Blaming federal laws must not be an excuse for tolerating dangerous students. But that is exactly what principals seem to be doing to avoid scrutiny of violence in their schools in Baltimore City.
Teachers across the system accuse them of not reporting violent students so that their schools are not labeled “persistently dangerous” under the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. Consequences of making the list include losing students and money. Teachers vented their frustrations at a meeting Monday with Baltimore City Public School System Chief Executive Officer Andres Alonso and Mayor Sheila Dixon following a nationally broadcast video of a student beating a city teacher.
“Our last principal paid for massages for teachers but didn?t report when students set fires,” said Cindy Bush-Johnson, a preschool teacher at Morovia Park Elementary.
Is that what leadership is about? Putting your staff and the vast majority of your students in harm?s way so that you can save yourself? As importantly, how are students supposed to learn in a dangerous environment? As Julia Gumminger, a former city public school teacher who was attacked by a student last year and who told her story to local media, said in a letter to the editor last week: “Teachers send their students to the principal and assistant principal for disciplining, and the students are sent back to the classroom holding handwritten notes that read, ?Ms. ___, there is no one in the office to deal with this student right now. Please do not send any more students to the office today.? The disruptions in the classroom, therefore, continue and lessons remain unfinished.”
Alonso said he will fire any principal who does not suspend or expel dangerous students. But the school system has not yet said if any of those already identified as tolerating violence have been disciplined.
He is right to say he does not care about the label “persistently dangerous.” The school cannot improve if the school system and parents do not have access to real statistics. But he needs a monitoring tool that holds principals accountable that does not depend on scrapping No Child Left Behind. We would suggest creating a publicly available online database where teachers could post incidents. Safeguards could be put in place so that minors? names were not released. That would give parents the tools to know if their children were safe and force principals to improve the safety of their schools.
Making empty threats to fire unresponsive principals will not quell violence and will only help perpetuate low student achievement and graduation rates, the poverty those problems beget throughout the city, and the lack of skilled workers needed to make this region thrive.
