McMahon is familiar with organizations built around an increasingly unstable man who is a genius at spinning story lines that inflame the crowd and damage enemies and institutions but, if you think too hard about them, don't necessarily add up to a coherent narrative.
Michelle Medintz spent at least $5,000 in 2022 alone, largely on books. She created a 'cozy corner' in her classroom with shelves filled with books, cushions on the floor, and stuffed animals. 'That doesn't make me a better teacher than my colleagues,' Medintz said.
There's a lot of evidence that indicates that teacher morale has been declining nationwide and is at, by some measures, the lowest point in recent memory. California teachers scored 16 on the Teacher Morale Index, which is based on three questions from the Education Week survey. The morale score for U.S. teachers overall was 13.
Hard-up school support staff are being discriminated against by these term time-only contracts. They miss out on more than 4,000 each every single year. The teachers they work with don't have to put up with it, nor do the council workers they are lumped together with for wages.
New York City K-12 students with perfect attendance are on track this year to be in school for 1,102 hours. That's about 20 fewer days than the national average, per the study, of about 1,231 hours in school each year.
Over the past few weeks leading up to the teachers strike, Superintendent Maria Su repeatedly told the press and labor negotiators that dipping into the district's over $400 million reserves was, simply, "not an option." But projected spending shows that the district will significantly spend its reserves to pay for its labor agreements, potentially depleting its "restricted funding" by 2028.
Teachers have almost no authority over student behaviors or academic grading, and are given little, if any, respect from administrators, parents or even students. Instead, students have all the authority but no responsibility for their success. Students do (or don't do) whatever they wish, while empty-handed teachers are left to take the blame. Teachers no longer have the ultimate tool of flunking students.
Whenever I made my initial rounds at a school, a quick peek at its technological resources was often a reliable predictor of its ability to meet students' broad needs. The differences in the quality and volume of computing labs at a school like Lincoln Park High School on Chicago's wealthy north side, where the local population is 75% white, versus Raby High School, located in economically distressed East Garfield Park which is 83% Black, were stark.
are about reducing or eliminating positions, not necessarily people. We're not sure if [layoffs] can be avoided in full, but I'm here to tell you that staff is working around the clock to minimize any and all impact.
This is the worst crisis OUSD has ever faced. Period. We don't even know what's possible yet. We never did the work to see what are our options. These are big questions. And I don't have any of the answers. And I have issue with that.
"On Friday, we ended a two-week process where members voted to give our executive board and our president authorization to call a strike," says Olivia Udovic, who is one of 60 teachers on the Oakland Education Association's (OEA) bargaining team. "We have not decided on a strike date. We will be providing the community with 48-72 hour notice of an impending strike. It is not what we what to do."
But as schoolage audiences of Matilda the Musical or the Harry Potter films can testify, UK classrooms usually have more children in them than fictional ones. What these young people probably do not know is that their classrooms are also fuller than many real ones abroad. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that the UK has some of the largest primary groups in the industrialised world.
Hundreds of teachers, students and residents descended upon the Dublin School Board meeting last week to demand the immediate firing of the district's superintendent amid districtwide budget cuts. Heather Campos, assistant superintendent of human resources, presented a proposal to potentially cut over 30 full-time positions and 12 substitute teacher jobs by March, due to what the district said is declining enrollment and budget shortfalls.
