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Dr. John Trotter, MACE's Chairman, is considered Georgia's
premier teacher advocate. He was a teacher and an administrator in several Georgia school systems. As an administrator,
he gave maximum support to classroom educators, believing this to be the only way to run an effective school.
He has published a number of articles on education in general and teaching in particular, including one about peer pressure
perceptions in The Journal of Negro Education as well as an extensive study entitled What Teachers
Like and Dislike About Teaching. Dr. Trotter earned a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum
laude, in History from Columbus State University; a Master of Arts in Social Science Education from
The University of Georgia; and two doctoral degrees -- one from The University of Georgia
in Educational Administration and the other from Mercer University's Walter F. George School of Law.
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DeKalb Is A Gangsta School System! By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD Look at the MACE website (www.theteachersadvocate.com) and see how
many times that MACE has called DeKalb a "Gangsta school system." When all
other groups were quiet as church mice, we were calling this system a "Gangsta school system" on TV, print media,
internet, and on our website. We called out the bullying, cheating, and lack of discipline on a regular
basis. Admittedly, we were behind the curve on the construction contracts and "gasolinegate"
because we were not privy to certain information. The nepotism, the shutting down of
a State-mandated grievance because the teacher was about to testify about systematic cheating at Clarkston High School, the
abysmal and abject lack of discipline in the schools, etc., have been discussed at length not only on MACE's website, the
AJC's Get Schooled blog, and other media. Finally, Gwen Keyes's office has acted swiftly and she deserves
the credit. I think that only the tip of the iceberg has been seen of the extent of the corruption not
only in the DeKalb County School System, but also in the Dekalb County Government. (c) MACE, February 25, 2010.
Children
Are Not Cookie Dough!
By Dr. John Trotter
I actually applaud Sonny Perdue's Administration for having the integrity and the guts to expose the systematic cheating.
Again, this is only the tip of the iceberg, especially in systems like Atlanta and DeKalb. It was in DeKalb last year
that I was "banned" because I would not roll over play dead when State Senator Ronald B. Ramsey (in charge of the
teacher grievances in the DeKalb School System) unilaterally shut down a grievance before it actually had a chance to get
going when he found out that the teacher whom MACE and I was representing was about to testify about systematic cheating at
Clarkston High School. This teacher had a list of Clarkston teachers
he was asking the school system to "subpoena" (really relieve of duty) to attend the grievance.
I was in and out of Ramsey's private office as he was obviously agitated and full of angst about this grievance.
I kept going back into the conference room and reporting to Mr. Haynes and the teacher about Ramsey's intense vacillation.
Finally, Ramsey just shut the whole process down and did not like the fact that I was quoting the law to him, particularly
this section: "...the complainant shall be entitled to an opportunity
to be heard, to present relevant evidence, and to examine witnesses at each level" (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.8[4]).
He retorted that he knew the law when I further insisted on reading the law to him from the Code itself.
I told him that he was a state senator and sworn to uphold the law and that these were the very laws that he and his
colleagues pass but he was egregiously violating. He apparently did not like my lecturing him on the law.
A few days later, I was "banned" from the school system. I must say that I wear this "banning"
with honor, and I can assuredly let anyone know that I have been truly "banned" from better places
than the Cesspool located on North Decatur Road. This "banning" has certainly not stopped MACE
from representing teachers in grievance hearings, terminations hearings, writing letters of intervention and rebuttal for
teachers, or picketing on behalf of teachers to expose situations which need to be exposed. (In fact, the
MACE Picketing Squad was picketing one of the DeKalb high schools yesterday. I wasn't there, but they tell
me it was a juicy one!) MACE was on the sidewalks at two or three locations (including the Central Office)
picketing against "systematic cheating" in DeKalb last year before any of the cheating scandals
hit the press. (By the way, Senator Ramsey was probably under immense pressure not to hold previously-mentioned
grievance hearing because the tragic suicide of the fifth grader had not yet hit the media and neither
had the cheating scandal at Atherton Elementary not the cheating allegations at King High School.) While I
applaud Governor Perdue's Administration for this exposure of cheating, I must disagree with his concerted effort to bring
about merit pay for teachers under the name of All Star Teachers. This will cause further pressure to cheat
for same reasons happening now. First of all, I worked as an administrator in the only Georgia school system
in modern time to use merit pay. I saw who was getting merit pay. It correlated to b_tt
kissing. Pure and simple. The teachers with less integrity will go along to get along
and do some major b_tt kissing in order to have their classroom rolls full of the "good" students. The
teachers who refuse to grovel and kiss b_tt will suffer for their rectitude. They will get the lion's share
of the "behavior problems." Cheating will take place on the tests, especially if the standardized
test scores will determine who will get the incentive pay. Teaches will quit sharing resources and teaching
techniques. Sorry, Sonny, but this is how it works. You're not randomly sorting out
inanimate objects which are floating down a conveyer belt. We are not talking about how many batches of cookie
dough each person on the assembly line can mold into a ready-to-be cooked cookie. Children are not cookie
dough. (c) MACE, February 12, 2010. "Save Teachers. Reduce Administrators." MACE Storms The Capitol! By John R. Alston
Trotter, EdD, JD Editor's Note: Photos and video of the Capitol picket will be up shortly, as well as photos
of the Atlanta picket (Beverly Hall), Lake Ridge Elementary in Clayton County
(Brenda Cloud), and Towers High School in DeKalb County
(Skip Nelloms). Yesterday morning, I got my day starting by
writing a fairly lengthy letter for a teacher in a DeKalb elementary school. Then, we
descended downtown to the Capitol to picket between the Capitol and the Legislative Office Building
(LOB). Our signs were colorful and they were definitely catching the attention of the legislators
who were coming into the Capitol at 2:00 PM. (An education committee meeting had just
adjourned at the LOB.) The signs, off the top of my head, were such as: "Teachers
Teach. Administrators Cheat"; "Save Teachers. Reduce
Administrators"; "Chop Administrative Bloat! Furlough
Administrators"; "Next Election: Teachers With Pitchforks"
and others. The Capitol and State Police force were all agitated and
calling in re-enforcements, claiming that we could not picket at this location at the Capitol but had to
picket at a "designated area" (on Washington Street). Well, if you know me, you know that this
precipitated a big confrontation and a pow-wow between the police and me. I take umbrage at the fact that
law enforcement officers just do not respect a Category One Free Speech Forum.
After I went in detail about the U. S. Supreme Court's dissertations on the First Amendment
(time, manner, and place regulation which must be accompanied by a compelling State interest which also must guarantee "the
least restrictive alternative," which in this case would be directly across the street in front of the Legislative
Office Building and the Judicial Building; the fact also that any regulation has to be "content
neutral") and after much fulminations were impregnating the air, we decided to move the picket to the Washington
Street-Trinity Street corner of the Capitol, much to the relief of the Officers. This
too was a good location to picket. I must give a "shout-out" to Captain Les Robinson.
He was called in to deal with the MACE Picketers. He handled himself
most professionally. He told me that he really didn't want to have to arrest me. I told
him that I had earlier in my career spent some time in the "Garnett Hotel" around the corner from
the Capitol and that my biggest complaint about going to jail is that it is so excruciatingly boring in jail,
and I feel like I am an expert in this area, having matriculated through a few jails in my professional career.
I have never been convicted. Charges have always been dropped (except on one occasion when they
were "dead docketed"). I must say that I am proud of all of the times that I have been arrested...always
for speaking out on what I believe to be right -- speech protected, mind you, by the First Amendment to the
U. S. Constitution as well as protected the same by our Georgia Constitution.
For the record, the State
has a "Code 50" that apparently (note that I say "apparently") gives the State Police
the right to regulate demonstrations in front of State buildings. I demonstrably (yes, this will soon be
on MACE LIVE TV via www.theteachersadvocate.com, You Tube, and many other
distributors) told the Police that the State's Code 50 did not meet muster with the U. S. Supreme Court's rulings on Category
One Free Speech Forums. For example, the Washington, D. C. City Council
passed a local ordinance forbidding citizens from picketing in front of the United States Supreme Court building.
But, in U. S. v. Grace, the U. S. Supreme Court struck down this ordinance as unconstitutional,
saying that citizens could indeed picket the Court.
One thing that we are not so good at MACE...getting the media to cover our events. We
generally operate like a triage center, and the pace is so fast-paced that we don't have time to send out press releases about
a gathering or demonstration. I hear that PAGE, GAE, and even GFT are planning different demonstrations
at the Capitol. Good. I am glad. The more demonstrations, the merrier.
At MACE, we generally do not ask our teacher-members to take a day off to show
up at the Capitol to picket. We, as MACE Staff, usually do the picketing
for our members. In 2000, this was an exception to the rule when Governor Roy Barnes was
in the process of dismantling due process rights for teachers in Georgia. Then, we did call upon our members
to take a Personal Leave Day. We showed up at the Capitol in mass and had three straight days of pickets
against "Redneck Roy," as I dubbed him and was roundly criticized
in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for doing so. We had some most colorful signs
back then, such as: "Roy Flunked Character Education!" I
would like to be able to attend the demonstration on Saturday, but my parents have been married for 65 years, and we planned
a big celebration for them in Columbus on Saturday evening. As many teachers who can get
out, please attend any and all of the demonstrations against the efforts to balance the State budget on the backs of teachers
as well as against the asinine notion that the so-called "All Star Teachers" program will do anything
but further perpetuate and facilitate the culture of cheating in Georgia. (c) MACE, February
19, 2010.
About
The Cheating... MACE Told You So! By John R. Alston Trotter, Chairman &
CEO My kudos to the reporters who have uncovered so much of this cheating mess. With continued
reporting like this, the AJC's subscription base will surely increase. I actually opened up the newspaper
at lunch today and saw the headlines and was pleasantly surprised at how the AJC is actually beginning to uncover what so
many of us have known about for years. We at MACE have been howling about the systematic cheating going
on in the schools, especially the urban school systems where they feel so much pressure about the standardized test scores.
Every time that I would hear some "success" story (like the "success" story about Parks Middle
School in Atlanta), I just roll my eyes, knowing that SYSTEMATIC interventions (i.e., cheating) was taking place.
The Law of the Large Numbers does not change. This is a fact, Jack. Standardized
test scores have a one-to-one correlation with free and reduced lunch counts (or any other measurement of socio-economic status).
You can take a high school athlete who runs a 6.25 forty yard dash and give this athlete the best coaching possible
for three months, but when you time his forty speed again, he will not be running a 4.35 forty. Am I saying that poor students cannot learn? Absolutely not.
But, the Law of the Large Numbers has demonstrated time and time again, that the students from very poor economic backgrounds,
as a group, continue to score lower on standardized tests than students who are from wealthier families and who have, all
of their lives, had the fortune to have been academically nurtured (from Hooked on Phonics, et al., their whole lives).
For children who come to school with virtually no reading and verbal readiness skills, it is like running the 100 yard
dash and starting 20 yards behind the other runners. Am I saying
that poor students cannot learn? Absolutely not. But, the Law of the Large Numbers has
demonstrated time and time again that the students from very poor economic backgrounds, as a group, continue to score significantly
lower on standardized tests than students who are from wealthier families and who have, all of their lives, had the fortune
to have been academically nurtured (from Hooked on Phonics, et al.). For children who come to school with
virtually no reading and verbal readiness skills, it is like running the 100 yard dash and starting 20 yards behind the other
runners. There are, of course, exceptions to any
rule, but the exceptions themselves are what establish the rule. About Atlanta: Beverly
Hall and her minions are educational thugs. I have no doubt that the AJC has just unearthed the very tip
(just the tip) of the Cheating Iceberg. I have dealt anecdotally with many teachers of Atlanta who have
told me war stories about how they raise questions about dubious practices and had their contracts non-renewed but those teachers
who went along to get along were rewarded for their submission. I have always told people that Atlanta
is the worst of all the school systems in Georgia. It is the hub of corruption. It is
an academic cesspool. But, quite frankly, the powers that be through the years have been reluctant to deal
with Atlanta because they are squeamish about the race issue. They are afraid of being called racists.
