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Why Is It So Difficult To Fire Bad Teachers?
Ant writes with this depressing story about how public schools sometimes work: "This six-page Los Angeles Times article shares its investigation to find 'the process [of firing poor teachers] so arduous that many school principals don't even try (One-page version), except in the very worst cases. Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare ...'"
Because there is so many bad school principals.
"The erroneous assumption is to the effort that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence .... Nothing could be further from the truth."
Not sure where that quote is from, but it's good and I had it lying around.
Do away with our corrupt tax code. Support the Fair Tax
I think it's blatantly obvious, the NEA is exceptionally powerful and won't permit it.
Brett
It's frustrating to see something like this, when we also see articles about innocent teachers being fired or prosecuted due to kids in their class sexting them. :\
Seeing the result of poor education is an easy task. It's even easy to identify poor teachers by merit and/or performance... The difficulty comes in establishing universal standards that will do that by a set of static rules. Of course there are the pandemic issues with unions and so on. My spouse is a teacher, and several friends I graduated with are in education, and the story (at least in Colorado) is the same: The Union only steps in for members of the herd that are to be culled. In more... sane... states (our state is the lowest in Higher Education funding by several orders of magnitude) your mileage may vary.
...Teacher's unions.
jdb2
Tenure. This doesn't solely apply to public schools either, it's become a problem in higher education as well. All too often there is a professor that has been around for longer than some of his students have been alive, isn't doing his job as he should, but yet the university isn't able (or willing) to do much, due to the hassle of getting rid of a tenured professor.
And we have serious shortage of teachers with ineffectual administrations, apathetic parents and disinterested communities who want someone else to fix *their* schools they don't bother to get involved with.
But, as usual, let's focus on the teachers.
Which is why I didn't go into teaching.
I think most nerds have had bad experiences with teachers in public school. Because either teachers count off for the most ridiculous things, have a personal bias against some things (and will fail you if you think otherwise), have a personal vendetta against students who (rightfully) correct them, or many other things that are wrong with our public school system.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
On what planet is this liberal propaganda?
... but somehow we keep creating.
The problem is that we don't want to trust people in authority to make decisions, so we come up with a process or committee or something to ensure that one person can't make the hard decisions. But time and time again, it's shown that if no one can make hard decisions, no one will.
And while it's probably going to beat the hell out of my karma for it, I recommend The Death of Common Sense, by Philip K. Howard. It basically goes into examples of how our unwavering belief that a legal processes can sort through the mess impartially causes all sorts of unexpected results.
As soon as the authority to make a decision is lost, how can bad behavior be punished?
I'd say that one of the main problems is that it is close to impossible to attract competent replacements with the incredibly low salaries that we offer to teachers. Many(most) teachers in the public school system are nothing but glorified babysitters. You get what you pay for.
At a University, getting tenure means you bring in money, and unless you are really, really bad, you don't have to be able to teach.
One Comp. Sci. professor with tenure would read us the textbook word for word in the lectures. Ask a question? He would just repeat the last sentence three or four times until you realized he could not teach.
The class Teaching Assistant was even worse, he could not understand English beyond what was covered in the book. Forget about asking complex concepts, he could barely understand simple questions.
But the prof. had tenure, he brought in money, he published papers, so it did not matter that he could not teach.
Worst Class Ever...
I'm a card carrying, gun shooting, cigarette smoking anti-liberal. I read Slashdot at least once a day, and do not feel that "Slashdot" has an agenda. Posters and contributors may, and that should be an easy thing to use your noodle to differentiate... Unless you believe everything you read.
*glare*
Give 'em a broom instead of a class. They'll get the point.
Why the Kalifornia Republic is such a screwed-up state.
Union
all of the union, lobbying issues notwithstanding, who exactly defines bad and how exactly do you measure results? no child left behind was an attempt at quantifying the teachers task and failed miserably. teachers taught to the test and teachers were considered good if they got more kids to pass the test than their peers. this was at the expense of educating the kids. do you leave it up to the children and parents to define who is good and who is bad? take the math teacher who makes you do math problems like a a drill instructor makes recruits do pushups. is he good or bad? when you're in high school you dread the busy work, as do your parents who are forced to do your homework for you. but when you're a freshman in an engineering program, you may look back and realize that education truly is what's left when you've forgotten everything you learned.
SCENARIO #2: Put that same teacher in a classroom of African-American kids from Oakland, California. The kids will do poorly because African-American culture rejects learning -- and rejects Western culture in general.
In scenario #2, the teacher would be fired as a "bad" teacher. In scenario #1, the same teacher would get a bonus for producing such accomplished students.
Is there any reasonable and objective way to determine a teacher's performance that is independent of the students in her classroom?
Most important thing is to keep everyone in line. Teachers' Union ensures that every member votes for the sanctioned candidates. The politicians then make sure there's no competition for the teachers (i.e., voucers and all that are strictly verboten). You get a good teacher or someone trying to make a difference, and you've got a dangerous person on your hands. They're not part of the "system". Of course, it's not nearly so well organized. But public monopolies like the US education system do have lives of their own.
Well... They can maybe start by firing the fuckers that do not pitch up for class!
And the idea in most countries with unions that teachers should get the same wage is idiotic - the more talented you are, the higher your wage should be!
first is tenure.
second reason is unions.
Broward County schools are filled with bad teachers. The unions keep them working.
recently a broward teacher had a delusional episode in the classroom. she had a pair of scissors and was threatening a student shouting about demons.
the union not only kept her job, but she's coming back to the classroom (albeit at a different school).
Bad teachers are a bit like molesting priests. They get moved around schools when people complain about them.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I don't think this is limited to just teachers. It is so difficult to fire anyone (in some states more than others).
Thats one of the problems, theres no real way of measuring talent. I've had teachers with many years of college who can't teach while I've learned many things from the entry level teacher thats fresh out of college.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
for all the fucks, who washed down a trillion dollar on Wall Street... hey wait, those were no public school peeps, were they? How many of them were fired for ripping off tax payers around the globe, taking away their funds for public education from the ones who's daddy can't afford Ivy league treatment for his little Georgie boy? Yeah, those illiterate bad bankers, they must be members of some union, which makes it almost impossible to fire them, "except in the very worst cases". WTF are we talking about, kids?
There are too many of them. Whatever tests they have to take to become authorized to teach aren't working.
I've had maybe 5 good teachers, out of say the 7 new teachers I get each semester for the last 10 or so years. ~5/700.
Of course there were some ok teachers, some nice teachers, but only 7 or so that could actually teach.
All the rest were either teachers so they could feel smart, teachers so they could order people around, or a few were teachers just so they could get money.
I'm in highschool, and I have a teacher who doesn't attend class when she doesn't feel like it. Sometimes she hires a substitute even when she's in the room messing with the gradebook but not grading anything (or watching youtube, she seems to enjoy doing that during work hours as well). She doesn't really teach us anything. The worst part is, most people who take Spanish 2A in our highschool were not doing well in spanish (otherwise they'd have taken the faster class in middle school), so a bunch of Ds on the midterm doesn't turn any heads.
The whole class constantly complains about her to the principle, but nothing is ever done. If you walk in to "guidance" and start to say
"My teacher isn't prepar-"
The staff will quickly cut you off, as they've heard it before.
"Oh you mean Mrs. [removed name]?"
The article summary is incomplete. The title of the article is "Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task"
Well, the problem, and the solution, are right there.
Tenure is intended for university professors mainly; it intentionally makes it harder to fire a tenured person, so they can "push the boundaries" a bit in their classes.. without the fear of being fired for petty political reasons.
The universities do not just give out tenure to every new professor, they make sure they are competent first. If the California schools have *tenured* teachers that can't teach, that is the problem RIGHT THERE. Don't give tenure to a teacher until they know they can teach. Simple as that.
Let's start out by saying that there is plenty of blame to go around. How much time are we going to waste trying to figure out whose fault the broken educational systems are?
Instead, lets try to redesign the systems. This is basic problem solving:
1) What are the goals we have?
- Universal Literacy?
- Scientific awareness?
2) What resources do we have available to reach those goals?
3) Put a plan together using the resources available that includes analysis not only of desired student outcomes, but desired teacher outcomes as well.
I guess it is easier to play the blame game. Personally, I wonder what the turnaround time from good teacher to bitter burnt out husk working towards retirement is?
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
Part of the problem is unions. Another part is the massive bureaucracy. But many times, it's to protect the good teachers from vindictive parents.
Which had, at one point, literally gotten in trouble for teaching beyond the curriculum. Apparently, Grade 9 students are "children" and cannot understand the concept of acceleration.
..it's not easy to prove that a teacher can't teach.
Where are going to base this on? Some students that can't solve math problems?
I've had my share of bad teachers, and being 20y.o. the memories are still vivid.
In my experience teachers support each other more than they should and turn their head the other way when one of them messes up.
I've seen math teachers copying the teaching books' answers from another book which has the answers.
English class was fun....it was like I were the one who was teaching.
Anyways, I can go oooon and on about this forever so I'll shut up now.
All the above refer to my Greek school but I assume the situation's kind of generic.
One word answer: Unions.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
"I think most nerds have had bad experiences with teachers in public school. Because either teachers count off for the most ridiculous things, have a personal bias against some things (and will fail you if you think otherwise), have a personal vendetta against students who (rightfully) correct them, or many other things that are wrong with our public school system."
Well, this isn't surprising. As someone who has been in high-school and also someone who grew up in a family of teachers I can safely say that this is inevitable. Nice teachers will simply be bullied untill they give in. High-school kids are highly observant of the level of authority a teacher has and once they see a weakness they can be quite merciless.
The people who are left are either split between people who have some natural authority and dickheads(the kind you read about in this article). A lot of teachers see students correcting them as an assault on their authority and they are partly right about this. Yes, the student may be right but admitting this may weaken the position the teacher has or aspires to have and thereby he has to carefully maneuvre between admitting his faults and maitaining order in the classroom(and over the students in general).
Remember that a high-school student spends around 5 years in a high-school but a teacher needs to maintain his position many times longer and that can cause the teacher to become ridgid. Personally, I see this as in inevitability though through good planning the damage can be minimized.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Because for every bad teacher that deserves to be thrown out, there's a good teacher dedicated to such crazy concepts as teaching evolution in a science classroom, and the evangelicals aren't just going to sit there and take all those facts getting put inside their childrens' heads. So the process for removal has to be slow as possible- otherwise the highly motivated fundamentalists could push out anyone they choose whenever they want. The result is that genuinely bad teachers must be dragged through a process that can take years.
There, was that so difficult?
Wanna fire that "bad" teacher for teaching evolution? Great, make it easier to do so. I agree there are bad teachers, but the fact that you don't like them doesn't necessarily mean they are indeed bad teachers.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
This would be alleviated if they didn't insist on stuffing 30 or 40 kids into a single classroom.
As a product of the public school system who is quite happy with the education he received, let me try and add some balance to the usual slashdot anti-teacher, anti-union, right-wing libertarian groupthink.
The purpose of tenure is to protect teachers from unfair termination, not to protect bad teachers. If a teacher is underperforming there is usually a process to get rid of them, even if tenured, only most administrators are too lazy to go through it. The whole system is designed precisely so a school principal can't just terminate someone because IN THEIR JUDGMENT, the teacher is doing a lousy job. Personally I'd trust the judgment of most teachers over most school administrators.
And when it comes to education, it's hard to create metrics to accurately measure success. And don't even try to argue that those idiotic standardized tests measure much. Are we going to punish a teacher because most of their students failed a standardized English test? What if more than half of their students don't SPEAK English? What if the teacher had to teach 40 kids in one classroom? There are bad teachers, but it's not always easy to measure which ones are bad, and which ones are just either lucky or unlucky.
And by the way, anyone who thinks that some all-powerful teacher's union is preventing success is just ignorant. The teacher's unions are constantly undercut and overwhelmed by legislatures and city and state governments. If the teacher's unions were so powerful, then why do teacher's make so little?
I've worked as a computer programmer for over 20 years, and I have never seen or heard of any programmer being fired for incompetence, no matter the magnitude.
As far as I'm concerned, teachers deserve our support, and I think all of the bitching is just a smokescreen to support cutting education funding, and a mind-trick to turn people against unions.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
You don't fire the one's you have, because you're not allowed to replace them. The schoolboard just increases class size. This year my niece's class had 45 kids. Of course, we live in a lower income neighborhood. If you go across town to the rich kids homes they're 23 to a class.
Nice teachers will simply be bullied untill they give in. High-school kids are highly observant of the level of authority a teacher has and once they see a weakness they can be quite merciless.
They don't need to be nice as in "I'm going to bake the class cookies" but rather nice as in "I'm not going to assign large amounts of meaningless work". I've had several teachers who were quite authoritative so people knew not to screw with them, but on the other hand they weren't total idiots, they admitted when they were wrong, didn't assign large amounts of meaningless work, didn't try to fail students, and were generally pleasant to learn from.
The people who are left are either split between people who have some natural authority and dickheads(the kind you read about in this article). A lot of teachers see students correcting them as an assault on their authority and they are partly right about this. Yes, the student may be right but admitting this may weaken the position the teacher has or aspires to have and thereby he has to carefully maneuvre between admitting his faults and maitaining order in the classroom(and over the students in general).
But by admitting faults you don't lose any authority and gain respect. Some of the things were such obvious mistakes that even with solid evidence they didn't believe. For example, a high school science teacher tried to tell us that blood in veins were blue. When we used evidence to prove that he was wrong, he dismissed it and kept telling us that veins were blue to spite us.
Remember that a high-school student spends around 5 years in a high-school but a teacher needs to maintain his position many times longer and that can cause the teacher to become ridgid. Personally, I see this as in inevitability though through good planning the damage can be minimized.
The one thing they can do, is treat high school students like adults. They aren't meant to be told to do this and this and this, but rather use reasoning and logic and such.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I see. So how do you propose who should determine who's right or wrong? Students hold a vote on it? There's a special commission on truth in the classroom?
Yes, teachers are wrong sometimes and they make mistakes. Yes, you may lose points because of it or be hassled over it. That's life. The same thing will happen at your job. And if you're human, you'll be doing exactly the same thing to others, including your own children.
If we insist on perfect teachers, there won't be any at all. The job pays poorly enough and is stressful enough that, frankly, schools need to be happy with who they can get.
Two words: Teachers' Unions.
I just had a conversation this weekend about a policy tried with some success in Chicago. When an entire school has an egregious record of underperforming, fire everyone in the building and start over. Make them re-apply for their jobs. (I tried searching for an article to support this story just now, but I couldn't find one.)
As a teacher I have to say I think that it is an incredibly common problem for every school to have someone that isn't being as effective of a teacher as they could be (read in some cases awful and idiotic). In my experience it tends to be the teachers that have been in the system for a long time, most likely tenured, who are protected just by the length of time they teach. Many times these 'teachers' spend their time as place holders, completely ineffective as teachers, and often times as people that pull down the morale of the whole teaching staff. Knowing that someone is a terrible teacher, but gets to continue to teach year after year, doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the schools to many people.
That being said, in my experience it's ONE teacher in the whole school (at most two in a large school). Not a problem at a level that should cause people to lose hope in the system. They're there, and we're unfortunately generally stuck with them unless they really screw up. Which happens sometimes. But, for every one case like this we get so much bad press that it causes people to make their snide comments about the rest of the school's employees. Myself, and most of the teachers I know, all give more time to these students than anyone ever acknowledges. There's no right answer right now, but the evaluation systems in education are definitely a spot that needs re-examined in many places.
That's no accident: that entry level teacher is still motivated and idealistic, and he's willing to spend a lot of extra time. Give him a few years of teaching, and he'll lose all that.
This would also be alleviated if there was a license required before people could become parents.
For all the back-and-forth that's going to take place in this article, the fundamental truth is that shitty parents generally lead to shitty students.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
The comments were from TFA - in fact, it left out this lead-in paragraph:
The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.
He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.
On the basis of the idea that the teacher decided to step off of the politically-correct, baby-em-all bus - and did decide to try to scare the kid straight - I like him too. More teachers have gotten further with a little ridicule than with nurturing, and each and every one us knows it.
Or - did the AC above simply try to get a rise by advocating death?
I elect the former.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
In my personal opinion the minute a teacher decides: "Correcting false information is less important than maintaining my own aura of authority," they stop being an educator and start down the road to becoming a tyrant in a teapot. Personally I would argue the reason high school students are so merciless is because by the time they encounter even one nice teacher they've been exposed to far too many of the "dickheads" and don't know how to interact with someone who is genuinely trying to teach them.
It's really rare to find a parent who doesn't love their kids and care deeply about their education. One of the problems I see is really bad school districting policy. I believe the people within a district ought to be able to declare on their tax forms that they want the portion of their tax dollars allocated towards public schools to be allocated towards the schools in *their* district. It makes no sense to me that an economically challenged areas should have any of their tax dollars going towards white collar school districts. That deprives them of the opportunity to improve their own situation. We owe those who have less the ability to target their own resources towards their own quality of life.
Its easy. Teachers' Unions have no incentive to do anything but gain as much money and power for the teachers as possible. They are not there for the students. Students don't vote or pay dues to the union.
