Thursday, October 15, 2009

Time to Grade District 150 Principals

So said Superintendent Ken Hinton, backed by board member Debbie Wolfmeyer, who said she didn't want principals handed raises without any evaluations, which she said took place last year. (JS, spring of 2009 article by Dave Haney)

No evaluations of principals? What was the superintendent doing? Promoting them into "Peter Principle" positions by seniority or race or the color of the classroom? And are they still?

Good grief!

And now #150 is further "dumbing down" the systems by having a committee of which teachers were a part of, to agree that a 50 would be the lowest any kid could be graded "because the administration looked at ways students were "not always putting themselves in that hole of not being able to climb out of." And Hinton said "that once you have so many children getting a zero, it's shuts them down; in other words they know there is no way for them to recover." (JS 10/6/09, Dave Haney)

If anyone in our relatively poor family of nine kids ever got an F, we got the razor strap across our buttocks. I don't recall any of the nine of us EVER ending up in jail or my Dad being reported to DCFS. An organization with a lot of it's own problems. But we did have community schools back then. And the community participated in "goings on" at the local schools.

Good grief again, no wonder so many people are in a depressive mood when they see a collapsing of a past way of life. Yet, on the other hand, we are the ones that got us here. We met the enemy and he was us to quote a phrase.

1 comment:

Jon said...

For what it's worth, Sharon Crews has commented many times on various blogs that there is reason to doubt that teachers supported the 50% grading system. According to her, it was discussed in committee, but not decided, and then thrust upon them with little notice.