So, I supposed it is O. K. to mess over thousands of children of color because you are afraid of being called a racist,
eh? Balderdash! Atlanta's schools are rife with miscreant "students" who refuse
to obey their teachers; in fact, they actually intimidate their teachers, and the Beverly Hall Administration allows this
to occur. We always say at MACE: You cannot have good learning conditions until you
first have good teaching conditions. When children are not expected and are not required to behave in school,
this is what is racism. You don't have to systematically cheat on tests if good learning conditions were
first established in the schools. Even though the composite test scores may never be as high as the scores
in Alpharetta and Crabapple, at least the group test scores will be accurate, and some of the students will score very high
(and their scores will be real scores and won't be cheapened by the fact that they are students in Atlanta City or DeKalb
County). I have detested the whole standardized testing mania.
I have compared the school systems obeisance to the standardized testing mania to bowing down to the Idol of Baal.
Standardized Tests have become false gods which have made caricatures our of educators. I understand
the pressure felt by the superintendents in large urban school systems. Money, grants, embarrassment, reputations,
ridicule, bonuses from naive and eager school boards, etc., are all tied to the tests which really mean nothing.
The school systems should be able to go back to the non-pressured and generalized achievement tests administered to
students just once per year to help the educators to gage where a student is in reading or math. The SAT
and ACT will always be there. But, since The Nation At Risk came out in 1983, our schools have actually
gotten worse! All of the gimmicks which the states and the federal governments have come up with (especially
disasters like George Bush's and Ted Kennedy's No Child Left Behind) have been totally counter-productive when it comes to
children actually learning how to learn. Everything has been reduced the tests becoming the curricula.
Weighing a pig over and over will never fatten up the pig. The pig has to be fed and fed a lot!
This whole testing mania is as stupid as trying to teach a Kobe Bryant how to play basketball by having him to fill
out a basketball scorebook over and over, and when he makes a mistake, we go back and erase his mistake and make sure that
a correct answer is put in its place. Making Kobe Bryant correctly fill out a scorebook instead of tossing
him a basketball and allowing him to PLAY is sheer stupidity. The same thing goes for LEARNING.
Let the children LEARN. We should quit making the children just regurgitate stuff on the standardized
tests and allow teachers to engage the students in meaningful ways so that real LEARNING can take place. In
the current testing craze, students are bored, teachers feel like they are teaching in straight-jackets, and the students
aren't really LEARNING. For children's sake, we should allow teachers to teach! (c)
MACE, February 11, 2010.
Confront The Real Problems In
Public Education! By John R. Alston Trotter, ED,
JD Why did I think that
Sonny Perdue might be able to go a full two terms without beating up on teachers? No one wants to admit to what the real problems
are in public education…(1) Defiant & Disruptive Students; (2) Irate & Irresponsible Parents; (3) Angry &
Abusive Administrators; (4) Widespread, Systematic Cheating; and (5) Naive & Spineless Educational Policymakers (including
legislators, school board members, and even the current governor) in the State. If the authority of teachers were substantively and substantially restored and if the teachers were fully supported
in the area of student discipline, then the State would see measurable changes after some time. Until then, all of this Race
To The Top (Obama’s) or All Star Teachers (Perdue’s) is like p_ssing in a tsunami! Things will only get worse!
Mark my words…things will only get worse! As we always say at MACE: You cannot have good learning conditions until
you first have good teaching conditions. Oh, by the way, please tell your
representatives and senators to vote a big “No” to Sonny’s attempt to take away the people’s right
to elect their own Constitutional Officers. On this, I agree with Cathy Cox! When is it good to downsize democracy and put
the positions in the hands of the Oligarchy? Pretty soon, we will be letting the Gridiron Wannabes actually run the State.
(In their minds, some already imagine that they do.) I actually have more faith in the “peasants” and their “pitchforks.”
Those who toil the soil and engage in trade. Not the sophists but the honest. I trust the “unsophisticated,” not
the self-inflated gnostics. (c) MACE, February 8, 2010.
DeKalb's
Crawford Lewis, Dummy
Explanation, and
Gasolinegate! By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD My spicy grandmother always intoned to us grandchildren: "Be sure [that] your
sins will find you out." Superintendent Crawford Lewis evidently needs to get the
DeKalb Board of Education to get him a car that gets more than two (2) miles per gallon.
Can you believe how Crawford Lewis tried to explain filling up his gasoline tank three (3) times in
one day? Does he think that we are imbeciles? The sheer gall of his dummy explanation
is beyond the pale! No wonder the DeKalb School System is imploding! Look
who's "leading" the school system! Well, we at MACE have been continuously
protesting about this "gangsta" school system and its corruption on the streets, in the
media, and on the net. We believe that the systematic cheating in the testing arena is only the tip of
the gigantic iceberg of corruption in the DeKalb County School System. Cheating,
bullying, construction contracts, and now petrol. Who
would have "thunk" it...that of all of the junk going down in the Dekalb County School System,
the thing that is probably going to bring down Crawdaddy and perhaps have him moving back
to Monticello is Gasolinegate? And to think that this clown of a superintendent,
Crawford Lewis, and his cohort of mini-clowns, Attorney Josie Alexander and State
Senator Ronald B. Ramsey, tried to "ban" my presence in the DeKalb County School System.
Ha. They couldn't and can't ban my ideas and words. It is an honor to be "banned"
by this Dubious Triumvirate. (c) MACE, February 3, 2010.
An Open Letter
To The Clayton County School Board Members! Well, you got what you wanted, a California-reject for superintendent and a school board attorney
whose firm touts Glenn Brock as not only a lawyer but a “counselor” for superintendents. I
noticed in last Friday’s edition of the Marietta Daily Journal that the Cobb County School
System, one of the firm’s clients, has apparently jettisoned any newly-found transparency for their more comfortable
cloak of darkness. Remember that it was Mr. Glenn Brock’s public trashing of the former Clayton County
School Board that apparently gave his “buddy” Mark Elgart more gasoline for the accreditation fire.
Several of Clayton’s board members were questionably removed by the State for one (or was that two?) illegal
school board meetings. However, lo and behold, the Cobb County School Board has been cited recently for
fifty-seven (57) illegal school board meetings. But, hey, who’s counting? Don’t
depend on the fake SACS organization or its hypocritical leader, Mark Elgart, to do one single thing in the matter.
I suppose Mr. Brock’s legal counseling was a tad off in those 57 meetings, as was his legal acumen when he and
State Board member Bradley Bryant and SACS’s Mark Elgart met illegally behind closed doors to apparently advise the
previous Clayton school board on how to act properly. But, hey, again, when you are big shots, perhaps
you can break the law. Now, I suppose
that this sage “counseling” that the Brock Clay law firm is providing Mr. Heatley is telling him that despite
what the Georgia Statutory Law says about teacher grievances (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.5 et seq.), he doesn’t
really have to obey this mundane Georgia law. Mr. Heatley and Mr. Douglas Hendrix have both sent to the
MACE Office letters stating to two of our members that they did not have the right to have a Level III hearing before the
school board. Hmm. Now this is quite strange since the appropriate statute on this matter
states just the opposite: “…the complainant shall be entitled to
an opportunity to be heard, to present relevant evidence, and to examine witnesses at each level”
(O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.8[4]). I know that Mr. Glenn Brock attended a non-accredited, now-defunct
law school, but I trust that he can read a statute. I do not even claim to be a lawyer (I never took the
Bar and have no desire to be a lawyer), but I can read. I could read before I ever attended Mercer
University Law School. (I suppose that if I were a lawyer, I couldn’t write letters like
this, and I do enjoy them.) Oh, and by the way, Mr. Bradley Bryant ruled on the State Board Level (in the
Gill case in Muscogee County) that they were indeed three (3) levels in the grievance process, just as the Statute
so plainly delineates. Board members,
I am apprising you of Mr. Heatley’s and Mr. Hendrix’s violations of the Georgia Law. What
are you going to do about it? Don’t ask Glenn Brock. Grow up and ask yourselves
what you are going to do.
John
R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD
Dr. Trotter Writes To Clayton's Special Assistant to Superintendent.
[The
names of the teacher, the principal, and the school have been changed.]
November 17, 2009 Ms. Luvenia Jackson Special Assistant to the
Superintendent Clayton County Public Schools 1058 Fifth Avenue Jonesboro, Georgia
30236 Dear Ms. Jackson: I am writing you on behalf of one of MACE’s valued members, Mrs.
Jenni Love who teaches at Tension Elementary School. Mrs. Jenni Love is in her fifth year teaching in Clayton
County and has good reviews for four years now. This year, however, has added much stress to her already-stressed
life. It appears that little sympathy and hardly any empathy has been shown toward Mrs. Jenni Love in respect
to her EIPs and other matters in light of the fact that her husband is suffering daily with lung cancer. What have schools become? Are they no longer like
families and little communities but are like military training grounds for the best snoopervisory marksmen or markswomen who
can demonstrate to the General (or, in the instant case, the Sergeant) that a teacher can be taken out? In
the old days, when a teacher had a very difficult situation at home, other staff members lent a helping hand, and the administrators
did not play this I gotcha game of supervision. Has the current system which seems hell-bent on
raising some stupid and inane test scores (even if it means encouraging educators to falsify the scores; e.g., DeKalb and
Atlanta) reduced educators to “robotucators” (note that I
just made up this term and hereby copyright it) who leave their hearts at the school house steps? When did support personnel no longer become supportive?
I thought people from the Central Office were there to support the teachers who are in the trenches, on the front line
in the important action of reaching and teaching our children. Perhaps I have been out of the active teaching
and administrative ranks too long. When I was an administrator, I led by inspiration, not by intimidation.
This is not only good practice but also good theory. Any current administrator could do himself
or herself (and certainly the teachers and children some good) if they read some social psychology from Abraham Maslow, Kurt
Lewin, and Carl Rogers. Ms. Jackson,
Mrs. Jenni Love could be out on Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), but she is committed to the children of Tension Elementary
School. Could you look in to her situation and see if more support, not critical supervision,
could be shown her during this time of major stress in her life? I know that you remember the days when
your fellow teachers and administrators were always supportive of teachers in times like this. Your principal
at Morrow Elementary School, I believe, was that kind of principal back in the day. Respectfully: John
R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD c. Mrs. Mrs. Jenni Love Dr. Trotter Writes To DeKalb's Superintedent Crawford Lewis.
[The
names of the teacher, the principal, and the school have been changed.]
November 6, 2009
Dr. Crawford Lewis, Superintendent DeKalb
County School System 3770 North Decatur Road Decatur, Georgia 30032 Dear Dr. Lewis: I
am writing to you on behalf of one of our valued members and a thirty-one year veteran educator with the DeKalb County School
System, Mrs. Jenni Love. It appears that trumped-up and unwarranted charges have been made against Mrs.
Jenni Love while she was serving in the After School Program at Tension Elementary School. We met with
Mrs. Jenni Love last week and she told us the story which resulted in her receiving an official reprimand from you and a one-day
suspension without pay. It is not the loss of one day’s pay which has Mrs. Jenni Love upset but the
shoddy investigation (if I may call it an “investigation”) which resulted in this travesty of justice.
Mrs. Jenni Love has for her entire tenure
as an educator in DeKalb been an exemplary educator, always going the extra mile for her students and her school.
It appears that a kindergarten student was mad at her for his failing to receive candy for not following instructions
in the After School Program. This same student went home and evidently told his mother that Mrs. Jenni
Love “tapped” (this word has been interchangeably used with “knocked” and “struck”) him
on the head when he kept using the computer after he had been told repeatedly that his time on the computer was up.
This unsubstantiated claim of a five or six year old has resulted in Mrs. Jenni Love’s record being sullied at
the end of her career. From talking
to Mrs. Jenni Love and from reading through the rather voluminous file has caused me to conclude what the principal, Ms. Judy
Smith, concluded: “[N]ot enough evidence that she [Mrs. Jenni Love] committed this act” (in
Ms. Smith’s memo to Jose G. Boza on May 4, 2009). Mrs. Jenni Love categorically denies ever even
touching the student. Yet, Ms. McIver with the Office of Internal Resolution, apparently without even questioning
Mrs. Jenni Love concerning the matter, made a recommendation to Ronald Ramsey that Mrs. Jenni Love be reprimanded by you,
suspended for one day without pay, placed on a Professional Improvement Plan, and removed from the After School Program (the
latter of which Mrs. Jenni Love would gladly consent). An investigation without even questioning the accused?
