News-Record.com

In case you didn't know, Mo Green posts his weekly calendar online. Here's an item of interest:

Friday, Nov. 21

8:30 am
Jim Melvin, meeting

It is not a "one time signing bonus"

"A recruitment/retention incentive is paid out on a recurring annual basis in monthly increments for working in a qualifying position at a Mission Possible School."

It's combat pay.

Didn't take Melvin long to get his claws in the new super. Now, just to attach the strings and he's in control once again.

I am very torn about this issue. I think that it is harder to teach in some schools.. would you prefer to teach at a low income school for same money? I think that the science, math and English teachers are the hardest to find in any climate at any time, perhaps just those? Not sure PE/Music and others should get bonuses, because there is no way to measure their effectiveness like benchmarks, EOC's etc. I do think if the kids aren't doing any better then the 'signing' bonus after year one should be lowered.

I do think that many teachers are unhappy with this plan as they feel it is unjust. I personally think that teachers should be paid on performance, not just for showing up. The value-added scores are a good way to see if a teacher has made a difference is the pool of children that they were assigned.

I might try to get to that meeting.. sounds like it will be a good one!

How many mission possible teachers have left before completing their agreed upon period of teaching?

There is another problem too. At Eastern we have a large contingent of disadvantaged kids bussed in. We have had some teachers leave and go to other schools because of the bonus's.

I mean you have to teach these challenging kids at both schools so why not jst go for the money. Why stay at Eastern?

Its probably the same for many other schools like Page, Southwest and Ragsdale to name a few.

Well, we either pay extra to have the best teachers go to these schools or we bus all the kids around again.
Having been bussed once I vote for paying extra.

Having said that I agree with the above poster. What happens when you then get disadavantaged kids and not so good teachers?

Nobody wins.

To answer Joes question the teachers should have to pay back the money if they end up leaving in the same year.

I am currently teaching in a mission possible school, and due to test scores recieving the highest possible payout within the MP program as a HS math teacher.

Most of the new teachers we have gained have not come from non MP schools, and as a teacher who teaches 6 EOC courses a year i am obviously a supporter of continuing the program. While i don't think the extra money has helped recruit better teachers i think it has helped many improve, and has definately held others accountable for what they are doing in their classrooms. The fact is while all teachers contribute to a school, most of us teach EOC's which are not electives, and are not classes most of our students are thrilled about being in and often we carry the stress of knowing that how our kids do will determine whether or not we has a school makes AYP.

Please don't lose sight of all of the extra hours of work, professional development and summer institutes that we are required to fulfill as a result of being a MP teacher. To whom much is given much is expected. Not to mention that if your scores are not up to par (negative value added data) that you are at risk of being moved to a new school.

Just one teacher's insight/opinion :)

Yes, I think bonus pay (hazzard pay) should be continued at Mission Possible schools. Either that or install revolving doors so teachers can constantly get hired then leave a year or two later. Teaching @ a "low perfoming school" must be awful. I have a friend who does in another part of the state and she constantly tells me how bad it is. Student behavior is awful, parents don't give a rip, and you're constantly dealing with the social worker. She is leaving at the end of the year because she is sick and tired of dealing with all the "crap". She is a really good teacher who has won several awards but she is so burned out that she has to leave and go to another school.

I think the program should be evaluated...but it makes sense to me that the better teachers will teach in the better teaching situations unless there is an incentive to put up with the problems faced in many of the lower performing schools.

It sounds like the social worker needs a bonus also. Any student critical position that is showing a high turnover should be evaluated for a bonus.

I do not know how we rate non-eoc courses. English, Math, Science, History, foreign language should be looked at, but we have good teachers in elective courses that can engage kids that are not interested in school...such as band, chorus, electronics, auto-mechanics, ...These are just as important. Turn-over is turn-over....

These schools need consistancy. I heard it said in the school board meeting the other night. Many programs work...but it takes time, repetition, and consistency. The longer the staff is together...the better things work and the better you know the students.
We are intelligient people...

I think we should be able to come up with a way to decide whether the instructors are successful doing their job. Job performance, appraisals, ratings...These are not new....

Actually, as I understand it, the upcoming meeting has to do with a federal program, not Mission Possible, although it works like MP. It would provide a $10,000.00 incentive to have more experienced (i.e., better) teachers come to low performing schools for two years. It would also pay experienced teachers at low performing schools $5000 to stay at the school for two years. These positions would be in addition to MP positions. The program is also designed to bring experienced principals to low performing schools.

The purpose of the program is to address several issues. First, the data tell us that low performing schools tend to have less experienced teachers and more turn over among staff. The reason for the turn over, is of course the fact that the low performing schools tend to be more "challenging" for a variety of reasons, not least of which are the fact that students tend to score lower than others and there also tend to be more discipline issues.

I believe in merit pay that rewards the better performing teachers for their hard work and results. Particularly, we need merit pay for science and math teachers as we are often competing with the private sector for folks with science and math backgrounds.

More turnover also means that there are continuity and leadership issues. We need schools where the leadership is intact from year to year.

Like any program, however, we must see results. If we are spending money to send more qualified teachers to low performing schools then we should expect that, all other things being equal, the students will perform better.

However, as I have said over and over again, there is only so much that schools, teachers, etc. can do. We must have parents who set standards for their children, and who inform their children in no uncertain terms that they are to study hard and not disrupt classes. Additionally, students must understand that, like most things in life, you get from school what you put into it. If you are not going to do your homework and sleep in class, or be disruptive, you will not do well in school. It's not rocket science!

Mr. Daniels – I’m glad the folks at the central office were more informative for you than me. I heard bits and pieces late yesterday about this new federal grant but the document requests I made have yet to be fulfilled.
Feel free to drop by here and weigh in all you’d like once you take office too.

