The Teacher’s Contract Pt 5 – Cherry Picking

I’ll spare you Frank’s recitation of the School Board’s chintzy offer of 0% raises. As you might imagine he is offended. How does he follow up the pathetic offer of the Board that has no more to offer since its reserves are almost gone? He quotes School District cheerleader Katie Kaufman to prove how deserving Duluth teachers are:

“Some would find it ironic that the school board would take such a stand given that the district so recently touted the fact that test scores are up. On August 27, Katie Kaufman sent out an email outlining significant improvement. ISD 709 students outperformed the national average on ACT tests (equaling the state which is at the top nationally. MCA results in reading, math and science are up pretty much across the board with focus and priority schools sharing significant gains. In light of this achievement how does one explain the school board positions in teacher negotiations?”

There are two problems with this data. First it comes from the District public relations person. The ACT data is meant to lull the public into some sense of security that the Duluth District is doing just fine thank you very much. But is it? Here’s problem two: The new state testing shows that the western schools in Duluth are all in the lowest ten percent of schools in Minnesota. Maybe if Frank wants to justify paying teachers more with nonexistant money he should also be willing to dock teachers in these miserable schools for the terrible job they have done. If the School Board really had teacher hating board members I’m sure this would occur to them in a trice.

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