Unfortunately, boards of education have been fairly powerless. There is this myth of the "Virtuous Teacher" who is perfect in all ways, makes minimum wage, and would solve all the worlds problems if only they had a little more resources. This is reinforced by the media, both in moves and TV as well as reporters. The truth is that teachers are regular people, there are good and bad ones. But if you try to stand up to the union, you are demonized as an "evil teacher hater". Nevermind the fact that test scores haven't gone up despite hundreds of billions of dollars in spending increases. Or the fact that we spend over $12,000 PER STUDENT in Atlanta and D.C., two of the lowest performing school districts in the country!
I have alot of respect for teachers. In fact, I have often thought about going into teaching High School after I retire as a way of giving back. I would not have made it to where I am without the exceptional work of many caring teachers. But I also had to put up with more than a few worthless, incompetent teachers who didn't care one bit about actually teaching. They came in with no preparation, read straight out of the book, and gave completely worthless exams. It was absolute torture having to sit there for 60-90 minutes a day, every day, with someone getting paid to waste my time. Back in High School myself and many others wondered how they could keep their jobs. Now I know.
Hopefully the tide is turning. If a paper like the LA Times is criticizing the union there maybe hope yet. We now need some boards to stand up to the unions.
Why is it that I get the impression that teaching in the USA is pretty much awful? It seems like teachers are pretty much universally demonised and hated, come across as petty dictators of their classrooms.
As a teacher myself of 11 years (UK, Science) I can say that this is not the situation here. Sure, some teachers are disliked more than others - it goes with the job - but by and large (and I mean 95%) we work well with our students and they work well with us. We enjoy each others interaction in the classroom and around school, have a laugh and learn some interesting stuff.
We don't go around picking on kids and watching youtube instead of teaching. What kind of pride in your job would that give?
I don't have any experience of the US high school system but it seems to have fallen apart for the majority of kids. Is this, sadly, the case? Or have teachers been singled out as a scapegoat for the failings of US society? I genuinely can't believe that American teachers are so universally awful.
(as well as unions)
Employees are "entitled" to a paycheck, they don't earn it.
Education needs to be 100% private or we're going to continue to trail the rest of the world.
~ now you know
A lot of the replies so far today seem to hint there's only one reason when really there's a myriad of reasons. It easy to play the blame game. Then you can beat up on whatever your favorite "dead horse excuse" you want. And there's a lot of them: unions, teacher pay, uninvolved parents who expect teachers to babysit, etc.
The issue should be centered around what all people involved can do to make the situation better. I have seen many good teachers who have been worn down by the system, both from the inside and from the outside, who are shells of their former selves. Unfortunately, you can't just blame one thing here.
Who determines what makes a bad teacher?
Some silver-spoon fed, vanilla face's mother (sorry, watched Borat last night) makes a song and dance because dearest darling is brilliant and should've gotten that 'A' on that paper. Said mother decides to make real trouble by spreading lies and being a general pain in the arse. Principle doesn't want school to look bad so gets rid of the teacher.
It's all relative. Instead, people should start being responsible for their own actions and stop blaming others.
Yes, there are most likely some really bad teachers out there. Well, start paying teachers more, giving them more power in the classroom (respect) and perhaps more trained professionals who always considered teaching will go into the industry and create an abundance of talent.
.
...And so abolish tenure. Give all teachers equal chance to get laid off or fired when the next year rolls around. Mr. Grump who everyone hates but can't fire because he has been in the district 40 years, shouldn't be immune to being laid off/fired.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The article kicks off describing how a group of shrill, ignorant parents took the word of an emotionally disturbed 12 year old and decided to push for someone to be fired based soley on that.
Parents like to treat teachers as their personal governesses. Like that cheerleading coach who was crucified for playboy pictures that were not a big deal until some fat dumpy girl who didn't get picked had a tantrum and made her mum charge into the headteachers office with the pictures.
Your kid isn't special. In all likelihood, your kid is a spoilt, willfully ignorant little shit who will give the teacher hell no matter how much they try (and they do try; nobody sticks at teaching who doesn't see it as a vocation as well as a job). Your little darling is so convinced they will be a millionaire professional sportsperson/musician/actor because you've always told them how 'special' they were, that they carry this overinflated sense of entitlement into the classroom along with 30 other 'special' kids.
The result basically lord of the flies with nicer clothes. And the people who take up the under paid task of controlling the little bastards are constantly subject to demands to fire them, cut their pay, and increase their work loads.
Back off assholes.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The "hard to fire" thing might be a problem in LA but it's not a problem everywhere. Georgia for example.
Similar experience. 24 yo here, and even though the high school teachers I encounter these days are more likely to be my own age and friends of someone in my social circle, my gut reaction is still extremely hostile.
I imagine schools anywhere end up creating an "us vs. them" mentality among the teachers towards the students, but society will still be dealing with the consequences long after those burned-out/incompetent/power-tripping tenured teachers are dead and buried.
Just put a few drops of hashish oil into their coffee each day. The amount is so small that they won't feel stoned, and it will accumulate in their bodies.
Then after a week or so, call them in for a 'random' urine test. The test will show (horror upon horror!) molecular traces of THC in their urine and you will have NO PROBLEM firing them, denying them unemployment, getting them thrown out of public housing, getting any professional license revoked, and just generally screwing up their All-American lifestyle forever.
Works every time. Done in the USA to hundreds of people daily for twenty years now.
Seriously, it's how we got rid of the asshole gung-ho Neidermeier officers back in the 1980's when I was in the US Navy. One positive test and they were gone: no appeal, no second-test review, no $2000 gas-spectraography review confirmation, no nothing. A few drops a day and the assholes disappear. Took the JAG years to realize that we were doing this, but we were out of 'service' by then.
It's like judo. You use your opponent's fanaticism against them.
But time has passed and wounds have healed. If you were booted out of the military for failing a drug test and you are the kind of person who never did or never would get high, then it probably happened to you. Think back about who you were seriously pissing off at the time. It was probably one of us.
We're not sorry. The military is better place because we did it. There was no permanent, endless war at the time and this was the easiest way to get rid of the psychos who would have gotten us all killed when the PEW finally arrived after 9/11.
People who can't teach shouldn't be allowed to grad from uni. We all know people who've got through uni, cheating or cramming. They may work out what they are doing later down the line, if they want to. But teachers are stuck, being teachers so why try to get good? just being good enuff is what they aim for. (granted dere are alot of good teachers too)
What's wrong with a teacher who admits they're not sure and looks it up later, or asks for the pupil to provide logical backing for their statement and considers whether it may be the pupil's version which is correct, or whatever?
A teacher's factual knowledge has no need to be perfect, but they should be prepared to accept some brief debate. Hell, if they're any good they should encourage it even when they know they are right - it gets the kids thinking, after all.
Is it _that_ _bad_ in the USA?
I've studied in several (admittedly pretty good) public schools in Russia and I can't remember examples of such behavior. Even though we had ~25-30 kids in one class.
They are usually fat and get stuck in the cannon mouth
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
How about increase teachers, decrease classroom size. And teach parenting courses in school?!?! Heaven forbid our children know how to raise children properly when they have them. It's mystifying how this isn't taught in school already. They have the first part taught "sex education" but they left out the next 18 or so years after the sex part.
The quality of a school depends on the principal. Good principals usually create good schools after a couple of years. By the same token, bad administrators kill off even the most excellent teaching.
The movie "Stand and Deliver" tells the true story of an amazing teacher who brought a group of 'lower class' students to an amazing level of accomplishment in calculus. What isn't shown in the movie was the administrator who managed to wreck the whole thing. I've seen this happen at least a couple of times where I live. Great teachers wrecked by shitty administrators.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver
This is for NYS:
How Do I Fire an Incompetent Teacher? (Flowchart)
Great, so not only can we get rid of the bad teachers, we can pay the good ones twice as much! (assuming we started out with classes of 33 1/2 students)
In all seriousness, back when I was in high school I'd have gladly traded sitting in a class of 67 to be taught by a competent and fair minded individual. I imagine many on slashdot felt similarly in their time. Bad teachers aren't just less good than good teachers, they have an actively negative impact on the students in their classes. Better to put them in bigger classes, or even shorten the school day if the only alternative is to protect terrible teachers because they "can't be spared".
Does this mean that if I dropped out of school because the teachers sucked, I should sue the school system ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Oh, look, people blaming unions, without asking themselves why the unions have any power in the first place.
Why aren't there programmer unions? Why, because there are vast differences in skill and competence among programmers, and our salaries reflect that. Only the lowest dregs would ever consider forming a union, which would require us to reduce our output to undifferentiable units of work, like an assembly line. What makes sense in a factory does not make any sense in a profession that requires intelligence and creativity.
There are also vast differences in ability among teachers, but they are paid nearly the same regardless. Paid a salary that is pathetically poor for people of high intelligence and education. Their unit of work is the student, and all students are the same. Good teachers make test scores go up, and bad teachers make test scores go down. We are only willing to pay just enough to ensure that test scores don't go down. Education is expensive, after all. No sense in spending more than we have to.
We have a culture that does not value education, but does value cutting taxes, and generally has frowns upon "book learning" and intellectual pursuits. We have a profession that requires extensive education, higher than average intelligence, but pays barely above the poverty level, and considers the work output to be nearly indistinguishable.
And you blame the teachers for forming a union. Your children get the education you deserve.
Tenure and Unions
I work in a private school as an IT director, and we don't have either of those things. If you are a stellar teacher, are rewarded with more compensation, and better kit for your classroom.
If you are a, "do-just-enough-to-get-by", type of teacher, you don't get more/better stuff for your classroom (motivated teachers will make better use of the materials), and if you are bad enough, your contract won't be renewed next year.
I've been with this school about 8 years, and I can see the steady improvement in the staff. The strong ones stay, the weak ones go elsewhere.
We are a private school - typically districts send us students, and we have some private pay students. We need to have the best staff possible, or else districts and parents will send their kids somewhere else. Competition does make us better.
That's the way public schools need to be.
-ted
Welcome to more right wing union bashing. If you are asking why is it so hard to attack union members, why aren't you asking some of these questions?
Why is it so hard to fire incompetent and corrupt Wall Street managers who have nearly destroyed the world economy?
Why is it so hard to stop subsidies for agribusiness that force Americans to pay more for food? Why is the government subsidizing inefficient environmentally destructive corn based ethanol production?
Why are tax rules and subsidies going for so-called "clean coal", which is about as stupid a phrase as "safe heroin"?
Why is it impossible to end huge boondoggle weapons programs intended to fight the cold war, which has been over for 20 years? Why don't we spend money on the kind of asymmetrical combat that is the major problem in the 21st century?
Why does the government support a pharmaceutical industry that kills people for profit? Why are drug companies allowed to suppress clinical trials that show their products are useless or unsafe?
Why are overseas produced products, including food, drugs, and toys allowed to poison people?
Why are defense contractors working in the middle east completely uncountable for their behavior, including murder, rape, and killing military personal because of bad electrical wiring?
Why are corporations allowed to write legislation that guarantees they make money no matter what they do? Why are there no negative consequences for bad corporate behavior (RIAA, Microsoft, predatory lending, credit card interest/fees)?
Why are willfully ignorant religious morons making technical and scientific policy? Why are people who deny evolution and think that the universe is only 6000 years old in charge of responding to global pandemics and developing environmental crises like climate change>
Just wondering...
The teachers' union in Toledo, Ohio, has spearheaded a controversial policy to purge the school district of incompetent teachers. It's called "peer review" and no school system in the country has been doing it longer than Toledo.
...
union members today overwhelmingly support it.
...
The AFT endorsed peer review in 1984.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91327130 Listen to the story -- the text is a poor summary.
A few years ago I pulled my son from a class with such a teacher, She had hit him on the head on more than one occasion, once even on film. it took not only suing the school but also giving the video and doing a interview with the local news before they fired her. Sadly after the summer break was over she returned to her teaching job until every one of her students parents showed up, signed a petition and personally escorted her and the principal *who turned out to be her boyfriend off school grounds before the school board made her being fired stick.
Not to mention the simple fact that most schools, especially pre HS, simply aren't built for dealing with the smart kids. The entire design and curricula is built for the C kid that will follow their little steps and do everything their way. After being tutored for 2 years due to a bad motorcycle accident they tried to reintegrate me into junior high. After about 2 months they just sent me back home and sent my tutor back out. Why? Because I was constantly being accused of being a "cheater" or a troublemaker because I didn't think that way.
It ended when my tutor walked past the vice principal and overheard them getting ready to expel me. I of course was extremely pissed off at being treated like dirt and told them to please do. When she asked "Why on earth are you thinking about throwing out one of our brightest kids?" the math teacher spoke up "He is cheating in my class and can't even bother to show his work! And look at how he dresses, he is obviously a gang element!" after Ms. Edwards got done choking on laughter she said "He wears those military fatigues year round because they belonged to his late grandfather which he loved dearly. And as for cheating that is easy to disprove" so she walked over to the blackboard and wrote two complex math problems. She then had me had her my Casio cal watch with space invaders built in(remember those?) and told the math teacher "If he is cheating this will show us. You work the one on the left, he'll work the right" and of course I was done in 1/3 of the time and with no work shown.
After the math teacher AGAIN screamed "he must be cheating!" the vice principal rolled his eyes and after using my calc watch to see the answer was correct he asked "So how DO you do it?" and I honestly told him "I don't know, I just know it is right". Ms Edwards just smiled and said "His mother had him reading books by Asimov and Heinlein at around age ten. While the other kids are playing Atari he is writing computer programs. His brain simply works differently than ours. While you and I have to work the steps, somewhere in his brain is a little voice that just lets him 'know' the answer. If you try to fit him into the traditional mold and work the steps he is only going to get frustrated as his brain simply doesn't work like that" but after having teachers call me a cheater and saying I was a disruptive influence because I would be in the back reading Asimov because I had done the entire weeks work the first day out of sheer boredom, they simply gave up and sent me Ms Edwards.
The point is a lot of the low scoring kids I knew that were labeled troublemakers and goof offs were simply frustrated or bored to tears because their brains didn't work that way. Both of my boys are being home schooled now because they ended up with the same shit I went through. The oldest at 16 is reading medical books that frankly make even MY head hurt while at the same time teaching himself 3d computer animation, while the youngest is teaching himself 2d cell style animation on his computer. With both if you sit down and actually explain to them a concept they get it quite quickly and will be hitting you with insightful questions at a rapid pace. But putting them in front of a blackboard and spewing the crap to them simply doesn't work. Their brains simply don't work that way. So while I am sure there are plenty of shitty teachers(like my "He's cheating" because I was better than him math teacher) I wonder how much of it is because that cookie cutter straight c designed curriculum frankly sucks if you have even a little brains and creative problem solving. And sorry about the length, but some things just don't fit into a soundbyte, at least not one written by me. I'm afraid my brain just doesn't work that way ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Are you crazy? We can't have students learning to think critically and logically--they might end up voting for third parties or worse. And encouraging debate? Do you just want to ruin our carefully constructed tapestry of political-correctness and cultural-sensitivity?
It must be the union... isn't it?
I taught high school and the only thing the Teacher's Union did for me was make my paycheck smaller by taking money out of it.
If there is some teacher's union out there with all these magical powers that people always claim they have it obviously wasn't the one that I was part of...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
What about the parents? Don't they have the final responsibility to educate their children? Sure, they send them to school, but do they make sure that they are learning? Do they read the material presented and talk about it with their children and ask questions so that they know what they have learned? Of course not, they send them off each morning and the kids come home to an empty house, maybe a blowjob, or a PS3. Mod me down, but it's the damned truth. Children are failed to be educated because of their parents. Professional educators have their faults, sure, but put blame on where it belongs, on parents that don't give a shit about their kids.
You are absolutely correct. I am a teacher and I assure you that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and there is precious little I can do about it.
load "$",8,1
In my opinion, our "education system" is really a system of judgment: the possibility of success in return for effort to receive a high mark on artificial examinations. However, it's deeply flawed because it fails to take into account original and useful ideas, potential real-world capacity of the individual, the incompetence of those making the tests, the challenges of those without money who cannot afford to study full time, and the impotence of the rich who have no incentive to study. Fall outside any of the mainstream parameters of a "successful student" and one is condemned to mediocrity, even though in the right set of circumstances the same person could have incredible intellectual output that reforms the way the world works in a useful way.
To call it an "education" system ignores the ultimate purpose of education: to control people by giving them the illusion of possible success in exchange for hard but useless academic judgment. Actual education (i.e. learning) is incidental to judgment that permits potential employers to determine the suitability of individuals for employment.
History has taught us that genius reveals itself before the age of 25. The system of judgment we know as education that is in place in the Western world inadvertently undermines the ability for genius to be recognized and utilized in any valuable way.
The inability to fire teachers is merely incidental to, and entirely compatible with, the system of judgment that employs them. If the purpose of the system was the learning of students, it'd be a different story. Sadly, I've observed that it's not even a consideration in the discourse.
Note: I do not live in the US.