How incredulous. On May 26, 2009, Mrs. Jenni Love wrote a letter of concern to Mr. Ronald Ramsey,
head of the Office of Internal Resolution, asking for an appointment to discuss her case. She relates to
me that to this day, she has not heard from Mr. Ramsey. Ms. McIver apparently based her conclusion on hearsay from the Director of the
After School Program who claims that Mrs. Jenni Love stated at the end of 30 minutes of explaining to the mother that she
most certainly had not even touched her child that Mrs. Jenni Love stated: “Since
he said that I did, then I did.” Mrs. Jenni Love states (and did so in her account written on the
same day) unequivocally that she did not touch the kindergartner and never made such a ludicrous statement.
In fact, Mrs. Jenni Love states to me that the Director of the After School Program was rather distracted during the
entire meeting that Mrs. Jenni Love had with the child and his mother. The Director wrote to Principal
Smith that the child “did not waiver in his account.” Anyone who has been around school children
long enough realizes that some children can offer up unmitigated lies without waivering. As a former teacher
and administrator, I have seen it happen on many occasions. This is certainly not probative evidence in
any sense. The principal must have drawn the same conclusion because she determined “not enough evidence”
– certainly not enough evidence to sully someone’s unblemished record with an unsubstantiated declaration from
a five or six year old. Ms. McIver erroneously concluded that “it appears more likely than
not that Mrs. Love made inappropriate physical contact with [initials redacted]” (emphasis added). So,
now we are dealing with a civil standard and appearances, eh? An allegation of this magnitude
could theoretically lead to criminal charges of simple battery against this exemplary educator, and McIver makes a conclusion,
apparently without even questioning the educator on the matter, based on appearances. Balderdash.
This is bush league “investigation.”
Mrs. Jenni Love did not offer to resign because of any remorse or guilt on her part; Mrs. Jenni Love wanted
to quit working in the After School Program because of what she felt was an abject lack of professionalism.
To be slanderously and maliciously accused by a child who was apparently mad because he did not receive candy of tapping,
knocking, or striking him in the head and then to be “convicted” of such a dastardly deed by the Office of Internal
Resolutions without this department even questioning the accused concerning the matter is unconscionable.
Is this what has become of “Premier” DeKalb County Schools? Dr. Lewis, I know that this past year and this year has probably put a strain
on you and your staff (with the cheating scandals, the bullying allegations, the District Attorney’s apparent widespread
investigation into the school system’s construction program, the recent forfeitures of the high school football games
due to the use of ineligible players, etc.), but each employee of the school system deserves the right to be treated fairly.
Back in the Spring, I was representing a teacher at Clarkston High School who was prepared to testify about systematic
cheating at Clarkston High School (and had a list of witnesses to testify also), but Mr. Ronald Ramsey just illegally shut
down the grievance. I thought that he was sworn, as a State Senator, to pass laws and uphold laws, not
to break the law. Just a short time after this grievance was shut down, the school system was suffering
a major public relations blight because the allegations of cheating at other schools came to the fore. I am bringing to your attention another potentially embarrassing
situation, a situation where the unsubstantiated allegation of a kindergartener was used to officially
reprimand and suspend an educator who has been exemplary in her services to the children of DeKalb County for 31 years.
Mrs. Jenni Love just wants her record to be cleared of any wrong-doing because she was falsely charged of this simple
battery. We are asking your office to clear up her record so that she can retire in peace and with the
solace of knowing that any false blemish on her record has been removed. Sincerely:
John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD
c. Jenni Love
School Board Members Ronald
B. Ramsey J. Anderson Ramay,
Esq.
And Remembering Our Departing Friends Holiday Musings From Dr. T. By Dr. John R. Alston Trotter
We are into our 15th year
at MACE and currently into our Holiday Season. So, a time of reflection
seems in order. I remember that MACE started with a veritable bang on September 1, 1995! Within a few months
of MACE’s beginning, a central office insider in one of the large school systems told me that the school
system’s attorney was stating that “MACE terrorizes the principals.” Good.
Don’t the principals and assistant principals often terrorize the teachers? Our MACE
Field Force was picketing at Fulton County’s Randolph Elementary School today,
and one of the teachers was telling me that she heard that the assistant principal was inside the school crying and the principal
had been away at a meeting but when he returned to the school, he rode into the parking lot and then quickly rode out.
I don’t know if this is true, but this teacher told me that she saw the principal do this. Why
does MACE picket? Do you really think that MACE just pickets for the
fun of it? Pickets are the most requested service that MACE gets from its members.
We try to accommodate these requests at the schools where we think that the teaching conditions are so egregious that
the Superintendents need to have their attention focused on these schools. Heck, we picketed Principal
Teressa Watson at Cobb County’s Hayes Intermediate School three times in less than two weeks
this Fall. Let me re-emphasize the message for Cobb Superintendent Fred Sanderson:
“Teressa Watson Must Go!” We have come a might long way – from the
earliest days where we rented literally one room next door to the current Jonesboro City Hall, then two rooms,
and then that August moved to a larger suite of offices (with actually two restrooms!). This was all within
the first year. MACE did not have banks or traditional lenders lining up to loan this
new organization monies. We scrimped and scraped money together as MACE kept getting bigger
and bigger. Our message was resolute about the atrocious teaching conditions in Georgia and about the inextricable link between teaching conditions and learning
conditions. We said forthrightly and unequivocally that you could not have the latter until the former
was in place first. (Go to our Archives Section, and you can read our bold articles in the first issue
of The Teacher’s Advocate! magazine of 1995.) Our resolute message resonated
with the teachers. MACE has kept growing through the years, despite the many cynical
and devious rumors started in the early days by self-serving admininstrators that MACE was not going to last.
No, the question today is: Are the other groups going to last? MACE
has that uncluttered, unequivocal, clear-cut, and unapologetic mission…to protect and empower teachers,
one member at a time. This is a teacher’s agenda. It is not an amalgamated
agenda, one where you are trying to please all people at all times and really just irritating everyone because you will not
take a stand. As a result of our focused mission of protecting and empowering teachers, MACE
has continued to expand, but our expansion these last 14 or 15 months, even in economic hard times, is nothing
short of remarkable and is an expansion for which we not ashamed to thank the good Lord! One of our next
goals at MACE is to help feed the hungry of the world, both here in the USA and abroad. We will be coming forth with more information
on this very shortly to let you know that we will be sending a percentage of your membership fees each month to a very reputable
organization where I believe over 90% of the money goes directly to feeding those poor souls who are literally
starving for food. To those whom much is given, much is required, and MACE will be trying
to do a little to relieve the misery of so many. Please pray for our efforts! In
May of 2002, MACE moved its Services Center (where most
of the MACE Staff is located and where the teachers come for service work) to Fayetteville. This year, MACE opened
up a Communications Center where so much is accomplished relating to videos,
the internet, the website, letters and articles are written, and calls are made. Most of the calls are
still made out of the Services Center so far, but I imagine a day when MACE will have a
stand-alone call center because of the huge volume of calls each day – and MACE is always committed
to returning each call that day, unless, of course, the weekend is involved (though we do make calls on weekends as well).
I am at the Services Center a couple days a week, but most of my work is done out of the Communications Center. We are generally booked three
weeks in advance for nightly meeting with teachers at the Services Center. As Chairman/CEO of MACE, I want to take this time to thank the
tireless MACE Staff and Associates, under the leadership of our Chief
Operations Officer Norreese Haynes and Associate Executive Director Jeff Cox, for their unswerving
dedication to our MACE Members. I want to particularly thank our Office Manager
Renee Bishop for encouraging me to delegate more and more to the competent personnel of MACE, but
this is hard when, at one time, it seemed that, along with Attorneys William Woods and Keith Walton,
I was everything from “chief cook and bottle washer.” I am learning to grow
(by delegating more) as MACE grows, but don’t ever think that I can’t still “throw down”
in a hearing (as will be evident at a hearing this Friday!), write a cogent and blistering letter, tote a picket sign, and
punk out a police officer if he or she tries to abridge our rights under the First Amendment to picket on
a Category One Free Speech Forum! I will be 56 on New Year’s
Eve of this year, and I figure that I have a good 40 more years on the picket line
– even if they have to wheel me out there on a Medicare Scooter! At this time of year, I think about our many
fallen MACE colleagues. I remember when former Atlanta Braves pitcher
Larry Bradford died. He was working at Fulton’s Banneker High at the time.
Our Vice President, Dennis Yarbrough, presented the family with a beautiful plaque
from MACE at the funeral. I remember that Dennis and I visiting the sweet
teacher of Atlanta’s Perkerson Elementary School, Bernice Barnett,
while she was suffering in Intensive Care in the hospital over in South Fulton, and she died within a few days. I remember
two of our young male teachers dying abruptly, without warning, one in North Fulton and one in South DeKalb, the latter of whom I knew at the University of Georgia. I
remember how the brave Charley Waggoner of Clayton’s Babb Middle School suffered
with cancer for a couple with the utmost grace. I remember how Don Carson’s sudden
death shocked all of us so much. I knew Don back when I coached against him nearly 30
years ago. He was teaching at Clayton’s Alternative School when
he died about four or five years ago. I spoke at Don’s funeral service and got all
choked up because I was reflecting on how loyal to MACE that Don and others were from the
very beginning. I attended Martha Wilson Johnson’s funeral this past January.
She had just attended President Obama’s Inauguration, returned to Atlanta the
next day, taught her children at Atlanta’s Price Middle on Thursday (proudly giving
out Inaugural souvenirs to her students), and did not wake up on Friday morning.
Martha was a proud MACE Member from the beginning, a great teacher, and didn’t
put up with much foolishness! I remember that I was on the phone with Martha at the original
MACE Office when I was biting down on my pipe and broke the only capped tooth that I had! It’s
funny how we remember things like this! I can still hear her saying on the other end of the phone call:
“Now Trotter [she always called me “Trotter”], this shouldn’t
be happening…” In July of 2006,
our founding attorney, William (Bill) Woods passed away. There’s hardly a day that
goes by that we don’t comment about Bill and our famous “Bill stories.”
Mr. Woods had been a teacher before becoming a lawyer and came from a family of educators.
He loved representing teachers, and he kicked some major league ass in hearings for teachers! We
keep Bill’s memory alive. We have many photos of Bill in the MACE
Office and have his law degree hanging on the wall, and we have named our Person of the Year Award
after William L. (“Woodman”) Woods, Esq. He will always be part of MACE. In this past week, we all were saddened by the passing of two our retired members, Pamela
Gardner only Thanksgiving Night and Craig Bankston this past Sunday.
Pam and Craig were such special people, especially to their MACE
Family. The spouses of these MACE Members, A. J.
Gardner and Cathy Bankston, have their own special connections with MACE.
While Pamela taught for years at Morrow Middle School before she retired this past
school year, A. J. was and is a regular on the MACE Picket Line! A.
J.’s first picket with MACE, I believe, was at the old headquarters of the Atlanta
Public Schools at 210 Pryor
Street, in 1997. He and Pam
were a very lovely couple who thoroughly enjoyed the MACE BASHes! Pam
hardly ever called the MACE Office for service work, but loved knowing that the protection was thereif she
needed it, and she was even talking about the up-coming MACE Holiday BASH the day that she passed away. Craig Bankston also joined
MACE in the early days of MACE when he was a teacher and coach at Babb Middle
School (Hines Ward’s Middle School, by the way) in Clayton County. I have known Craig before
MACE ever began. He first came to MACE because he told us that he had
called and called GAE and it took 30 days before one of their reps even called him back.
He had an issue at Babb. I told him that Attorney Woods and I
would be at his school the next afternoon. He called us at the MACE Office the next day
and said that the principal was upset when he told him that we were coming. We said that we were still
coming. Before it was over, the assistant principal who appeared to be harassing Craig suddenly
left him alone. After this, other Bankstons joined MACE!
