A plan to limit the “forced placement” of veteran teachers in Denver’s lowest-performing and highest-poverty schools drew applause Thursday, and some opposition.
David Clayton, a parent at Montclair Elementary, echoed others when he said that he supported the plan “but only as a first step” toward extending the policy to all schools.
“Forced or direct placement is not good for our poorest-performing schools nor is it good for higher-performing schools,” said Clayton, a member of the group Stand for Children.
Because teachers with three years of experience are guaranteed jobs under state law, the district must place those unable to find their own positions by the end of the school year.
DPS placed 107 teachers in schools for the current year without the agreement of either the teachers or the principals.
Of the 107, 26 were being direct-placed for a second or third time. Five teachers have been direct-placed for three consecutive years.
DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg announced Feb. 5 that the district would not allow any direct teacher placements at schools on probation under the district’s school ratings system.
He also said he planned to limit direct teacher placements at Title 1 schools, meaning those schools with high poverty rates that receive federal grant dollars.
In past years, Title 1 schools have received a disproportionate number of unassigned veteran teachers.
“We’ve got to have the best trained people in our building,” said Antonio Esquibel, principal of Abraham Lincoln High School, where 91 percent of students are poor and 80 percent are English language learners.
“We need teachers that really understand what it means to be a second-language instructor and help get kids ready for college,” he said. “And that’s tough because there aren’t very many teachers out there in this country that have that background …
“I want to be able to select and be able to interview those candidates that possess those qualities.”
More than a dozen speakers, including a teacher and representatives of A+ Denver, Colorado Succeeds, the Denver Urban League and Padres Unidos, spoke in favor of the change.
One speaker, Henry Roman, the president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said the union is not in agreement with the plan.
He said the district needs to address broader issues, such as better mentoring of new teachers, if the idea is that direct-placed teachers are ineffective.
Otherwise, “When we make statements about ending forced placement, to me it’s an analogy like ‘Let’s end unemployment.’ I think all of us would agree that’s a lofty goal,” Roman said.
“Even in a well-functioning economic system, you’re always going to have a normal rate of unemployment. In a big system like DPS, we’re always going to have a normal rate of placements.”
But the most vocal opponent to the plan Thursday was school board member Andrea Mérida, who read aloud a resolution she said she’ll introduce at a later board meeting.
It states that any policy change regarding direct placements should wait until after improvements are made to the teacher evaluation system.
“…the Superintendent of Schools is directed to immediately produce … a plan for a teacher evaluation, mentorship and professional development system within 90 days of this resolution,” she read in part.
Read Merida’s resolution here.
Boasberg acknowledged the district and union do not agree on the issue but said they’ve been meeting for two years, without success, to address it.
“In the interim, do we continue to force place teachers disproportionately in our Title 1 Schools?” he asked. “I think that’s wrong.”
Merida shook her head and quietly said, “That’s not the issue.”
“The issue here is not the policy,” she later Tweeted from the meeting. “It’s the fact that we aren’t properly evaluating and keeping the RIGHT teachers in the 1st place.”
DPS and the Denver teachers’ union won a $10 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve teacher effectiveness. Boasberg said they’re collaborating on a pilot program on teacher observation, coaching and evaluation to be launched next spring in several schools.
The schools receiving the most direct placements in the past three years are in far northeast Denver – Martin Luther King Early College has received 11 teachers via forced placement and 10 have gone to Montbello High School.
Another 11 teachers have been assigned to central administration and not a specific school.
Faye Alexander, a parent at Montbello, said her children came home one afternoon and said, “Mom, we have a teacher in our building today who said, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ ”
“How does that make you feel as a parent that you have someone teaching your child that doesn’t want to be there?” she asked the board.
Nancy Mitchell can be reached at nmitchell@pebc.org or 303-478-4573.
Click here to read the letters supporting the policy from North High Principal Ed Salem and West High Principal Jorge Loera.
Click here to read the latest DPS staffing update outlining the new process under the changed policy.
