I’ll be on vacation for a few days and will not be blogging. Feel free to use this space as an open thread to talk about whatever you want in the meantime.
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
I’ll be on vacation for a few days and will not be blogging. Feel free to use this space as an open thread to talk about whatever you want in the meantime.
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
When do the taxpayers of Peoria get to grade the administration of District 150??
Time to grade District 150 principals?
School Board wants to evaluate leaders based on performance when it comes to pay increases
Thursday, February 14, 2008
By DAVE HANEY
OF THE JOURNAL STAR
PEORIA – Increasing reading or math scores by certain percentage points and cutting truancy or dropout rates may determine whether or how much of a raise School District 150 principals could receive come the start of the next school year.
Officials say the move – from salary increases tied to what the teachers’ union bargains and receives annually to one based on performance and held to particular goals – will provide more focus at each of the district’s more than 30 schools and programs.
“The Board of Education wants more accountability,” District 150 Superintendent Ken Hinton said of the proposed performance-based contracts that will be implemented with the hiring of new principals at Manual and Richwoods high schools in the coming months but also may affect all principals beginning this fall.
Not all goals will be tied to student achievement, both Hinton and board members are quick to point out, noting parental involvement and teacher and student morale likely will be as much a part of the evaluating process as will recommendations from the superintendent.
But Hinton admits academic performance is under the microscope nationwide. “With (No Child Left Behind) it became ever more important,” he said this week.
The board on Monday is expected to vote on the new policy, removing principals from the current method of compensation. School officials say the actual tool used to evaluate principals, however, likely won’t come until later this summer.
The performance-based concept is certainly nothing new nor individual to District 150.
Bob Hall, chairman of the Educational Leadership Department at Western Illinois University, said the practice, long held for superintendents, illustrates “natural progression” by expanding such evaluation to principals and represents a school district more or less saying “this is what we expect.”
The District 150 board in 2006 told the administration it wanted to introduce the performance-based raises for principals, but that process has been delayed.
Board member Debbie Wolfmeyer, who has pushed for the new evaluation tool, said Monday during a school committee meeting she didn’t want to see principals handed raises without any evaluations, which she said took place last year.
Principals and other school-level administrators, such as assistant principals and deans, traditionally get the same raises as teachers. As of August, that raise was a 1 percent increase to base salary. The average annual salary for a District 150 principal, excluding the alternative schools and adult education programs, is about $88,500.
The principal evaluation, board members say, would consist of a checklist of sorts, involving a number rating system for several criteria such as attitude and morale within the school as well as raw data, test scores and other information – attendance, truancy, dropout rates – from preceding years.
Goals also will have to be in place at the start of the school year. Still to be determined is when to begin. Some school officials have mentioned the performance-based evaluation should be phased in while others say all the district’s principals should follow such parameters this fall.
“In my mind, the principal is the one who sets the tone for expectations in the building,” board member Jim Stowell said. “It’s really a great opportunity for principals, and hopefully, ultimately, teachers alike, to be compensated extra for extra effort.”
Grade the school district? I think that has already been done by the thousands flocking to Dunlap, Bartonville, home schools and across the river. I think it already seen in the price of homes within District 150. As far as the district, the teacher’s union and the school board are concerned, I think we see what people think of Peoria’s schools.
makes sense to me..as long as the superintendents, sorry,1 super & 2 deputy supers are held to a similar process that takes budget, number of schools on watchlists etc into account.
septboy,
Just to set the record straight the top heavy administration (in more ways than one)consists of the superintendent,
2 associate superintendents plus an assistant superintendent who is equally well paid! And I ahead in salary and benefits of these two associates and the assistant is King Hinton’s court jester Cahill.
I think that is a called a gaggle of administrator$ !
^oo^~
So, are they going to reorganize the district so that there are no principals? That would free up alot of money! Maybe they will have the Administrative Directors take over all those jobs.
ImaSwede,
right – no need to have principals nor teachers with best intentions when the BOE takes over assigning grades for 14,000 students! Just have mommy and daddy tell the BOE what they want their little prince and princess to get when they first dump them off at King Hinton’s womb to 18 school.
^oo^~
That was good! I laughed so hard I almost choked on my Valentine’s chocolate!!
Well, more important things to worry about… 18 shot and possibly 2 dead at Northern Illinois University. My friend’s son is up there….. on lockdown. Thank God he is ok….
I do not envy educators!!
NIU proves once again that a concealed carry law is desperately needed in this state. I also would bet a substantial sum this guy was whacked out on prescription drugs, like almost all these “school shooters”. The only question is how long it takes before the facts leak out this time. Of course, Chicagovich, the Mayor of Chicago, and the various new world order advocates will use this as another excuse to push disarming law-abiding citizens and advancing more surveillence and gestapo-like searches, etc., etc.
