More About Isolated Incidents

I have written before about how the public school system is blinded by numbers. I submit that that is why "they" like the phrase "isolated incident", because, in their mind, it minimizes the conflict.

Isolated incidents and insignificant percentages sound great, until it happens to you.

Here are the numbers provided by The Gradebook:

Hillsborough: Of 12,887 classroom teachers, 6,709 were rated Outstanding (52.1 percent), 6,088 were rated Satisfactory (47.2 percent), 62 were rated Needs Improvement (0.5 percent) and 28 were rated Unsatisfactory (0.2 percent).

Redisni sounds like they are an "insider" - wonder what will happen to him/her when they are traced down.

"The improbable numbers reinforce the old say "there are lies, big lies and then there are statistics. Administrators like to use statistical results to support their progress and planning, but this time the numbers came back to bite them.

By the way, those 28 low performing teachers from Hillsborough probably came from my school. Since those teachers were purged from the school, can Hillsborough now boast a 100% satisfactory+ rate?

Posted by: redisni | July 08, 2009 at 04:28 PM "

The public, and school employees simply have to trust the numbers.

How many thousands of students and parents are effected by those 28 teachers for the years that those teachers are there? How many of these students and parents will eventually turn against the system after their complaints are ignored? How many borderline students that may have been helped with their communication skills will instead end up being identified as what is wrong with the education system. We know the school system can't make a good salad with wilted lettuce and rotten tomatoes. Throw in some Po Boys and some Mexican jumping beans, and the system's production suffers.

But the numbers look good. Damn near 100% is something that damn near 100% of the people will believe.