How To Fire A Teacher In 20 Easy Steps

Well actually this list doesn't fire them either, it is just the steps a local school district must take but it leaves off at the appeal to the state board of education. Bear in the mind that throughout the entire process the taxpayers are still on the hook to pay not only the teachers' salary but the salary of the replacement teacher along with all the fees associated with the teachers' defense. Regardless of the outcome of the case some of these teachers will still be allowed to keep their pensions.

This has become a hot issue for the city of Atlanta in the wake of the largest teacher cheating scandal uncovered...so far. There is no teacher union in Georgia in the strictest definition of the word but there is a powerful association and in light of statements made by some of their representatives it is pretty clear that they are going pursue every step on the list, not out of any sense of duty to the teacher or to protect someone who may be wrongly accused. Their purpose here is to place as big a financial burden on the city and it's taxpayers as possible as some sort of perverse revenge for outing them.

This is only going to get messier and is meant to be a shot across the bow to any others who decide to investigate teachers in their areas. It is only further deteriorating the opinion of teachers and the education system within the community and the anger is only going to get worse the more this drags on.

Disgraced School Superintendent Has Time To Check Facebook

From a secret undisclosed location, probably one with no extradition agreement with the US, the disgraced former superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools system, Dr. Beverly Hall, has posted a message letting us know that everything that happened wasn't her fault and just the rogue acts of a few individuals. Umm, yeah like a 178 of 'em.

Now there is two ways to take this. If you give her the benefit of a doubt then she is merely an iron willed administrator who only had the children's best interest in mind when she was constantly telling those under her that test scores would improve and she never intended for any wrong doing to take place to accomplish this. Rather she wanted the teachers to get in the classroom, roll up their sleeves and get to work teaching.

I do not apologize for the reforms my staff and I implemented during my tenure as superintendent. The public has a right to hold educators - and administrators - accountable if they fail to teach children what they need to learn. We set goals for our schools because our students deserve no less. But, most importantly, we accompanied our targets and the targets mandated by No Child Left Behind with programs and facility improvements designed to give principals and teachers the means to achieve them.

Or as evidence shows, she tended to turn a blind eye to allegations of cheating whenever they were brought up to her, so while not condoning cheating explicitly by ignoring the reports she was giving her tacit approval.

To the extent that I failed to take measures that would have prevented what the Investigators have disclosed, I am accountable, as head of the school system, for failing to act accordingly. I sincerely apologize to the people of Atlanta and their children for any shortcomings. If I did anything that gave teachers the impression that I was unapproachable and unresponsive to their concerns, I also apologize for that. Where people consciously chose to cheat, however, the moral responsibility must lie with them.

I will leave it up to the individual to decide which of these scenarios you believe.

Unless you were a juror on the Casey Anthony trial then nevermind, have somebody explain it to you.

Uhh, Texas, About That New School Superintendent Y'all Just Hired

The DeSoto Independent School District (ISD), a suburb of Dallas, might be having some second thoughts about the hiring of their new school superintendent.

She won’t officially start work until next week but the new DeSoto Independent School District Superintendent is already under a cloud of suspicion.

New hire Dr. Kathy Augustine comes to DeSoto from the Atlanta, Georgia school system.

Earlier this week the Georgia Governor’s office issued a report naming Augustine as one of the school administrators suspected of giving investigators false information in their probe of massive test cheating.

Here is what the commission found specifically.

Dr. Augustine had a legal and ethical duty not to falsify, misrepresent, omit or erroneously report information submitted to governmental agencies. We conclude that Dr. Augustine violated this by duty by intentionally causing a letter containing false information to be transmitted to the state. Specifically, Dr. Augustine caused and allowed a letter to be transmitted to the state indicating that the investigation into allegations of cheating at Deerwood Academy was complete and that no evidence of cheating had been found.

We conclude that Dr. Augustine either knew or should have known cheating and other misconduct was occurring in schools in the APS system.

Finally, when questioned about the Deerwood Academy investigation and other matters, she made false statements.

Yeah, other then the part about the teachers sitting in the break room changing answers on the test while other teachers were surprised to discover that students who had previously been unable to read passed the CRCT test with flying colors. Of course, the principal making an occasional visit to the break room to get a candy bar and check up on their progress wasn't suspicious in the least.

The ball is in their court now. Let's see just how far that slogan "Don't Mess With Texas" goes.

Before Atlanta There Was Newark, NJ

Before coming to Atlanta to be the superintendent of schools, Beverly Hall was the superintendent of schools in Newark, New Jersey, where, surprise, surprise, allegations of intimidation and coercion were also made against her.