A concealed weapon wouldn’t have helped this situation. Cole Hall is a huge lecture auditorium. This happened faster than could have been prevented and the shooter took himself out. Northern is a huge campus…40,000+ students over 700 acres. To think that having a bunch of undergrads packing heat would have helped is naive.
The issue here is not gun control laws. It is about campus security and plans implemented to maintain it. After V. Tech most schools around the nation tried to address campus security and what can/should be done in these ‘shooter’ situations. They came up with crap. Local colleges have fire and tornado alarms, exit plans etc. It is sad to say, but the chance of a school shooting seems far more likely than a fire or tornado hit! I am sorry, but little if anything has been done in local area schools to address this situation.
that Colorado church where the armed volunteer security guard squelched that potential massacre was essentially a hugh lecture hall, Rixblix. It happened just as fast. New Voice is right about the need for planning, but the problem is, effective planning would require the active participation of teachers and students. That wouldn’t do. They are supposed to be sheep. If they are involved with the planning, they would soon realize how vulnerable they are and demand that means of self defense be available. If the sheep realize they are sheep, that would upset the whole applecart. Can’t have the sheep thinking for themselves.
Another Chinese contamination problem?
In case you haven’t heard, the blood-thinning drug heparin is being investigated for possible contamination causing reactions and deaths. Apparently the suspect ingedient comes from – you guessed it – China. Oh what a blessing free trade is.
Well, mouse, it was a security guard that killed the gunman in the church, not an 18 year old in the middle of a lecture hall. There is a difference there.
Apparently the shooter stopped taking his medications, whatever they were. Oh, but to have such a troubled mind must be so painful to go and kill they way he has. Here is a picture of him in high school apparently.
http://pysih.com/2008/02/15/steve-kazmierczak/
and his myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/sinicalypse
And apparently now, there is a post on the myspace that is not the shooter’s site, but a friend of his….. over 5,000 hits today. So much anger on that site too….
just as I thought, the guy was on drugs. Now, whattaya bet he was the same kind of stuff the others were on – one of those so-called “anti-depressants”. By the way, Rixblix, 18, 19, and 20-year-olds, just like those NIU students, stormed the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima so you could live in freedom. Not saying we should arm every college student, but in the not too distant past, young Americans stepped up to do brave and difficult things. Now we insist they cower under desks and hope the bullet hits somebody else. What has this country come to?
Unless we are wanting put a fence around the whole campus and have metal detectors at each entrance and check cars and vehicles coming in I don’t see how you could stop this. And if this young man was not able to get into the college to do this then he could of just gone into a crowded restaurant or Wal-Mart and produced the same outcome. This is a much larger problem than securing areas or gun control or concealed carry laws. These people are going to do what they are going to do. Our only chance is to try and raise our youth better but I don’t see much changing there. This isn’t really a new problem. Don’t you remember the guy back in the 60’s that shot all those people from the clock tower at some college campus? Not a good thing but people have been flipping out for many years. Unfortunately they seem to think taking as many with them is the thing to do now. It’s just very sad. So close to home this time.
The answer to violence is never more violence. This man intended to do harm. He legally obtained his weapons. That’s his right…to buy as many weapons as he wants. What has this country come to? What have we come to when our answer to violence is more and more and more violence. Who does more to glorify guns and violence? Video game makers, film makers or the NRA? I say the NRA. Buy more guns. Conceal more weapons. A gun in your purse, a gun in your car…that’s what’s wrong with this country.
Peoriafan,
You were writing about University of Texas campus.
Rixblix,
Excuse me while I step down from my 150 podium and ask you a question.
When you posted “Who does more to glorify guns and violence? Video game makers, film makers or the NRA? I say the NRA.” You have to be joking – right? NRA isn’t the problem! And I don’t even own a gun!
Surely you have seen a video game or two, or MANY films, let alone have been subjected to some idiot’s idea of “music” I call that rap crap. What do all of those do to an immature mind – let alone some sick-o 27 year old who had to take meds to keep him socialable? As someone else has already stated when a sick-o wants to do harm to others as well as kill themselves in the end then it’s going to happen. This is sooooooo sad – but don’t blame the NRA!
