Thursday, November 19, 2009
MCS Gets Gates Grant
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:27 PM
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that it would invest $335 million to support effective teaching, including $90 million to Memphis City Schools for its Teacher Effectiveness Initiative (TEI).
"We are convinced that in order to dramatically improve education in America, we must first ensure that every student has an effective teacher in every subject, every school year," Melinda Gates said. "These communities have shown extraordinary commitment to tackling one of the most important education issues of our time."
To read specifics about what MCS plans to do with the funding — to be awarded over six years — here is an earlier blog post.
The announcement of the grants culminated a yearlong application process. Other funding was awarded to Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida, Pittsburgh Public Schools, and a coalition of charter school management organizations in Los Angeles.
Comments (2)
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Now they can finally move ahead with hiring a top flight consultancy to conduct a multimillion dollar six year study to tell them what's wrong with the school system, again, while another entire generation of students is left behind, again. Woohoo!
If you take your best teachers and put them in the worst schools and worst classes, you'll end up driving most of them away. I see this in the business world all the time. Those who work hardest are given the most to do and carry the dead weight of dozens of others, until they finally burn out and quit, leaving the organization top-heavy with mediocre slackers whose primary talent is playing the system.
I think a good investment of this money would be to create a teacher training program to take people with a high school diploma, but who might otherwise not have a degree, people who can pass a battery of social, intellectual and psychological tests, and train them up with real world, real classroom experience to become loyal, dedicated teachers. Pay them while you train them, so they can support themselves while they learn, and you will have no shortage of hardworking people who otherwise could never manage the expense of the required four-year degree.
How many people spend 4 years to get their degree and their teaching certificate only to burn out in the first year because they haven't been properly prepared for the realities of the urban classroom? How many children lose an entire year because they are unfortunate enough to draw a teacher who is neither prepared nor motivated to meet the extraordinary demands of teaching? You take a kid in her first years of school, all it takes is one bad teacher, one lost year, to put her permanently behind, especially if she is passed on to the next grade without having learned what she needed to know in the previous grade.
Our teacher training system itself is broken. Teacher training should be done by the schools in a paid internship program. They should mix actual teaching experience with educational courses for as long as it takes to prepare that teacher to take over a classroom, whether that takes one year or six years. The current system serves one function and one function only - to deliver a steady supply of students and their tuitions to four-year colleges and their masters and doctorate of education programs. (No doubt the master teacher level will require a master's degree.)
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Ok...The Gates foundation has lost their minds. Why would they give a corrupt school district money? I’m sure Mr. Cash will line his and his crony’s pockets with most of it like King Willie did, with the tax payer’s money.
Or, he will use some of it to help his crack head son who was arrested for selling drugs at a school he worked in. (The story can be found on the net).
He is the worst superintendent this city has ever had. He does not care for the students, teachers or community. He still has Florida tags on his car. (Doesn’t plan to stay long).
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