Craig and his sweet and dedicated wife, Cathy, were regulars at
the MACE BASHes, and Cathy did part-time work at the MACE Office from time-to-time.
Even after Craig retired from teaching (he had taught in Clayton, DeKalb,
Atlanta, and Florida), we still heard from him and Cathy
on a fairly regular basis. Oh, one other note, after the aforementioned situation at Babb Middle,
I think that the principal retired before the school year was over. We will miss Craig
and his humor and his smile. He once told me that a principal in DeKalb with whom he was
fairly close told him that the DeKalb Superintendent was trying to get him to accept a transfer into Southwest DeKalb High
School as the principal. But, Craig’s
friend (the principal) told Craig: “No, I don’t want that
principal job because MACE is down there, and once they get hold of you, they don’t ever let you go!”
These are just a few
my musings on a December 3rd, 2009 evening.
Take care and have a safe and enjoyable Holiday Season!
December 3, 2009.
New National Standards Not Needed Cookie-Cutter Approaches To Curriculum And Pedagogy Do Not Work!
By Dr.
John Trotter New standards. New
curricula. New materials for the new curricula. New textbooks. New
programs. New experts. New consultants. More money. It's
all about the money. Don't kid yourselves. Ostensibly, it is about the children, but
it is about the money. Money now drives the public schooling process. Just like the
Military Industrial Complex which President Eisenhower warned us about, this Educational Curricula Complex is also very dangerous.
Wouldn't it be nice if our students learned the rules of grammar and could write a creative and cogent paragraph?
Wouldn't it be nice if our students could elucidate on the three branches of our republic and intelligently discuss
our national bi-cameral legislature? Wouldn't it be nice if our children could compute numbers on the basic
level (e.g., percentages, perhaps simple long division, etc.)? Wouldn't it be nice if our children could
actually quote the Preambles to our Constitution and Declaration of Independence as well as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and
King's "I Have a Dream" speech? Wouldn't it be nice if our children could actually recall in
which century that the Civil War took place or the Civil Rights movement took place? What about the essential
causes of World Wars I and II?
So many of our children don't even know these basics...stuff that was so elementary for those
of us who went to school in the 1950s and 1960s before all of the "feel good" curriculum of the 1970s came down
the pike (stuff like "Values Clarification"). All of the tinkering with the curriculum (minus
the obvious changes like in technology) have actually watered-down the curriculum to meet some common denominator.
The cookie-cutter approaches to both curriculum and pedagogy have contributed to the demise in public schooling.
Creating and promulgating new standards will not make a whit of difference. They will not improve
anything, but perhaps billions of dollars will be spent on such curricula ballyhoo. Giving the teachers
power in the classroom (1) to enforce her or his standards (without any pressure from the administration to change grades
and lower the failure rate) and (2) to establish discipline in her or his classroom (without the rug being pulled out from
under her or him by the spineless and weasel administrators) will do wonders in improving student achievement.
But, these educational bozos (who always clamor for "new" and "higher" standards) have not yet
figured this out. They just can't hit a curve ball. They need to be sent back down to
the "bush league" where they belong. © MACE, September 23, 2009.
Motivation
To Learn Is A Cultural Process Teachers Need More Freedom
By Dr. John Trotter [This article
first appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
dealing with a discussion about the performance of African
American children in urban schools.] All children CAN learn.
African American children CAN learn. But, not all children
WANT to learn. This is the issue. The MOTIVATION to learn is a culture phenomenon. The asian children WANT
to learn more intensely than the white children, the African American children, and the hispanic children. (All four
perfect scores on this year's SAT came from Asian children.) Obviously, family environment makes a huge difference --
as studies have shown that if a child comes from a two-parent household, he or she has a significantly higher chance of being
successful in school. There is the same positive correlation between social economic status (SES) and student achievement.
Some children just start their "hundred yard dash" ten yards behind the starting line. That's why we celebrate
so much when a child from dire economic and familial circumstances performs so well academically. We celebrate this
because it is simply so unusual. I personally love to hear stories about children growing up in terrible conditions
who overcome the social and economic obstacles to get accepted at Yale or Princeton.
This is inspirational because we know that this child has overcome much more in his or her success than a child born and raised
in Alparetta or Milton or Suwanee with two parents at home who have provided him or her with all of the tools and nurture
which enable the child to start the formal schooling process with all the requisite readiness skills.
I too have observed this "acting white" phenomenon. This is a reality among African American
children. I published a research article on the peer pressure perceptions of "academically able Black male adolescents"
in The Journal of Negro Education
(Winter of 1981). Often times, a young African American student will simply have to
withdraw from from his or her peer group in order to be successful in school. The anti-academic peer pressure is simply
that great. Our daughter admitted to her mom taht she purposely made lowered grades in high school because she did not
want to endure the criticism of "acting white." She flawlessly speaks the "Queen's English," is
very articulate, and loves to read. Often times, these traits, for a "child of color," are a liability among
his or her peers. This is sad, but this is just a fact. I have observed that this is particularly strong among
"children of color." African American children have so much to overcome. This is why teachers should
be freed up to be creative to be able to reach these children, to be able to find ways to MOTIVATE academically these children.
Putting teachers in pedagogical straight jackets and requiring them to teach from some inane cookie-cutter
pattern only creates more and more tedium and boredom in the clasroom. (Research has demonstrated that one of the greatest,
if not the greatest, hindrance for keeping the students from learning is simply their claim that they are immensely "bored"
by the schooling process.) Teachers are not allowed to be creative. In fact, creativity scares the administrators.
Of course, administrators appear easily scared these days. Three MACE colleagues and I visited one of Atlanta's middle
schools yesterday, and from the reaction of the principal, you would have thought that I was Darth
Vader. All of the secretaries happily jumped up in apparent excitement that we arrived at the school at the end
of the day and were signing in the visitors' log, but the principal did not apppear too excited and began making phone calls.
She asked me to talk with one of her apparent superiors downtown whom I have known for years. This central
office administrator, in repsonse to my stating that we had done nothing out of the ordinary -- nothing different from
the other unions, jokinly said, "Now Dr. Trotter, you know that they see you as John Wayne."
We made a trip downtown and apparently have this little snafu worked out, but this just illustrates how nervous the administrators
are these days. They apparently want NO CREATIVITY. They apparently want teachers to teach boringly with their
heads down. They seem to be very scared people, as a whole. This is sick.
All children are
different. They are not inanimate objects floating down a educational conveyor belt. All children CAN learn.
But, these days we need to (1) free up the teachers to be creative and (2) support the teachers when it comes to discipline.
The worst thing that we can do for children is to coddle and pamper them. They need strong stuctured environments where
they perceive that the teacher cares -- even loves -- them. Then, the chances for children to respond positively to
the learning is enhances. The key to learning is MOTIVATION, and MOTIVATON to learn is indeed a culture process.
For the curious...the school was Turner Middle School in Atlanta. (c) MACE, September 18, 2009.
A Double Standard In Georgia! Administrators At Fault, Not Teachers By Dr. John Trotter I have seen the Professional Standards Commission
(PSC) recommend three years of suspension of a teacher's certificate for a much less offense. Let's just face the facts:
The PSC was set up by the administrators and their legislator-friends to keep teachers in line, not administrators.
There is a clear double standard in the State. When Beverly Hall did
not report any serious disciplinary offenses a few years back for about 40 or more Atlanta schools, people just raised their
eyebrows is disbelief, but nothing was done. When Alvin Wilbanks in Gwinnett did not report thousands and thousands
(wasn't it over 30,000?) serious disciplinary offenses, the PSC just slapped him on the hand.
I received
just yesterday an email from a Gwinnett
teacher who says that Gwinnett in engaging in systematic cheating and that she has been trying to report it to Gwinnett officials,
but that they are turning a deaf ear. This type of anecdotal evidence comes into the MACE Office on a fairly regular
basis, and this is why MACE was the lone wolf howling in the desert about the systematic cheating taking place in places like
DeKalb and Atlanta. Heck, State Senator Ronald Ramsey simply summarily shut down a grievance
hearing wherein teachers were apparently prepared to testify about systematic cheating taking place at Clarkston High School. We presume that Ramsey was
just doing the job of his boss, Crawford Lewis.
Trust me: These incidents at the named schools
are not the only places of malevolent conduct. I think that it is just the tip of a huge cheating iceberg. MACE
will continue to speak out against such conduct, even though MACE will be reviled as some educational pariah to these weasel
administrators. It is the adminstrators who are destroying our public schools, not the teachers. (c) MACE, September
10, 2009.
Dr. Trotter Writes To Fulton's Superintendent Cindy Loe About Middle School Assistant Principal.
[The names of the teacher, the principal, and the school have been changed.]
October 15, 2009 Dr. Cindy Loe, Superintendent Fulton County
Schools 786 Cleveland Avenue, SW Atlanta,
Georgia 30313
Dear
Dr. Loe: I
am writing this letter on behalf of one of our valued members at Tension Middle School, Ms. Jenni Love. Ms.
Jenni Love came to our office and asked us if we could assist her in some matter concerning her assistant principal which,
to me, seems fairly petty considering the grand scheme and scope of the school’s mission. Apparently,
there is some confusion at Tension Middle School about to whom the Media Specialist reports when she is going to be absent
from the building due to illness, doctor’s appointment, etc. I think that that school system guideline
states that the absence should be reported to the principal as well as to the district-wide automated system.
Apparently, Ms. Jenni Love simply followed the district-wide practice, but her assistant principal, Mr. Picayune evidently
felt that she should have notified him. In an exchange of emails, Mr. Picayune apparently
chastised Ms. Jenni Love for not notifying him earlier of her intended absence, although she has apparently notified the principal,
Ms. Smith, as well as the automated system. Ms. Jenni Love replied to Mr. Picayune, letting him know that
she properly notified those whom the school district expected her to notify. Mr. Picayune apparently took
umbrage at Ms. Jenni Love’s assertion that she had followed the proper procedure, and he wrote, from the document which
is in front of me, a fairly caustic (as well as grammatically and syntactically incorrect) memo to Ms. Jenni Love on August
26, 2009. Mr. Picayune uses the word “sarcastic” on eight occasions in this memo.
Perhaps Mr. Picayune confuses factual with sarcasm. In a response to this memo, Ms. Jenni Love stated
that she had “NOT” been sarcastic, and it appears that Mr. Picayune also took exception to upper case letters
in not. Yet, I have seen a memo purportedly written from Mr. Picayune which went from standard type the
first time that it was sent out by email to bold type the second time that the email was sent to the same person.
Email and font etiquette is certainly not an exact science. In fact, I, a true luddite in many respects,
just recently learned that all upper cases means shouting to many people relative to emails or texting. I
learn something everyday. Electronic communication certainly cannot decipher tone or inflection.
I had though that all upper cases letters meant emphasis or emphases, although I seldom ever capitalize a word.
Ms. Jenni Love filed a grievance concerning the allegation that Mr. Picayune was violating school board policy as well
as breaching Professional Standards Commission’s Code of Ethics. She filed this grievance August
27, 2009, but in a spirit of willingness to resolve the matter, she was willing to forego the grievance for the time being
as a person in Human Resources was working on the matter. Mr. Picayune had stated in the aforementioned
August 26 memo that “[t]his letter will be filed in your personnel records and will be a part of your annual evaluation.”
I hope that Mr. Picayune is not using this evaluative instrument in a manipulative, retributive, and punitive manner.
Ms. Jenni Love tells us that Mr. Picayune was complimenting her on how she looked (either referring to her clothes
or countenance; I wouldn’t know), and that she simply retorted words to this effect: “Well…and
what do you need, Mr. Picayune.” Perhaps Mr. Picayune took offense at the rather curt tone of Ms.
Jenni Love’s alleged response.