However, I must warn you to be prepared for Hall to say she did not know that such conditions existed. I must warn you to be prepared to be called a liar. I must warn you that you will probably be put into a room and escorted everywhere you go by a security guard until you see the errors of your ways. This is what happened to Mr. Embrey, former Principal of West Side High School now under house arrest, when he was brave enough to speak out for the children.

As for parental involvement which Dr. Hall cites as being important to her, here is what one parent had to say at that meeting in New Jersey.

Allegedly, Hall has since attempted to deny parents their 1st Amendment rights by sending investigators to the homes of parents who speak out at Advisory Board meetings.

This report from 1997 also contains allegations of mismanagement and misuse of funds, cronyism and the picture of a woman who ruled with an iron fist and would tolerate no insubordination in the ranks while painting only a rosy picture of the system she was in charge of.

Something she continued when she relocated to Atlanta in 1999. So if you want to read yet another damming report on this All Star of Academia go ahead and click on the link.

A Culture of Fear, Intimidation and Retaliation

"If Johnnie don't know how to read, he had better on test day"


What this investigation uncovered, and what is included in their 800-page report is, that for almost a decade, what began as isolated incidents of teachers cheating on the standardized tests to improve their students test scores became institutionalized, accepted, and practiced, and all who dare to question it quickly found themselves unemployed with their careers in shambles.

Replace educators with the corporate entity of your choice and imagine how much media attention this would be getting, even in light of the fact that this information is coming out at the same time as voyeur society is going nuts over the verdict in a murder case in Florida. A generation of kids lost, I guess, just doesn't have the glitz and glamor of hyperventilating pundits all offering their 2¢ worth on a unwed and unfit mother in the Sunshine State.

Georgia Supreme Court To Decide If Your Kids Can Leave the Plantation

Sometimes it's hard deciding on what to post and this is one of those times. While it's true all politics is local and some events don't have much appeal beyond geographic boundaries, in some cases they also act as a canary in the coal mine type case, and I believe this is one of those cases.

The despicable behavior of the union-led teacher's revolt and, to a larger degree, the extent to which government teachers go to to indoctrinate the children entrusted to their tutelage, came to full light in the wake of the actions in Wisconsin by the teachers reversing their roles and acting like the juvenile delinquents.

In Georgia, there's a case that has been simmering--at times boiling over--and gaining attention only to recede from view while the judicial system continues to stew over the questions. The case revolves around charter schools and taxpayers dollars.

In Georgia. there are provisions in the law which allow tax dollars to follow the student and not the school. There has been a big growth in charter schools in the state fueled mostly by the realization from parents that the government-run schools just were not doing their job. The government schools have several lawsuits trying to stop this expansion for one simple reason: money.

The amounts are considerable. When a child goes to a charter school, that school is entitled to receive the tax dollars that would have normally gone into the coffers of the government school system. This is the money that the school systems count on to fund the exorbitant salaries of the administrators more then the teachers or for anything to fund any sort of teaching activity in the classroom.

The latest case is headed for the state Supreme Court and it's outcome could determine life or death for charter schools in the state.

If the court sides with the argument put forth by the government schools coalition then the charter schools will lose this money.

This is not about education. In fact, nowhere in the plaintiffs case do you see a mention of educational achievement being affected other then obtuse, nebulous terms. It is about being able to continue to live in the lifestyle to which these government bureaucrats have become accustomed to.

Since I began following this story, which I became acutely aware of after my child was out of school and the state mandated that on our property tax bills that the amount going to education be clearly identified, I realized what a huge ripoff the school system was running. I also became aware that it was not the teachers who were the drain on the system as much as it was the administrators. That is a distinction I want to make clear.

Within the government school system now you have two tiers. Administrators and teachers. Administrators encompass everything from guidance counselors to principals to those on the school board. I found it very hard to find any administrator who did not rake in a six figure income.

While teacher complaints of having to do more with less does have a certain amount of validity to it, it is quickly squelched by the revelation that academic achievement has not improved much since the days I was in school and we didn't have those marvelous high-tech gadgets which have become a must have in every classroom.

Introducing competition into the education market is the best way, in my opinion, to improve the quality of the end product and to ensure more parental involvement. I compare it to the way income taxes are taken out. Since it comes out of your paycheck each pay period you really don't notice it and have become conditioned to it; however, if no taxes were taken out and once a year or each quarter you were to write a check to the federal government for your income taxes, you would very quickly become interested in how that money was being spent. That is what happened in Georgia when they started itemizing the property tax bills.

