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Slackers turned into teacher sackers


Reagan1k

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19 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Not today boy. You fire somebody you better protect yourself from claims of racism, sexism, or some other ism, and you'd better give em a really glowing reference letter.  At least in corp. America.

Forget about firing a civil servant, you'd have to kill somebody it seems....

Fire? Heck, my last two shops HR goes over PDRs to ensure certain groups' averages are not below the mean. If you give a particular group below average, you're getting a talking to by HR and encourage to raise it to the mean.

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Regardless of the grading system. She wasn't fired for giving a zero. She was fired for for not following the clearly written rules and procedures set out by her bosses. If I have an employee who repeatedly ignored written instructions, I don't really care if they have a differing opinion on my policy, you're going to get fired.

 

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8 minutes ago, Jameslaw121 said:

Regardless of the grading system. She wasn't fired for giving a zero. She was fired for for not following the clearly written rules and procedures set out by her bosses. If I have an employee who repeatedly ignored written instructions, I don't really care if they have a differing opinion on my policy, you're going to get fired.

 

This is not the point, dude. The point is the fucked up grading system. A system that she disagreed so strongly with she was willing to get fired over it.

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29 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

This is not the point, dude. The point is the fucked up grading system. A system that she disagreed so strongly with she was willing to get fired over it.

Eh, he has a point. If she wants to grade the way she feels grades should be handed out she needs to find a school that fits her. We have policies here at work that I disagree with and if I find a clothing optional employer elsewhere then I'll do what is needed to get fired here.

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9 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

Eh, he has a point. If she wants to grade the way she feels grades should be handed out she needs to find a school that fits her. We have policies here at work that I disagree with and if I find a clothing optional employer elsewhere then I'll do what is needed to get fired here.

So she's not allowed to put the grading policy at a public school on blast?

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1 hour ago, Jameslaw121 said:

Regardless of the grading system. She wasn't fired for giving a zero. She was fired for for not following the clearly written rules and procedures set out by her bosses. If I have an employee who repeatedly ignored written instructions, I don't really care if they have a differing opinion on my policy, you're going to get fired.

 

Looks like you missed the last paragraph in the article. There is no minimum grade policy according to the district.

“There is no district or individual school policy prohibiting teachers from recording a grade of zero for work not turned in," The chief information officer for the school said in a statement. "The district’s uniform grading system utilizes letter grades A to F, numerical grades 100 to zero and grade point averages from four to zero.”

 

 

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Here's the story from the 1988 Carter football team, and it sounds really familiar:

Quote

Gary Edwards says he was stunned when algebra teacher Wilfred Bates handed him his weekly progress sheet in late September 1988.

In the space next to "grade average" Bates had written 65. Edwards says he kept track of all of his grades, using the School Improvement Plan grading formula implemented by principal C.C. Russeau the previous year.

"So I calculated my grade with him," Edwards says of Bates. "He said, 'No, no, no, I don't do that. I do this.'"

Two weeks remained in the first six-weeks grading period. For Edwards to remain eligible under Texas' no-pass, no-play law, he needed a six-weeks average of at least 70.

Edwards' father accompanied him to school the next morning. Russeau transferred Gary to John Abbe's algebra class, where he finished the six weeks with a 72.

That was Oct. 10. Edwards' eligibility was a nonissue until Nov. 9, when an anonymous caller tipped off the University Interscholastic League.

The next day, a UIL investigation found that Edwards' grade was "inadvertently miscalculated" and should have been 68, making him ineligible and initially disqualifying Carter from the playoffs.

Carter played on while the imbroglio winded through Texas Education Agency hearings and courtrooms. Russeau said he changed Edwards' grade, based on his authority to enforce the SIP.

"It was a case of the teacher not following the Improvement Plan," says Russeau, now 84.

"That's an outright lie, and I will say that to his face!" says Bates, 77. "As a matter of fact, when he [Russeau] first submitted the program, it would not work mathematically, so I showed him what needed to be done."

Carter coach Freddie James says he was unaware Edwards had transferred classes until the six-weeks reports came out, when he wondered why Edwards had two teachers and two grades listed for algebra.

"I went to the principal and asked, 'Why does Gary have two grades?' He said the last teacher was responsible; that's the grade that counts. Being the principal, I took his word."

James says he was "shocked" when the media arrived during practice Nov. 10 with news that Edwards was ineligible.

