Yes!!
Right, but you seem to have pretty low expectations for what a kid can handle. I think we should work from the assumption that all kids could probably master more than they currently are and try to find ways to make that happen.
I am not saying we should blame teachers, but as a profession, we shouldn’t be complacent, either.
As above, it’s not about punishing “bad” teachers, but recognizing that as an institution, education is often failing to give kids the skills they need–and I honestly believe a lot of them could learn a lot more than they do, if things were different. So we have to figure out how to make them different.
If a teacher is less effective than even the current average (by whatever metric), I feel like they should want to improve. I don’t like most of the ways current reformers want to incentivize that improvement because I think they are counter-productive, but when someone says “oh my god, only 15.8% of African Americans who take the SAT are college ready!” our response should not be “well, that’s on the kids” and “you have to understand, these kids’ environments, not much can be expected from them.”
By definition, there will always be kids that are below average. Statistically, every teacher should have the same number, but realistically some will have more than others some years making them look like a below average teacher.
You can’t look at a teacher’s class grades one year and say, “Yep, they’re a bad teacher.”
Probability says even the best athletes will have bad games.
These two things are mutually exclusive. If you raise salaries, you are absolutely guaranteed to attract lots of people who are only interested in the money, not in helping students.
Attract them, yes. But you don’t have to hire them. It’s not that hard to distinguish people who have a genuine calling from those who just want a paycheck.
And in that conversation lies a big part of the problem.
Great link. Thanks! But, does it really include evidence for “transmission to one’s offspring”?
Missed the edit window (damn the Board is slow today).
What I am asking/implying is that although there is “transmission to offspring” it really is more of an in utero toxicity to the embryo. That embryos’ offspring would not seem to be affected (assuming the embryos survive to even have offspring, i.e. they are non-hereditable changes).
I disagree, if it were easy it wouldn’t be a problem.
One, I don’t really think what we need are people with a “calling” who are dedicated to “helping students”. Or rather, I have no doubt I can get that. I can get that now. What I need are people who are interested in the process itself–who find teaching intellectually stimulating.
Two, in no other field do people make this argument: if I pay computer programmers too much, I won’t be able to find tech-heads who really love code. If we pay engineers too much, we won’t find people who love to build and problem solve. If we pay cooks too much, we won’t get people who love food.
Teaching is intellectually challenging and interesting. I am confident that there are tons of people who would enjoy the challenge and find it satisfying, but they can’t justify what it will cost them in terms of their lifestyle and their ability to provide for their children.
Good post. It’s interesting how people almost want teachers to be like nuns or monks or something who do their jobs just for love and conveniently cost society very little financially.
In two recent episodes of “This American Life” it was posited that there is one very well known effective way for improving academic performance of historically disadvantaged minorities—specifically, poor black and Hispanic children—and that is forced integration of schools.
The problem is that forced integration is political poison among white voters, so policymakers have essentially given up on them.
Yes, this would also take the heat off of supposedly “failing schools” as there wouldn’t be schools that have overwhelmingly poor populations. Even if test scores remained the same in the aggregate across the country (although I don’t doubt that there would be some improvement), at least the low-performing kids wouldn’t be concentrated in certain schools which then get a political bullseye on them.
The OP should at least consider the possibility that his wife and her colleagues are geneitically shitty teachers.
Yet they most likely know how to spell “genetically”.
That’s hardly adequate compensation.
God bless you, my child.
Is it possible that really great teachers who have their hearts in it (or whatever you want to call it) when they start teaching sometimes get burned out by years of politics, standardized test, new curriculum planning, new standardized tests, parents, and more until they just don’t care?
I couldn’t imagine putting up with all the crap teachers deal with. My mom taught at an open space school where 80% of the students where on free or reduced lunch. I don’t think she went a single year were every student was fluent in English.
There was a family that was known for causing problems. Once she took one of the kids to the office and they were still causing problems. When she started getting physical with my mom the police officer in the office told her to stop and the first grader stepped on his foot to get up in his face and said “Make me!”
The kid’s parents wanted to know what my mom had been doing to set their daughter off. They couldn’t imagine their daughter doing anything. Yet every teacher that had had every student from this family had experienced behavior problems with them.
If anything we should cut teachers some slack. If you’re a parent you know what it’s like trying to raise a kid or x. Kids aren’t easy. Teachers have to handle their own + 20-some more to educate + the parents of those kids. Hell, I wouldn’t do that for $1,000,000 a year.
I’m on the school board for a high poverty, low performing district. So I understand the frustration that OP has. I hate standardized testing, the sheer number of tests, and developing a curriculum to solely teach to the test in the hopes that kids will pass. A curriculum and set of goals laid down from the state that shifts from year to year and sometimes throughout the year.
I understand that many of our parents are single moms unable to find the time to help their kids. Many with no experience of higher education cannot properly instill a need for it in their kids. Some even view school as a glorified babysitting service. And the kids pick up on all that and decide their education isn’t worth the bother.
I get all that.
But I also get that this is the job teachers signed up for. You knew what the district was like. You knew that these kids have to pass the test. You knew you’d be judged in part on your students’ results. And given that, you shouldn’t complain.
Am I looking to fire someone because our kids aren’t doing as well as kids in another district? No, that would be insane. We’d have to get rid of around 90% of our teachers! But if your English class is composed of 30 kids who last year scored 10 Below Basic, 10 Basic, 6 Proficient, and 4 Advanced and you end the year with 12 Below Basic, 12 Basic, 4 Proficient and 2 Advanced, don’t blame the shitty students or the shitty district or the shitty socioeconomic standing of the area.
Look within for the answer to what’s shitty.
I agree with that 100%. If a teacher has a track record of students falling behind due to their incompetence, they should be shitcanned. I’m only complaining about the general notion that a school is" failing" because it doesn’t bring all of its students up to a proficient level.
Sigh. This is another facet of the same basic problem, rooted in an insistence on proceeding backward from the axiomatic surety that all kids are equally proficient, regardless of background, unless the schools fuck them over somehow:
Yes: schools need to just give the placement/IQ tests to all kids, not just the ones whose parents request it. And let’s leave subjective teacher referrals out of it as well. But beyond that: we cannot work backward from “it’s racist/classist if white and/or affluent kids are more highly represented in gifted than in the overall population” and then try to artificially monkey with the numbers.
It’s not just that doing an affirmative action maneuver would, given budget realities, unfairly exclude some kids (my daughter was right on the border and barely made it, so I can’t help thinking of that). It’s also that the kids who got brought in to balance things out would not be able to handle the gifted curriculum as it now stands, so the whole thing would be dumbed down.
I don’t relish the lack of diversity in these gifted programs, and I have no desire to lord it over the underprivileged that they don’t score as high on these tests. It’s an awkward and sensitive situation to be sure. But the integrity and efficacy of gifted education is on the line here.
Furthermore, I guarantee you the next victim will be special education. In a mirror image of this well-meaning attempt to make these groups reflect the overall student population, they’ll end up pushing some poor and minority kids out of “sped” and pull in some white/affluent kids to replace them (basically “grading on a curve” for each population group), and it’s hard for me to see how that’s fair to anyone.