In the Netherlands, where I live, we have a seperated the high-school classes based on your learning capacity. If you are smart, you will be able to visit the higher high-school classes, if you aren't you will go to the lower classes. We now have 4 distinct levels(more or less), and the highest level is split in two where people in the higher class of the two get taught greek and/or latin.
The ability to maintain control is different for the different levels of students and it is widely known and accepted that people in level 1 are much harder to control than people in level 4 although you will always have problems with teaching in every level if you can't keep order.
Thankfully, people in level 4(where I have studied) mostly take their work seriously and I learned in a mostly healthy environment partially because of that.
I have dozens of examples of teachers who had limited to no authority and without exceptions the learning process was disturbed by that. Effects ranged from taking the teacher not seriously in class to outright insulting them in public and actively trying to get them to leave by means of causing distress.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Amen! Without objective measurements, it's difficult to make a good case to get rid of somebody. And objective measurements would be expensive.
Such metrics may include rotating observers and/or testing. The problem with testing is that it turns the course-work into test-centric course-work, and it can be argued that tests are too rigid to represent the future work-place. Observers are also expensive, and the teacher may only behave when they are present.
The commercial world generally lets managers fire people almost willy-nilly, and thus by eliminating any claim of objectivity or fairness, they don't have that problem. Whether this is entirely good or not is another thing.
A compromise may be to reduce pay for each bad review. Eventually a bad teacher will be earning minimum wage, and hopefully leave, or at least won't ding the budget. But, sticking kids with such teachers is another matter. If parents find out their kid has a dud teacher, the school will be swamped with complaints.
Table-ized A.I.
Here's how you get rid of a teacher: make their life miserable. My IT teacher quit his job, and here's how the school board bastards got rid of him:
He was teaching his Security class, showing us how to use BackTrack, Wireshark, Nmap etc... He has been teaching this class for years. His superiors recently decided that they don't want him around anymore, so they started complaining to the school board that he is teaching students "hacking" and they will all become criminals, etc. They would make up new lies about him every week. They even threatened to call the police so he would stop teaching kids "how to commit crimes". So he decided one day that he's had enough and would quit. Interestingly, once he submitted his resignation letter all his problems went away. All the treats stopped. The school would pay his salary until the end of the school year and then he would leave. So for the rest of the semester we would just waste time and played video games in class instead of learning, because he couldn't teach the class anymore.
So there went one of my favorite teachers. Most of the teachers in my high school were incompetent fools who have never deserved their jobs, but they all stayed. None of them were fired. I feel like I was denied an education.
If you've got a teacher who is bad at his current assignment despite counseling and training, find a position in the district he would be good at, then reassign him if possible.
If he resists, find a position he would be so bad at that he'd be easy to fire or he'd be so frustrated he'd quit, then either entice him to take the position through incentives or force him to take it by eliminating his current position or making his reassignment part of a larger shakeup.
A third option is to entice him to take a non-classroom position. If teaching is like any other profession, there are people who know the theory of teaching and can teach that theory to other teachers, but who, in the classroom, are mediocre. If you have one of these people in your classroom, "promote" them to administration as a teacher to the teachers.
If you do any of these things, you will have to be very careful with your paper trail. You'll either want this to look specifically non-punitive, in which case you won't want many black marks in the teacher's employee record immediately prior to making the move, or you'll want it to be clearly punitive, in which case you'll want it to look like the person deserved firing but you didn't want to tarnish his resume.
The sad reality is that in some districts, there are too many bad or ineffective teachers for this to make more than a small dent in the problem.
By the way, in some states, if an entire school is ineffective year after year for several years, all the teachers can be forced to reapply for their jobs and any of them can be summarily not rehired without cause. Of course, if things are that bad, the principal is probably also out of a job, so the principal is very unlikely to do this just to get rid of a few bad teachers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd be curious to hear more. Why were they considered to be incompetent? Over what period of time was this measured? Do you think it's a correct assessment?
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
There are few examples of this which have gotten prominent media attention. One ongoing example is that of John Freshwater, an 8th grade school teacher who was found to be a) teaching creationism to his students and b) using a Tesla coil to burn crosses onto students arms. These were among other problems. The district finally got sick of it all and tried to get him fired. The result is a series of lawsuits which are still ongoing. This is getting regular coverage over that The Pandas Thumb http://pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=2&tag=Freshwater&limit=20 due mainly to the fact that Freshwater was promoting Young Earth Creationism. So in this case we have a teacher who was engaged in unconstitutional behavior and also engaging in what might constitute assault and the district still can't rid of him without a massive hassle.
While firing teachers may be difficult, getting them out of the classroom isn't in NYC.
I first heard about this via "This American Life" on NPR, but this site summarizes it nicely:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/32769
My father was a local teachers' union president for two years. The grievance system can be quite arduous, however many local board members and superintendents were pretty efficient at finding ways to fire teachers or make their job so miserable they quit.
All that said, for us to 'fire' teachers seems to imply that we believe that teachers cannot learn and retrain to become better teachers. Isn't that ironic?
Firing bad teachers in suburban schools might be good for inner city schools, where they have classes without teachers. In this case a bad teacher is better than no teacher. If fired teachers want to continue making a living, some may be forced to work in an inner city school where they could get a job the next day. Not exactly a win/win situation.
I've had quite a few bad teachers in my time (as in disliked), just as I've had some bad (incompetent) teachers. There's an intersection there of course, but in my experience the disliked teachers were actually very competent.
However the only ones people complained about were the disliked teachers. Like the ones who didn't care who your daddy/mommy were and would treat you like you treated them.
You hit on an important point that I don't think most people who have never taught really realize. Having done stints in both high school and jr. high teaching, I have this to say: Teaching jr. high or high school is the same as being in jr. high or high school, but keeping your head down and just passing through isn't an option. It can be fun, but, at least for me, it was miserable.
On the other hand, teaching university is just like being in university, which I enjoyed a great deal, and for that reason, that is where I work. I get paid a handsome salary to hang around with idealistic people and learn stuff!
Because bad parents affect kids more than the teachers, and there are a /lot/ more bad parents out there.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
There is a charter school in Oakland with nearly all minority kids (mostly black) that do better than schools comprised mostly of while kids in wealthier districts. The same can be said of Catholic schools comprised of mostly inner city black kids. My point is that race really isn't the issue although there is a serious problem within popular black culture. But if the school has zero tolerance for disruptive children and they enforce a strict learning environment, you can teach children of any race to do well.
From John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education":
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/17b.htm
"""
Power ÷ 22
PLAYERS IN THE SCHOOL GAME
FIRST CATEGORY: Government Agencies
1) State legislatures, particularly those politicians known in-house to specialize in educational matters
2) Ambitious politicians with high public visibility
3) Big-city school boards controlling lucrative contracts
4) The courts
5) Big-city departments of education
6) State departments of education
7) Federal Department of Education
8) Other government agencies (National Science Foundation, National Training Laboratories, Defense Department, HUD, Labor Department, Health and Human Services, and many more)
SECOND CATEGORY: Active Special Interests
1) Key private foundations.2 About a dozen of these curious entities have been the most important shapers of national education policy in this century, particularly those of Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller.
2) Giant corporations, acting through a private association called the Business Roundtable (BR), latest manifestation of a series of such associations dating back to the turn of the century. Some evidence of the centrality of business in the school mix was the composition of the New American Schools Development Corporation. Its makeup of eighteen members (which the uninitiated might assume would be drawn from a representative cross-section of parties interested in the shape of American schooling) was heavily weighted as follows: CEO, RJR Nabisco; CEO, Boeing; President, Exxon; CEO, AT CEO, Ashland Oil; CEO, Martin Marietta; CEO, AMEX; CEO, Eastman Kodak; CEO, WARNACO; CEO, Honeywell; CEO, Ralston; CEO, Arvin; Chairman, BF Goodrich; two ex-governors, two publishers, a TV producer.
3) The United Nations through UNESCO, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, etc.
4) Other private associations, National Association of Manufacturers, Council on Economic Development, the Advertising Council, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy Association, etc.
5) Professional unions, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Council of Supervisory Associations, etc.
6) Private educational interest groups, Council on Basic Education, Progressive Education Association, etc.
7) Single-interest groups: abortion activists, pro and con; other advocates for
specific interests.
THIRD CATEGORY: The "Knowledge" Industry
1) Colleges and universities
2) Teacher training colleges
3) Researchers
4) Testing organizations
5) Materials producers (other than print)
6) Text publishers
7) "Knowledge" brokers, subsystem designers
Control of the educational enterprise is distributed among at least these twenty-two players, each of which can be subdivided into in-house warring factions which further remove the decision-making process from simple accessibility. The financial interests of these associational voices are served whether children learn to read or not.
There is little accountability. No matter how many assertions are made to the contrary, few penalties exist past a certain level on the organizational chart--unless a culprit runs afoul of the media--an explanation for the bitter truth whistle-blowers regularly discover when they tel
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I have had a biology teacher who was a proud member of the Promise Keepers (our section on evolution was ten minutes, mostly consisting of "Now, you don't have to believe any of this."), a college algebra teacher who had trouble adding two single-digit numbers without a calculator and who let us use cheat sheets for every exam, including the final (could only be 1"x1", but in 6pt font, that's every formula for the test), a statistics and probability teacher who spent most of the class discussing the latest goings on with the various school athletic organizations (she was the cross-country coach), an AP English teacher who had a penchant for "losing" papers she didn't want to grade (and when she did grade papers, the first few submissions would have corrections and comments, the rest had nothing but a grade, rumor has it she never read them, just assigned a grade based on what she thought that student would do), a physics teacher so mind-bogglingly incompetent that my sophomore year a student organization devoted to her termination had more members than any other club (she was really, really bad, a powerpoint teacher), a German teacher who spent more time showing us slides of her various trips to Germany than teaching (we did a lot of projects in English in that class), a Spanish teach who spent an entire semester not teaching Spanish because it was more important that we learn about the cultures of South American nations (Spanish-speaking or otherwise), a seventh-grade math teacher who didn't mark off points for wrong answers because, and I quote, "Check marks lower self-esteem" (no, I am not making that up). The list goes on and on. We watched the Leo DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet, rather than reading it, I had an English teacher in middle school who thought Billy Maddison was an educational film, you name it. I attended a private Catholic school until fifth grade, and while I wouldn't have wanted to study Biology there, I was about two years' worth of curriculum ahead of my classmates when I transferred into public school.
Now, I did have a handful of good teachers. Namely, two good middle school science teachers, my sociology teacher, 20th Century History teacher, CAD teacher, art teacher (I made a bong mug), and good elementary teachers (until public school. Although they were about as friendly as Catholic school nuns are widely supposed to be). That's it. And, those teachers were the ones always getting into it with the administration. The most wildly incompetent teachers were the ones in the administration's best graces. My sociology teacher couldn't get textbooks for his class, for example.
A large part of the problem is the incompetent teachers. They have no interest in emphasizing retention. Starting College Algebra, but don't remember how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions? No problem, the first month of the class will be spent reviewing it! It is very much the case that the further you progress through the curriculum, the less you are expected to remember. Instead of booting the kids who can't handle fractions out of the College Algebra course and sending them back to a more appropriate course, the curriculum is dumbed-down to fit them (I once had to make up a test in College Algebra, along with a classmate a year ahead of me who was about to graduate valedictorian. We were sitting out in the hall, and I was breezing through the test, while my classmate looked quite perplexed, stuck on the first problem. Finally, she turned to me and asked "What does perimeter mean?" God I hate this country...). As a result, your average and above-average students not only don't learn the material they should, but they often lose confidence and interest in school in particular, and learning in general (luckily I still enjoy learning, I just chose to learn out of the state-sponsored daycare/prison).
... just try firing any state or (especially) federal government employee.
I suspect for much the same reason. It's so difficult most managers won't bother.
I'm all for employee rights but governments really take the cake. It's the rare, maybe even non-existent, bird that gets fired for incompetence.
I don't deny that there are crappy teachers but at the same time if the teachers aren't supported at home by the parents then all the work by the teachers is an exercise in futility. I always find it funny when I hear people here from good family backgrounds assuming that their background is universally applicable to all students out there.
With that being said the way which kids learn needs to be examined; English should be taught right up until the end of 7th form - focusing on the fundamentals, if they want to learn about poetry, creative writing and so forth, they can take double major English. Talk to any university professor and they'll tell you about the sorry state of writing by students who come to university. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals - I look at the crap that US schools teacher - what they hell have they got to do with fundamental skills?
Kids who aren't university inclined need to be told they aren't university material and they should go to a polytechnic - learn a trade, be a bricky, sparky, plumber or some other trade. Its time that parents pulled their head out of their ass and realise that their kids aren't vessels for them to fulfil their dreams which they failed to do in their own life - if their kid is not academically inclined then they should stop wasting tax payers money by continuing their education and get them learning a trade.
The right-wingers will blame unions, "tenure" and every other typical right-wing target.
They will forget the fact that in the USA, teaching & education appears to be not very well valued. Nor is it viewed as a basic right (yes, I will be branded a "leftist", or as you Yanks like to call people you consider criminally insane traitors, a "liberal"). For quite some time now, in the USA, people haven't been going in teaching for the money or because it is a well-considered profession. So the best & brightest are not generally attracted to the profession.
And then, there is the generally negative attitude towards " book learnin' " generally found in the USA, an attitude that seems to go back to the late sixties. Contrast this with the attitude that you had to go to school if you wanted to elevate yourself & better your life, attitude that seemed to be somewhat prevalent before the sixties (or is it the fifties?). What brought about this, I have no clue, but then I do not live in the USA.
For a country that likes to view itself more civilized & enlightened that the rest of the world, the USA seems to have an odd relationship with what enables that: education...
p.s.: I'm not saying there are no bad teachers in the USA, or anywhere else in the world. There are. But if "The System" is built in such a way that achievement or even just the will to learn & succeed are not correctly encouraged and rewarded, maybe you're just reaping what you sowed (sp?).
Great story dude! I read it through to the end!
Regardless of whether it is actually true, it is at least credible... sadly.
I mostly taught kids between the age of 11 and 18, in not the best neighborhoods money can buy (not really bad, not good either).
I always started my introduction round about this way:
I can assure you that the rumors that I am reasonable are just that, rumors.
I am only interested in becoming a better teacher, for that I need you to pay attention or be very good at faking it.
Either way if I think you are obstructing me in becoming a better teacher, no matter if this is true or not, I don't want you in my class, the consequences are yours however. If thats sound unreasonable, I really don't care.
As you have noticed, I am not getting paid for my good looks, social skills, political correctness or any other thing that might make you like me.
If I speak to you, I address you with mister or misses and your surname, it is in your best interested to do the same.
I am not your generation, neither am I psychic, if I have to guess what is going on in your mind, most likely I will get it wrong. Thus it is in your best interest to make suggestions how I can make you understand better what I am teaching.
I can not demand your respect, you make your own choices in that, therefor I do not put any effort in making me more representable to your liking.
I can not demand your obedience, you are your own master, therefor I do not put any effort in establishing me as a figure of authority.
However, as said before I can decide if I want you in my class or not and rest assured I will use this privilege as often as I possibly can.
These are not rules, these are consequences, there is no good or bad and I am not capable to judge right from wrong, only you can do that for yourself. So unless you are certain you want this, it is probably for the best to leave now.
Alright then, I do not give grades, you either pass or you fail the module (I teach in modules, for an average student about 4 hours study time per module). You are welcome to repeat the module test as often as you like, the last test result is the standing one.
Material you need to study the modules will be available when you arrive, if you rather use your own pen instead of my chewed off pencils, be my guest. If you rather read from a nice book than from my barely readable copies, well you know what to do.
---
Of course in this period I had numerous things that went wrong, but the worst that can happen is that when I ask someone to leave and despite that remains seated and seeks the confrontation. In that case I explain, that if he/she will not leave, I can not continue this class, meaning that I might as well give everybody off for the hour with no consequences for leaving my class early except for the trouble makers.
The next disastrous thing that can happen is that the whole class remains seated in a try to intimidate me, in which case I announce that I am going to leave the room and recommend that all of you will be expelled, unless for the students that leave before me. This has happened exactly ounce when I just started out. The director did try to 'calm' me down but I knew that if there where no consequences then my teaching career at least at that school would be over. So I said either you expel them or I leave now, we settled on a time-out of a week (meaning the whole class was not welcome to school for a whole week and the education inspectors and social aid was alerted of the situation).
Somehow this reputation managed to follow me wherever I was, that is till now, I moved to another country and no longer (part-time) teach. I never was a full-time teacher, since to make a decent amount of money I needed a more 'serious' job. But teaching for me is the most frustrating, rewarding, difficult and enjoyable job there is, it makes me feel alive, tired, humble and proud all at the same time.
Because the students are so pampered that it's hard to prove that someone is a bad teacher?
POLITICS.
I don't mean politics as in government, I mean politics as in social manipulation.
The only way I see to fix the system is with vouchers. This is the only way to have competition within a state-funded education system.
If a teacher's students' parents all transfer their kids to another school because the teacher is incompetent, there's no commission that can save that teacher's job: the school will have no money to pay him/her. That's the extreme case, but short of that, the schools that provide the best education will get the most students.