Ms. Jenni Love is a good lady and a
serious-minded educator. She raised, as a single mother, two very successful children, the eldest being
a student in medical school in Louisville and the youngest being a student at Georgia Tech. She has been
removed from her home in Austell due to the horrific flood recently. Her possessions are ruined, and she
has been living outside her home for the last five or six weeks now. We are trying to help her resolve
this manner at the “lowest administrative level,” as the spirit of the law encourages (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.5 et
seq.). In fact, two of my colleagues at MACE and I traveled to Tension Middle School, hoping to peaceably
talk with Mr. Picayune after school one day. The students had already left the building. Unfortunately,
he was not in, and I left my card. To this day, I have not heard from him. Dr.
Loe, if you would ask a member of your staff to look into this impasse, I would appreciate it. I look forward
to working with you. I hope that you have settled nicely into your relatively “new” job.
I am sure that being a superintendent is not an easy task these days.
Sincerely:
John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD
Chairman & CEO
Dr. Trotter Writes To Cobb Superintendent About A Principal.
[The names of the teacher, the principal, and the school have
been changed.]
October 6, 2009 Mr. Fred Sanderson, Superintendent Cobb County School System 514 Glover Street Marietta, Georgia 30060
Dear Mr. Sanderson: I am writing to you today on behalf of Mrs. Jenni Love, one of our
valued members at MACE. She came to our office last week to share some concerns and some situations that
are apparently going on between Ms. Picayune, the principal at Tension Elementary School, and her. Obviously,
I do not know about the situation firsthand, but I feel compelled to share the essence of what she has shared with us at the
MACE Office. First, I want to congratulate
you and the school board for the many accolades that the school system has received this year. I believe
that I recall that you were willing to come out of retirement to lead the school system as its superintendent, and this is
very commendable because I know that it is not an easy job. I perused the website, and I noticed that the
school board members are obviously very educated and committed to serving the needs, as they see them, of the system’s
children. I noticed that the members of the school board have served in many capacities in their personal
lives (e.g., minister, engineer, business people, educator/child advocate, principal/educational leader/church volunteer,
U. S. Army officer with a PhD, MPH, and MBA, et al.). I am also aware that the Cobb County School System
is the second largest in Georgia. Therefore, I am quite sure that you are a busy man. Thus,
let me share Mrs. Love's concerns as best as I can.
Mrs. Love is a career educator, having taught for 20 years, and the last few years she has taught at Tension but her
other schools include Alpharetta Elementary and Crabapple Crossing Elementary in Fulton County. She became
a fulltime mom after her children were born, but her husband was severely hurt in a major accident at work a few years back.
He is now on fulltime disability. When the accident occurred, Mrs. Love, returned to teaching.
She has been, as evidenced by about twenty years of evaluations, an exemplary educator. She is a
family woman with very strong traditional values. But, something rather strange apparently began to unfold
this past August at her school. Let me recount
the story as told to me by Mrs. Love. This is off the top of my head. Apparently, one
of the teachers who teaches on Mrs. Love’s grade level had told the parents of her children last Spring that she wanted
to loop with their children. (Looping is, as I understand it, the practice of staying with the same children
through another grade level.) But, Principal Picayune apparently did not approve of this teacher’s
desire to loop with her former students for the full day in this year, but this teacher’s parents had not been notified
that full looping would not take place. Therefore, when parents showed up in August for the “Meet
& Greet,” some were apparently disenchanted that the full looping which had been promised to them was not happening
after all. (Mrs. Love teaches these same students in Math and Science.) Apparently, a PTA “guru” at the school informed the principal that Mrs. Love
did not provide her with “warm fuzzies” on the night of the Meet & Greet. Principal Picayune,
so I am told by Mrs. Love, apparently told Mrs. Love that this PTA “heavyweight” (no reference to physical stature;
I would not know her if I saw her) “didn’t get a good feeling from you [Mrs. Love].” Lo
and behold! This PTA “stalwart” had not even darkened the door of Mrs. Love’s classroom
on the night of the Meet & Greet! They had only exchanged pleasantries as they passed each other in
the hallway that afternoon, according to Mrs. Love.
Suddenly, it appears that Mrs. Love was the object of constant and petty “snoopervision” and the tyrannical
power of evaluative minutia. Two students were evidently taken out of Mrs. Love’s class to be put
in the same class where Principal Picayune’s child attends. Apparently, after 20 years of superlative
evaluations (were all of these administrators blind or incompetent?), Mrs. Love is treated as a sub-part teacher.
Could it be that Principal Picayune is offering up Mrs. Love as a “sacrificial lamb” to the gods of parental
impertinence? Is she being treated as a Levitical “scapegoat”? Of no fault
of her own, she now suffers from the vicissitudes of a principal apparently failing to notify the parents that full looping
was not going to take place. This hardly sounds fair, When Mrs. Love met with Principal Picayune, she told me that she simply asked the principal
if she had even looked at her past evaluations to which the principal apparently retorted: “Well,
this is this year.” Mrs. Love also apparently offered up to the principal that she felt like she
was working at a “slight disadvantage” since the parents had been expecting the full looping, and
Mrs. Picayune, according to Mrs. Love, replied: “Well, that was yours to make or break, and I guess
that you didn’t make it.” Can anyone say “Corporate Execution”? I
have been around public education for 55 years (with nearly all my relatives serving now or in the past as teachers or administrators
and my brother currently serving on a public board of education here in Georgia), and I have seen my share of corporate executions
carried out. If this is allowed to go on in this instant case, then it would be a travesty of justice and
a sin against humanity itself. It, in my opinion, certainly is an affront to the Judeo-Christian Ethic
of treating your fellow humans justly and mercifully.
Mrs. Love is a good teacher whose life apparently has been tormented by some of the actions of the administration at
Tension. She came to the school on one Monday and discovered that nearly every piece of furniture in her
room had been moved and re-arranged. (I presume that the administration moved her furniture and supplies.)
She could not find certain school supplies as well as some of her personal belongings. The same
PTA mother who allegedly had told Mrs. Picayune that she had not received enough “warm fuzzies” from Mrs. Love,
apparently told Mrs. Love, “To be frank with you, you’re the one being thrown under the bus.”
This is sad. It would be
nice if the principals in Cobb (as well as the principals in other districts) had some scant knowledge of social psychology.
The actions of many administrators are so apparently devoid of even a scintilla of understanding of negative forces
or valences which are touched off by the I gotcha approach to supervision. The top-down, heavy-handed
“snoopervisory” tactics which so many employ runs counter to rudimentary theory of human behavior (be that theory
gestalt, behavioral conditioning, etc.). If we want our classroom educators to be self-actualizing
human beings, then our administrators need to help satisfy the teachers’ lower needs (physical, safety, belonging, and
esteem). This is very basic stuff…almost sophomoric in nature. A satisfied need
no longer motivates. If we want self-actualizing educators who are not worried about their own
basic needs but the needs of the children in the classroom, then the petty vendettas need to cease. Perhaps
the principals have never been exposed to Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” or Kurt Lewin’s discussion
of positive and negative valences within a field force (and a classroom and even the larger school environment are two classic
examples of a field), or Carl Rogers’s understanding of the actualizing tendencies of humans and the
importance of authentic behavior. It appears to me that Mrs. Love got caught up within a vortex of administrative mishaps
which has apparently now spun out of control. I understand that Tension is a racially and ethnically transitional
school. I hope that the hue of Mrs. Love’s pigmentation is not a factor in this novella of sorts.
Racial insensitivity cuts both ways. I cannot but help to believe that one factor in
this dramatic equation is the notion that both Ms. Picayune and the teacher who allegedly told the parents that full looping
was going to take place are apparently members of the same sorority, Delta Sigma Theta.
If this is the case, then this favoritism also needs to cease post haste. Mrs. Love needs
to be freed up to concentrate on teaching the children under her care at Tension. This is her mission.
This is her hope. Playing “bureaucracy” with the administration hardly serves the interests
of the children. At MACE, our mantra is the following: You can’t
have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.
Mr. Sanderson, I felt compelled to share my and Mrs. Love’s concerns about what is apparently happening at Tension.
Of course, I could not expound upon the matter from first-hand knowledge, but Mrs. Love came to our office in hope
of finding some resolution to her situation. She is a good woman and does not deserve any unfair treatment. Respectfully,
John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD Chairman & CEO
c. U.
S. Office of Civil Rights
Board of Education Members
The Educrats Thwart Learning In The School Buildings!
By Dr. John Trotter
[This article originally appeared in the The Atlanta Journal-Constituion.]
Classroom
educators are the only real educators in the school system because they are the only people who actually interact with students
each day. The rest of the folk are just what I call "educrats." The educrats have cushy jobs which enable
them to live a "life of Reilly," whether located in the school building or in some central office-type building.
These are the jobs for which people aspire, especially the ones located outside the school buildings. (The high school
principalship, if performed correctly, is actually the toughest job in public schooling. Note that I said "if performed correctly.")
These educrats like to snoopervise teachers and make their lives miserable. I actually think
that the educrats also have some warped notion that this is what administrators/supervisors are supposed to do. So-called
leadership by intimidation rather than inspiration, I presume. This type of unleadership has been discounted in the
businessworld for years. It just does not work. As an administrator, I could always get the teachers to go the
extra mile (without even asking them) because they appreciated the fact that I supported them, valued them, respected them,
esteemed them (get the picture?). There is no respectable psychologist in the past or current who advocates scaring
the heck out of the professionals under your supervision and causing them undue stress in order to obtain more effective job
performance from them. If we want self-actualizing professionals to work with our sensitive and fragile children, then
being a harsh task-master toward
the teachers will only cause them to focus on their own needs (ala Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Kurt
Lewin, et al.). A satisfied need no longer motivates a person. For the teacher to be a self-actualizing
individual, then the teacher's lower needs (physical, safety, esteem, security, social, etc.) must first be satisfied.
This is just basic theory.
These educrats do not tend to be too hip to academe (and certainly
are not scholars in the true sense), are oblivious to good theory on how to treat fellow humans. They tend to operate
on bad theory, not even realizing that there are any theories of behavior involved. They work on the intimidation model
of bad conduct. Perhaps because they are so insecure about their own jobs amounting to essentially nothing but (A) inane
paperwork being foisted on the teachers and (B) insane evaluations being manipulated in a way that scares the teachers even
more, these educrats are bent on treating the real educators (the ones in the classroom) like their are pariahs instead of
"saviors" for the children. These insipid educrats and "insultants" (a name which my father used
to call central office consultant when he was a principal) see the teachers as the enemies rather than comrades committed
to educating children. Their behavior, I believe, is deeply rooted
in insecurity and ignorance. I presume
by now that you can tell that I don't suffer educational fools very well, especially when they are "mean as cat
s--t and twice as nasty," to quote my grandfather.
Yes, these educrats should be the first
to be jettisoned, as I clearly pointed out to Governor Perdue when I wrote to him in July about the furloughs. A 25%
to 35% cut in the educrats in Georgia would be a good start.
It would not hurt education one bit; in fact, it will actually help the school environments which will, hopefully, improve
student achivement. You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions, and these
educrats simply screw up good teaching conditions. (c) MACE, September 3, 2009.
Beware Sergeant Edmund Heatley: Clayton County
Is A Graveyard For Superintendents! By Dr. John Trotter [Dr.
Trotter responds to queries in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about his views on Clayton County's new superintendent, Edmund Heatley.]
What is there on which to comment? The school board
now has what it wanted...a man from California...just as Ericka Davis was insistent in 2004 on going all the way up to Minnesota to bring in Pulliam. Dr. Sam
King, Educator of the Year in Georgia (as chosen by fellow superintendents), a known quantity in Clayton County and currently
doing a super job by all accounts as superintendent in Rockdale County, was available, but the school board, never known for its wisdom,
chose to bring in a person, sight unseen, with two years of experience in the classroom. Dr. Sam King is well-known
for making discipline a top priority in a school system. I remember him when he was an assistant principal at Oliver Elementary School, principal at Forest Park Middle
School, and as he actually worked his way up to Assistant
Superintendent before Rockdale County realized that he was a "steal" and offered him the supetintendency about five years ago.
