That may be true, Finn, but in the absence of standardized tests, how does an outsider gauge the student’s progress, and the effectiveness of schooling? The only measure left is grades, which are assigned individually by each teacher. One teacher’s A work is another teacher’s B work, there is no consistency.
If a school is turning out students unprepared for the world, how do you find out before it is too late to help?
So allowing the best trained, most experienced employees to keep their job is a bad thing? This is common practice throughout most workplaces, union and nonunion (nepotism, politics etc notwithstanding of course), so why is it suddenly evil when teachers have the same consideration as the rest of us?
And I’m talking of teachers that are good representatives of their profession, not some guy who merely has been there the longest.
This “teaching to the test” thing is one of the things that has gotten our school system to the point that it’s at now. And that is to say, NOT turning out successful graduates the way it should. That’s most of the reason that the NCLB thing has people in such an uproar, the whole “formulized test” thing.
I don’t believe that seniority, at least in our school district is determined only by time on the job. Job performances are taken into strong consideration as well. So that if Teacher A with only 3 years on the job is doing spectacularly well, and Teacher B with 20 years is just coasting, and it came to crunch time, Teacher A would have the job.
For one thing, our muni looking at the bottom line the way they always do, new teachers get paid less, so getting the older teachers to take early retirement or forcing them into it, saves money.
That’s not exactly fair either. I’m still not getting why, in any other industry, reasonable treatment, reward for time in service (getting to keep your job), fairly regular raises and ability to continue getting raises with no “cap” are givens, but people just accept that it shouldn’t be so for teachers.
One addendum regarding tenure and seniority. In PA, tenure travels but seniority doesn’t. IOW, once you achieve tenure in the Pennsylvania system, you are tenured even if you take a job in another PA district. Seniority applies only in the district where you gain it. So, if I work for 20 years in District A and then take a job in District B, I am at the bottom of the seniority list in District B.
Bill H.- pretty much anything I might have said in response to your suggestions has already been said by others.
Then private schools do not compete with public schools, which is precisely what I said. Leading subsequently into what I also pointed out: That what you referred to as competition, isn’t. Private schools may be competing for students, but public schools aren’t. You show up at a public school, you’re a student. Are you a special-ed student? Doesn’t matter. Got a lot of problems that adversely affect your school performance? Doesn’t matter. Play basketball really, really well? Well, not to worry, a private school will come along and offer you a scholarship. Show up at a private school and expect to be accepted and ‘mence to learnin’? Don’t make me laugh.
Well, yeah. I thought you claimed that you had read this thread. Did you not? Can you point out to me where I claimed to be anything other than the spouse of a public school teacher?
See above. Jesus shat, man! If you’re going to claim that you’ve done something (in this case, have read the thread) then it’s very much in your best interest to do so. Otherwise, you speak from your ass and look like a fool.
Asked and answered any number of places throughout this thread. Once again, see above.
Really? How so? Understand that in no way am I trying to wave away economic theory, just telling you that attempting to live your life entirely according to market dictates makes you a miserable bastard to spend any time around. Especially when you try to force other people into your economic box.
See, you’re allowing your whole Jekkyl/Hyde thing to peek through your facade. Once more: Teachers strike when they’ve been shat all over by the administration one time too many (which translates to several times too many for most folk). D’you get it now? Should I say it again? Or are you going to continue to be willfully ignorant about the real world? Either way, I manage to sleep at night. But in the interests of fighting ignorance, I’ll wade in as many times as you think you need.
The problem seems to be that you think the entire world works according to your dictates. And it doesn’t. Nor is it likely to start doing so anytime soon. You’re in a district that sounds like seven different shades of wonderful. But the rest of the world isn’t.
You also think that you know precisely what a teacher does and therefore what he or she is worth. But you don’t.
You also think that your answers to establishing a better system of teacher pay are in some way workable. As FinnAgain, CanvasShoes and I have pointed out, they’re not.
Coupled with your belief that private v. public schools are some sort of competition, as well as any number of other things. . .well. . .you think an awful lot, but you’re not right when you do so. Are you seeing the problem here?
To add to what CanvasShoes just said: “Seniority” has become such a forbidden word here in the world of higher ed. that we part-timers have to negotiate for it by other terms–i.e. rehire rights, right of first refusal, etc. And it doesn’t have to do entirely, or even mostly, with longevity of service. It has to do more with evaluations, mainly the ones given by our dept. heads, deans and/or peers, and perhaps to some degree the students. (Bear in mind that students tend to give their profs low scores when the students themselves have performed poorly but wish to blame someone else, so what they say isn’t always accurate.) And that’s the situation only if you are on a campus where people are actually enlightened as to such matters.
Not that it isn't possible, but I cannot conceive of anyone going out on strike because they want to, because they think it's fun, and so on. It is a last resort, a worst case scenario, and something that we (in my local, anyway) try to avoid at all costs.Several possibilities exist, actually. The first and most obvious to me is replacing standardized grading with individual teacher reports. After all, a (just for argument’s sake) one to five page paper describing a child’s behavior and skills tells you a lot more than a number or letter grade. The New School (a college) in Manhattan does just that, and they’re quite respected in the field.
On the issue of test mechanics I’m afraid that I can’t give much of an answer as any indepth discussion I’ve been present for has made my eyes glaze over and roll into the back of my head. There are a few educators out there who’ve developed better tests, but they’ve had them shot down by administrative bodies.
As a side note, did you know that the SAT was originaly developed as an IQ test for the army, but they got rid of it when they realized that all it tested for was how good you are at taking it?
See, that’s the problem with standardized tests they don’t test anything. There is no correlation between standardized scores and performance at higher levels of education. Often, standardized tests are a piss poor way of getting at a specific student’s body of knowledge. They’ve also been demonstrated to be culturally biased. Etc…
So it becomes sort of Swiftian, and we’re all seeing who can jump the highest/farthest in order to prove which college we should go to.
Simple: by asking the teachers, looking at samples of a student’s work, taking a personal interest in each student’s educational career, etc…
The urge to make education a ‘factory based’ system whereby you put kids in and finished products come out is a bad paradigm. The system is organic, and top-down legislative practices are naturally met with techer resistance. Study after study has shown that the most effective scholastic enviornment involves three basic elements. Teachers doing a good job and being in a supportive enviornment, parents helping out on their end, and students being willing to cooperate.
FinnAgain wrote
I dispute the idea that the SAT “won’t test anything”, or that there is no correlation between a high score on it and performance at higher levels of education.
Didn’t say that the SAT won’t test anything.
I did say that the SAT tests nothing other than how good you are at taking the SAT, which is true.
Can’t find the research directly right now so here’s a cite which points to it, but again, it’s most likely done in peer reviewed journals, so if you’d like I can find it and email it to you.
You keep a tight grip on that straw now, hear?