Low-Performing Schools? We Don't Think So 

Page 3 of 4

"We have lost so many potentially very good teachers, young teachers with good preparation, good background, good knowledge of subject area," he said. "Usually a person that wants to be a teacher has a gentle personality. They simply want to teach. They just don't know how to react to these things."

Stanley Frazier, principal of Merry Oaks International Academy Elementary School, has little patience with teachers who would refuse to teach in EquityPlus schools. "I wonder about their dedication," Frazier said. "We shouldn't even be having a conversation where we need to pull teachers to go to the equity schools. Some teachers take safe harbor and go to schools where kids will score well whether they have a great teacher or not. Now if you are truly a teacher and you are ready to test your mettle, you should be able to teach all kids."

Missing: Trust in CMS Administration

When asked what it would take for Pughsley's plans for low-performing schools to work, veteran Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board Member Louise Woods said, "I think it's a matter of trust." Teachers we spoke to agree with Woods. Unfortunately, they see trust, or rather the lack of it, as a big part of the problem.

Whether they supported Pughsley's plan or not, all of the teachers CL interviewed thought an extra $10,000 dollars a year would be enough to attract battle-tested teachers to equity schools — if the system could indeed create an atmosphere in which they could teach. But even if the discipline problem was taken care of, these teachers have so little trust in the CMS administration, most of them didn't think they'd ever receive a dime.

In the comments section of the Classroom Teachers Association survey, teacher after teacher said they didn't trust CMS to deliver the money at the end of three years, or were convinced the rules would somehow be changed midway through their tenure, thus blocking them from receiving the money.

Teacher after teacher said they didn't trust CMS to deliver the money at the end of three years, or were convinced the rules would somehow be changed, blocking them from receiving the money.

CTA President Judy Kidd says she doesn't oppose the plan in principle. But she, like many others, is skeptical of its timing. Had the administration spent a year mulling this over, thoughtfully planning how to fix broken schools, that would be one thing. Instead, she says, until very recently school system leaders largely refused to acknowledge that they even had a problem on their hands. So, given the recent condemnations by Judge Manning, it's ironic that Pughsley announced his crisis plan now, some teachers say.

"I think it's a knee-jerk reaction," said Kidd. "There are reasons [Pughsley] is going to have to force people to go to those schools and until he steps up to the plate and deals with the issues that exist — and those are leadership issues in the schools and a discipline problems in the schools — it won't work."

CMS is planning to to spiff up EquityPlus schools' image of the equity schools by hiring a marketing company to develop a new brand name and image for equity schools through direct mailings and newspaper ads. It won't work, several teachers said, unless the system is serious about addressing the challenges inside the schools as well. Until then, many teachers are waiting to see what exactly the administration will do.

Gregory Shaw, a teacher at Jay M. Robinson Middle School on Ballantyne Commons Parkway, says he purposely didn't get his national board certification, a prestigious designation teachers can earn after a rigorous study process, because he anticipated that CMS would move board certified teachers into low-performing schools.

Shaw is about as conflicted as you can get. He loves the Ballantyne parents who sometimes offer him more help than he can handle. He won't go to a low-performing school unless he's forced to, he said. Even with a good principal and all the support they need, he still doesn't think good teachers can raise these kids' test scores that much.

But he's also African-American, and it bothers him that low-income kids don't have the same number of quality, experienced teachers his students do. For him, the main issue is with the administration, not the children.

"It is what is happening down at the Education Center that bothers us the most," he said. "The constant new ideas every other day. We're going to do this, we're going to do that. I think teachers even at good schools are overwhelmed with these ideas that seem to come and go overnight. You go to workshops, you learn this idea to do this. Then the next year it's another workshop. They never stick to anything." That's why, Shaw says, he too doesn't believe he'll ever see the money if he's transferred, or that the changes will last.