Parents now want to get the best return on the money they are sending to the state and the education coalition simply cannot stand by and watch the little fiefdom they have built up through the years be torn apart by the barbarians.

I hope the charter schools prevail in this legal case, but most reports by analysts I have read do not give them very good odds, mostly based on the arguments being made by the government school lawyers that the institution is the only answer and why do you want to upset the apple cart. For a group that was firmly on board with the community organizer in charge's mantra of change, they sure are fighting it tooth and nail in their little corner of the world.

"You're asking the wrong question"

Watch this union leader from Wisconsin avoid answering the question about the "fake" sick slips by telling Megyn she is asking the wrong question. He stuck to his script and seemed to be ticking off his talking points regardless of what the question was and for you Megyn Kelly fans she is less confrontational here then she is at other times, but hey it is Megyn Kelly.


I would personally like to thank the Wisconsin public [government] employees union for opening the eyes of so many taxpayers, you know the ones who foot the bill for your outrageous benefit and pay packages. I think we all now realize that the Democrat political party is nothing more then an extension of the union leadership and if that continues to hold true the only percentage of the vote the Dems will get in the next election cycle will be that 10% of the population.

Well and those in California who are on their 'medication'.

Union Goons Trying to Fire ROTC Instructor Over Dues

This is what it's come to with these thuggish teacher's unions. They try and run roughshod over their members and force them to pay dues or their lives are made miserable. Even if they don't want any of the plush benefits, they're forced to pay up. When a politician dares to take them on all sorts of ill will is directed their way. Well, now it appears they may have just picked a fight with the wrong man.

A retired U.S. Marine who runs a high school ROTC program in Worcester says he faces the boot for refusing to pay local union dues, leaving the 58-year-old father of two crying foul and school administrators bewildered.

“It just seems crazy that they’re gonna fire me over $500,” said Maj. Stephen L. Godin, senior naval science instructor at the Naval Junior ROTC Unit of North High School. “Everyone’s talking about finding good teachers - I haven’t missed a day in 14 years.”

You can guarantee that's a better attendance record that any teacher in the school.

Indeed, North High School Principal Matthew Morse praised Godin yesterday as an “excellent” instructor who has turned his program into a top junior ROTC academy.

Godin, a 20-year Marine veteran until 1994, who flew F-4 Phantoms and was deployed five times, said he refuses to join the union because he receives all his benefits, including health insurance and half his salary, from the military. Unlike other teachers, he doesn’t earn a stipend for after-school activities, such as the hours he spends coaching the high school’s regional champion drill team. His salary is dictated by the U.S. Military, not labor negotiators, Godin said.

Officials from the Education Association of Worcester did not return repeated calls, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association declined comment.

Whenever these "officials" have a demand they're always ready for some camera time, moaning and whining over their lot in life, but now they're mysteriously silent.

State law requires certain public employees to join unions as a condition of employment or pay a so-called agency fee, which goes toward the cost of collective bargaining. But Godin said he shouldn’t have to pay the $500 fee because he receives no benefit from the local union. He provided a letter from the local union demanding he join or pay the fee by the school year’s end. Godin said in 14 years of teaching in Worcester public schools, he’s never been asked to pony up for the union.

I suspect there's more to this story believe it's probably an anti-military sentiment from some in the union. Whatever the case is, is $500 worth the incredibly bad publicity they're going to get just to mess with the man?

Teacher of the Year Another Pedophile

This is just yet another story in the ongoing saga of teachers behaving badly with their students. Can you imagine any other business or profession, which if they had the number of cases of sex with underage children that Congress wouldn't be calling for a complete and thorough investigation?

The Teacher of the Year at Shiloh High School has resigned after admitting to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student, according to records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Keenon Aampay Hall, 29, left a promising career as an English teacher at the Gwinnett County school amid allegations that she seduced a senior who came to her for homework help. An investigative file on the case compiled by the school system’s human resources division contains the student’s accounts of sexual trysts at a hotel, a friend’s home and in the teacher’s classroom during school hours. The report also says that pornography was found on Hall’s Gwinnett County schools laptop.

Of course the story is also another example of the double standards that exist when it comes to cases of pedophilia. If the roles were reversed, arrests would have already been made and a male suspect would be cooling his heels in the lock up explaining to Bubba why he might want to keep his distance because of some sort of funky infection. Nowhere in this story do you see any reference to law enforcement taking action, or if they were even contacted.

I have a great idea. Since states are being forced to cut teachers to meet budget demands, how about running a few background checks? Ought to make the decision on who to keep and who to let go pretty easy. If school administrators monitored their teachers as closely as they do their student's Facebook accounts they might be able to nip some of this crap in the bud.