Bates says the coach shouldn't have been surprised, since he met several times with James, Edwards and an assistant coach, offering makeup work to replace the "NC" on one of Edwards' daily averages.

The "NC" became a focal point during hearings, with Bates saying he counted it as a zero, while Russeau and Dallas ISD officials contended it should have been a 50 - enough to raise Edwards' grade to passing.

FWIW, I put this on my syllabus every semester:
 

Quote

1.       I will not grade substantially incomplete projects.  Do not turn in a partially completed project and expect me to put a grade other than zero on it.

 

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Nobody is really making a point about her being fired.  It also says in the article that administrators told her that no turned in work equals 50%, so she still disobeyed.  The discussion is about the policy itself.

The policy that doesn't exist?

Edited by Apep
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It appears that the district's policy is to grade on a 0-100 scale.  The school shows this in their handbook, but with an ad-lib disclaimer below it that no grades below a 50 will be given.

The school appears to have made this policy unilaterally so she was following the district policy but violated the statement in the school's handbook.

The discussion regarding an individual school's decision to circumvent policy is far more interesting and worthy of discussion than the teacher being fired for not abiding by the principal's rules. 

This presumably affects not only the students' futures, but also the ranking and performance evaluations of the school if it is judged on GPA or graduation rates.

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7 minutes ago, Apep said:
Quote

 

Nobody is really making a point about her being fired.  It also says in the article that administrators told her that no turned in work equals 50%, so she still disobeyed.  The discussion is about the policy itself.

 

The policy that doesn't exist?

 

Edited 5 minutes ago by Apep

If your boss tells you to do something one way whether it's written or not it's policy. 

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Just now, Gene Parmesan said:

If your boss tells you to do something one way whether it's written or not it's policy. 

That depends entirely on where you work and the facts and circumstances. For example, in a state with strong unions, the teacher could have told the principal to fuck off and not gotten fired. Other times, policies may violate the law and create a situation where the employee cannot be fired for refusing to violate the law.

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4 minutes ago, Apep said:

That depends entirely on where you work and the facts and circumstances. For example, in a state with strong unions, the teacher could have told the principal to fuck off and not gotten fired. Other times, policies may violate the law and create a situation where the employee cannot be fired for refusing to violate the law.

Fair enough, although I assumed not having to follow illegal orders is somewhat implied.

Edited by Gene Parmesan
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2 hours ago, Jameslaw121 said:

Regardless of the grading system. She wasn't fired for giving a zero. She was fired for for not following the clearly written rules and procedures set out by her bosses. If I have an employee who repeatedly ignored written instructions, I don't really care if they have a differing opinion on my policy, you're going to get fired.

 

If the orders/ instructions are to falsify results...then that's a problem.  

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31 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Here's the story from the 1988 Carter football team, and it sounds really familiar:

FWIW, I put this on my syllabus every semester:
 

 

You are so unfair...

 

( high five for accountability.)

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1 hour ago, Reagan1k said:

It appears that the district's policy is to grade on a 0-100 scale.  The school shows this in their handbook, but with an ad-lib disclaimer below it that no grades below a 50 will be given.

The school appears to have made this policy unilaterally so she was following the district policy but violated the statement in the school's handbook.

The discussion regarding an individual school's decision to circumvent policy is far more interesting and worthy of discussion than the teacher being fired for not abiding by the principal's rules. 

This presumably affects not only the students' futures, but also the ranking and performance evaluations of the school if it is judged on GPA or graduation rates.

Pretty sure we had something similar occur with one of the high schools around here. Low performing school went renegade and wrote their own rules.

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3 hours ago, Apep said:

Looks like you missed the last paragraph in the article. There is no minimum grade policy according to the district.

 

 

"There is no District or individual school policy prohibiting teachers from recording a grade of zero for work not turned in. The District’s Uniform Grading System utilizes letter grades A-F, numerical grades 100-0 and grade point averages from 4-0."

When asked about West Gate’s “no zero” policy in the handbook, Padrick said, “Some classroom teachers and school faculties have discussed the range of points for work submitted in each grading category.”

 

Looks like the district had a policy but gave leeway to the individual schools for each grade/class.

 

But then she checked the West Gate student and parent handbook. Below the chart detailing the score requirements for letter grades, there was a line in red ink.

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