200 students at a time.

Imagine a school with very close, supportive ties between students and teachers and between student peers – where everyone was well motivated to learn.

Imagine a school that could ensure that almost every high school dropout who entered was successful in achieving the high school diploma and that most of them also went on for the bachelor’s degree.    Read More...

I am taking a vacation until May 19. There were be no long posts by me during this time, but I may post occasionally.

Please help to pick up the slack by posting more yourself.

The comments of FIU education professor Louie Rodriguez on the Chris Wolfe Show this week have me thinking.

How could one develop a progressive program for K-12 education at the state or local level that the FEA or UTD would support?

What do we really need in Florida today?    Read More...

The choice of Mark Rosenberg as the new president of Florida International University makes us think about how the public schools relate to the local public institutions of higher education, FIU and Miami Dade College.

This relationship is in flux because MDC is becoming a four-year state college that grants the baccalaureate. MDC started out by adding bachelor’s degrees in science, math and special education.     Read More...

Right now, labor is abundant. Many people want to become teachers, but almost no hiring is going on. This weakens the UTD because the school district has all the teachers it wants.

But the recession does not necessarily mean union power must recede. The most active organizing of new unions in mass industry took place precisely in 1936-37 in the midst of the Great Depression.    Read More...

How can we get closer to our goal of a public school system which provides a superior education for all students?

The obvious answer is that we need teachers who are better prepared and better motivated. We need to attract and retain more teachers who are highly effective, and we need to retrain or eliminate teachers who are ineffective.    Read More...

UTD oppositionists believe that the union will cave in and accept an unpaid furlough between now and the end of June. They predict that the UTD will lose thousands of additional members – after having lost 1,200 already, according to the Miami Herald.

The oppositionists say that the poll being taken on the UTD website is intended to give cover to the decision by the top leadership to accept the furlough. More than 2000 members have already participated in the poll.    Read More...

We may later have to eat our words, but the “experts” are saying the recession has hit bottom and recovery is already underway. It seems we have also reached bottom in Florida politics.     Read More...

My proposal is to legalize luxury casino-resorts in very large hotels on Miami Beach. The hotels would have to have a certain number of rooms to be allowed to have a casino-resort, and they would be limited to a small strip of territory near the Fontainebleau Hotel.    Read More...