I guess zero tolerance only works one way. Notice that the school district was "investigating" the incident but had taken no action. The teacher quit after admitting to the affair.

Sid Camp, executive director of Gwinnett’s Division of Human Resources, told the state that Hall “admitted to having a sexual relationship with the student.” Hall wrote a brief statement to the school district saying that it was a “consenual relationship,” misspelling the word. She said at least one other teacher knew about the romance.

About par for the course. An English teacher who can't spell.

More crooks in academia: Ex Principal Indicted for Embezzling

Teachers Steamed At Loss Of Taxpayer Subsidy

This story has been bugging me ever since I originally read it this weekend. I also want to thank the reporter(s) who wrote the story who were gracious enough to answer a question I had about the story.

Here it is in a nutshell. Georgia has decided to stop paying a bonus to teachers in the state who posses a national certification due to budget costs. The amount of the bonus amounts to 10% of their salary. I do not begrudge anyone how much money they make, unlike the president I don't feel that at some point you earn too much.

What had me interested was the fact that the story gave a few examples of the impact this would have on some teachers, and using the information contained in the article I drew the conclusion that teachers were making far more money then we are led to believe. The reporters confirmed that indeed the amount the teachers would lose amounted to 10% of their pay, but they left it up to the reader to determine how much the teachers were making.

Thanks for the note. You make a good point. We stated how much they would lose (say, $6,000) and let readers do the math (if they lost $6,000 for instance, they were making $66,000). We probably should have just used their salary number up front.

Why did this bother me? The simple reason was because in all the examples cited the teachers were going to lose between $6,000 and $8,000 dollars which means that the average salary of these teachers was between $60,000 - $80,000. Not exactly the model of teachers living in poverty is it? I am not going to argue that losing $6,000 when you make $66,000 is not going to have an effect, but it should hardly make you homeless, destitute, and ready to flee the country. Most of us get by on far less then that and we don't get 3 months off in the summer, spring break, and other 1 or 2 week breaks throughout the year.

The other part that got me is that they mentioned the cost of the certification, which could cost up to $2,500. While squeezed in there was a mention that part of it was paid by the teacher.

The process costs $2,500 — with at least some of the money often coming out of the teacher’s pocket – and the certificates are good for 10 years.

So let me get this straight. I pay some portion of a $2,500 bill and in exchange I get to draw at least $6,000 extra a year for 10 years. Sign me up!

They gave one example where both husband and wife are teachers and they stand to lose $11 - $12,000 dollars. That makes their total income somewhere in the neighborhood of $110 - $120,000 a year.

I get by on far less then a teacher makes. It means shopping around for the best price, driving a 15 year old pick up truck and using coupons generously, but I somehow manage to get by. My last vacation was 5 years ago.

I am sympathetic to them losing some income, but when that income comes from us the taxpayers I am less then sympathetic. My favorite comment was this.

Gail Tillery, literature teacher at North Forsyth High School, said she’s working three jobs to make up for the money she’s lost.

Just how much was her bonus that it takes two additional jobs to make up the difference? The other side is I would think a teacher would qualify for a little better job or else she can be the poster child for how academia doesn't translate into the real world as far as job skills. I am sure those who are out of work have a real soft spot in their hearts for somebody who taking a job they could have also.

Maybe if the teachers association hadn't come out in opposition to the state trying to get a $400 million grant from the federal government there might have been money for their little bonuses.

It's All About The Kids

We are all familiar with the common refrain among teacher unions that everytime they are lobbying for better pay, more vacation time, and better pension plans that it is all about the kids.

Well of course that is unless the governor of your state proposes cuts to those programs and tries to introduce programs to hold educators accountable. All of a sudden their political vendettas take priority over the kids. In Georgia they are trying to compete for a $400 million grant for the schools. Everybody wants the state to try hard and get this money. Well everybody but the biggest teachers association in the state. In Georgia we technically don't have teacher unions, rather they are called associations.

The teachers union, er excuse me, association is a powerful force in the state, and in fact they are one of the primary reason that our current governor is a Republican. The first one since reconstruction, please remember that all you race baiting types. When Sonny Perdue was running for governor, the current governor, a Democrat, had proposed several reforms to the education system including teacher accountability and the possibility of merit pay for the good teachers while making it easier to get rid of the bad ones. So now the teachers associations are against the very governor they helped to put in office.

