ALBANY, GA -
Dougherty County School Administrators think they've come up with a good solution to replace 13 teachers removed from their classes because of CRCT cheating. The system won't pay temporary substitutes.
Instead, Early Intervention Program teachers will replace the educators who confessed to cheating.
Superintendent Dr. Joshua Murfree says he wants to minimize disruption to students and do more than the minimum required to deal with the fallout from the state CRCT cheating report. He says filling classrooms with EIP teachers is the best fix for now.
Thirteen teachers pulled out of the classroom by the Superintendent and School Board left classrooms at Turner Elementary, Jackson Heights, Alice Coachman, MLK, Sherwood, Westtown, and Northside without instructors. They've been replaced with Early Intervention Program teachers.
"That's a teacher who helps students get back on grade level who have fallen behind on their academic achievement," said DCSS Public Information Director R. D. Harter.
They are full time, salaried instructors. Dougherty County schools use them for one on one instruction, pulling students out of class, but the state offers a second option.
"An EIP teachers takes in students who are behind grade level and works with the whole class together and brings them up to speed for their grade level," Harter said.
To fill the void, that's what the school has opted to do, use them in classrooms, where for many students they're a familiar face. Unlike a substitute, they're familiar with the materials and better equipped to deal with students who may not have been getting what they needed through instruction if teachers were continuing to cheat.
"We want to make sure that students who are in classrooms where cheating might have been involved, where those students, we need to be able to bring them up to grade level on anything they may have missed as indicated by test performance."
Students who were individually seeing EIP teachers are now getting the same instruction just inside the classroom and school officials feel they won't miss a beat getting what they need in that classroom setting.
The Early Intervention Program has long been a focus of the Dougherty County School System. In many schools they have what is called third period, it's a time of study halls or other recreational time for students that can be used for students who are falling behind to catch up.
School Administrators say this is the fix for now, but it may change once they have a better idea of whether other teachers will be removed from the classroom and how long the teachers could be out.
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