^oo^~
I’ve heard more than a few people say the media is partly to blame. (not just in the most recent shooting) I was curious what everyone thinks about this. Does the media glorify these indiscriminate killings? Do these nut job shooters do this to be ‘famous’ or to ‘make history’, knowing it will cause a media swarm? Should the press handle it in a different way? Thoughts? Opinions? The Omaha mall shooter (remember him?) mentioned he would now “be famous”. I couldn’t even tell you his name without looking up the story. Sadley, I think another wacko is always on the way. Hard to keep up with them.
http://www.tinnong24h.com/US/wireStory?id=4015694
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TBNJGG0&show_article=1
To be as secure as in a sealed room, you must live in a sealed in room and so it goes for our social interactions. Live in a compartmented social oder that has no interaction outside of the walled in rooms and you might approach a secure situation, but there will be an exception just sure as there is sand on a beach. The term public will take on a much different meaning.
It’s so easy to point to violent video games and angry music as the root of all evil…America is a violent society. Us against Them. We are a very young society in history’s terms. The NRA is a multi-million dollar lobbying agency much like big pharma. Unfortunately, it’s far more acceptable to hold drug companies liable for their obvious misfeasance that it is gun manufacturers. The gun lobby works to loosen all regulations on owners, dealers and manufacturers. The gun lobby is as insidious and harmful as the pharma lobby. And, yes, I believe that the NRA has major culpability gun crime.
NRA and gun crime.The NRA educates people about guns,and the proper handling of them.They also educate the youth enrolled in the programs on the reallity of the world we live in today.These are not rational people doing the shootings.Do you think this idea just sprang on him, or was it a copy of what some other nut did.The one who caused this was the nut job behind the gun.I bet some of his friends are wishing right now,if I only said something.That is one way the shootings could lessen,if only someone says I think this person needs help.But to place blame? How can you stop an ambush if no-one knows about it but the shooter?
“The answer to violence is never more violence.” Ya, Rixblix, you’re right. Let’s disarm the police. Normandy and Iwo Jima were mistakes. Hitler and Tojo were really nice guys, we just didn’t understand them. It we could have just talked them into taking Ritalin, everything would have been fine. Oh, and that awful Civil War we fought and all that violence we visited upon the Southern states just becuase they wanted to secede. Huge Crime. I’m surprised you haven’t already started the movement to give the Southern states reparations for all the destruction they suffered at the hands of the Union Army. Don’t you think it’s high time to right that wrong, Rixblix. Let’s be consistent here. Violence is never the answer.
Ian,
I think there needs to be a ballance between the public’s right to know and an excercise in judgement on how certain stories may in fact impact the public negatively. As you know, responsible journalism is bound by integrity and a set of ethics. I am not certain if the increase in violence is related to an increase in media coverage or not. I did a study in my undergraduate years on the effects of music on aggression. I had grown up during the “back masking” years and had heard that certain types of music would influence behavior, but also noted a lack of hard data on the topic. Long story short, I found statistically significant results that music will influence mood and subsequently behavior, but there has to be a predispostion to that mood to begin with. In other words, if you are prone to aggression and listen to what would be described as clearly aggressive moods, the music will enhance/elevate that existing mood. Not a big surprise, but did provide at least a preliminary basis scientifically. Shocked the heck of out professor as he did not expect any clinically significant results.
I know from working in my field that simply asking or assessing one’s suicidal/homocidal risk does not “plant” the idea in one’s head, but on the other side, I would only speculate that extensive coverage of the mechanics of these incidents or worse in the almost “glorification” of these incidents could provide a better blue print to implement or some internal motivation to act for those who already have these thoughts, but have not enacted them. I would also speculate that some people experience vicarious trauma through some of the extensive coverage by the media. I remember during the OJ trials, and to date me, the Challenger explosion, and before my time the Kennedy assasingation, and also 9-11, people were glued to their sets, even though no additional information was provided. That behavior can reinforce the fear/trauma base if there is no method of processing it. Eg: people at work talking about 9-11 and discussing their reactions. For those in more isolation, I would predict it would become easier to fall into despair.
I think the link to violent crime/actions is directly related to sociological reasons (and the most important reason–being choice) vs. more media related, but the fact that we are instantly aware of such acts throughout the world has one of two effects: 1. desensitization (or even learned helplessness) in areas we should become more active and involved or incensed enough to act toward positive change or 2. an increase in fear or hypervigilance in areas where we might not need to fear threatened.
I am glad that you are asking this question, as a young professional in your field, I hope that you continue to wrestle these issues with the variety of stories you will cover throughout your lifetime. It will make you a better journalist from the struggle.
I would also submit that while Mayor Ardis recieved a great deal of flack from his previous challenge to media about including more postive stories, I agree it is very important to continue to show that there are hopeful things in the world and the local community at large.
And to a previous thread, perhaps “sumptious” was not the word to describe your pad, perhaps “Swanky” would do.
best of luck in your pursuit of excellence my friend.