Georgia's second largest teachers' group said Wednesday it will send a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan formally opposing the state's bid for new federal school reform grants.
The announcement by the 43,000-member Georgia Association of Educators comes on the heels of a legislative victory it shared last week with the state's largest teacher group, the 78,000-member Professional Association of Georgia Educators. Both groups successfully fought efforts by Gov. Sonny Perdue to create a merit pay system for teachers or, at the least, to create a statewide mandate to make student performance part of teachers' job evaluations.

I guess this makes the teachers association sort of apolitical huh? They will oppose anybody who tries to hold them accountable, and the children be damned. They are just props to be used to further their political agenda.

Obama's the One Who Needs a Math Education

Barry O, back from his exhausting 10-day golfing vacation, is back doing what he does best: Spending money.

His latest proposal? Let's throw $250 million dollars to training math and science teachers.

"The quality of math and science teachers is the most important single factor influencing whether students will succeed or fail in science, technology, engineering and math," Obama said in a statement. The money will help prepare [ed.-create] 10,000 new teachers and train [ed.-save]100,000 more, the administration said.

Sounds just like his talk on keeping the unemployment rate at 8% with the passage of his $800 billion stimulus package and the White House's reporting of jobs created or saved.

No doubt just like the stimulus money went to help states pay their teachers, thereby giving them a little relief from the these salary expenditures imposed on state budgets, and thereby allowing them to all keep their jobs while the private sector continues to hemorrhage jobs at an alarming rate, this money too will probably be used to save or faux create teaching jobs.

The only ones who need an education in math and science are the Dems in Washington. They, after all, are the ones who promote the whole climate change myth and, for the record, the current temperature in Atlanta is 30° after a another morning low in the teens.

Of course, the Democrats have never met a problem that they thought couldn't be solved by throwing more money at it.

At this point, they are just pulling numbers out of their butt and anybody who believes any of this horse squeeze has probably fallen victim to Nigerian email scams on multiple occasions or are Harvard-educated economists.

There are approximately 6.2 million teachers in this country. This little fig leaf sounds like just another chance for Barry O to shower a little appreciation onto the teacher's unions that have supported him.



Besides, it ain't real money.

Teacher's Union Blocks Bonuses

It's all about the kids. I just do not get the union mentality. In Boston, a teacher's union is blocking the awarding of some bonuses to some teachers, instead demanding that the bonus money be divvied up among all the teachers.

The Boston Teachers Union staunchly opposes a performance bonus plan for top teachers - launched at the John D. O’Bryant School in 2008 and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Exxon Mobil foundations - insisting the dough be divvied up among all of a school’s teachers, good and bad.

Unions are just like our socialist-leaning Congress in that they don't want to reward achievement, but rather you have to fit into the group they designate for you, assume the mantle of victimhood that is appropriate for that group, and then just sit down and shut up. The union decides what is best for you, tells you that it is best for you, and crushes any dissenting opinion.

Welcome to the Borg Collective.

I hate to be the one to rain on their little liberal academic institution but Boston teachers are discovering what Tea Party protesters have known for a long time.

Parental Unit Shows Offspring How to be Mature

You wonder why our kids are so screwed up? It is because of the fine examples of maturity that they are exposed to.

Police say the mother and daughter walked into Williams' classroom and began arguing with the teacher. Williams asked them to leave but the mother pushed past the teacher and grabbed a book off her desk, police say.

When Williams, 40, tried to get the book back, the mother pulled the teacher's hair and threw her to the ground, the report said. Then the mother and daughter stomped on the teacher, according to the report.

Williams, a first-year teacher at Southside High, teaches video broadcasting, Manguno said. She has not returned to the school since the attack, he said.

Thankfully, both mother and daughter have been arrested and charged and who knew teaching kids how to make YouTube videos could be so dangerous.
The attack occurred on February 28, so I wonder what took the police so long to make an arrest in this case? I have no doubt that the school board and members of the administration were doing all they could to make this go away so they wouldn't have to report the incident and risk being put on the list of schools labeled as being in trouble as required by the No Child Left Behind legislation. More and more, school administrators are abandoning their teachers in the classroom in the sake of making the metrics in the NCLB legislation. Soon the teachers union is going to have to decide who they represent. Is it the teachers or the administration?

Morning coffee sample

National database of problem teachers

The database itself is seriously lacking in information, such as what offense the teacher was punished for or which school they teach at or taught at, at the time of the offense. Basically all it contains is names, date of birth , and state.

Think your car has OnStar™? Not so fast.

Which brings me to the new cars that have this system called Sync™ which is produced by Microsoft®. Do you really want a Microsoft® product in your car?

Don't forget to visit the Norad Tracks Santa website for updates on the jolly man in a red suit and his travels this year. At least he doesn't have to put up with the TSA.