Anonymous 7 p.m. – Unless I’m misunderstanding something Eastern is listed as Mission Possible school.
Here's the school's link for more info http://www.gcsnc.com/depts/mission_possible/index.htm

Joe – That’s an excellent question and one I’ll be looking for an answer too.

Parent 8:52 – Interesting point about “student critical positions.”

Brian,

Eastern is a mission possible school this year.

Last year we lost many high quality employees to greener pastures, because of the problems many mission possible schools deal with on a daily basis. Disruptive/violent/disrespectful students that remain in the classrooms.

I asked one teacher last year that left Eastern for Western if there was any difference....

Her response was well not one student has cussed me, threatened me or stolen from me yet!

Why you are researching can you find out
why a school that is listed as mission possible is allowed to have classrooms with 40+ kids in them when the county mandated maximum is much less?

....and you ask why our teachers leave?

We have also lost good teachers to MP inspite of having some really difficult kids being bussed in.

Our school ( and JT Middle) is becoming a real difficult place to teach. I think the school board have to be really careful. They bus kids out of some areas and then entice the good teachers into the areas where these kids were. Our leaders have this mixed up. These two different initiatives work against eachother.
Because of the bussing, I have heard that Penn Griffin is a really good place to teach now. Should it be a MP school?

A friend of mine who teaches at Southwest tells me its a similar situation to Ragsdale.

Ragsdale teacher,

I agree the board have these two things completely wrong. It should be one thing or the other.

They need to decide on one direction and stick t it. Either bus or pay teachers more to get them into the needy schools.

Paul:
I'm impressed, briefed before me, protect your sources.

If this involves moving teachers midyear - my vote, NO! This is not an emergency situation.

Idea is conceptually reasonable, sadly such a program eats at our resources as we still have to educate kids at "normal" schools. We already have financed significantly smaller class sizes at impacted schools, this may be a pilot project but why implement something we cannot afford long term? I will be weighing this heavily against the very real cost to our other schools. We are more and more taking away resources without showing real results, this experimenting should be offset by some benchmark. Having a 17 student class size, our best teachers and principals should surely produce good results now compare the price and fairness, what few schools get these saturated resources. Like being dealt 2 cards face down with 3 aces showing, it's a hand that is hard to mess up.

Now, if we have one good hand out there, the remainder will not be up to that standard. As noted above other High schools are being seriously impacted as we bus and reassign more and more kids that need these expensive resources to schools that do not have them we force these schools to do even more with less, thus in effect stacking the deck against them. Eventually the taxpayers will get as fed up as they did in High Point and leave. Yes, I do agree with the so called Mission Possible concept, but I have to see results and to date they cannot be ascribed to the mission possible program as we also placed more resources financially at these schools as well as smaller classes. At the same time we are reassigning kids more and more, can any intelligent person tell me why we are showing only modest gains at best with largess?

Before I am crucified for the above, let me say, I am not in disagreement with these ideas, but such blanket " throw everything we have at it" is sapping our almost average schools. Any more of this and we will not have any choice about arts programs or airport technology magnets, all these will go the way of our AL program, out the window. If you can't tell from this, I am very undecided about this path.

Garth,

Why would you be cricified for asking questions that are reasonable?

The right hand needs to understand what the left hand does and they must work together.

I agree with you and the posters above. There are just too many reassignments to other schools and too many gerry manded maps for bussing.

Mission Impossible schools are created by mission impossible students and parents. This can be proven in the many instances of bussing in Guilford County. As the school demographics change, the schools scores dropped.

This is what is happening at our school.

They are bused in...and they are choose to do nothing.

Why?

Partly from years of knowing they don't have to do anything to be promoted to the next grade. The school bends over backwards to see that they pass.

Homework never gets a "real zero".

Book reports that are suppose to be 25% of their grade are never turned in thus not included in the grades. Great teachers that give real 0's for this and have 75% of their class failing as a result are reprimanded. Is it the teachers fault that 75% of the class did not turn in their book reports....not grade them...just turn them in...

Tardy...who cares...we don't even keep attendance!

No shows stay after school in a retaining room for 30 minutes to make up your 1:30 missed class time and we will pay for yet another bus to make the 40 mile roundtrip twice a week.

Is anything accomplished during this time...maybe a make-up test but mostly just time in a seat. Is
sending a bus with 1 - 3 students 30 minutes after the one they should be on justified with the cost of transportation? I don't think so...especially when home is 45 minutes away.

It would stop a lot of it if they would make everyone that had missed three class periods ..
come in on a Saturday and make them stay all day and send the bus home once that semester.
Take away their Saturday and you will see them show up for class through the week.

Tutorials can become real tutorials again and not filled with disruptive students that just want to make up time to pass the class.

I was at today's meeting and live-blogged the event. Read some of the play-by-play here:

http://guilfordschoolwatch.blogspot.com/2008/11/mission-possible-on-steroids-live-blog.html

Staff,

I am with you 100%!

First of all, let's talk diversity for a moment. We all want to live in such harmony and peaceful environment; however, we can't even send our children to the same schools together. We want community schools because it is conveniant to send our children to school right outside our back door. What about the those children in the poorer communities that would benefit (heck!!!!) even learn from the child next to him that comes from a better environment? But only in good ol' Guilford County are we "scared" to make this happen so that we won't have these Mission Possible (or better stated "Impossible"). Let's mix things up geographically where we all can learn together and benefit from each other. Maybe little Johnny from across the tracks sees that little Susie can get attention by doing good work versus acting a fool....little Johnny will do the same...and get the attention that he may not be getting at home (just a thought...).