I realize there are some likely problems with vouchers, such as the money getting spent on religious education. That's a valid concern, but (a) I think it can be addressed to some extent and (b) compared to the ongoing train wreck we have now, I don't see it as so terrible.
Despite being a generally center-left voter, I have always thought vouchers were a stellar idea. (Think "single-payer education".) The ongoing antipathy the Democrats have to them just shows, to me, that they're in the unions' pockets. But why more parents don't demand them just mystifies me.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
If the average class score on the test is at the 40th percentile at the beginning of the term and then the 45th percentile at the end, the class had a good teacher, even though most of the students still scored low on the test. But if that same class scores at the 35th percentile at the end, the class had an underperforming teacher.
Likewise, a class that scored at the 85th percentile at the beginning of the term and then at the 80th percentile at the end had an underperforming teacher, even though the class scored well.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yeah school doesn't teach a lot of life skills like managing personal finances. A lot of that has to be learned on your own but at least there's internet help and tips nowadays. I imagine in the past few decades, most people had to ask their parents. And if your parents were absent or terrible, then it really sucked for the kid.
Oops. Never type whilst trying to do your weekly chores at the same time (I should stop doing my laundry when I run out of clean underwear...).
Anyway, I should have said that whatever ails the education system in the USA (if there is "a system" instead of a hodge-podge of disjointed schooling arragements) is not the typically targeted superficial factoids favoured by the right, that the causes might be a bit deeper.
Or, like someone else pointed out, maybe the school principals (or directors or whatever you Yanks call them) are just too lazy to follow The Process to terminate those unfit for teaching. You could be a PhD in your field and yet be a abysmal teacher...
Awww, I thought the single page version was shortened. How can the product of the public school system be expected to maintain his attention span through the entire text?
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I know a programmer who has been fired 5 times, but not for incompetence.. he's an alcoholic. He thinks its perfectly normal to get fired.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yes, very much so. Keep in mind that school systems are locally controlled (well...), so there's a huge variation across the country. The description is accurate for a typical school, though. Although you'll hear a lot about people who love teaching becoming teachers, there's another fundamental personality type attracted to the position. People who like to be in control of others. There are better jobs for that, but if you're not qualified... well, a four-year education degree has about the same real content as a two-year degree in anything else.
I personally experienced what the GP was describing. I went from a private 1-6 school to public Junior High (not by choice; dad's job moved) and the culture shock was enormous. I didn't encounter a public school teacher that didn't fit the dickhead type until ninth grade, and then only one exception.
I do need to address the caveat above. For quite some time now the federal government has been intruding more and more into the K-12 school systems. They're using the usual way of exceeding their authority; taking money they shouldn't have, attaching strings, and only then passing it back (same way the pushed nation wide speed limits). Oddly enough, if you compare test scores (SAT and various international competitions) over time compared with federal interference over time... there's a pretty strong correlation. *sigh* Anyway.
Once a teacher has achieved tenure, they are nearly untouchable, at that point you basically can't fire them.
Check out Bill Gates' recent TED talk. He talks about how to improve our school systems in the second half, and how hard it is to fire teachers is part of it. It's really astonishing -- he mentions some teachers actually have obstacles added to their contracts that make it nearly impossible to fire a teacher for poor performance, or even to restrict judging their performance at all.
It's PARENTS. I worked in a high school for 2 years. Parents today are sending less disciplined, less respectful students to school and expecting the teachers to make up the slack.
Parents are so arrogant that when Little Johnny comes home with a story about why their teacher is so bad and mean to them, they never even stop to consider that their child could be doing what children do; lying to avoid responsibility for their own actions.
Kind of a long story, but I'll share one incident. The junior class at the school I worked at was getting into LOTS of trouble; DUIs, MIPs, bad academics, poor performance in school sports, you name it. So, the principal called an assembly where he sent out all of the teachers except for a handful of administrators. He told them quite frankly that they were screwing up and ruining their futures. He basically challenged them to turn their class around.
Well, ALL the kids ran home and told their parents what a mean, bad principal they had and that he'd called them stupid slackers, etc. Naturally, having worked with the students when I heard this story I called BS and did my own questioning of kids. What they'd all admit if you took the 30 seconds to skeptically question them was that the principal had done nothing of the sort. That they were exaggerating what he'd said and that they had gotten the precise response they wanted from their parents. The parents blamed the teachers and the administrators.
And, this wasn't some poor, troubled school. This was a obscenely wealthy school district in a college town with a lot of children of college staff and administration in attendance.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I complained about my daughter's teacher, and the Beaverton Education Association sent me a cease and desist order threatening to sue me for defamation and interfering with the teacher's business relationships! Wanna know what teacher's priorities are? Visit the teacher's union web sites sometime. Hint: They contain no content about helping students learn; all everything there is concerned with how to avoid be held accountable for your actions or for you lack of educational results.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In the Polanco case, as in Daniel's, there was no shortage of documentation. The account of the history teacher's interactions with the apparently suicidal boy came primarily from his teaching assistant, who wrote a detailed letter to administrators. In addition, students submitted written statements that were introduced at Polanco's hearing.
One student wrote that Polanco had told the boy that he "should cut himself more bigger next time (cuts himself like a little wussy)." Another wrote: "Polanco tell [him] that he should cut himself with something sharper." A third wrote that "Polanco would call [him] 'the cutter kid' and would sometimes call [him] stupid."
Polanco testified at his hearing that he had not made these remarks and instead had told the boy -- who was not named in the commission documents -- that he was glad his suicide attempt had not succeeded. The documents suggest he had showed concern about the boy, asking a counselor about his well-being.
"Knowing that I caused pain, whether I did it on purpose or without knowing it, it's a weight on my shoulders because I'm responsible [for] what happened in my classroom," testified Polanco, who declined to comment for this story.
The commission accepted the accounts of the teacher's aide and students as accurate. But it did not see the statements of Polanco, an otherwise well-regarded teacher and former union representative, as goading or callous. The teacher, the panel concluded, was trying "to defuse the awkward situation."
The Times could not determine what became of the boy. As for Polanco, he now teaches at East Valley High School in North Hollywood.
People such as yourself are apparently part of the problem. Through some primitive tribal mentality, you assume people who are part of your group can do no wrong, although they are humans, just as capable of wrong as the parents and students you bash. Frankly, if your first reaction to reading about an attempt to fire a teacher for insulting a student about his suicide attempt is to stop reading and rant about how much parents and students suck, you should find another line of work, because you're either burnt out or an adversarial nutjob. I say this as someone who believes that an entitlement attitude is a problem -- but not one that is limited to parents and students.
Fortunately, I have no doubt that most teachers would be in favor of firing that asshole.
Back in highschool I had a teacher who would literally read the paper more often then he taught class. He'd been at the school for a very long time, he had to know it would be a pain to out him.
The same could be said for any position which is covered by a union. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get rid of deadwood in a local city government position, and it's strictly because of the unions and contracts.
Meanwhile, those without the seniority( but rock their jobs ) are the first up for lay offs. Unions are the cause of this insanity.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It's all about dumbing down people, so they won't notice the changes to the government that the big-government people are doing.
It's a coup. And it's long underway.
Democrats, starting with FDR started with the idea that people "deserve" things they can't ay for. The Carter and Clinton administrations did the supreme stupidity of MAKING banks give worthless loans so they would necessarily crash.
Oh, blame it on those rascally-republicans, capitalism, and all the other things that would have stopped it...but crash the lenders. THEN step in as if the congress played no part and 'save the day' not by buying off these loans...instead take over the banks by buying up the cheap stock.
The same is going on with the car companies. In 10 years, the same people you bitched about paying $600 for a toilet seat will bring their ineptitude to car making, and they will force you to buy only the cars they want you to have.
The healthcare system is the same; crash them by requiring they take medicade/medicare patients, then pay then $30 for a $5000 case. Swoop in, 'save the day' and soon they have control over life and death of everyone in the nation.
But don't watch Fox News; please returned to your centrally-planned news channels and resume programming. Those we elect are sure to care for us SO MUCH BETTER than ourselves.
Yeah, the end is, in fact, near.
Well those people are going to fucked up the poop chute in short order. I seriously doubt those pensions will be paid forever. There are so many states, cities, and counties that got greedy and gave away absurd pension packages for years and now don't have the revenue to support themselves.
That and just where are the pension funds? Who is managing them? What have their losses been like? Were some of them invested in Bernie Madoff like investments?
What happens when those people that are used to doing nothing productive for society at all* find themselves without any of that cushy cushy income to support themselves?
Could they even survive in a real business environment where you might live and die by your performance alone? It's not like they can all become banking and auto executives that seem to be completely immune.
I'm with you and we can take some comfort in knowing how close they are to losing their pensions.
* - before I am attacked for that little statement, keep in mind how crappy our entire education system is. My statement is harsh, but well deserved. I support paying teachers much higher salaries, but without tenure and more sensible regulations. Basically revamp the education system and I will have no problem paying my taxes and paying those people.
P.S - Yes, there are good teachers who are serious about actually educating a child. My experience is though that they are vastly outnumbered, marginalized, and generally lack the power to change anything.
I wrote it through and through. What I said is true, complete, correct, and not mis-leading. Applied to Lake Forest, CA -- Orange County Jail Theo Lacey, County of Orange Social Services, State of California.
This isn't hell on Earth. This is earth on Hell and I don't recommend anyone being around this shithole. Oh you wouldn't believe what kind of shit was going on in Royale Therapeutic Center just off Little Saigon. Those aren't people, they're less than animals; they're creapy things and creatures. What they commit on their "subjects", they themselves wouldn't recommend to their children and co-workers. Folie a'deux syndrome being spread by alleged psycho logists/analysts/trists.
First, NCLB is seen as a joke by all teachers, but it is what management must have them do. Management are former teachers, and they agree it's stupid... So they play it like a game, get your kids to pass the test. They have departments that study the answers to tests, and then pass off the research to the curriculum departments to write the curricula for school district.
Kids (in California esp) who are doing HORRIBLY, not just slacking and pulling D's, but just not fucking bothering, are babied. They are treated as though they aren't doing anything wrong by being lame asses, and are put in ridiculous "remediation courses" that cost over $2000 per student per year. State and Fed funds will pay these fees almost exactly.
So, since schools are already overwhelmed, private contract firms offer afterschool programs that cost exactly that amount per student. The kids have a good time and since they're engaged, they study and do marginally better. The bump is seen as a good thing by the management when it hits the news papers after the latest standardized test.
Management liked it so much they brought the same types of programs in house and had their staff teach using these programs (still cost about 1k per student per year in software licensing, thank you Scholastic.)
Now go back to these kids; the whole point of this tirade. I worked in a high school district, these kids were 14-18 and were reading at the 3rd grade level...
That means 7 other years worth of teachers (and parents yes) failed these kids so horribly they can't read Clifford the Big Red Dog without help.
-1, bizarre
$ make available
The union most likely negotiated your contract, the amount of in-service days you worked, the pay scale you participated in, and the benefits packaged that was offered to you (retirement, pension, healthcare, life insurance...etc).
They also, most likely, negotiated the school calendar that you worked as well.
Obviously, this varies from state to state, but teachers unions have FAR reaching influence - more so than most people realize.
-ted
My opinion is as follows: the prospect of firing "bad" teachers should not even be on the table. The educational problems of the U.S., namely our lacking in math/science compared to some eastern nations (India, China, etc.), and the fear for the United States' place as a technological leader in the world, is partly self-correcting, partly a governmental issue, and partly a non-issue. Now I'll quickly explain my nonsensical, vague statements.
It's self-correcting because the disinterest of many young people today in their education is a symptom of the media glamorizing the quick buck, and parents' naivety in how to deal with such a phenomenon. It's my belief that the next generation will see the faults in their thinking. Parents will cease to blame teachers and administration for their children's shortcomings. In the end, the youngsters are the ones doing the learning - teachers only have a few hours a day to indoctrinate them with what they can.
It's a governmental issue in that many of the problems surrounding education are interrelated with larger systemic societal and economic problems. The general state of our economy and the relative success of the workforce creates the educational expectations and demand. In this respect, it is the job of the government to promote social programs that prevent the educational breakdown in lower income areas of the nation. The important thing is that the classrooms and books are in place so the students can learn if they choose.
It's a non-issue because, in the end, people advocate for themselves. If a teacher needs to be fired, it will happen.
Lastly, I feel it necessary to give my own profession and education background: educated in public schools through middle school (NYS), went to private Jesuit high school, private engineering school. Currently an EE.
I'm not suggesting "throwing" money at education--obviously we'd like it spent wisely. Looking at districts across the US, it's clear that there's a correlation between quality of education and dollars spent.
One significant benefit of increasing education funding is that it allows a larger set of people to consider teaching as a career, as opposed to their next best alternative.
For example, I have some desire to teach, a graduate degree, and an excellent knowledge of science and technology. I'd have to cut my salary in half, though, and since I have a family, I'm not willing to do this. (In my case, I believe I'd do poorly in the classroom, so this is not much of a loss, but there are a lot of people like me who'd make excellent teachers.)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
AC. ... you don't have a brother.
May the Maths Be with you!
The purpose of tenure is to grant a level of political immunity to teachers so they can teach properly. I had several very good teachers who wouldn't have lasted a year without tenure. They were not popular with the administration because they expected ALL of their students to learn the material well and would happily deviate from the brain dead course materials as much as was necessary to accomplish that.
Unfortunately, with politics raging as they do in schools, tenure has gotten so strong that it supports bad teachers as well as good.
Take away tenure and you won't improve the faculty much, but they will as a whole be more politically correct. The low end will be out for incompetence and the high end for being politically incorrect.
Of course, one question naturally comes up. If these teachers are truly THAT bad, how in the world did they get tenure in the first place?
From TFA:
Among the findings:
* Building a case for dismissal is so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don't make the effort except in the most egregious cases. The vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse, other immoral or illegal behavior, insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as showing up on time.
Showing up on time is a violation of the rules? Geez, no wonder teacher performance is so poor. They can't even set a good example for the students by coming to class on time!
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
So what are you trying to say? Is school still in session to teach the student how to eat durring the 12 o'clock hour or do they Recess to relaxe and eat on their own? That's how it were the day I swung by that high school on my way to the hardware store. Did my Long hair and Unix-gruven beard remind them of their sins that the one god Thor would drop some hammers and lightning bolts on their friggin' heads and that is why I was prejudiced? You remind me of some of them arm-chair US'ians that are always quick to judge as though they were right, true, and immune from prosecution.
I think it's high time those who downmod on Slashdot ought to be required to write a minimum 50-word statement explaining what they find objectionable, especially when they're downmodding something that someone else upmodded.
I'm looking at the "reactions" to this one, and I can only assume the downmodders happen to be people who slid through the educational system and are precisely the sort of moron I'm describing!
Fucking ignorant bullshit.
Articles like this are designed to fool and manipulate the public. After reading three paragraphs into the article, everyone's bullshit detector should have gone through the roof. Read this:
The Times reviewed every case on record in the last 15 years in which a tenured employee was fired by a California school district and formally contested the decision before a review commission: 159 in all (not including about two dozen in which the records were destroyed).
So, 183 firings were contested. In 15 years. Anyone bother to think for a moment about what percentage of teachers this was?
LAUSD is the 2nd largest district in the country. This year alone, there were 46,496 teachers employed in the district. In one year. I would estimate that the average year over the last 15 years saw 43858 teachers. 183/15 = 12.2 teachers contested per year. 12.2/43858 teachers means that there were problems with .03 PERCENT of the teaching staff. That's roughly one out of every 3,600 teachers each year.
If anyone here thinks that teacher unions should be done away with because 1 out of 3,600 teachers is a bad apple in LAUSD, you are an idiot. Public schools are the greatest economic equalizer in the world today. They allow the poorest of children to still become part of the middle class. No other economic factor even comes as close to achieving this. And the more empowered teachers are to concentrate on teaching, the better the school. Unions help provide this.
Stop bashing unions, and instead bash the government officials who turn our public schools against themselves, their students, and their communities.
This is seriously a mystery for some people? It's because they work for the government. They get away with being "bad" teachers because there's no motivation not to be bad teachers.
It's not like people have a choice. What are they gonna do? Send their kids somewhere else? Stop paying the portion of their taxes that pays bad teachers? Good luck.
If the government is going to have anything to do with education (which it shouldn't) there should be a voucher system where the government pays for schooling, but the actual schooling is provided by privately run schools. It's no big surprise to anybody that the people most against voucher systems are the teachers unions, filled with bad teachers.
Maybe not
We don't "cherry-pick" geniuses- the originating school district sends them to us. If the kid is a genius, then the kid is not being placed at our school. We get the kids after they have already had problems in traditional schools.
We teach kids with learning differences. We must meet the needs specified in the IEP, and perform to the sending district's satisfaction, or the child is placed somewhere else.
We need the absolute best staff we can get to help most of these kids that come from poor school districts, or from un-supportive homes. We don't succeed with them all, but we do succeed with most.
-ted
Again it comes back to correlation and causation.
Two separate teachers, both with 50% failure rates.
Is this because Teacher A has a high expectation of what the students should learn and grades accordingly? Is this because Teacher B can't teach? Or is that reversed?
