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Union Boycotts LA Times Over Teacher Evaluation Disclosure
Atypical Geek writes "According to Newsweek, the local teachers union is infuriated over the disclosure of teacher performance metrics. Quoting: 'Do parents have the right to know which of their kids' teachers are the most and least effective? That's the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times's Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper's announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city's elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers' union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.' According to the linked Times article, United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said the database was 'an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning.'"
When you're make up fake excerpts from a newspaper article, make sure you at least get your grammar correct. Don't write blatantly incorrect stuff like "come from the same world the poorest corner of the San Fernando Valley".
That has nothing to do with it. They are employees of the school district not, of the public. Consequently it's not up to you or I to make those decisions. If you don't like the results, you have options, take your kids out of public schools or vote for somebody different to run the school board, but you're no more there boss than I am the boss of the local Starbucks, by virtue of buying a drink from time to time.
I used to work for the state for a while, and it's mind blowing to me that random people think they're your boss. They have no clue what your job is or what the priorities are, nor do they know what the funding status of the project is, but somehow since it's taxpayer dollars, they're the boss. Which isn't true, they aren't the boss, and there is, at least in my state, mandatory auditing that goes on to deal with any problems that might pop up.
It would be nice to hope that this was the first step in recognising that (indirectly) real people pay for and therefore employ teachers. These real people would like to think the primary role of teachers is to impart knowledge, skills and abilities to the children in their charge.
I'm a prof in a school of ed, but my background is in psych, not ed. I've noticed that many teachers (and those teachers who go on to become profs of education) do not feel that imparting "knowledge, skills and abilities" is their major goal. Rather, as I see it, they envision teachers as replacing the home, family, and parents as the conduit of social morals.
Both things you studied are bullshit. It sucks that some university actually has to pay your salary.
There's parental apathy, because the parents, short of removing kids to home school or private school, are slaves the the government educational system and have 0 Choice. Give PARENTS a choice, and see what happens to education of their children. Voucher systems improve education for everyone, but Teacher's Unions and Liberal Elites don't favor them because it is "unfair" for some reason or another, or fear of "religion" (private religious schools) getting "Government money", which is nothing more than a red herring.
If the kids are REALLY what matters, and it improves education for ALL kids, then keeping the current system is simply stupid, regardless of the reason. What those types are saying is that it is better to have a bad system that is "fair", everyone gets the same rotten service, or whatever than actually giving parents a choice.
As it currently is, we punish success and reward failure by giving MORE money to under performing schools and LESS money to schools that are better performing. These are our kids, and failure is NOT an option. It is just that when failure is rewarded, it becomes the choice, even if it is unconscious one.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.