He is known
throughout Georgia as truly one of the brightest and hardest-working superintendents around. But, if the Clayton
County School Board, chooses to go with Sergeant Edmund Heatley, then so be it. We will see where the
school system ends up under his leadership. At MACE, we predicted that the school board would be sorry that it ever
had hirerd Pulliam. In fact, the night that the school board voted on her contract, MACE folk were picketing the school
board. One sign said: "You're gonna be sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry." Within three years, the same Ericka
Davis was working diligently to get rid of Pulliam.
Both Dr. Sam King and Dr. Valya Lee
would have been better superintendents for Clayton County than Sergeant Edmund Heatley. But, Clayton County has, through the years, been a veritable graveyard for superintendents, and the school board probably
did both of these good educators a favor by not selecting them. I cannot remember a single superintendent who ever left
the Clayton County School System simply because they wanted to retire.
I personally did not know Ed Edmonds, but I knew his nextdoor heighbors and his personal secretary. I am told that the
legislature changed the appointed/elected nature of the superintendency, depending on Mr. Edmonds's popularity at the
time. He preceded Mr. Stroud. I have personally known and interacted with the following Clayton County superintendents:
Ernest Stroud, Joe Lovin, Bob Livingston, Joe Hairston, Dan Colwell, Bill Chavis, Barbara Pulliam, Gloria Duncan, and Valya
Lee. Mr. Stroud "retired," but I am sure that he saw the handwriting on the wall, so to speak.
I
wish Dr. Heatley the best. Right now, Clayton County is dead last in the cellar on SAT and CRCT scores. The discipline has become atrocious through the
years. About Edmund Heatley: I have never met the gentleman nor have I spoken to him on the phone. This,
I am sure, is what qaulified him the most in the eyes of some school board members. (I was told by a sitting school
board member in 2005 that the school board then was going "all over the country," trying to find someone whom I
did not know.) Dr. Heatley, I will not call upon you -- unless your administration violates the law (e.g., refuses to
follow the grievance law, OCGA 20-2-289.5 et seq., the duty-free lunch law for elementary school
teachers, OCGA 20-2-218, etc.). I have bigger eggs to fry.
Clayton County has become, as we say in the MACE Office, the
"New Atlanta." Dr. Heatley, you are encountering the same issues that confronted the old Atlanta, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
I hope that you will be successful in your endeavors. But, if you simply try to sweep the dsiciplinary problems under
the proverbial rug, your stint in Clayton County will probably be somewhat truncated. (c) MACE, September
1, 2009
Merit Pay, Race,
Culture, & Public Schooling Part I [This genesis of this three-part article
was a recent blog on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Get Schooled blog. It started with Governor Perdue’s
thought that teachers salaries should be tied to the performance of the students whom they teach. It evolved
with some on the blog who were suggesting that some students, or more particularly, some races, were simply superior than
other students or races. The three articles are Dr. Trotter’s response to such virulent racism.]
Pay The Physician Only
If The Patient Is Well! Pay The Lawyer Only If The Client Is
Acquitted!
By Dr. John Trotter
I see that Sonny, like Roy, just doesn't get it. Now, with the budget crunch going on, Sonny's
decided not to pay the Nationally Certified teachers the money that was promised to them; rather, Sonny wants to tie extra
pay to the performance of the students, but who chooses the students? This is the issue: The
children are never randomly selected and scattered around evenly. The teacher who is teaching at Atlanta's
King Middle School is confronted with a much more difficult job than a teacher who is assigned to Gwinnett's Trickum Middle
School. Or, let's stay in the same county...Fulton. The teacher at Fulton's Haynes Bridge
Middle School in Alpharetta has an easier time getting students to perform at a certain academic level than students at Fulton's
McNair Middle School. I don't know what the answer is for the very significant achievement gap between
white students and black students. But, the Fulton County School System is certainly a microcosm for the
whole state on this issue. In the Fulton County School
System, the system is divided by north and south, with the Atlanta Public Schools sitting between the two distinctly different
geographical areas of the Fulton County Schools, and the academic performance of the children in these two areas are vastly
different. This school system stretches from north of Alpharetta to south of Palmetto -- about 75 to 80
miles long. Very diverse, considering that North Fulton is overwhelmingly white and South Fulton is overwhelmingly
black. In my job, I deal with teachers in both the north and the south. I have a fairly
accurate, I think, perspective. Besides the income disparity being very great, I am sure that if anyone
checked the formal educational levels of the parents of the children in both areas, the parents in the north would have higher
educational levels to a statistically significant level. This is where the motivation of the students comes
in play. If a student perceives that he or she comes from educated culture, from a family which values
formal education, then this student has more motivation to learn. The motivation to learn is the key.
The motivation to learn is a cultural phenomenon. I did not say "a racial phenomenon,"
but "a cultural phenomenon." The African American children, for example, who vacation at Martha's
Vineyard (as pointed in the book Our Kind of People, a revealing book about the "elite class"
among African Americans in this country) do not struggle with motivation to learn. In fact, their motivation
is to determine into which Ivy League school they will matriculate. Where there
is very little motivation to learn, there automatically is a concomitant amount of disciplinary problems associated with this
lack of motivation. If teachers are not freed up to be creative instead of being forced to teach in a straight-jacket
(so to speak), then this children will continue to disrupt the learning environments of the students who actually are motivated
to learn. Roy Barnes and Sonny Perdue and other people who were and are in positions to dole out monies
to teachers based on "performance of the students" never take into their calculations that children are not inanimate
objects which were randomly (and thus uniformly) selected to float down some educational conveyor belt. What
if we paid physicians based on how their patients performed. One doctor is sent to the ghetto where health
and nutrition takes a back seat to daily survival. But, this physician’s pay is tied to his patients’
blood pressure readings. His patients love ham-hock and fried chicken in their daily diets. But, his counter
part physician (both graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical School) has his practice in Athens, Georgia where most of his patients
refuse to eat fried foods, much less fried chicken with all of that ugly chicken skin. They cook with extra
virgin olive oil rather than pork lard. This Athenian physician's patients have low counts of blood pressure.
Should this physician make more than the physician whose practice is in an area where the patients cannot afford to
cook with extra virgin olive oil and are very lucky to be able to occasionally buy Wesson Corn Oil? You
get the point, but guess what? Ole Roy and Ole Sonny don't get the point...probably because they don't
want to get the point. It is so much easier, from a political standpoint, to just blame the teachers.
"We are only going to reward those teachers where the students perform." Balderdash!
We're only going to pay the physicians if their patients have low blood pressure! We're only going
to pay the court-appointed lawyers if their get their clients acquitted!
The motivation to learn is a cultural phenomenon, and if the motivation to learn is not there, all of the new curricula
fads and gadgets will not mean anything. The best thing that the educrats can do is (1) free up the teacher
so that the teacher can be creative in his or her attempts to reach these unmotivated students and (2) support the teacher
when he or she is attempting to establish a structured and orderly classroom environment. © MACE, September 27, 2009. Students Have The Same Type DNA But Different Cultural
Backgrounds Part II
I don't think that anyone in Georgia
decries the sorry state of student discipline in our public schools more than me. (This is really not an issue in private
schools.) Our representatives went to two high schools in Clayton County this past week and both schools,
according to our reps, look more formidable than a prison fortress -- halls near the front office blocked off by iron fences/gates
or whatever and one school had a metal detector at the main door. (For the record, the schools were Mundy's
Mill High and Jonesboro High.) And, while we are speaking of metal detectors, remember that most of the
serial killings at the schools throughout the country in the last decade -- be they at Columbine or Jonesboro, Arkansas --
were carried out by white students. This is also a cultural issue...white kids materially coddled by their
parents, spoiled-rotten and bored. But, I am not going to jump to a conclusion that there is something
in the DNA of white students that makes them more prone to carry out stupid, devastating, serial killings than children of
Asian, African, or Latin descent. It is indeed a cultural issue. No
inherent DNA differences. Your analogy about animals isn't logical because there are no different species
of humans. It would be more analogous if you had compared chocolate labs with black labs and/or yellow
labs. Your Darwinian view is simply flawed. But, I must admit that taking a Darwinian
view of humans would logically have you believing that one race might be genetically superior to another race -- the Nazis,
as you know, had this view. But, DNA is always the weakness in Darwin's theory.
I will grant you this...When a school starts on a racial transition and the population of the African American students
grows, the white administrators tend to be afraid of the African American students and their parents. (I
have seen this over and over again.) Tension builds and builds. Finally, the white administrators
get so afraid that they are reluctant to administer discipline to African American children. (Initially,
when the African American students arrive at a previously all white school, a lot of institutional racism exists, and the
African American students are personally stung by this. For example, the football team needs to have almost
75% African American players before more than two or three African American cheerleaders are selected for the Varsity Football
Cheerleading Squad. I am just telling you what I have observed for years.) Before you
know it, the discipline gets out of control, and very seldom can an administrator -- be he or she black or white -- get "tooth
paste back into the tube." An administrator must be determined from the beginning that he or she is
going to treat all students fairly, equitably, and firmly when it comes to discipline. If the administrator
is fair, then the word will get out. The administrator might not be liked initially but he or she will
be respected -- and usually eventually liked as well. Why do
Asian-American children score so well? Why were all four perfect scores on the SAT in Georgia from Asian-Americans?
Very simple. It is cultural phenomenon again. These students take the standardized
exams very seriously and study for them for years. One of the girls who made a perfect score this year
said that she had been taking sample SAT exams since her middle school years. Again, the motivation to
learn is a cultural phenomenon. Do the Asian American students have a stronger work ethic at school than
do the white, black, and/or Latino children? Yes, usually they do. Usually, they also
behave better in school. © MACE, September 27, 2009. The Key To Learning Is Motivation Part III Believing that there are inherent differences in races is the foundation of the
inherent evils of the fascist philosophy. Some on this blog obviously believe that the races are inherently
different. I do not. I believe that cultures are different as well as different peoples'
histories. There are also sub-cultures within cultures. The human race is a kaleidoscope,
but we are all children of God, created in the image of God. Children from different cultures bring different
levels of motivation to learn to school each day. The key to learning is motivation, a thought which seems
to totally escape our educrats. The motivation to learn is a cultural phenomenon. The
motivation to learn, not the ability to learn. I believe that 90% of the learning content which is offered
up by the public schools can be mastered by 90% of the students, if the students are motivated to learn as they are motivated
to learn many things outside of the public school walls. © MACE, September 27, 2009.
Dr. Trotter Takes On U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan!
By Dr. John Trotter
[This small article originally appeared in the AJC's Get School blog. This is Dr. Trotter response
to the new Secretary of Education's mandate to do a total overhaul of public education in American, blaming the problems on everyone except the students
and the parents.]
When it comes to the public schooling process, Duncan doesn’t know his rear end from deep center field. He doesn’t have
a clue, and I don’t care what his position is. He apparently thinks that you can just demand and command improvement.
He wants to replace everyone…except the ones who matter, the children. The children in these failing schools are essentially
the problem. They are unmotivated and lazy. Now, Joy’s take on this is that they are dumb; my thinking is that they
bring no motivation to learn to school each day. Yes, there are many incompetent and idiotic and mean administrators who need
to go (but realize that they were promoted because they are sycophants). There are even some bad teachers (but these are really
rare). The problem starts with the students. What is Duncan going to do with some so-called students who act like miscreants
each day? (c) MACE, August 27, 2009.
Dr. Trotter Is Quoted In The Atlanta Journal Constitution On His Views On Duncan.
It's A Motivational Breakdown, Not A Technical Breakdown! By Dr. John Trotter
[This article originally appeared
in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.]
Georgia’s overall SAT ranking hasn’t changed hardly
one whit (I guess that a whit is first cousin to a bit) from its overall rankings 10 or 20 years ago on the SAT. It’s
not worth getting all worked up about it. The Law of Large Numbers is for real.
Significant changes probably indicate some systematic fudging or cheating taking place. Minimum Foundation, APEG, QBE, A+,
NCLB — none of these programs brought about significant changes, although these Georgia programs (and the monies spent in Georgia from the Federal NCLB) cost the taxpayers untold millions
and billions. Hire good teachers, allow them to be creative in their teaching, and support them in areas of student discipline.
This is the best thing that can be done for the boys and girls in Georgia.
