Then why don’t you go out and become a teacher? Its not like the barrier to entry is enormous.
And frankly, if “everyone” agreed they were, you wouldn’t have characters like Chris Christy and Scott Walker in Wisconsin scoring political points by going after them.
As long as every school:
A) will accept that voucher as full payment for tuition and fees;
B) must accept all comers;
C) must teach the basics necessary for a regents diploma;
D) must hire certified teachers 9or whatever the standard is to get hired by the public school system;
IOW must meet all the standards that public schools must abide by, then, I don’t see why a voucher system would be any worse than the current system and the question comes down to whether your particular school system is disfunctional enough for you to try just about anything.
As things stand, how many districts do you think are so disfunctional that the parents would vote to chuck their current system out the window to try out this new system? Or do you think government should impose it on them?
Wait a minute. Are you talking about firing a guy because he was accused of and acquited of charges? So now being accused should be grounds for firing? It might have gotten too hard to fire bad teachers but it seems somewhat unAmerican to fire someone because they have been accused even thoough they have been acquitted.
Education-Subject materials change with time as new things are understood. There has been no epiphanys concerning the simplest machine elements. “Introductory Applied Physics” by Harris and Hemmerling, McGraw-Hill 1963 pg. 183-“Despite hundreds of different kinds of complex machines in use, there are actually only three basic machines, the lever, the inclined plane, and the hydraulic press.” Please prove this text book wrong and get off my back. I used this example to show how text books have changed because they are chosen by teachers that tend to want to teach what they understand and agree with and not by proven content or advances. Teachers have not originated from the top percentages of university performers and tend to teach their field because they can not compete in a system where profit performance drives their careers. They can however become demigods with a protected job unless they are ethical or go against Administration or become politically incorrect. Why do most teachers support the Democratic Party (the anti-corporate socialist party}? Socialism ends when “other peoples money” runs out said Margaret Thatcher. Do not be stupid, investigate the Atlanta Public School system agenda to see what is wrong with our system, which is the topic of discussion, not machines, or shut up. Now go out there and educate yourselves like I have. Sometimes the dumbest kid in the class gets paid and sit up front and to prove their worth, will cheat as a substitute for ability.
Last year I went through a process during which I videotaped two sample lessons, collected work from students demonstrating specific teaching strategies, and documented my contributions to the teaching profession. I wrote roughly a hundred pages describing the work I’d done and its relationship to teaching standards and analyzing the ways in which particular lessons met–or failed to meet–the specific needs of my students. I took a three-hour written exam during which I analyzed six different situations that might arise for teachers in my area of expertise (middle childhood) and described what I would do to meet student needs.
This was the year-long application for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. It’s a $2,500 fee to apply, and in some states (mine included) you get a stipend for a successful application; fewer than half of applicants succeed on their first time around.
I would be totally okay with requiring ALL teachers to go through this process during their fourth, fifth, or sixth year of teaching, and giving them three years to complete the process. Those who complete the process successfully would stop being paid like factory workers and started being paid like professionals. Those who fail to complete the process would be given a link to Craigslist Jobs page.
I emailed one of my old professors, a man who has had a PE certification in Mechanical Engineering for a long time. Here is what he said:
A pump is a fancy lever with a compressible fulcrum. It is a way to transfer force using area instead of distance as a multiplier without using a solid as a transfer mechanism.
I’ll take the word of a man far more intelligent than you over a textbook every day of the week.
I hope you don’t think I was suggesting that such a process doesn’t exist at present. I’d like it to be mandatory everywhere, and successful teachers paid more, with more administrative assistance and more teachers’ aides and smaller classes, available to everyone. But RR wants you to be replaced by nuns, who take a vow of poverty and have recourse to teaching with a ruler when they feel so inclined.
One of his points (thus far unstated) still puzzles me, and I wonder what your take on it, Daniel: that of students who don’t want to learn. I think one root problem in public schools is that small group of students who have no interest, no motivation, no family pressure or support, in doing well in school. It’s all well and good to say “Change that,” but we know that any plan for change tomorrow leaves us with unruly, bored, hostile, often disturbed “students” occupying seats in classrooms, making teaching difficult if not impossible. I think that if an idiot like RR had a kid who said “School sucks, Dad,” RR would blame his kid’s issues ON the school, not the kid, and support him in whatever wacky way seemed appropriate at the moment–beat up your teacher, stop attending, start fights, set fires, do drugs, all as long as it wasn’t the kid’s fault that school sucks. What do you do with totally unmotivated students who are required by law to attend your school?
The two things should have nothing to do with each other.