There's too many variables involved with trying to rate teachers based on students' academic performance. Let's face it. There's a lot of kids out there who either can't learn or just don't want to learn. To quote Caddyshack: "The world needs ditch diggers too."
Maybe an answer is to filter them out early in the process. By middle school it's fairly obvious who is going to advance to college, who is better working with their hands, and who is just there to cause as much trouble as possible. Send them down different education paths and play to their strengths.
My father dropped out of high school and went to vocational school because his strength is working with motors and electronics. He's been very successful at that. There's no way he would have done well in a college prep situation.
Back on topic. The only real way to objectively judge a teacher's performance is based on administration. Show up on time, teach the required syllabus, etc. Any review or subjective process lends itself to personal spite and politics.
I've dealt with some bad teachers -- and in a few cases had to get pretty specific with schools to get changes made -- but generally they have been because the issues were real.
On the other hand, I know there are MANY of these so called "helicopter" parents who have made most of the teachers I know absolutely terrified of input. These parents see everything the teacher does that doesn't result in their perfect and brilliant little darling being the top recognized student as a direct threat. Every moral statement must agree, every method of teaching must match their kids' way of learning.
You've got type-a lawyers and doctors and accountants as parents who are intimidating as hell (on purpose) to these typically 20 something young women teaching fresh out of school. It isn't even a fair fight. By the time the teachers have 10 years experience, they've in full-on defense mode.
I'm not saying all teachers are good teachers. I am saying that if they didn't have pretty solid walls to stand behind they couldn't teach our kids without constantly being under threat from every parent who doesn't agree with them.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I agree. I don't at all understand tenure for elementary school, middle school, or high school teachers. It simply makes no sense to me. There is no "tenure" in any other job on Earth, is there? Why should a bad middle school teacher be impossible to fire because s/he's been in the job for 3 years?
Unions and Teachers
Now try to get rid of either one
Slackers of the world unite!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Part of the problem is, what metric are you using to judge the teacher?
The metric that works best, as I am sure you are aware working in higher education, is peer review. Student performance depends too much on external factors and parents are not qualified to assess a teachers overall performance - although they certainly can alert others of a need to be reviewed.
You're not just a smart kid, you're gifted, which is a different problem. Not a problem for you of course (or maybe it was at the school you were in) but for the school to know how to handle. Gifted students have special needs that not all teachers know how to meet.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Reason Magazine talked about this a few years ago.
The NYC version:
http://oldsite.reason.com/0610/howtofireanincompetentteacher.pdf
I am Jack's writable stack pointer.
Unions protect all the teachers, good and bad. It's administration's job to demonstrate that a given teacher is bad. If they are too lazy or can't adequately describe their grounds for firing, this is hardly the union's fault.
Or would you rather let them fire the good teacher who has just turned 40 and lost that certain je ne sais quoi she used to have? Do some research. That shit happens.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
In the USA we have, and/or had, similar systems. It tends to vary by state/district and I've been in so many it has blurred. Most schools had a concept of "gifted/regular/remedial" in some fashion. The advantages I think are obvious, but this model has always been under attack. It seems the schools prefer to mix capabilities, trying to drive mediocrity instead of excellence. Good training for the corporate world, but I digress.
The only compelling argument against the segregation approach is that teachers too wish to teach the more eager, more docile elite, than to deal with the remedial students who in many cases may be dangerous, but certainly more troublesome. As a result, remedial teachers tend to teach remedial students, making a bad situation worse. Maintaining control/authority in these levels does at times become a bigger concern than teaching.
So I went to a school filled with poor or bad teachers. The good teachers were generally an embarassment to the school board in one way or another (i.e. a gay teacher a quarter-century ago was borderline unacceptable).
Where did I go? One of the two most prestigious academic high schools in our city of 3/4 million people. You needed high marks to get in, and high marks to stay in. Music and drama were on the agenda, phys ed wasn't (at least, not beyond the one course required for grad). Thing is, the students did well. The students did well _despite_ the teachers, because they were driven.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I teach physics at a state university, and am a lowly untenured instructor. I know from personal experience that a few nut cases can make your life hell. There's the sweet young thing who out of the blue starts the "you really hurt my feelings when you said girls brains aren't as good as boy's brains." Just picture the shit that can come down on your head when this total delusion hits the administration. Total delusion! We have a zero tolerance policy against sexual discrimination of this sort, and it would be trivial to not renew my contract since I am in a state where it is against the law for public employees to be represented by a union. Then there is the guy who goes to your department chairman every two days because he isn't doing well in your class and he's got a 4.0 so it must be your fault (he got a B+ at the end of the term since he wasn't very good at physics--because you cannot memorize all the problems--and physics cost him his summa cum laude!). So you get marked down on your annual assessment even though the overwhelming majority of your student assessments come in well above departmental average, and you wind up getting counseled, etc., don't get a pay raise for the superior job you are doing.
For every bad teacher that has survived the elimination process at the outset of their teaching career (or gone bad later on), there are at least a half dozen who have had their lives screwed over by nutcase students along the lines outlined above.
Liberals, by definition, come at their argument pre-biased to the left and are therefore never "open minded."
I love the way you write off an entire group as never being open minded in a sentence about bias.
*chuckles*
My pics.
There was a billboard from the last campaign that read "More teachers, less bureaucrats". Someone spray-painted "fewer grammar" underneath it.
I took this as a sign that the New Zealand education system was in fine shape. Even our taggers are grammar nazis.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
You think bad teachers are a problem? Look at bad administrators. At best they are useless bureaucrats who collect 6 figure salaries of taxpayer money. At worst, they are horrible martinets or anti-science bozos pushing their agenda on kids.
One of my favorite lines from "From the Earth to the Moon" was uttered by Harrison "Jack" Schmidt.
"Find a teacher who can bring out the 'scientific mind' in all of them."
Speaking as someone who wasn't the best of students in high-school, I was a lousy regurgitator of facts and a terrible test-taker. But I had a physics teach who nurtured my "experimentalist" nature. I also had a math tutor who was able to get me to understand the material far better than the regular teacher. I've also had college professors whose method of teaching only worked if you already had a background in the material from some mysterious unknown class I should have taken before.
My point is that a teacher is effective if they are able to reach the student who is having trouble yet far too many teachers are willing to write off the ones that don't "get it". In the current system, teachers' goal is to get tenure which is just a euphemism for coasting. "I got tenure. You can't fire me and I don't give a damn anymore." Executive Order #57: Tenure doesn't exist. You will be evaluated on your ability to teach with special merit given to teaching the unteachable. If you suck at it, you're gone. Demerits will be given to those who foist their own dogma on students.
Wish I had some mod points.
Public education in the US is not about education, the objective is to teach submission and to act as expected in your chosen profession.
Personally, I quit and got my GED after grade 10. Sure they offered "honors" classes, but these classes really just required more homework and were graded to a higher standard (read, no one gets an A). My choice was to work my ass off to make a B, take "regular" classes and make a A+ or quit and wash dishes, cook food and make some money.
On the flip side of that are teachers who get fired without solid reason when left without tenure. For instance, I live in Corpus Christi, TX. Here in the city named for the body of Christ, non-Christian teachers have been fired without cause when their religious preferences, or lack thereof were discovered. Yet Christian teachers who feel the need to foist their dogma on their students cannot be touched without bringing in the ACLU. History and government teachers often feel the need to refer to Fox News for their information, which anyone with a brain knows is garbage. Evolution is skimmed over at best with the option given to parents to keep their kids stupid by signing a form that keeps them out of that course. Atheist students are picked on regularly by both students and the principal. At least one teacher I know to be Atheist is forced to hide his lack of belief to keep his job. The only Atheist teachers who live without fear are the ones with tenure and even they must tread lightly. This is sad as most polls show that the more educated you are, the less likely you are to be religious.
No animals were harmed in the making of this sig.
Well, there was that one puppy, but he is all better now.
Every kid deserves to be taught by a teacher with above-average skills. That'll solve everything.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
This would also be alleviated if there was a license required before people could become parents.
Funny joke. The thought of any government handling the necessary certifications with any more aplomb than they do drivers licenses had me in stitches. You know what sort of people they'd select for.
I, for one, welcome our bureaucratic overl...oh, wait...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I know everyone love to bash NCLB, God know I've wasted enough of my life taking mind numbing tests, but No Child actually can have some pretty positive effects. In DC, where I grew up and attended a public non-magnet elementary, Junior High, and High School, No Child has actually improved my High School. Manly it allows the principle, and in DC the mayor office who have direct control over the schools, to fire a large number of teachers without going through the usual Teacher's Union rigmarole. The sacked almost the entire academic adviser staff, who could be easily identified as the most useless people in the building, and a few teachers. Everyone knew who should go but no one could get rid of them before No Child. If I had known it could be helpful I would have been flunking those stupid standardized tests all through High School.
"Also it is used to make them obey authority and brain wash them to cultural "moral standards"."
You might take a long, hard look at your hypothesis, as the school system is essentially a liberal enclave.
And how are his points exclusive from yours?
Moral standards are the PC world we live in today.
As for obeying authority - many of the most authoritarian states have been essentially liberal in nature.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whereas a master's degree in business administration if often enough for a $200,000 per-year job in the private setor, a PhD in education rarely nets $80,000. We have an "industry" of low pay. When the argument is made that CEOs must be paid 10 million per year to attract the best, is it less reasonable to assume that low pay attracts lower quality educators? We have a relative shortage of teachers. If schools were flooded by applicants, bad teachers could be fired. As it is, we spend so little on education my child's kindergarten teacher asked us to donate crayons so the kids could color. No business will ever look to fire bad apples when they are already short on manpower. I worked in such an industry, and the sad fat was that the easy work was given to the incompetant, and the competant looked forward to starting their own business and getting out as soon as possible.
Over at SUNY-Albany, possible research fraud has been pointed out. The investigation has taken a long time and included a situation where the complainant was asked to comment on a report which he wasn't given a copy of because the complainant is not part of the report, with several regulations being ignored and misapplied to achieve that. It's not clear whether one person, several people, or the school administration is most involved in this mess. At least it might save some tax money if the whole school loses the ability to get related funding.
cool story, bro
look again.
The easiest way to turn kids into unthinking adults is to never give them a chance to learn discipline. It takes self-discipline to think.
There are two ways to do that.
One is by too much external discipline, never giving them a chance to do anything but what the teacher thinks. (That's a really hard thing to do to a whole class, but teachers can selectively do that to a few of the standouts, to cow the rest.)
The other is to never ask them to stretch, never push them at all.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Teaching is a problem because human learning isn't understood. Measurement is not understood either.
Education is NOT business. Only a fool applies business to education (and there are lots of them in recent years.) Just because you went to school doesn't make you an expert on education and just because you can procreate doesn't make you an expert in child development. I'm not a doctor because I've been sick... Politicians are especially bad when it comes to this problem.
Law of human nature: any measurement system will be hacked and exploited. The more rigid the system the more attack vectors-- "letter of the law" is a perfect example.
A few Ideas:
A HUMAN evaluation by a panel of 3 educators will beat a paper graduation exam easily.
Break up subjects MORE and try to eliminate the stigma / attachment to GRADE LEVELS. Some kids should be doing a heavy math sequence BEFORE english, etc. Why should everybody be forced to fit into the same mold?? The larger the school, the more alternatives should be provided; there is more than 1 way to teach something.
School Psychologist. Emotional issues are the #1 problem in education by far. (Lack of proper parenting aside...)
Child development and physiology. Not tradition. Being labeled BAD or SLOW does not help anymore than picking on a fat kid helps them lose weight. Young children wake up sooner; playtime IS development.
History. The modern world was created by people using OLD SCHOOL education without technology or involving the legal system. Learning math with an abacus or slide rule may be highly beneficial for a large number of people.
Parent Grading? Factor in the parents, if anything to help the system-- but it could put pressure on parents; who will have a harder time claiming their brat is perfect when they themselves rank poorly. (school psychologist??)
Dog Training. Ever try it? Big part of it is training THE OWNER. Its for dogs but not for kids?
No performance pay. It encourages exploits more than bragging your server is unhackable at defcon. Bad Apples shouldn't sour the whole bunch. There will ALWAYS be some corruption and there will ALWAYS be some bad educators (plus 1 style doesn't fit all.) Transferring teachers is already done - sometimes they shape up when moved around.
Culture. Sports team success impacts the college's state funding. I rest my case.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Here's an article on these issues from the AFT union magazine, "American Educator", last fall:
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2008/goldstein.pdf
A primary problem is that principals want to fire people at-will, without evidence. The union demands legitimate documented evidence, and many principals don't have the time or interest in following that up, and therefore simply drop that responsibility.
One thing that has been tried in places is putting teachers and the union on a renewal panel with the principal, including a regular review/evaluation process. Lesson: The union members are far more aggressive about removing bad teachers, so as to protect the quality of the profession (similar to doctor & lawyer bars). The example in the article saw an increase from 1% of teachers fired to 12% in the year that union-involved renewal boards were established. Principals are quoted as being enormously grateful for the confidence given by such oversight. (See article above, p. 10/37, item #6, "Increasing Accountability for Teaching Quality".)
I've taught at community colleges in two states, one with a weak union and one with a strong one. I know the strong-union institution (CUNY in New York) has far more regular, and far more rigorous observation/evaluation practices, by fellow professors. At the previous job it was entirely one assistant dean's responsibility to oversee everyone, he didn't really care for it, skipped it the majority of the time (and only sat in for 5 minutes after I begged him to give me the contract-required review), couldn't understand the proceedings in the class, etc.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Depends, when they set sexting as part of homework, I would question that.
Where are the mothers and fathers??? The moms in the PTA in my high school were vicious, they would have surely ripped the teachers head off if he didn't get fired and probably the principles too for letting him stay. This is out of control, it doesn't matter what the board can do and what the regional blah blah blah said and what the union defended. I had some bad teachers in my day and yes it would have been nice if they had fired them. But my bad teachers just were not good at teaching a subject or something. These teachers abusing their rights like that should be fired faster then they can add 2+2.
One students best teacher is another's nightmare.
If you tie the teacher's wages to students' scores on standardized tests, the teachers end up teaching the test instead of the subject. And then you get students who are good at taking (a certain kind of) tests, instead of students who can work.
There is no way to objectively evaluate teachers.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Yeah, good points.
But showing weakness is not necessarily going to undermine your authority.
Admitting to an error is not exactly showing weakness, either.
Teaching the subject is not the primary goal of a class. It's number two, generally. But the subject is the seat of your authority as a teacher. If you are dedicated to presenting the subject in a way that makes it accessible to the students, and if your are dedicated to giving the students opportunities to gain enough experience and understanding of the subject to prepare to master the subject, and to choose whether the subject is one they want to pay the price to master, you don't have authority problems.
The subject is the authority. Lean on it.
Admittedly, you do get a few students in your classes who should not be there, and some of those will try to take it out on you and their fellow students. You may not be able to help them get into classes more suited for their needs, but you can deal with them as necessary if you know what your priorities are and act by them.
Usually. In some cases it does end up taking more than the duration of the class to solve a particular student's riddles.
Which brings us to what should be the first priority of the teacher -- keeping the students from killing each other.
Heh. Erm, maybe it would be appropriate to point out that the way to avoid unhealthy competition between the students (and between students and teachers) is to help them understand that education is not the teachers' responsibility.
The teachers can only present, explain, encourage. The actual learning is each individual student's job. No one can do that for them.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
It may not be specifically liberal or specifically conservative, but /. definitely has an agenda.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The statements by the "emotionally disturbed 12 year old" were backed up by other students in the class and by the teacher's own teaching assistant. From the article: "In the Polanco case, as in Daniel's, there was no shortage of documentation. The account of the history teacher's interactions with the apparently suicidal boy came primarily from his teaching assistant, who wrote a detailed letter to administrators. In addition, students submitted written statements that were introduced at Polanco's hearing. [...] The commission accepted the accounts of the teacher's aide and students as accurate."
In other words, you popped off at the mouth without reading the article. Go write on the board a thousand times, "I should stop posting without first thinking."
Seriously, why?
That's one of the more relevant posts here. Every field has these problems:
People who don't know what their job is.
People who know too much about the other guy's job and not enough about their own.
People who know what their own job is but don't know what any one else's job is. (Or, rather, they think they know what their job is, but they don't know how it fits in with the other jobs that need to be done, so they have trouble producing results others can use.)
People who are so busy working that they forget to do the job. (And people so busy doing the job that they don't have time to work.)
People.
Imperfect people. Like you and me.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This biggest failure of most unions is not letting their members know they're actually doing anything, and not talking to their members. They may have been doing plenty but not telling you about it.
It's like anything else -- you may opt to write code over documentation. Trouble is, both are important.
My union used to bitch about this until we started involving them appropriately...
Believe it or not, there is one easy and swift way to get a teacher fired. And fired in such a way that they'll never have another teaching job again.
