Even is certainly right. The central issue holding America back from improving the schools is the property tax-based funding scheme. Just try to touch that and watch people squeal.
The teacher-qualification thing is a red herring. Lots of talented people can teach with few qualifications can teach, many with lots of qualifications cannot. Qualification standards have become a fence against recruitment of fresh blood designed by the unions.
But, the idea of holding The System accountable is the basis of all else. Presently, The System can simply write off whole groups of students. If we can hold The System’s feet to the fire, we will push them towards excellence.
NCLB is very far from perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Good schools and teachers must be rewarded bad ones must be helped and perhaps even punished. This is obvious. The resistance to this simple truth is led by the unions and is hurting children.
I’m not sure I precisely agree with you here–the arguments against lateral entry are more robust than simply job-protection–but in essence I think you’re right. Until we can professionalize teaching (which I think should be our ultimate goal, requiring teachers to get an education roughly analogous to what attorneys must get), we need to recognize that teaching colleges don’t really produce uniformly good teachers, and that folks with strong qualifications can be deterred from teaching by having to return to undergraduate institutions.
How do you compare a teacher whose students are in Honors and AP classes with a teacher who teaches basics and fundamental classes? Also, consider that if the school is punished, the students face the consequences. It’s not always so simple to tell which schools are “bad” anyway. Some of the schools which are failing under the NCLB program are schools that were designated “Blue Ribbon Schools” previously.
An excellent question. The answer so far is somewhere between ‘imperfectly’ and ‘I don’t know.’ Still, we can agree that The System has to be held accountable. Only by this can we provide pressure towards excellence.
Because education involves a lot of politics that have nothing to do with one’s teaching ability. Presumably, most people are against it because they feel it makes it hard to fire bad teachers, but getting rid of it males it harder to find good teachers. You’d be surprised how much backstabbing and political in-fighting exists in schools today, and if job security weren’t guaranteed, you would see more of it. Students suffer when teachers mistrust their colleagues/bosses. Since there isn’t a particularly accurate way of evaluating a teachers performance, you foster an environment where people feel the need to “look” better than their peers as opposed to becomes better teachers for their own sake.
Job security also makes it harder for administrators to intimidate teachers. If you find out the problems a particular school has, you will see the vast majority of the people arguing for reform are tenured. Why? Because non-tenured teachers don’t want to rock the boat.
Then, you must look at the personalities teaching attracts. In my opinion, teachers value security more than people in many other professions. It’s part of what attracts people to the job.
Without tenure, schools facing budget constraints would just fire old teachers regardless of their quality. Why keep two teachers making 70k when you can hire 3 for 40k? I don’t think it’s fair to do that. Any system where teachers with experience become a liability is flawed IMO.
Additionally, much of the public perceives teaching as a “bullshit job” and firing teachers after a decade or so would make it hard for them to integrate back into the workforce since the “skills” that are valued haven’t been utilized during that time.
Recently, a teacher in my area was let go (contract not renewed) because he was deemed “too contoversial.” He was a government teacher who encouraged students to think outside the box and to engage in debates in the classroom about current events. One of his students taped one of his lectures. I listened to it. In no way was he pushing any political views on the students, but merely asking probing questions of both sides. Reading between the lines of what the school board said, his unpardonable sin was encouraging kids to make up their own minds.
One of the school board members was quoted as saying, “This sort of thing may fly in the big city, but not here.” Hundreds of students signed petitions and came to the board meetings to beg them to allow the teacher to stay. Even if I hadn’t heard the tape myself and heard what the students were saying, I probably would have been convinced when one of my ultra-conservative co-workers expressed that she was saddened by it. Her son had taken his classes, and said that he was an excellent teacher.
Yeah, local control of education is so ingrained that it is foolish to even think about overturning it. Local people will administer their schools well or poorly depending. Of course this ensures the central government will not impose One Big Mistake on everyone.
Also you have to admit local people ought to (within limits) control their own schools as it aligns interests very neatly.
And we’re rapidly back to prayer. How is that any different than keeping the kids in their original classes and **hoping ** that works out? Because the teachers and paint are different? How do you intend to fill this new school with personnel? Heck, how do you intend to pay for the building, equipment, etc.?
Ah, because that always works. Put the kids in another district which has no experience dealing with people from the original district. Not to mention that you’ve just increased the class size of the new school, which is always a problem. If we “increase the size” of these “good” school, how do you intend to fill the new classrooms with good teachers? Who is going to pay for the new additions?
Right, better to tear down the admittedly dieased structure and start from stratch with funding from the Underwear Gnomes.
When someone is sick, the doctors don’t just go in, ripping and tearing out organs at random. They target the disease and they fix it. That’s what we need to do here, take careful aim and work on what we got. Is it going to be expensive and take time? Yes. Better than expensive and ineffective.
This isn’t Major League Baseball. A new stadium and a line-up of superstars isn’t going to cure-all, heck, it doesn’t even in MLB.
Ten years ago I might have been surprised but since then I’ve seen plenty of petty and spitful behavior from workmates and employers in a wide variety of settings. I’m just not convinced tenure prevents this from happening nor am I convinced that it’s a good thing over all.
Of course you answered a question that was asked and I do appreciate it. You’ve given me something to think about and it’s quite possible I’ll come to see things your way after I chew on it for a while.
The teacher qualification is to ensure that a teacher knows the subject matter better than the students. There are a lot of teachers in math & science classes (especially at elementary & middle school level) that have great pedagogical skills that know nothing about the subject.
In other words, you are taking the opposite extreme by assuming a good teacher can teach anything. That is simply not true - you need to know the subject AND have teaching skills. NCLB addresses both of these issues.
My mom works for the state governemnt, Right now she tests computer system. Before, she helped collect taxes. Before that, she worked at a call center.
Through all of these promotions, she never once had to “prove compency”. Her previous work experience combined with her manager’s decisions to hire her are considered enough proof. As far as I know this procedure is the same throughout the government, in both professional and semi-professional jobs.
I think teachers sometimes get an unfair shake because they are an easy target and one of the few professions whoes work habits arn’t decided by their managers or customers, but rather by government fiat. If we treated our state lawyers or doctors like this, we’d heave even less of those, too.
I don’t think tenure “prevents” this per se, but I think it’s a mitigating factor. I wish tenure wasn’t necessary, but I think it is based on some of the stuff I mentioned before. In the private sector, competition is usually good because people have a way to show their worth to their employer based on what they produce (often tangible things). A teacher has few ways to prove they are worth what they are paid.
How much math do you need to teach at the elementary level? Adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying fractions is about as advanced as I can remember elementary school math getting but maybe kids these days are solving differential equations or something. At the elementary level I think pedagogical skills are what’s most necessary not being an expert in math, history, or literature.
Don’t necessarily blame Bush. As a professional developer at my school, I offered my services free of charge to my principal to go through every teacher’s (public) record and provide questionnaires and fill out the correct forms to ensure EVERYONE met NCLB a year before the deadline. My principal’s reply was, don’t worry - the district will take care of that.
As of today, the district has not taken care of it.