If let’s say I was caught taking kickbacks from vendors (I’m a buyer, for those playing along at home) I would be fired regardless of what the legal system decided or even if it decided to bother. I would be fired long before it ever got to court and even if I were completely exonerated of the charges, there’s no way I’d expect to have my job waiting for me Monday Morning.
Regardless of how the legal system plays out, there should be the ability of administration to 1) make sure this guy never gets alone with another kid and 2) make sure he’s not sucking up the taxpayer’s hard earned money.
Guy, I’ve met professors with Ph.D.'s and tenure who were absolutely worthless…
And frankly, I don’t think you need a flippin’ master’s degree to teach a fourth grader math. You really don’t.
We place way too much emphasis on this nonsense. I know folks with no degree who are damned good at their jobs, and people with them that are worthless as tits on a bull. It’s a scam big education uses to keep us all in their thrall, a butt we have to kiss to move ahead.
The thing is, what should count is job performance, just like it is in the real world. My employer might have been impressed with my degree and the medals the Army gave me and the work I did at other places, but at the end of the day, either I bring the performance or I don’t, and if I don’t, I’m out of there.
Teacher’s unions have the effect of saying, “you can be the most worthless slug out there, but as long as you’ve paid your dues, we will fight tooth and nail to keep anyone from getting rid of you, even if you are doing actual harm to your charges.”
And as I pointed out earlier, the Democratic politicians who are happy to cash the big checks would never subject their own kids to this nonsense.
Well… we don’t have tenure exactly, but once you are done with your probationary contract it takes almost an act of God to get fired or not have your contract renewed. It is really really really really (and I mean really) hard to get rid of a lousy teacher in Texas.
You can tell people to shut up in the Pit, but not here. It looks to me like you’ve gone off on a lot of tagential arguments here - please stick to the subject of education.
If you suspect someone is socking, please tell the mods instead of posting about it mid-thread.
Our big government teachers of today, and their pet teachers union will take credit for everything newsworthy and deeded good, disavow anything negative or media bad. The administrators are criminal is a lot of cases, like what is happening right now in the Georgia public school system. Teachers who have punished children in the past for cheating have been caught in a cheating system to make them look good on review. They can never live this down. Check it out for yourselves and, NO, the Socialist Teachers Union does not get a pass on this one, as it is the children that have been permanently harmed. A generation taught cheating is ok because it worked until it did not.
crewface, your arguments are nearly stream-of-consciousness rants without paragraphs, facts, or cites. It’s very difficult to take them seriously. May I suggest that you kick back a little, read some threads, watch for posts that are persuasive, and see how folks write those posts?
You’ll probably find that they use paragraphs with topic sentences, they respond directly to other points, they avoid name-calling (or relegate it to a minor snarky aside, not a main point), and they provide strong factual claims buttressed with credible cites.
Part of the underlying problem here is the just-plain prejudice against education generally by opponents, “I been to school, and it was no big whoop what them techers did” sort of thing, “anybody could do it, especialy what Miss Knockchester did, that bitch, to me in thrid grade” funny thing is u can tell by total lack of sentence structure and frequency of typos who’s actually been educated a little bit so rants of this sort tend to flag themselves, but RR, who’s about average in writing skills around these parts, mostly comes from this biased place so there’s no reasoning with him, anyone could do it, it’s not a real job, and he seems offended that teachers earn more than minimum wage, certainly that they earn anywhere close to what he earns.
BTW, it’s not essential to my argument that teachers earn Masters or Doctorates, that was just shorthand–we can call them “teaching certificates” or whatever, as long as it’s post-grad coursework in specific areas related to their teaching, either content-level or pedagogy. A course in “tenure” for example, what it protects and doesn’t protect, ways to improve it, its monetary value, recent court cases and developments, might be useful, but you’d need about 12 such courses (and A’s in them) to be fast-tracked into the profession.
“Well, most of these education haters are uneducated, but RR can actually structure a sentence… but he’s just like them. Those meanies!”
Obviously, nobody ever taught you the concept of a run-on sentence, did they?
Fact of the matter is, the people who are really against “education” are the parents who look at the awful job these folks do. They are darned angry that they have to chuck out extra money to buy “Hooked on Phonics” or get the Sylvan Learning Center to do the job that they are already paying big bucks to have these “certified” professionals do because they don’t give a flip.
But you see, my solution is simple enough. Give every parent a voucher. Let the schools compete for their business. Just like every other business out there, performance and service will what counts.
et r strang thut thu teechus cum ot of thu wudwurk whin sumone reveels korupshun sisteemic en ataks thu gramma thay uz tu dufind thu cheeters fore munny- Now examine your motives and let us know if you are a teacher who participated in or ordered test score cheating at your Gubermint school. It is about the students and the topic, how to fix education, not attacking persons who post. A run on sentence still has content and a point, what is your point?