A very good friend of mine spent on the order of 5 years getting a degree in education because he wanted to be a high school teacher. When we were in high school together, he had a crappy and unstable home life but always looked up to the few good teachers in our school. They were really the only decent role models he had and he decided he wanted to travel the same path because he knew, better than most, what a positive influence a really good teacher can have on a kid's life. Not long after he after had all the necessary certifications and whatnot, he landed a really good job in an upscale public school district on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area. He made quick friends with the faculty including the principal, his students loved him, he was active in the sports programs, and so on.
One Monday, during the school's lunch hour, he was keeping an eye on a group of students in a classroom for whatever reason. As is common with teens, their conversation turned--shall we say--a bit on the sexual side. Now if you knew my friend, you'd know that he's a pretty jovial, easy-going guy. He made some harmless off-hand joke relating to the existing conversation before trying to steer the banter back towards something more school-appropriate. Worst mistake in his life.
One of the girls in the room at the time had a history of disciplinary problems. Her parents were of the "my precious snowflake can do no wrong" persuasion and already had a grudge against the school. Apparently she relayed some blatantly false information about the discussion to her parents and they, in turn, threatened the school with a sexual harassment lawsuit. By Wednesday my friend was fired. The school board couldn't be bothered to hear his side of the story. They didn't confirm the story with any of the other students in the room. The teacher's union wouldn't lend a hand because they won't touch a sexual harassment claim with a ten-fool pole, legitimate or not. Just the threat of a sexual harassment lawsuit set the whole system against him. His career as a teacher was finished for good. No school would hire him after that.
All he has now is a worthless education degree and is trying to support his family on whatever random work he can find because he can't afford to go back to college now, especially with huge student loans that he never got the chance to pay off.
The U.S. public school system doesn't fail only the students it ensnares, it fails the teachers as well.
I suppose it's just my attitude, but I've learned useful things from every teacher I've had, things that were on-topic, as well as things that were extra-topical.
Somehow, early-on, I got this idea that my education was ultimately my own responsibility, that I was the one who would end up living with the education I got. So I tried to learn from what the teachers could tell me. And I have never had one teacher that couldn't teach me useful things.
I have had a few teachers whose bad influence competed with their good influence, but, while those teachers failed me, they usually met the needs of other students.
Teaching is not an easy job, and it is all to easy to criticize.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
You try to pay people with a 4 year degree less than fast food ass't managers get paid, surprise, surprise, you don't get anyone worth a damn applying for the teaching jobs.
If it were up to the GOP, teachers would be paid minimum wage. Why? Because it's in the interest of the GOP for people to be as ignorant and superstitious as possible.
The CA teachers' union is an excellent example of unintended consequences. When hired in any union school (basically all of elementary/high schools in CA) a teacher has to work for a few years to earn tenure, after which it becomes very difficult to fire him/her.The idea I to encourage good quality teachers by making it more paletable/desirable to be a teacher.
The reality, however, is pretty much the exact opposite.
Life circumstances are such for me that I get to see behind the scenes in K12 education in California. I've seen school administrators wring their hands over how to deal with a crappy teacher... with tenure. There really is no way to get rid of bad teachers, unless they are basically caught with their hands in the pants of a minor.
So crappy teachers with tenure are free to be jerks and not give a flying shiatte about getting along. It's terrible. Teachers who bring books to read at staff meetings because their contract requires attendance, not participation. An ugly caste system based on seniority rather than competence that simultaneously discourages positive change and encourages conformity.
I've seen much better, though. I see alternative non-union schools, and it's like night and day! Teachers are brighter, happier because the arseholes just get fired! At one school I saw, the teachers were actually picked by the parents - the crappy teachers were never fired, they were simply paid as a function of how many parents chose to work with them. Guess how long the assholes stuck around? (never more than a single semester)
Unions were formed to solve a very real problem - to deal with worker abuses - but it seems that now, the unions have become their own problem that needs to be solved!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"...No moor lieberal speelin testss!"
If high school kids can't read then I think it's a bit much to expect a sperm to be able to check the all the paperwork is in order.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
First school I pulled up (I just happen to have Portland State University bookmarked) proved you dead wrong.
"...Mathematics majors planning to teach secondary mathematics in Oregon and to be licensed through Portland State University should complete a BA/BS in mathematics to apply for the one-year postbaccalaureate Graduate Teacher Education Program through the School of Education...."
http://www.mth.pdx.edu/programs/BS-major.asp
This is precious: license required before people could become parents
You tax payers subsidize my kids. In the game of Life, I will have more offspring than you. Your kids may have more stuff than my kids, but at least I'll have great great grandkids, after your line of genetics has died off.
I must have been in 6 different school districts in elementary education. Most of my teachers were good. In the three years before a teacher makes tenure, there is ample opportunity to fire him/her. The ones that make it through this probation period are the ones who are able to tow the party line and fit in. After that, I guess that some just get lazy. While this might be true, I have seen students and parents gang up on teachers and students who did not "get along," usually for their political or religious beliefs.
Most Americans are religious bigots and political jingoist. You can talk about how evil Hitler was (and I agree), but once you compare Hitler to Andrew Jackson, you are are a traitor. You can talk about how Hitler rounded up Jews, but no one cares how the Indians were treated in OK. You can talk about 6M Jews who were killed by the Nazi's, but don't bring up the fact that 50M Africans were killed during the Slave Trade funded by the Confederacy.
Christianity as a Religion is even easier to rip apart by most pissed off Americans, but no one has the guts to do so. A simple topic is if Jesus was indeed the Messiah and preformed the miracles attributed to him, why did he chose not to perform one act in front of Pilate's court on the Friday before Passover.
But the real question is, how can you have an educational system if most graduates can't discuss these topics nor have any inclination of how to approach such an argument. I use to hate oral exams and thought I was lucky that I never had one all during my elementary school education. It was not much later on in life that I realized that most evaluations of performance in jobs was based on my oral presentation and how much of a disservice was done to me by having avoid that.
I think Pink Floyd got it right, "All in all, you are just another brick in the wall!"
Idiots oversimplify,
Public schooling today is NOT about educating the little ankle-biters anymore.
It's day care / kiddie-jail with the barest attempt at a facade of education.
And god forbid anyone actually have a hunger to learn!
"Well, let's just wait for everyone else to finish..."
What remains unsaid is "Wait for them to finish TWELFTH GRADE."
Public education in this country is sick. Like terminal cancer + full-blown, end-stage AIDS + hemophilia + leprosy sick.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This would also be alleviated if there was a license required before people could become parents. ...and what do you do if someone gets pregnant without a license? Execute them? Force them to abort the baby? Put them in prision where they no longer can even attempt to take responsibility for the child? Perhaps a large fine (making it impossible for them to financially support the child)? ...or are you suggesting some sort of spooky large scale birth control in the water supply kind of scenario? Others are horrified at the idea of the authorities administering such a license in the first place never mind forcing people to do things they don't want to with their reproductive organs.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Thanks, but especially at school there never called me gifted, just weird and one teacher said "He must have mental problems" because I have serious body damage and didn't sit there crying "Oh poor me" like what SHE would have done. My mom just spoke up "So do YOU have mental problems? After all you are VERY fat, which is a handicap. Surely that must mean there is something wrong mentally as well."
But I was truly fortunate that I have a "weird" family that thinks outside the box. My dad figured out "there is something wrong with his joints" even though it took them another 6 years to actually figure out I have adult Arthritis(I was 5 at the time) the docs were stumped and were basically let him rot in the bed. Dad instead went out and bought me a Honda 50cc at 5 and taught me how to ride. He saw a problem and simply figured out a functional solution. He dropped out at the 8th grade because they treated him like dirt and called him dummy,and God forbid I try to teach him computers, as he just wants to launch his quickbooks and be done, yet when it comes to electricity he knows more than I could ever learn. When it comes to electricity he can make it do whatever he wants. That is just how is mind works. And while other sick kids would have been left in front of the idiot box my mom was reading me Asimov and Heinlein and having spirited discussions over whether you could could send a message from the past to the present to allow you to avoid a temporal paradox when altering time.
So the only reason my mind and body didn't sit there and rot until they could find a treatment was my "weird" parents simply wouldn't give up on me. But at the time the docs and especially the schools said there was too much wrong with me and I should be left to basically rot. funny how when they found a treatment for me that instead of taking classes in HS the football coach ended up talking all the teachers into giving me straight As so I could spend 4 years TEACHING my own class to the football stars so they could pass the tests and continue to play.
Sadly this also gave me a chance to interact with all the "loners" and "goof offs" and "troublemakers" many of whom I found were just like me, and simply didn't fit into their cookie cutter mold. I often wonder how many of the drop outs and losers out there are simply those that don't fit into the cookie cutter. My 2 boys are having to be home schooled because they didn't fit the mold. Being in the south the religious bigotry was simply too intense. The teachers didn't give a fuck if kids picked on the youngest because he is gay, and would actually get onto the older for standing up for his brother. So frankly if the public school system fell of the place of the earth I would have a party. My boys are happy to study at home, one reading Grey's Anatomy and trying to decide whether to be a doctor without borders or a 3d computer game designer, while the youngest reads Agatha Christie in his free time for "light" reading as is teaching himself cell animation. His idea of a dream job is to work at Gamestop so he'll have enough free time to write and animate a series about being gay in America
So call us freaks or gifted or weird, whatever. I personally am damned glad I'll never have to deal with the cookie cutter and that my boys are so smart. I just wish schools actually looked out for kids instead of dumping them in a corner when they don't fit the mold. There are no telling how many kids are being left behind simply because they are different. And that to me is what truly is a waste. Again sorry for the length, but some ideas I just can't fit into a single paragraph. I guess my brain just doesn't work that way :-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ah, the classic model minority argument. Tell you what, let's go back in time and have blacks enslave whites for a dozen generations, emancipate them without compensating them or providing for them amidst deep racism, and let's see how things turn out. Blacks are absolutely not summarily inferior to any other race, including Asians as you suggest. They just happen to have a huge part of our history working against them. That's speaking as one of your model minorities.
I don't doubt you weren't cheating but I'm sorry but it sounds to me like:
1) You either were unable or unwilling to explain your logic in doing the problem. Even in your head there must be intermediate steps.
2) Failed the social test. You already had this teacher off side, but that could have been his fault. If you can do it your way you should take the time to learn to do the problem as it has been taught and show your work. THAT would have proved beyond a doubt that you can do the work.
It's not just getting the answer right to math problems that matters. Part of your schooling is proving you can do it. Part of your schooling is learning to get along with others and cooperate. You haven't learnt that lesson, and taking you out of an environment where you can do (school) and keeping you at home was a great disservice to you.
Someone with your intelligence (assuming you're honest about that, which I am) should be able to manipulate the social situation so that everyone likes them, and go off and do your own extended study in your spare time just for yourself.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Not sure how it works over there, maybe you have too many whacko cops and judges, but if someone did that to my kid, they would be charged with assaulting a minor and spend at least a year been forcibly sodomised and beaten by "Bubba". Why was this guy not just charged?
Criminal activity, having the conditions of bail such that he is not allowed in contact with students is more effective than firing him. If any law enforcement officer refused to go along with the charges, say for also being a religious nut job, I make sure they their pension. Religious freedom does not give anyone the right to commit assault.
I don't therefore I'm not.
This is how the world is ! Incompetence is everywhere. Sooner they meet incompetent people better they will be prepared to manipulate them.
They will also learn that this not because they have a bad teacher than the teaching matter is bad. There are multiple method to learn (Books, friends, other teachers, ...). Bad teachers are just a life fact.
Oh of course, blame the Republicans for all the ills of the world. Can we have a discussion where it doesn't turn into a partisan "the republicans are evil" dogma. What about the no child left behind act. That really did great having the Federal Government basically derail public education because of some feel good agenda. Also if most republicans had it their way, not just your stereotype of evangelical bible thumping 'publicans, public schools would actually not exist, and not because they want everyone to be stupid, or jesus lovers, but because they believe a public education system breeds the lowest common denominator in education. Now whether you agree with that or not is your opinion. Lets also look at the Federal Government system that has seemed to gotten us into this mess in the first place. I am far from anti-welfare or trying to help our most economically distraught citizens but the abuse and massive mishandling of the system has gotten many Americans believing that it is a system of entitlement. These same Americans have children and believe that public school is nothing but a state mandated babysitter service and that if their son or daughter doesn't make anything out of their tax-payer funded education, that they can also blame their race/gender/poverty on it and collect money.
Look at it as if you paid someone $5000 a month without any incentives on your part, that person will just spend the money and continue to collect because they didn't have to earn it and you're not lighting a fire up their asses to become financially independent. I don't care if republicans or democrats support their bungling of welfare but I do think that a system of endless entitlement is what breeds laziness and incompetence. Get a poor kid from a 3rd world country and put them in the United States and watch how fast given the opportunity they will try to make something out or what is virtually non-existence in their country. We just grow fat and lazy in the United States with encouraging the ignorant to stay ignorant and the poor to stay poor.
Now getting into teacher salaries, while I agree that most people won't find the pay very attractive, you shouldn't get into teaching for the money. It should take a certain passion and self sacrifice that motivates someone to take a pay cut to make sure that the you do the best you can to foster the country's future to become the most productive members of society as their potential allows. It should be enough to allow a teacher to live comfortably but we can't pay all teachers near six figure salaries either and I honestly don't think an artificially inflated or deflated salary does the system any justice as well.
"That erroneous assumption is to the effort that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence....Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its am everywhere else." - H.L Mencken, The American Mercury, April 1924
http://www.oldthinkernews.com/Articles/oldthinkernews/mandatory_public_schooling.htm
Teachers should be whipped.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
only fair that bad teachers are hard to get rid off. it is impossible to get rid of terrible students. so there ..
*disgruntled partner of a high school teacher in a social hot spot who is suffering from the behavior of kids who had received no parenting whatsoever prior to starting school.
John Allen Paulos in one of his books writes of a time when he told a teacher a pitcher could have an ERA greater than 9. Her book told her that it was not possible. Moral of the story. Teaching is about regurgitating facts while learning is about using what you are raught to see if this is true or not.
Why is it so hard to sack incompetent C*O's?
Why is it so hard to get rid of incompetent Politicians?
Why is it so hard to get rid of incompetent stock brokers?
Why is it so hard to get rid of incompetent Directors?
etc.
JUST to sign contracts with the individual teachers?
If, instead of paying out the salaries for people just to sign contracts, how about upping teacher pay? Maybe then teachers won't feel the need to have a union...
One (of many) problems with the American medical system is that it artificially restricts the number of people who can become doctors, which in turn drives up pay. Stop the hazing (which the typical process of becoming a doctor is) and increase the number of medical schools, and you'll probably get lots more qualified candidates who will work for more reasonable rates.
Japan has lots of medical colleges and only a few law schools - and despite everything else costing twice what it does in the USA, medical care is much better AND cheaper.
(My parents have used both systems, which is how I know.)
Super cool story bro.
...if you paid them enough in the first place to attract people with the right talent and drive. Teaching is by far the most important, overworked, and underpaid position in the country.
Knowing what school was like when I was in attendance, and hearing reports from my friends who are teachers, or ex-teachers, and from my daughter who is still in the system, I know what the likelihood of anyone looking for an easy life and a well-paying career becoming a teacher is - essentially zero. You have to add in some sort of mental oddity, such as wanting to spend time with children, before you get to a reasonable chance of someone choosing to become a teacher.
Consequently, by the time that someone has slogged through the educational requirements to become a teacher, they're pretty rare. Then there is the attrition rate in the first couple of years of assessment and "supply teaching" - in the order of 30 to 50% of the people I've known who have gone through teacher training have gone off and got a job in the outside world and ditched the profession because it's too depressing (neither my mother nor my wife has any intention of going back into the teaching profession, which is not uncommon).
So, now you're a head master (chief administrator of a school), and you've got a bad teacher. Do you try to sack them (regardless of how hard that is going to be) and take the risk of simply being unable to replace them? Or do you use them for crowd-control in the pupil-pens where the sub-humans get caged during school hours, so that the more hopeful prospects can get the better teachers?
Bear in mind - the school administration have a legal obligation to provide a safe place for the children, and a safe system of work for the teachers. For many, that can be achieved by giving the teachers cattle-prods and Tasars to break up the fighting in the pens, and setting them in pairs to guard the animals. Which is where bad teachers can be much more useful than no teacher.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Getting rid of them is easy - just throw a heap of cash at them, and keep throwing until they go.
It seems to work, so try that with bad teachers.
she walked over to the blackboard and wrote two complex math problems
I'd love to see your definition of a complex math problem. Share with the class?
Visit the teacher's union web sites sometime. Hint: They contain no content about helping students learn;
The metallurgist union web site does not have content on how to make better metal work, the car maker union does not have content on how to build better car, and my union in science does not have any hint on how to make a better diffraction experiment (or whatever else). This is actually pointless. You don't realize that union are NEVER there to help worker do their job better, they are there to enable a framework of protecting work environment/condition.
all everything there is concerned with how to avoid be held accountable for your actions or for you lack of educational results.
proper link and citation needed. The few web site I visited on teacher union had nothing on the sort. More stuff on how to avoid legal problem with pesky parents.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Your argument is that you get better quality applicants if you reduce pay? I find this a tricky concept. By extrapolation, therefore, surely you would get better quality teachers if you paid them 14K instead of 28K, or even zero?