The definition for crazy is doing the same thing
and getting the same results. Am I advocating a change in instruction or a change in the curricula or a change in the way
the schools are organized or a change in the school schedules? No. As a society, we constantly change things, hoping that
these changes will result in genuine student improvement on the SAT and other standardized tests. Do you remember the almighty middle
school concept? What about block scheduling? New math? Sight reading?
Whole language? Non-graded instruction? We could go on and on. Now the State
is coming up with an even more biased and onerous teacher evaluative process which is subject to major administrative abuse.
Why? Another attempt to bring about improvement. It’s not going to happen. The Law of the Large Numbers
is a law, folk. Somewhat like The Law of Gravity. You have to change either who
our students are or drastically change our current students’ attitudes toward rigorous academics. Just legislating more
laws or passing more policies without addressing the students themselves is like spitting toward a Tsunami! You just end up
with spit all over your face and clothes. But, no, no one wants to blame anything on the students or on their parents. This
would not be very political, but it would be the truth. I will continue to quote Dr. Eugene Boyce, one of my professors nearly
30 years ago at UGA: “The motivation to learn is a social process.” It’s a motivational breakdown, not a
technical breakdown. (c) MACE, August 25, 2009.
Georgia Needs More Vocational Education
By Dr. John Trotter
Not
all students are cut out for college. No shame. They can and often do make more money
and have a good career and life in jobs which do not require college education. However, the standardized
tests are driving everything now. Presumably, this is why Beverly Hall shut down a highly successful auto
body shop at the old Archer High School. This "shop class" could not contribute to the standardized
tests (the false gods of public education), though this "shop class" had contributed mightily to changing many students'
lives in the Perry Homes/Hollywood Court area of Atlanta. These kids, under the inspirational leadership
of Mr. Whitehead, took this "shop class," took great pride in their success (winning statewide competition), and
got meaningful jobs in places like Beaudry Ford. But, abruptly and without sufficient explanation, the
program was eliminated. The standardized tests are driving this notion
that all students should become "scholars" rather than "vocationalists" (did I make up this word?).
Most of the students, I believe, who begin college do not complete college. They went down the wrong
track. The British model may provide something in the offing. The State of Georgia should
forget about the standardized test scores. The State should throw off the shackles of stadardized testing.
Yes, have tests, but for the purposes of simply gaining insight, not funds. In the old days, we
had the yearly Achievement Tests, but we were not enslaved to these tests. The State should establish strong
vocational programs in nearly every high school in Georgia. (c) MACE, August 18, 2009.
Hey Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, The Earth Isn’t Flat! By Dr. John Trotter [This article originally was published in the AJC’s Get Schooled blog.] Heah, heah, you boys must actually think that the
AJC is still a serious journalistic venture. I hope that I am wrong but I think it is just trying to figure
out how to survive now, but your suggestions are correct...if the AJC would really dig deep without bias, then perhaps it
will become relevant again. People began to attach less value to the paper (note that I still say "the
paper"). I miss the paper before the days of Martin when he brought in the USA Today standard of writing
little short articles. I guess that he thought so-called "dumb Southerners" would not read lengthy
investigative articles. I miss Rick Allen, Bill Shipp, Dick Williams (he did write for the AJC at one time,
right?), and, of course, the late Lewis G. Jimbo Wooten (my fellow UGA alum) is retiring, and he will be
missed, particularly on Friday. Jimbo is conservative, and I too tend to be conservative on everything
but Free Speech and race issues. I will even miss Cynthia T. because reading her editorials let me know
what the standard liberal, Democrat line was on anything. I sort of miss that. Plus,
she's an Auburn graduate and so is my Dad. MAM, the paper will never address the lack
of discipline in the schools and the lack of teacher authority in the classroom. The AJC is still operating
like the Earth is flat. Trying to improve the educational achievement of students in public school without
addressing the woeful lack of structure and discipline in place is insanity. It doesn't matter what curriculum
is in place and how much money is throw at the problem. Without establishing discipline, it is all for
naught. © MACE, August 21, 2009.
Merit
Pay For Teachers Does Not Work By Dr. John Trotter
[This article first appeared on the Atlanta Journal’s Get Schooled blog.
Dr. Trotter wrote this is response to a California teacher who wrote a book advocating, among other things, merit pay
for teachers.]
NOTE:
I will try (note that I said "try") not to call these callous and insensitive (and might I say "evil"?)
administrators by the phrase that offends the sensibilities of the AJC Blog Filter. Perhaps the Good Master
would call them "a brood of vipers." I was talking to a teacher tonight who was crying and severely
stressed out by some lying and conniving administrators who appear to delight in making people's (yes, teachers are real people)
lives miserable. Our mission at MACE is to devour administrators (metaphorically, of course; this is not
a terroristic threat) who abuse teachers. We don't do spelling bees and give out tote bags nor do we try
to act like we are important by aimlessly walking the halls of the Georgia Capitol. We don't have time
for such silliness. Now to the post that now may post. O que? Tudo bem, amigos e amigas!
What does Brother Crosby propose to do with the kiss-up,
weasling, and booger-eatin' administrators who immediately label any teacher a "trouble-maker" when ANYTHING is
questioned? (Maureen, you ably pointed out the notion that questioning teachers are labeled "trouble-makers"
in your "Endangered [T]eachers" article of July 6, 2009 on the "Opinion" page of the AJC.)
These are the same administrators who would sell their own mothers "down the river" to ensure that they can
hold on to their high-paying jobs and lifestyles. They use the evaluative process in a manipulative, punitive,
and retributive manner. They do not tolerate anyone who deigns (1) to point out that some students are
acting like hellions and that the teachers need administrative support in order to deal with these miscreant "students"
(yes, "miscreant" because their behaviors often cross the line into criminality) or (2) to refuse to simply "go
along to get along," especially when issues of conscience are involved (like lying about student attendance in order
to cook the books for No Child Left Behind or changing answers on students' test sheets so that the Pharoah-Superintendents
won't terminate, demote, or transfer them). Merit pay has never worked in public education because students
are not inanimate objects floating down a conveyor belt in a factory. Students have various IQ levels,
have different motivational levels, and definitely come from different home environments which make all the difference in
the world. I worked in a public school system in Georgia which was the only school system in the State
which actually practiced differentiated pay for teachers. This same school system was hailed in Time Magazine
and Reader's Digest as a forward-looking and progressive school system in Georgia because of “merit pay.”
I was allowed to look at the teachers' salaries at the school, and I can assure you that the salaries did NOT correlate
to a teacher's skill or dedication as a teacher but to the number of b_tts that his or her lips had puckered up to or
whose spouse this teacher was attached to. It was all about politico-familial connections and/or b_tt-kissing.
These factors determined who got the "best" group of kids and who got the "merit" pay.
When you can control the input variables, then, and only then, perhaps will some form of "merit" pay work.
Until then, it is just a sham and a farce. Teachers start rat-holing everything from teaching materials,
lesson plans, and insightful ideas. Teachers become suspicious of each other and very uncooperative.
In fact, they begin to act like 2nd and 3rd year law students who are competitively angling to be hired (or, "enslaved")
by the silk stocking law firms. (c) MACE, August 14, 2009.
A Round Earth, A Disciplined School By Dr. John Trotter It all begins
with discipline, but you won't hear this word even pop up in any conversation by policy wonks, legislators, State Board members,
or superintendents (especially not from the university professors of education who have their heads so far into the clouds
that you cannot see their crania -- the plural for cranium, eh?). Therefore, the public schooling process
will NOT improve -- not until student discipline improves. Establishing student discipline is the "dirty
work" for administrators, and hardly any of the new genre of administrators want to do it or even understand its importance.
Our so-called "school leaders" of today are trying to explore the high seas of school improvement using flat
earth topography. It is really pitiful watching them wring their hands and wondering why the schools do
not improve...heck, they think, "We've passed good education-legislation, commandeered standardized tests for the children
to take and even published the scores in the media, and we have commanded the scores to go up." And?
No improvement emerges. In fact, the reality is this: The Georgia schools today
are in worse shape than ever, and it is NOT the fault of the teachers. The Nitwit Educrats and legislators
who are making decisions about education in Georgia do not have a clue. It would be like me teaching how
computer work or teaching the advance (or lower) stages of Calculus. I wouldn't have a clue.
It is this simple: They do not have a clue, and they certainly haven't even thought that starting
with the establishment of school discipline is the essential prerequisite before anything else can even have a chance of working.
I wonder if people like Christopher Columbus had folks to look haplessly at them when they kept saying that the Earth
was round. Hey folks: A Round Earth, A Disciplined School. You have
to start here. (c) MACE, July 24, 2009.
Hey Governor, Balance The Budget By Slashing The Administration! By Dr. John Trotter
Dear Governor Perdue: Let's see now.
Something is not making sense. Public school systems have about five or six (or more) times the
per capita "Central Office" employees as do the private schools (be they well-established schools like Marist,
Woodward, Westminster, or Lovett or fairly new Christian or other religious
academies) and yet the public school systems operate much less efficiently than do the private schools. I
know that the public schools have to take whomever the parents send our way -- and I want to make it clear that I am a product
of public schools from kindergarten through a doctorate at UGA over 25 years ago, although I did graduate later from law school
at Mercer University which is private. Public schools just aren't what they used to be.
You had discipline in the old days, and that was the FIRST order of business BEFORE
you could focus on any curriculum and learning. (Think back about your experiences at Warner Robins
High School in Houston County. In your heart, you know that I am speaking the
truth.) I was reading Tim Russert's best selling book this week about his relationship
with his father, Big Russ & Me, which is about his relationship with his father and about growing up
Catholic in a working class Buffalo neighborhood. Russert was regaling
in the stories of Father John Sturm, the Prefect of Discipline at Canisius High
School where he attended. Russert joyfully remembered that all day Father
Sturm barked orders: "Stand up straight"; "Fix your tie"; "Close your
mouth"; "Stay in line"; "Why aren't your shoes shined?"; and others. (Today,
Father Sturm would be immediately fired for talking like this. He would be told that he was not
"sensitive.") When you have strong discipline in place and the superintendents and school boards
support good discipline, you don't need multiple layers of bureaucratic paper-pushers (trying to find ways
to blame the woes of education on the teachers and creating more inane things for teachers to do). The
teachers just need support in discipline, by and large. It is really so simple that the educrats and policy
wonks can't see it. They need to teach just one day at Coan Middle School or Therrell
High School in Atlanta or Forest Park High School or Forest Park Middle
School in Clayton or Lithonia Middle School or Clarkston High School or
Flat Rock Elementary School in DeKalb or Lindley Middle School or
Bryant Elementary School or Russell Elementary School in Cobb or Liberty Elementary School
or Banneker High School in Fulton or Lilburn Middle School in
Gwinnett or just about any school in Georgia. Teachers don't need all of the "Insultants"
(as my father always called the Central Office "Consultants" when he was a Georgia
principal); the teachers need support. Today, the focus is on having a zillion educrats to condescendingly
tell teachers how to teach instead of supporting teachers so that they can
teach! Nearly 30 years ago, I was the sole administrator in charge of discipline at a large high school
in Georgia (with some very rowdy students). I became the assistant principal in charge
of discipline at age 27. I was coming down from the University of Georgia, and the teachers
later recalled how they were predicting how long it would take before the students had me under control. It
didn't work that way. By October/November, I was bored because the discipline was so under
control. You could hear a pin drop in the halls, and the teachers loved it because they now could teach
without having to focus on discipline all day. The students, deep down, actually love the strong discipline,
and this is the point of my mentioning the book by the late Tim Russert of Meet the Press.
