This school district need serious help...... for several reasons not just the issues the article brought up...
1. They need teachers badly
2. They need teachers so bad that they had billboards up all around Florida.
3. No teacher in their right mind would want to teach in a district that has those policies. There is no way in h@# that you could get me to use those rules in my classroom!
Me and my teacher alter ego is now going to analyze these policies.
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•Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."
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Is homework going to change names to "fluff assignments"? Or are students going to be expected to never do homework? Because part of homework and assignments is that you might not do well at first! So then you do more activities and assignments to improve and maybe just maybe....learn something!!!!
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Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.
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Seriously....How big are their high schools? Because in a normal size high school (2,500-3,000 students). The principal will never have a chance to follow up on this...or the assistant principals....They are just too over stretched as it is with discipline issues.
What about accountability? If they have a project to do at work and don't turn it in, what happens? Well lets just say someone remembers that you didn't turn it in!
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•Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.
•Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."
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If a student fails....guess what???? They FAIL!!!!
I am sorry if that sounds callous to some, but failure is important step in learning! This mean said, I am encouraging my students to fail, but if they don't follow the directions of an assignment or don't even turn it in....I am going to fail them! Hopefully they can recover their grade with other work, but failure is part of life!
On the other bullet....
1. No district should tell their teachers that they can or can't give a common sense grade.
2. Who is supposed to "make an effort"...The parents? The Teachers? The Parents most likely don't care and the Teacher has tried everything in the book to help.
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•High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals. For middle school the rate is 15 percent; for elementary it's 10 percent.
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Here is my take on this.....20% of your class should not fail.....but when you have 150 + students...you may have 30 students that don't get Cs! It happens!!!!
Now that being said.....I can understand the improvement plan....most districts have all their teachers do PIP regardless of their fail/pass status.
My last thing.....Did the people who run this district ever actually teach school?