If you increased pay, would you then not get a larger number of applicants, allowing you to choose from a higher quality pool of potential new employees?
I agree with you that levels of education do not directly equate to ability to teach. But in the UK, for example, for many years many teacher training schools required lower school grades than standard university entrance, so it became known by 18 year olds as the thing you did if you wanted a professional career but weren't good enough to be a subject specialist. If you weren't good enough to study Physics at university, you could still teach physics. I don't think that's necessarily healthy for an education system.
Two words: Teacher's Union
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
Don't be so quick to blame the Unions, or the administrators. I can think of two reasons why it is so hard. I am an adjunct teacher at a community college. I really WANT to teach full time, but it is hard getting a job, especially with the budget cuts, but I see bad teachers all over the country as well. The first reason is that the pay is crap, so who wants to teach? Most positions demand a Masters at least. I can make a lot more money in the government or private sector, twice as much in fact. The only reason to teach is because you WANT to. Most people today will choose the money. The second reason is tenure. A school has only a few years to figure out if the teacher is any good and they can get rid of them. Now I like tenure, as it does provide teachers freedom from political and other agendas from interfering with their jobs, but if you get a bad teacher in there, they become very hard to remove if they just give up. And there IS burn out in jobs like this. Many teachers simply give up trying to teach students they perceive as not really caring, and especially in high schools they get a lot of pressure to just pass kids so the school doesn't look bad and lose funding. I think if we would change our attitudes about schools and how we judge them, and paid teachers decent salaries, we will get better people in the field. Make it a place where people WANT to go, instead of a place where people have to decide between a love of teaching, and making a decent living.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
Indeed. At a high level of mathematics it is basically all about mathematical proofs. There is little point in doing a proof unless you give your steps. Writing out non-trivial proofs such that other people can understand them can take me weeks. Still it would be nice if the teacher explained why writing out working can be so important. When I was in school I found it hard to be motivated to do things that I didn't see a real world use for. If Fermat had bothered to write out his proof we could have saved mathematicians 300 years of head scratching: http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/FermatsLastTheorem.html ;)
Get rid of the unions and open teaching to folks who would get paid on their performance. (GASP!)
Freshman year of high school my English teacher was crazy. My mom would always ask how school was, and I'd tell her my English teacher was wacko. Of course my mom dismissed it because most kids that age will have issues with teachers. It wasn't until the end of the school year that my mom started to believe me... my mom worked for the court of common pleas judge and there was a trial going on involving my English teacher. Apparently the teacher was too emoitionally unstable to take the stand, but she was still able to teach to 9th graders. Needless to say my mom started believing me a bit more after that happened :).
I really don't understand why bad teachers can't be fired. In my area there's no shortage of teachers. The public schools are decent and the pay starts out a bit on the low side but they can max out at a decent wage (starting at 35k and making up to 50k with experience)... Does the teacher's union hold a lot of power? Seems like baring some serious neglect you never have to worry about your job.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
it's clear that there's a correlation between quality of education and dollars spent
Nonsense. It's a cultural issue. Look at the DC school system, for example. One of the highest per-student expenditures in the country, and abyssmal results with high drop-out rates, persistent illiteracy in students holding diplomas, etc. At over $10,000 per student per year, it's an outrage. Private schools charging less than that per student while teaching the same kids (from the same demographic, in the same areas) have excellent results. And the current administration and congress are all about killing off the voucher programs that would allow parents to send their kids to such schools, in order to buy political support from the teacher union brigade. The supreme irony, of course, is that the children of most of the congressional and executive decision makers are themselves in private schools. The irony would be delicious if it weren't such a tragedy for the kids themselves.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'm sorry I got your panties in a twist and, for the record, I didn't suggest any of your distopian "solutions" to this problem. I am only pointing out the fundamental truth is that there is one source of blame for the quality of students; the parents. You can blame society. You can blame the teachers. You can blame the unions. You can blame the politicians. You can blame TV or the internet or D&D or video games. You can blame the NIMBY neighbors that don't want new schools or new property taxes. But, in the end, the blame falls on the people who have the biological maturity but lack the emotional and intellectual maturity to be parents but decide to bring a new life into this world anyway.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
You just tell "see that road over there? Hit it." That usually works most of the time. Oh and frisking them for guns before you fire em. That should handle it.
I'm familiar with the concept--I just moved out of a similiar district in another large city.
Vouchers, for better or for worse, have been completely tainted by religious conservatives, who see them as a way to use taxpayer dollars to further their agenda.
Private schools are somewhat tainted by this thinking, and are also harmed by the Ayn Rand types who do not understand why (for example) private fire protection is unworkable.
As you say, it's a tragedy that the kids are held hostage to these political agendas. Unfortunately it won't end until we agree that a quality, public, secular education for every child is a fundamental right and a serious priority.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
unions
I find it interesting how many people (both on slashdot and off of it) feel like they are an expert on the teaching profession (i.e. curriculum) simply because they went to school for 17 years and did a decent job at it. This is like saying that as a user I can tell you why you should program in python because I've used a computer for 17 years.
Another Coward "Oh of course, blame the Republicans for all the ills of the world."
Republicans aren't to blame for the 30 people who died when a boat sank off Indonesia Saturday. Cheer up. The GOP isn't to blame for ALL the ills in the world. Just most of them.
----
You do realize that Dubya NEVER allowed the money Congress passed to fund No Child Left Behind to be spent. Dubya turned No Child Left Behind into a huge unfunded mandate for the states.
This nonsense you're ranting about...
"Lets also look at the Federal Government system that has seemed to gotten us into this mess in the first place. I am far from anti-welfare or trying to help our most economically distraught citizens but the abuse and massive mishandling of the system has gotten many Americans believing that it is a system of entitlement. These same Americans have children and believe that public school is nothing but a state mandated babysitter service and that if their son or daughter doesn't make anything out of their tax-payer funded education, that they can also blame their race/gender/poverty on it and collect money.
Look at it as if you paid someone $5000 a month without any incentives on your part, that person will just spend the money and continue to collect because they didn't have to earn it and you're not lighting a fire up their asses to become financially independent. I don't care if republicans or democrats support their bungling of welfare but I do think that a system of endless entitlement is what breeds laziness and incompetence. Get a poor kid from a 3rd world country and put them in the United States and watch how fast given the opportunity they will try to make something out or what is virtually non-existence in their country. We just grow fat and lazy in the United States with encouraging the ignorant to stay ignorant and the poor to stay poor...." ...never frackin happened in the US. I don't know what the hell you're talking about
--------
"Now getting into teacher salaries, while I agree that most people won't find the pay very attractive, you shouldn't get into teaching for the money."
Are teachers supposed to be celibate now, too? A married teacher household can't afford to bring children into world and raise them without getting food stamps. Your GOP did that teachers.
They're hard to fire because the person(s) that would have do so are the person(s) who kept them on the job, and possibly even the ones that hired them. Firing the bad teacher on their own would mean having to recognize they'd fucked up. Someone further upstairs of from outside forcing them to do so would make that public knowledge.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Get rid of the unions and open teaching to folks who would get paid on their performance. (GASP!)
Yes, Unions, the organizations responsible for you and your extended family not working in a coal mine seven days a week and dying at 35, yes, they are bad and should be gotten rid of in an expression of overt extremism.
A little perspective, please. Extremism is useless.
Paid by performance? Okay, and how does one measure performance? That question has been circled around forever and nobody has come up with a useful answer. Kids are not car parts. They are not binary bits. The question, in short, is not black and white. Some subjective imagination is required to solve the problem. --Come on, you must have heard the arguments and counter-arguments. They nearly all, on both sides, have reasonable concerns.
Extremism is never the answer, because the school system is littered with retarded people who can only see in black and white who are best treated like cogs, and it is also filled with people who know how to use their imaginations who die if they are treated like machine parts. The lizards and the monkeys need to live together and so the system needs to not be one thing or the other.
-FL
I actually have a solution to this. If really do suck that bad, train them till either get better or quit. Do not stop training them over and over again till it borders on harassment. So either they get better or they go mad. Either way they can't possibly sue. What court would accept a law suit complaining of being trained to much?
I'll preface this with the points that my experience is in the U.S. and specifically this is with K-12 in Virginia.
They don't fire people, they just don't re-up their contract for the next year. That way there is no firing.
This strikes me as one of those thing that, "everybody knows." Is there some study that shows that it's hard to fire bad teachers, or is this one of those things that everybody says just because everybody else says?
At the last, it's no universally impossible to fire teachers. A friend of mine was fired for "not keeping his classroom clean." This was done with no previous warning. Best we can figure is that they're actually cutting back because of budget constraints but for some reason didn't have the guts to tell him, they were afraid of litigation if they used any other reason, or somebody had it in for him. In the end, his firing seem too easy.
So, I would like some actual proof of this particular "conventional wisdom".
True story. I had a high school teacher who was caught molesting a 14 year old girl. He felt her up, and also masturbated in front of her. She reported it, and an undercover police officer posing as her brother got him to admit to it on tape.
The "punishment" was that he was allowed to retire early with full pension. He wasn't fired. He later settled the criminal case. The whole thing was bizarre.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Yep, I went the long route. Tried college, tried the Military, tried college again.
Couple of guys from high school who struggled to get D's started a lawn care and snow removal business. While I was farting around in the Navy and in college, they were making a couple of hundred grand a year with a crew of workers under them.
Now I have a great job, and those guys are probably retired. Boo fricking hoo.
Education is a bunch of facts and ideas that can help you be more successful. Intelligence is the ability to cope and thrive in your environment. Neither concept is a complete subset of the other.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
If I understand the thrust of the article, it's about how difficult it is to fire incompetent tenured teachers. Well, why not move the target up a bit and ask instead how these incompetent teachers were awarded tenure in the first place? That of course turns the focus from the "evil union" towards the "incompetent school administrators".
LOL, even FAIR / GOOD pay would not be worth it... kids are HELL! Especially now that teachers cannot do anything to discipline or control kids. Parents are never supportive of "their sweet little angel". Everything is stacked against teachers.
I'm sure they work hard to be hard to fire. It likely doesn't come without some effort. Teaching is completely unimportant when it comes to keeping your job as a teacher. Being hard to fire is. In fact if you spend time teaching, then you aren't spending it being hard to fire. That means when the axe comes your head will be in jeopardy.
Yes, this does mean that the students at the upper end don't get the education they could have. But they aren't the ones that need the help.They're smart. They will do just fine.
Well, except of course that y'know... bad parents are still going to wind up pregnant, regardless of whether they would fail this 'license' horribly.
Which brings up several additional problems. Do the parents keep the unlicensed children? If yes, then the license is irrelevant. If not, it leaves said 'bad' parents to have unprotected sex with zero child-based consequences (except of course for the pregnancy period or abortion).
So now you're left with a large amount of children needing to be adopted, or you'll have religious groups going insane on the system for aborting so many pregnancies. Unless there's a massive, MASSIVE increase in adoption rates, these licenses will only restrict those who WANT to have children. Those that don't care about licenses will still continue on at the current pace unhindered, if not greater so.
In high school (mid 1980's) I had a Grade 10 Math teacher who sat at the back of the class and played 60's music on a tape deck.
His teaching involved telling us to do the work on certain pages, as we tried to concentrate while listening to 20 year old music we all hated. Of course being teenagers none of us asked questions or didn't really think to ask and as a result not one person in the class had a final mark above 40%, we all failed - the entire class.
So for the next two years I was behind one year in Math, all my other classes were fine, and for some reason I was put in a Grade 10 home-room even though I only had one subject that wasn't in my grade level. This also was the situation when I was in Grade 12, stuck in a Grade 11 home-room while my friends were one grade up, all because of one damn subject I failed.
The part that hurt me the most but I didn't know about until years later was all the Grade 12 students went to the local University to as part of an orientation field trip, they were showed how to fill out applications, given information about and how to apply for bursaries etc.
I finished Math thanks to a very good Math teacher who "picked volunteers" (we didn't get the joke at the time) four at once to go up front and complete Math problems he wrote on the blackboard. I had two classes with him, Grade 11 and Grade 12 Math, when finished my marks were in the high 80's to low 90's for Grade 11 and 12, coming from a mark of less than 40% I'd say he was the best teacher in existence. He even held classes after school and during the Summer. Earl Foster you're the best!
btw I went to University briefly many years later and by then I felt very out of place. Maybe someday I'll go back.
>No, this is just genuine racism. There's nothing integral about being
>african-american that makes one reject learning.
It is not racist to point out a failing that is prevalent in a race of people.
You are correct in that there is nothing /intrinsically/ about being black that makes black people do poorly at school. Yet AS A GROUP they seem to do so. AS A GROUP, they do seem to reject learning.
It is not racist to point this out.
Too many people are eager to pull out the "racism" hammer and bash people like the OP with it and consequently little gets talked about concerning the root causes of problems like these.
I believe that black people do tend to have a dim view of learning and western culture. But I do not believe it has anything to do INTRINSICALLY with their race.
It has to do with expectations and opportunity.
AS A GROUP, I suspect most black people have low-paying, unskilled jobs. There are probably, for example, a lot more black janitors than black doctors. What this does is two important things:
First, it sets up a poor level of personal expectation from the children of such people. When your father or mother is a janitor or convenient store clerk this is going to be the metric by which many judge their own success in life.
Second, it sets up a feeling of despair, as when they look around for successful black roll models they find that they are very few and far between. Thus many black kids simply feel that it is not possible to achieve success and they give up or settle for less. Or worse, they harbor feels of resentment and actively reject opportunities for success.
Both of these things are reasons why I have come to grudgingly accept affirmative action. Though I abhor the idea of giving things away based on race, the simple fact is the pump needs to be primed. We need to get enough black people into positions of success until being a successful black person doesn't seem like an impossibility and in fact seems as common as any other color of successful person.
Until then, too many black youths will have no reason to aspire for better.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
>Long story short: There was a whopping 3-point difference between the two groups...
I don't know anything about IQ testing. Is 3 points really a big difference or were you being sarcastic?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Nonsense. At a community college students are more likely to be adult learners paying their own way and thus usually more motivated than the typical university student. Similarly, many universities have TAs teaching classes, while community colleges always have faculty teaching. Community colleges are dedicated to the fundamental ideals of non-profit education, which is not always the case in university settings where profit, research, sports, and other priorities can take center stage. While community colleges do not confer BA degrees, this is largely due to the lobbying groups of universities. They know full well that community colleges can provide a similar quality of instruction for *pennies on the dollar*, and they cannot compete. Thus, an ideal role for a community college is to serve students for the first two years of their BA program.
Certainly the university system has many strengths of their own, but don't mistake them for somehow all encompassing or being indicative of a loss in the community college system. While it may be easy to cast dispersions at our modern student population, the community college is uniquely situated to remediate many of the learning delays and general lack of quality education students receive in high school. Systemically teacher performance needs to become part of our education system at all levels.
This doesn't sound made up at all...
You see, that was what was pissing me off at the time. I would have bothered to try to show my work if it was something like algebra or trig or at least tried to give a brief explanation, but they had "dumbed down" the classes SO much to let the C kids pass that they were basically teaching how to balance a checkbook in the 9TH grade! Their idea of "hard math problems" was stuff like basic 2 and 3 digit division! WTF?
As for those who said it was upon me to "show my proofs" and be another good brick in the wall? No it wasn't. It was up to the teacher to make me give a fuck. If he would have spent a whole FIFTEEN SECONDS talking to me he would have found out that basic math like that is too easy and could have given me harder work if he wanted proofs. But because I had long hair and wore an old military jacket of my granddad's from WW2 he instantly labeled me scum and gave me shit. It is NOT my job to take shit from anyone, even a teacher. It is that same attitude that had us take my youngest out of school. They were like "He is gay. He shouldn't act like that. He is being picked on because he is different." and to them that was fine. WTF? So if his sexual orientation doesn't fit the norm its okay to treat him like shit?
No thanks, you can keep your totally shitty "brick in the wall" public school system. The only things I learned in public school was how to smoke pot, how to ditch class, and how to be bored out of my fucking skull. There I would even get in trouble for doing my work AHEAD of time because I wasn't "following along with the class". If a student does the entire week's work in a day because they are bored to tears that should tell you to give him something more challenging, NOT to castigate him in front of the class for not being a good little C student and not following your little rules. I don't know how the schools are where you are from, but here it is a combination of McSchool and training jocks to be future college football stars. Our books were always old and out of date but the gym was filled with top o' the line pro bowl equipment. So THAT should show that their priorities were NOT on education or actually giving a crap if you weren't a jock.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
For the most part this article is sensationalism, it's about tenured teachers and it's not nearly as big of a deal as the article makes it out to be. If the teacher was bad to begin with they should have *never* reached tenured status. It takes two years to tenure in California. While that's incredibly quick compared to Georgia (some counties throw out tenure entirely), it's plenty of time for the administration to notice and take care of the problem assuming they're not sleeping on the job. These schools sowed what they reaped and they are just as worthy of blame as the teachers themselves.