Only the thugs do not like strong discipline, but if you do not get the thugs in line or get rid of the thugs (and
that's what the superintendents and principals today refuse to do -- and especially since No Child Left Behind
penalizes suspensions and expulsions), then there will be chaos in the schools, resulting in hiring more Central Office
personnel (snoopervisors, if you will) to push more paper and blame onto the teachers. (By
the way, in that one year, I had to take 13 "thugs" before the school board, and the school board expelled all 13
"thugs" for either the rest of the quarter or for the rest of the school year. This got everyone's
attention.) So, what
is my point? How does this relate to the State's budget woes (and they are real)? Well,
I think that the answer that you, Governor, should be seeking is how much money a 25% to 35%
slash in administrators would save the State. Do you really need four or five or even six administrators
who "share" disciplinary responsibilities but who really shuffle their responsibilities to each other or simply
bury theirs heads in the sand, resulting in essentially nothing being done? Get rid of most of the "Insultants"/Snoopervisors
at the Central Offices. The fat is in the administrative ranks, not in the teaching
ranks. This, Governor, is where you should be cutting. The teachers have already borne
the blunt of this so-called "reform movement" which has been a colossal failure.
How about thinking outside of the box? How about showing teachers your utmost respect and save the
money by reducing the ridiculous and gargantuan size of the administrative ranks? How about becoming the
Georgia governor who began restoring discipline in our schools? This would be quite refreshing.
Governor, I don't envy your budgetary responsibilities, but when it comes to the schools of Georgia,
please do the right thing. At MACE, we often state that you cannot have good learning
conditions until you first have good teaching conditions. Respectfully, John Trotter, EdD, JD. (c) MACE,
July 23, 2009.
Testing Lobby Controls Public Education Superintendents
Only Want Weasel Principals! By Dr. John Trotter At MACE, we have been stating for
a long time (even in pickets and articles) that there is systematic cheating taking place. If you are a
man or woman of integrity, it is very difficult for you to be an administrator these days. This reality
has been emerging stronger and stronger through the years, especially after the passage of the Quality Basic Education
Act (QBE) in Georgia in the mid-1980s and the passage of the No Child Left
Behind Act (NCLB) in the Federal Congress. Test scores were raised as the almighty
gods which determine how "good" or "bad" a school is or a school system is. Quite frankly,
the superintendents want "booger-eaters" as principals because they can be scared into doing anything just to keep
their jobs. They know that their jobs are dependent on the test scores. Hence, fudging
and out-right cheating takes place. If you do not go along with the program, then, as a teacher or an assistant
principal, you are targeted. Educators who are good leaders with great people skills are not wanted anymore.
For years, I have personally been telling people who have integrity to stay out of administration. There's
no telling how many times that I have said, "All they want as principals these days are a bunch of weasels/booger-eaters."
This is the state of the public schooling process not only in Georgia, but pretty much nationwide.
Test scores drive and determine the curricula and everything else in public education, including jobs and promotions.
It is this National Testing Complex which is bohemoth in size and drenched with money.
The Testing Lobby now controls public education. It needs to be broken. (c) MACE,
July 20, 2009.
Crawford Lewis Must Go! The Deplorable
Conditions At Cross Keys High School By Dr. John Trotter Personally,
I think that Crawford Lewis and his DeKalb administration are driven so much by political
factors. Yes, any careless observer knows that Cross Keys High School has been neglected
for years. The school is very ethnic-oriented, and, unfortunately the people do not appear to feel politically
empowered. This must change. If this physical facility was located where Stephenson
High is now located, the parents of the community would be demanding that the DeKalb County Board of Education
fire Superintendent Crawford Lewis (which, by the way, is a pretty good idea). At
MACE, we think that Superintendent Lewis is a joke, a clown, and a candy
ass superintendent. Hey, Lawyer Josey Alexander, are we clear enough for you?
Crawford Lewis is a joke and a clown of a superintendent because
of the deplorable Cross Keys High School situation and many other similar eyesores in the DeKalb
County School System. He is a candy ass superintendent because he is evidently
afraid to process a State-mandated grievance according to State Statute (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.5 et seq.).
Apparently there are other groups in Georgia and DeKalb County who have similarly
low opinions of the DeKalb County School System's "leadership" (the buck stops at the top with
Crawford Lewis) because websites are springing up explicitly to protest the actions of the DeKalb
County School System. I guess MACE is just prophetic in its analysis of the DeKalb
County School System under the non-leadership of Crawford Lewis. (c) MACE,
2009.
Pitiful Crawford Lewis Must Be
Upset With MACE!
Little Lawyer Josey Alexander Sends Another Silly Letter To Dr. John
Trotter, But To No Avail
July 14, 2009 Dear Little Miss Josey Alexander:
You must be embarrassed to have to write your silly letters to me, but I presume that your boss, Crawford Lewis,
one whom I call “a joke of a superintendent,” is upset with how we call him a “joke”
and a “clown” and a “candy ass superintendent.” Do
you feel like you are being legally pimped? If not, then you are a worse attorney than I initially thought
you were. Did you even take a Constitutional Law class in law school? Do
you understand anything about the First Amendment? Well, tell little ole Crawford
that we may leave him alone for a while because our next target are the school board members (Sarah Copelin-Wood,
Zepora Roberts, Gene Walker, et al.). Our message to them: Either get rid of
Crawford Lewis or face political doom at your next election. You think that Crawford
will like that? Lady, if you think that calling an elected official (superintendent
of a large school system who has constant access to the media) a “joke” or a “clown”
or a “candy ass superintendent” is actionable, then you had better go back
and read New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, if you have ever read it in the
first place. The absolute defense against any slander or libel is the truth, and what we have said about
Crawford Lewis is the truth. His administration had refused to abide by the Georgia
Statute on grievances (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.5 et seq.). We have addressed Crawford
on many occasions about his administration not abiding by this law. When a superintendent refuses to go
by this law, we can only conclude that he or she is afraid of airing out complaints from employees, subject to the aforementioned
statute. Hence, the superintendent is a “candy ass,” a “chicken,”
if you will. Crawford is not the only superintendent who has earned this moniker in Georgia.
But, make no mistake, I think that Crawford Lewis is “a joke of a superintendent,”
a “clown of a superintendent,” and “a candy ass superintendent.” Do
I think that he is also an “educational hypocrite”? Sure I do!
Not just him, but I think that Atlanta’s Beverly Hall and SACS’s Mark Elgart
are big time “educational hypocrites” in Georgia. Now, I
have never called Crawford a “killer,” as your letter libelously accused me
of doing. Miss Alexander, if you want to engage in a frivolous suit against me,
then go ahead. If you actually think that another silly letter from you in any way intimidates me, then
you obviously have the wrong “John Trotter.” Perhaps you were looking for
a “John Trotter” who plays the bagpipes in Scotland, but even he, I don’t
think, would be one bit impressed by you. Crawford chose to get into the kitchen; he will
just have to take the heat of being a public official. I will continue to offer my opinion about Crawford
and his lack of leadership in the DeKalb County School System. We were just about to have
a grievance hearing where the teacher whom we were representing was about to testify about systematic cheating at Clarkston
High School, and State Senator Ronald Ramsey summarily shut down the grievance, which he had no
legal right to do. This teacher had a list of other teachers who were willing to testify about the cheating
matters. As you recall, MACE has staged a number of pickets at the DeKalb Central
Office and elsewhere decrying systematic cheating. Shortly thereafter, the Atherton Cheating
Scandal broke wide open in the media, and I think the administrators were carried off in handcuffs. Then,
you had the situation which was covered on the nightly news about the teacher at King High School who alleges
that the grades in her grade book were changed and that students who were not supposed to graduate actually graduated.
Oh yes, I think that there is a lot of corruption in the DeKalb County School System, and the buck
stops at the top. Yep, I will continue to agitate and will not vacillate one bit.
Miss Josey, if your letters were not so pitiful and sad, they would actually be laughable. Yep,
this might be fun…having the Doors of Depositions opened. “We waive
all objections except to the form of the question…unless, of course, the heat gets too hot, and then we’ll ask
State Senator Ronald Ramsey to shut down the depositions for good!” The previous
quote, Miss Josey, was satire – in case you didn’t get it. I don’t think
any “reasonable man” would conclude that we were literally quoting your good boss, the “Candy Ass
Superintendent”! But, you never know. Miss
Josey, I have to run now. But, I will make sure that this letter too will end up on our website,
TheTeachersAdvocate.Com. What do you think of our website? We’ve
been getting a lot of good responses from this website. The teachers and the public have a right to know! Sincerely:
John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD P. S. Miss Josey, do you
actually think that you can give me a “Formal Directive”? LOL!
I take “formal directives” from the Good Lord Himself, the Good Book
(Revised Standard Version preferred), and my parents (who are both over 84 years young now).
Your chutzpah is quite amusing. c. J. Anderson Ramay, Esq. Preston Lee Haliburton, Esq.
There’s A
Culture Of Cheating In Atlanta & DeKalb I remember
when one teacher conscientiously reported (as was her duty) another teacher for cheating on the standardized test. This happened,
so I was told by a teacher at this school, at an elementary school in Atlanta. The teacher who did the reporting
was “corporately executed” (contract non-renewed), and the teacher who was accused of cheating
was made (no doubt by the principal, not by fellow teachers) “Teacher of the Year.”
This is how Atlanta works, Gov. So, don’t be too dismayed that Beverly Hall
has not investigated the situation at Deerwood Academy. There
is a cheating culture in the Atlanta Public Schools as well as in the DeKalb County
School System, in my opinion, and I have seen a lot in my days. Governor,
I have always thought of you as an independent, competent, and honest man. If you really want to expose more on these questionable
and near-impossible gains (considering the Law of the Large Numbers), how about checking into the scores
(100% on the four reading and math tests) at Atlanta’s Capitol View and West
Manor Elementary Schools? Atlanta’s school culture is a cesspool,
despite all the accolades that the media and the local Chamber of Commerce apparently seek
to heap upon Beverly Hall. I still say that the three biggest educational hypocrites in Georgia
are Beverly Hall, Crawford Lewis, and Mark Elgart. © MACE,
July 10, 2009.
Standardized Test Correlate With Income Georgia
Criterion-Referenced Tests Are Bogus!
By Dr. John Trotter
As usual, Catlady is right. There is virtually ALWAYS a positive one-to-one relationship with test scores
and the child's Socio-economic Status (SES). The collective test scores for each school (unless cheating
is an intervening variable) simply indicate how many students are on free and reduced lunches. The test
scores are so predictive of free and reduced lunch scores. There is a strong correlation. That's
it. It's just that simple. The CRCT is indeed a joke. The ACT and
SAT are norm-referenced tests. All serious tests are norm-referenced. The criterion-referenced
tests (like the CRCT) are for public consumption -- to try to fool the people into thinking real "progress" is being
made. (c) MACE, 2009
More Revelations About Dekalb To Come?
What's Wrong With Middle Schools?
The Acronym Needed: D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E!
DeKalb County Tries To Kill Messenger!
DeKalb County, Systematic Cheating, Robert Moseley, Race, Mark Elgart, Etc.
MACE Is Vindicated On The Cheating!
MACE: Administrators Are Ruining Our Schools!
Free Lunch Count Can Predict Standardized Test Scores!
Treating Teachers Like Sh_t!
Dr. John Trotters Treatise Against The DeKalb County School System!
More on Cheating, Falsifying, & Violating Law!
The Tests Become The Curricula!
The False God of Standardized Testing!
The GAP Team Leading Clayton School Board Further Down The Road of Destruction?
News, Notes, Quips, & Quotes
State-run Voucher SchoolsEducrats Still Looking For Faddish Panaceas.
Ah...Surely Not "Premier" DeKalb!
MACE Is Not For Everyone!
Mark Elgart of SACS= Cry Baby
Are Our Educrats Nuts or What?
Norreese Haynes -- The Real Story!
A Wild, Wild Year!
APS: Still Teaching in Hell!
Coweta Teacher Written Up for Dust Bunnies in Trailer!
"Anal-Retentive" Principal Cries in Fulton County?
Fashion Nazis in Gwinnett!
Can Caribbean-Born Teachers Teach Phonics in Atlanta?
Teacher with Bipolar Disorder in Atlanta!
Are Teachers Able to Pee in Fulton County?
A Clear Mission!
It's the Discipline, Stupid!
Dr. Trotter's Letter to DeKalb Middle School Principal!
Pulliam's Immoral Reading Curriculum!
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"MACE doesn't give tote bags
and do spelling bees, but, then again, I've never met an administrator who's afraid of a tote bag or a spelling bee."
-- Dr. John Trotter
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