And This Is Considered An Exemplary Urban District

WAW is a school in an urban area that used to be a shining example of success. Then came No Child Left Behind, and lots of problem students from other schools poured into our classrooms (mixing politics and education is almost as bad as mixing religion with poltics, but I digress). Our class sizes grew and the percentage of children we had with serious behavior problems grew exponentially. But we kept trying. We managed to continue to improve our test scores.

Then we got a new principal. A principal whose only experience was with middle school students in another (recently unaccredited) school district. The first year, our fabulous instructional coach (that's a teacher who's primary job is to help the rest of the staff become better teachers) covered for him. A lot. She also stood up to him a lot. She was transferred.

Our new instructional coach pronounced the word "specific" as pacific. She wrote e-mails referring to the "liberrian". She refused to create testing handbooks like the other instructional coaches do. She refused to lead staff development meetings (and would often ask me to do it for her). She was not capable of covering for our principal. In fact, she was not even capable of spell-checking his atrocious memos and newsletters.

Deadlines for test scores and staff observations were missed and/or ignored. Discipline became contigent upon whose class you were in and whether our principal thought your parents would complain. Those teachers who were less experienced and/or less competent grew worse - parents requested that their students be transferred (and that's pretty rare in an urban district) to another class. Behavior problems grew worse. Certain classes were falling way, way behind.

As those of us who knew what we were doing began to speak up, began to point out problems before they turned into catastrophes, both the principal and the instructional coach began to hate us. We tried to be respectful when we reminded them or assessment due dates or procedures, tried not to insult anyone when we brought up concerns (like a teacher who called her students "morons"). But it didn't help. Not even talking to their superiors helped - we were told to mind our own business.

So we didn't mention the things that confused us about the school budget. The principal took over, committees be damned. We didn't mention various other unprofessional behaviors. We gave up.


Fast forward to March, 2006:
The five most vocal teachers at our school received letters warning us that we would be placed on "administrative assistance" if we chose to remain in the district for the following school year. The reasons cited included a list of the days we had been absent (listed as "too many absences" even though none of us had gone over our allotted limit), the days we had not filled out our online attendance (coincidentally also the days the computer system was down) and the days we had forgotten to sign in and/or out. Magically, the fact that we were the teachers that were most requested by parents did not matter. Suprisingly, the fact that all of our students' test scores were way above the district average did not matter. It didn't matter that we headed every committee.

My principal claimed it was his boss, who is close friends with clueless instructional coach, that forced him to write the letters. We don't know. Because the five of us resigned. Then the music teacher requested a transfer. And then the art teacher resigned. And then the kindergarten teacher, a fourth grade teacher and PE teacher decided to retire sooner rather than later.
I'm not saying all these decisions were due to our resignations. I know some of them were due to the fact that certain teachers had spent the year quietly resenting our principal and instructional coach and not saying anything when they turned state tests in late.

October, 2006:

We are banned from visiting the school and seeing our former students. In fact, the principal (who, we have learned, has said many vicious things about us to the new staff) says that he will send campus police after us if we enter the building.

Fast Forward to February, 2007:

The principal was forced to resign over misappropriation of funds. The district has been all over the school's academic problems as well, since all the test scores have fallen.

But I'm not holding my breath for an apology.