Reformers trained a teacher's replacement in his own classroom without telling him he was fired.

[madfloridian]

This is one of the many tragedies taking place as schools are turned around into something else. Arne Duncan has been given the power to reward districts that fire all the teachers at a school, or part of them....and only keep a few. That is one hell of a lot of power, and is it even moral or legal? When did the government ever intervene in schools so significantly?

As Mayor Daley cashes in, ousted teacher gets cut off

Chicago schools' CEO sent a team of reformers to a school to let the teachers know they had to reapply for their jobs, even if they had tenure.

They went so far as to use the classroom of one teacher without letting him know he was gone. Of course he suspected. He was older, and his salary was higher.

He said he had an inkling of the direction things were going when the turnaround team brought prospective teachers to his classroom to give them a tryout. "They'd come in and say, 'Could you leave so we can use your class?'" he recalls. "It was a little awkward."

So he'd go to the hallway or the library. A couple of times a member of the turnaround team asked him to come back to the classroom. "They'd say, 'Could you please help us settle your class?'—the kids were being a little disruptive for the tryout teacher," says Skokna. "Think about it from the kids' perspective. Some of the kids told me, 'We don't have to listen to you—you're getting fired anyway.' And other kids would tell the turnaround people, 'Why are you bringing in this new teacher? Mr. Skokna is our teacher.'"

By the end of last school year, he hadn't received any word about whether he'd be brought back. So he called the central office. "I wound up talking to someone who says, 'Oh, you didn't get a call?' I said no. And they said, 'You should have. But you're not coming back.'" And that's how he learned that, after 18 years on the job, his days at Marshall were over.

All told, 47 of the school's 61 teachers were fired, all of them like Skokna—old-timers making as much as $82,000 a year. (Skokna made about $75,000). In their place, the new principal, Kenyatta Stansberry-Butler, brought in younger, less-experienced teachers making between $55,000 and $60,000.

That is the cruelty of the policy of Arne Duncan. And he has been given full power over public schools

[madfloridian]

1. More stupid stuff about this "turnaround" power play by Arne Duncan.

Here is more about what happened to the teacher mentioned above.

"Oh, and one more thing: there are three central office transition officials at Marshall making an average of $85,000, more than any teacher in the school, according to the CPS payroll. That's another lesson young teachers might want to learn: in CPS, the farther you get from a classroom, the more money you make.

As for Skokna, he was sent to what CPS calls the "reassignment pool," which is filled with teachers kicked out of turned-around schools. As a displaced teacher, he keeps his salary and benefits for one year, but he's not assigned to a permanent school while he looks for a full-time job.

He says he's been sent to seven schools, never for than a month at a time. In some, he was told to teach math or science, two subjects he knows little about. In another, he was told to sit at a desk by the fire escape and keep kids from escaping. Unless, of course they tried to escape, in which case he wasn't supposed to stop them.

"I was told if they do escape, don't try to stop them because it's all captured on a security camera," he says. "It made no sense—I guess they just didn't know what else to do with me."

By what authority is this going on all over the country? Who gave these "reformers" such power over local districts? What? No one is answering? Hmmmm.

[madfloridian]

2. Also ask yourself whence the authority to break union contracts?

[Divine Discontent]

3. this sh*t makes me ill! how disrespectful to that educator!

[madfloridian]

4. It makes me ill there is little speaking out about it.

We would never have let Bush get away with these policies. Yet they are being fulfilled.

I accept that talking about it has harmed my reputation at some Democratic forums. So be it.