By Antonio D. French
Filed Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 9:13 AM
Labels: Schools
State Senator Jeff Smith told the audience at Wednesday night's panel discussion on St. Louis Public Schools at the Carpenter Branch Library a story of his personal experience briefly working in the district years ago.
Smith, who introduced legislation this year to test teachers' subject knowledge, described seeing several teachers and administrators who seemed to be there just to punch a clock and collect a paycheck.
Superintendent Diane Bourisaw took exception with that characterization.
10 Comments:
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5/24/2007 11:14 AM
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5/24/2007 11:15 AM
Smith highlights a problem within bureaucracies in that the ability of management to punish bad employees and reward the good is limited. This is due to the merit system. By fighting patronage and arbitrary discretion, this system also eliminates the ability of managers to remove bad employees.
Of course Borisaw is a good executive and will go to bat for her employees, but the fact is that she is defending the merit system which needs reform.
SB443 is a step forward. It creates incentives that will attract those hardworking college students who normally would go to better schools, especially those with full accreditation. This program will pay for a part of their student loans and is obviously targeted at the SLPS and other struggling districts.
Pay for performance is another step which should be implimented in order to ensure existing teachers who work hard are rewarded. We must not reward mediocrity or failure. Otherwise those hard workers will find their way into the private sector or a district with higher pay.
5/24/2007 11:16 AM
Duckworth,
Smith must be paying you for overtime. Hope it fits the new state standards,
5/24/2007 1:08 PM
a question about Smith's story.
I'm not sure how old Smith is, but it would be interesting to know what year Smith worked in the SLPS because he references the guy "doing emails" in the story. Depending on the year, did SLPS have email then? what year did it get email? and was the email external as well as internal? If SLPS didnt have email then it wouldnt discredit his whole story, but it would seem interesting nonetheless; what other parts of the story might he have made up? Just a thought.
5/24/2007 5:41 PM
Bourisaw takes exception to Smith's experience? She just set foot in the city. Will she move to the city since we all heard her announce last night that she was keeping her job. Will her children attend the school system that she thinks is doing so well. Come on Slay get this nut out of the city she is a joke and is using black people. Before this is all over Bourisaw will be the cause of our first riot in this town.
5/24/2007 8:19 PM
Anony at 8:19 PM,
Please Veronica, stop embarrassing yourself with cheap shots against a professional educator with vast experience beyond anything you'll ever have.
Sandra Turner,
SLPS parent and former student
5/24/2007 9:56 PM
Bourisaw will be fired by Slay's appointee, by Blunt's appointee, and by the state board of education-----she will be fired by everyone who will not want her calling attention to and demanding accountability from this charter school hoax.
I think she has been and could be good in her job---but she is in the way of everything they stand for--------and it is not the best interests of the children.
They will choose someone based on studying the cartoon Dilbert to replace Bourisaw.
5/25/2007 2:14 AM
Smith is definitely young enough that they had email. He looks about 12 when you see him in person. You've got a red herring here.
5/25/2007 11:02 PM
In the clip, Jeff Smith claims he worked in the department of "evaluation", and found himself in the schools as an "evaluator" with teachers. As an SLPS employee for many years, I can assuredly state that evaluating teachers is NOT part of the job description or work of the employees who work in the "department of evaluation".
I have known the Department of Evaluation and Assessment to be responsible for processing student test materials, keeping student test records and analyzing data of student test scores. They also oversee the development of benchmark tests given to students to evaluate STUDENT knowledge of curriculum material.
It now makes sense to me why Mr. Smith has been unable to correctly EVALUATE the test scores of his own charter school, Confluence Academy. Had he been any good at his job in the evaluation department, he would be able to determine that SINGLE DIGIT TEST SCORES are NOT evidence of PROGRESSIVENESS.
Mr. Smith needs to add to his list of "personal experiences with SLPS" the fact that as a board member and proponent of increasing charters like Confluence Academy, he has the distinction of running the school in St. Louis with the RECORD LOWEST TEST SCORES. In 2004 ZERO PERCENT of Confluence students scored proficient on the MAP in Communication Arts. DESE has the numbers. Perhaps Mr. Smith could get some of his old SLPS colleagues to explain them to him.
Doesn't it strike ANYONE as ridiculous for the state to be taking advice about SLPS from a man whose own charter school has NEVER met AYP standards for NCLB?
5/29/2007 7:38 PM
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