When your team (teachers, principals, and parents) are saying forced placement does not work for anyone- the forced placed teacher, students and school, then a problem has been identified.
To say that we should not deal with a problem until, there is a teacher evaluation process, even though this problem can be easily resolved by changing policy, shows poor management skills. When good management is in crisis mode (Yes DPS is in a Crisis) then problems need to be evaluated quickly, short-term fixes need to be implemented, and long-term problems need action plans developed. To say we should not address a short-term fix (forced placement) until we solve a long-term problem (teacher evaluation), is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water . All you get is an empty tub, and have not moved further in the crisis.
While I am normally behind Andrea Merida, in this case I am not. Lake Middle School had several forced placed teachers while my boys were students there. They were the worst thing that could have ever happened to that school. I will give the principal, Mr. Kayser a great deal of credit. He was able to remove those teachers before they were able to do more harm.
One of the teachers was in the habit of calling the students derogatory names and went so far as to tell one of the students that if he/she didn’t understand that he/she should go back to Mexico. The other teacher “went off” on a parent at parent/teacher conferences and threatened to hit the parent with a notebook. And these are the types of teachers that we want placed at our schools? I’m sorry Andrea, but, I beg to differ.
I’m wondering how teachers will be vetted and if it might be possible to do some sort of “staging” whereby the most suspect workers could be evaluated first, and fast. I don’t recall Andrea saying she was in favor of a drawn-out process. Just a process.
I’d imagine some teachers are less likely to be determined unproductive than others, and there’s no reason they all need to be evaluated alphabetically (or whatever). Triage them instead and all members of the Board may feel more comfortable going forward with the result.
I feel that the placing of brand-new teachers into at-risk schools is even worse than putting “direct placed” workers into classrooms, unless of course they are overtly negative such as the one Cathy referred to above.
Cathy, you miss my point. The teacher that you describe absolutely needed to be removed from any and all classrooms, and having the right kind of evaluation system does that. If teachers like that no longer have employment in DPS, then we don’t have to worry about them anymore, not for anyone’s kids.
Here Mr. Kayser made the right decision, and had the previous principals done their job, they never would have made it to Lake.
D.P.S. is still not getting to the heart of the problem. The system of how teachers are reduced in response to budget cuts and the difficulty of retaining teachers in our lower perforning schools directly feed the direct placement quandary. Our current system is grounded in the agreement between the Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teacher Association and in district policy and practice. These can be changed through a collaborative effort between the parties and by making different choices at the district level. Yes, teacher evaluation and the statute-directed non-probationary system are important facets of the dilemma. However, the current frustrations are the result of decisions that should be made more responsively than can changes in statute. D.P.S. children deserve a system that does not draw all schools toward mediocrity, but allows all to soar. If there was true interest in finding resolution to the direct placement issue in the here and now, it could be done.
Andrea – I do get your point. Teachers do need to be evaluated. However, as in any “company” public or private, there are those people that are passed around because no one else wants to deal with them. Even hearing through the grapevine about these people is not enough. The principals and administration need to be able to determine if a teacher “or employee” is going to work at their school. In the example I used above, Mr. Kayser had no choice in these placements. Of course, he had heard that he probably didn’t want to have these teachers in his school and he was unable to find out why. Unfortunately, evaluations don’t always come around when they are needed most. Sometimes they come when it is too late. The information needs to be share sooner rather than later. But, if you are saying that DPS needs to put an evaluation system in place before they get rid of direct placement I think you’re wrong. The principals need to be able to interview and meet these teachers before they are placed in any school. Whether it be a “rich” school or a “low-performing” school
You know what? Douglas County has been able to develop a revamped evaluation system between the time their new board was sworn in and now. If they can do it, so can we. We’re just all fooled into thinking that these things take forever. They don’t, and they shouldn’t. My resolution that I will introduce next month will direct the Superintendent to have at least phase 1 of the evaluation to be completed in 90 days. Si se puede.