MD and Professional Athletes may be able to get away with not having a legible signature. However,good penmanship is a plus for pretty much everyone else.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
One of the many perverse aspects of the Freshwater case is that he has the support of much of the community (Mount Vernon, Ohio). The town is also the home of Mount Vernon Nazarene University. From a quick glance though some of their on-line material, they're probably good palls of Liberty "University." That's to say they have...interesting takes on history, sociology, and science, especially evolution. Sadly many teachers in the Mount Vernon school district are graduates of that university, which explains some of the loopier details of the Freshwater case. These guys think they're in the end times and Christians are a persecuted minority. As is so often the case with fundies, lying for Jeebus is totally cool, and has come up in the hearing. Search Panda's Thumb for "John Freshwater" and bask in the whackaloonery.
The summer camp I go to doesn't pay the regular counselor staff a whole lot; yet I have noticed how enthusiastic said staff are about their work; I had often thought that the workers were enthusiasic *despite* the low pay.
I have conversed with the camp's director on occasion, and once he reframed this as a positive correlation, the lower pay helps to keep out the nonenthusiastic types that he/they don't want
He also mentioned that it helps keep the camp fees down; the analogy starts to break there, as educational systems don't seem to have a zeal for cost control. :)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
what can I say??
people are ruled by FEAR!!!
RESPECT is just consequence of fear
f.e...
I'm afraid of bad marks...
I'm afraid of my mates...
etc..
Teacher just has to give understand possibility of consequences
I explain this situation at very basic level... :)
This sounds like a KIPP school. I've read some of the analyses by proponents of this kind of school setup. My conclusion is that KIPP schools demonstrate that kids who seek out a rigorous curriculum and learning environment will benefit from such. Maybe I'm biased by "romantic notions of teaching." KIPP schools have the advantage of not having to serve anyone they don't feel like, though, so the "no excuses" approach is limited to the kids who choose to go to the school.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Not to belittle your main point (that people can be mistreated in school...even by teachers!) but as a math instructor, I wanted to comment on this "cheating on a math test" thing.
You clearly weren't "cheating". However, be clear that Math is not about finding the "right answer". Math is about showing how to get the right answer, through technically sound, and generalizable principles. I have a general leniency in students trying "other ways" to solve an algebra problem...but make no mistake, solutions are things we "solve for". They are not things we just "state".
This is a big point of dispute between teacher/student, but the fact is, I don't want to know "x=3". I want to see you can get to "x=3" using a system that would work when x turned out to be \sqrt{2} or 3-2i, or 2.234921211. In other words, the work is what we're looking for.
As it happens, I just found that book at a garage sale over the weekend.
The message is a disturbing picture, but it seems to make perfect sense based on the available information
It seems pragmatic, not arguing about the ideology of more/less government, but rather about how we could be doing it better...I like that approach.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Early 1990s I think. My sister was a HS Biology teacher. Sis thought the chem teacher was creepy. One day she went into his chemical storage room and found pools of mercury lying around the floor, bottles with leaky stoppers lying on their side on the shelves, etc., and various other obvious problems. Upon closer examination, she found he had organized the chemicals so that pairs of chemicals with the most volatile reactions were always stored next to each other. There were massive quantities of magnesium and inflammable liquids -- up to 100X more than any school would ever use. He had basically arranged his chem storage as a giant bomb, and the chemicals from the leaky bottles were gradually eroding the seals on some of the more dangerous other bottles. It took a fully-suited hazmat team almost 3 months to safely clean up that mess (during the summer months, so the school was empty). The teacher's union made it impossible to fire the dude, or even to mention his problems in public. The nature of his violations have been kept secret from the kids and their parents to this day. He was demoted to study hall monitor, where he spent his time typing single-spaced diatribes against the school, the government, the president, the pope, etc. Last I heard, he was still there, supervising kids and banging out his manifesto in study hall. He never even got a demotion or pay cut. Just a change in duties to keep him away from the chemicals.
You've hit on my pet peeve here. I HATE it when people tell stories that unilaterally paint teachers as villains. All I get out of your post is a smug polemic against some teacher you had a grudge against AS A CHILD.
I think it's true that most public school curricula don't serve advanced students well. I've had a lot of experience with that; I'd been repeatedly identified as "highly gifted" as a kid, and that repeatedly resulted in absolutely nothing happening. None of my teachers were adequately prepared to instruct me. I got into petty confrontations like that with my teachers all the time, and I can say with hindsight that I instigated every single one. It's true, they didn't know how to handle me because I was "gifted", but I also tried my hardest to be an annoying little shit.
This is a complicated issue. Sometimes there's really an incompetent teacher, and sometimes there's an ignorant parent or spoiled student raising a shitstorm. Often, it's both.
The problem with raising teacher pay is that it will attract more people. Teaching is not something that everyone is good at. Just because you can get a doctorate doesn't mean you have the skill. There is a big difference. ...
Sure, I'd love to get paid more, but I also want kids to learn from people who LOVE teaching.
This was modded insightful? I'm glad you love teaching and are willing to jump closer to the 22K poverty line to do it, but hopefully you aren't going to teach economics.
Couple of thoughts:
1) Raising salaries expands the market for all different qualities of teachers, not just the bad teachers, as you are so fearful of. Now you can afford more good teachers to replace the bad teachers you already had (assuming you're not expanding the head count) because more good teachers are also available. Expanding the market means you, as the education system, can choose.
1a) The counter point to your logic is we should lower teacher salaries. Therefore only the best teachers who LOVE teaching would be willing to work in poverty. Clearly, that way lies madness.
Even for a passionate teacher like you, if the salary were $22,000, I doubt you'd be able to afford to be a teacher. For many, $28,000 is below their threshold.
1b) If teachers were paid $100,000 salary, I suspect you would get top-rate, passionate, teachers. People who give up being business executives and academic researchers to become teachers. Extrapolate a little farther, and pay $200,000 and you pretty much have access to the smartest, most caring, most skilled teachers in the world. Your market is pretty much everyone in the world and you can choose just the best.
So I really don't buy your argument.
2) Another fallacy is that you have to love what you do to do a good job. This is often argued in the medical field, but is argued in all fields.
The best of the best probably need that extra passion to become the best. (eg Tiger Woods probably loves what he does) But you can still be good, even excellent, without loving what you do. You could just really like it. Or you could not like it and just be really good.
Most engineers I know have found themselves stuck maintaining something they've developed only because they're really good at maintaining it, not because they enjoy it. They get their enjoyment some other way, like using the money they earn playing games or going on diving trips or buying fast cars.
I guess my point is:
Work is work. As long as you do a good job, who cares.
passetspike!
To quote the Happy Bunnies: "School prepares you for the Real World. Which also sucsk."
I hear this a lot from some of the programmers and sysadmins at work. I can assure you that working on a team, where you have to fix their mistakes, is not fun. Since programming is basically showing every single step so the infinitely stupid computer can understand what you want to do, there are a lot of those mistakes to fix.
Knowing the process well enough to explain it is not as sexy as whipping out the mental penis and showing off. It's actually harder to:
That is why documentation, lawmaking, programming and math is hard. All those steps are drudge work. None are as fun as pushing a virtual button in the grey matter and having the answer pop out.
"Cheating" is the red herring. "Understanding" is the correct problem. I wouldn't call that a bad math teacher for asking for the minimal rigor to explain a solution but for having the wrong motivation. Math and other disciplines are not always about 'just' the correct solution but about the correct method. For instance, there are a lot of ways to solve world hunger. Killing off anyone unable to pay for their dinner tonight is not an acceptable method.
It's nice to believe that the world operates on magic. With magic you can even ride unicorns! But sadly, proof of the pudding is in the eating. The reason that teacher should be asking for steps is not because of possible "cheating" even if that teacher is not articulate enough to move beyond knee-jerk threats.
The story itself makes clear that you sublimated the process needed to do the solution. With programmers they call this 'getting the X into your fingers.' The problem with that is your process may be wrong - either in assumptions, application or simple mistakes. If you can explain your steps, then you cannot fix them when they are wrong. It's nice that you got the correct answer in your story. What will you do when your answers are wrong?
That's because it doesn't work at all. You have to have engaged students at the correct level and speed. If you teach so low and slowly to 'leave No Child Behind' you are going to lose all those that need to move ahead. The problem is highly diverse student populations (in terms of learning capacity) and a false assumption of everyone being equal (outside of justice.) Parents are afraid of binning students on ability because some will be (in-)correctly labeled dumb and put in the slow classes. Nobody wants to be the parent of the slightly-below-average student.
Nobody wants to be the one to tell little Johnny that just because he got the correct answer, he still fails for not showing the work like the instructions asked him to do. And a sad as it may be, a lot of little Johnny's life will consist of following measly little instructions to show his work. Reality may have a liberal bias, but humans are notoriously bureaucratic. Just look at the steps to fire a teacher or fill out a tax form.
Sadly, this culture of fear, false-equality and constant scape-goating is why bad teachers are impossible to fire, bad students are sliding by and bad parents impossible to be held accountable.
Many people say teachers are just glorified babysitters, so, as a former teacher, pay me like one. I will cut you a deal ever, $7 an hour. Lets say I teach 25 students and for 7 hours a day. Now the school year lasts 180 days, so, $7*7=$49 per student, $49*25=1225 per day, $1225*180=$220,500 per year. Most teachers make some in the neighborhood of $25-50k. Since I know of zero teachers who make what we should as babysitters, maybe this is the reason that it is hard to get rid of bad teachers. Little respect from the public, little respect from parents and students, equals little respect for the position, equals little change people will apply for it. I taught science in Texas for 2 years, currently back in school so I can teach math, less political baggage. Let me give you some examples of the way in which new teachers are "helped". In the 1st week of class, I gave my students copies of "Nightfall" to read to get their minds back in gear after the summer break. I was told by an administrator that a part called to tell him that since Asimov was an atheist and comminuist, that meant I was both as well. The parent went on to say that the overtones in the writing were difficult to detect, and only a highly educated person would be able to notice them. I wish I could have responded to the parent directly, B.A. in Philosophy. Next was the parent teacher confrence with a lad's parents. Now to full understand this statement, know that the area newspaper has a homework hotline, parents can call and see what homework has been assigned. Also, there was a large poster in the middle of the hall that had all of the lad's classes and homework written on it. Back to the confrence. Lad seems to be doing poorly in class, mostly because he does not turn his homework in on time. This is a direct quote from mom, "I will not sacrifice Lad's education to teach him responsibility." Later, he was pulled from that school. He was failing my class because he had not turned in 6 assignments, and had earned a -18 on a paper, more than 5 days late -50 off the top, and did not complete it. I was told to pass him because they did not want to deal with his parents.
I was the Registrar for a K-12 for two years. All I asked of my teachers was to have their grades submitted properly into the database before they went home the night before report cards. And by filled out properly, I mean "hit the enter key once you've entered a grade, otherwise the value doesn't take". So yeah, they filed union grievances against me for making them look bad. That, my fellow slashdotters, is why it is impossible to fire bad teachers.
True, but not really fair. Charter schools and Catholic schools have kids with parents who care enough to enroll them in and transport them to charter schools and Catholic schools. There is a BIG difference between a kid whose parents take an interest in them and a kid whose parent is a crackhead or a hooker who doesn't give a shit about them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Rationalize it all you like. I'm glad YOU'RE not serving any more. They may have been assholes, but what you did was evil. There's no code of ethics on the planet that would condone it.
The fact is, in the face of a challenge, your mission was to find a straight-up way to deal with it and overcome. You failed miserably.
- Alaska Jack
HONOR: Huge fail .. care for the safety, professional, personal and spiritual well-being of our people ... Show respect toward all people ... treat each individual with human dignity ... exhibit the highest degree of moral character" ... yep, you=fail
COURAGE: Fail
COMMITTMENT: "Demand respect up and down the chain of command
As a teacher, I have no problem with seeing education as a right, however, People need to think in terms of "My kid has the right to the OPPORTUNITY for and education", and not "My kid has the right to be educated despite everything I and my kid do to sabotage the teachers' efforts.". This idea that it is the teachers' responsibility to compensate for all of society's ills and repair all the damage done to kids by the poor parenting skills of their families really has to go before we as a society can start to move forward on the education problem.
I personally think the kids should the right to review teachers. I had teachers who delighted (publicly) in guessing games (as in, "guess what I want to see on a paper."). A few even admitted as such.
I've heard there's no such thing as a poor student, only poor teachers.
Administrators do not want to fire the bad teachers. The bad teachers do not challenge the administration, and are therefore more welcome in our schools that people that can REALLY teach, and KNOW their material. Administrators DO NOT want people that are 'better' than them; they would rather spend their time making sure the good teachers are knocked down.
Actually, that's for NYC, but we still get the picture.
That is a broken argument. How about this: the bottom half is useless, so don't waste the effort on them. Don't like that? Fuck off, it is the converse of your argument and based on the same logic.
Smart people get shit done. Dumbasses flip burgers. Cater to the dipshits and you get spoiled whiney burger flippers and undereducated leaders. 'Education' should be reserved for the motivated and the gifted. Meanwhile, fucksticks like you should get vocational training on keeping your shitty mouths shut and your bad ideas to yourselves.
I think this problem is quite common with bright people. If you need to design a curriculum that will fit the most number of people you will inevitably end up with something aimed at the C students and the A students will get bored. There *should* be a separate track that bright students can take; but, more often than not, there isn't.
I personally went through the same thing during my school years. Luckily though I had a friend and fellow student who was going through the same thing and a math teacher during my last two years of school who understood this. So while she would be working on the regular curriculum with the rest of the class she would give us harder problems to chew on and more advanced things to read. And when she didn't have anything prepared for us she allowed us to do whatever we wanted as long as it didn't disrupt the class(read books, simply leave the class, write a game on my calculator, etc...).
All through school though, the only thing that really kept me going was the fact that I had learned programming and that I was able to explore the world of computer science in parallel with my schooling. That and the hope that it would get better in university(and it has, though not *that* much)
The subjects being taught are secondary to the education we want them to be getting.
Not to say that I like teaching mediocrity, but I don't think that's what you mean, either.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
While your point about many teachers preferring the more manageable students is a valid point, I think it is not the only reasonnot to segregate.
Smart students get smarter when they teach other students, especially when they help teach students who have a hard time understanding.
Handling a classroom where students are teaching each other may not be part of the typical curriculum in courses in education, but it should be.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I don't see much difference, except that the students tend to play a better game of emotional chess.
I do admit, I would like to see more opportunities to guide research projects at the middle and high school level. I miss that part of the University environment.
But, then, I also have this idea in the back of my mind that the system sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson is correct, where public school ends at grade three, after teaching reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. After that, the idea is that each individual should learn on the job.
In countries with large character sets, six years look to be necessary, and I guess the modern world probably requires a little more than the three "Rs", but I'd still like to give a lot of my fifth- and sixth-graders more applied subjects to study.
Which points out the other side of that, that society must change, to accept the idea of studying while we work, basically for our entire lives.
There's really no reason anyone should have to work longer than 20 hours a week, and there's no reason we should be watching TV all the rest of the time, so there's plenty of time to study, if we, as a larger society, can just quit fighting each other, both on the warfields and in the marketplace. (Boxing rings and football fields, yeah, but that is, or should be, a different kind of fighting.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
of course unions protect their dues-payers, and of course school districts work to subvert them...too bad they all forgot why they're there:-(kids, in case u missed the obvious;-)
reminds me of the story a co-worker told me ~25 yrs ago: he'd just graduated from a teacher's college & was recruited by a rural school system (arkansas, iowa, can't remember)
he moved there, joined the local instantiation of his parents' church for the social networking...the little old ladies were ecstatic a fine young man had moved into the area, wanting to intro him to their daughters/nieces when they came home from college on vacay, to try to get them not to move away...the midwest has continued to suffer depopulation:-(
new hires were on probation, no tenure for a year or 2...after which they were fired & a new batch brought in, a classic case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_management unfortunately, the schools had no choice, with falling budgets from falling tax bases from falling population...funny how the repubs push for standards of education but not standards of funding of education...
Someone with your intelligence (assuming you're honest about that, which I am) should be able to manipulate the social situation so that everyone likes them, and go off and do your own extended study in your spare time just for yourself.
While I agree that school is at least partly about learning to deal with social situations, I don't think it's as black and white as you're making it. While it's the socially accepted thing to try to get everyone to like you, it's not necessary and can be counterproductive.
It's nice to get along with people, but think about how slowly things progress when people don't disagree with each other. Disagreements are what help society advance. For example, when a company has a monopoly on something, they tend not to introduce new products or change things very quickly, but they'll respond instantly when an innovative competitor comes along.
Certainly, it's not necessary to make a scene (which could be worse), but one shouldn't roll over and agree simply because it will make them unpopular.
He probably could have shown SOMETHING about how he solved the problem, but doing it their way just because of the social factor is counterproductive. It will slow down his progress by making him learn an alternative method (assuming his was technically valid) and will serve no purpose but to appease a teacher/administration that apparently can't adjust to a student's (different, but potentially superior) abilities (remember what I said about competition?).
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Some kids get behind in a class and so they have to attend summer school and someone has to be there to teach.
n is the size of a statistical sample.