I encourage everyone to find out which side of this issue their local teacher union is on. It's very likely the science side, and this is an example of why tenure has an important function of protecting academic freedom. People pooh-pooh the role of academic freedom in k-12 schools, but it does matter.
We used the issue in one of our interview questions when deciding whom to endorse for the local school board elections. And I live in a pretty conservative area.
Maybe I just enjoyed it at the time and it wouldn't survive a replaying let alone a remake. It's like how I liked Yogi Bear cartoons when I was little and now they're terrible. But I don't know. Is there a good example of giant robot FPS we can point to?
Shogo: MAD is from 1998, so it qualifies. There's not enough giant robot in modern games, in my opinion.
I also enjoyed the sarcastic sense of humor in this Monolith game. Other Monolith games include No One Lives Forever, which is fine on its own, and the sequel and spinoff to that game.
Republic Commando is from 2005, so that's still quite recent but I would love to see more star wars games in that vein.
I read something really interesting about this. The people who advertise in trade channel with "please be geared and know the fights" or "gear will be checked" are simply lazy. They want a raid of experienced people to carry them through an instance because they're too stupid or socially inept to explain fights to people. Or maybe they just lack patience. Regardless, excessive gearscore requirements or demands that you already know the fight means that those people are garbage and why bother?
Some countries with strong union presence like Finland do really well, and others don't. Some countries with little or no union presence, like Japan, do really well and others don't. There's not much evidence that unions have an inherent effect on students. There is, however, a lot of gut reaction that unions are there to ensure that your worst teacher in school still has a job if she wants it. Or he I guess although usually it's she. And where I work, unions are prohibited by law from using dues money for political contributions. I've heard a number of ideas get shot down because they would amount to using dues money for politics. I haven't worked at the state or national union level, but NEA has a PAC that is separately funded, again at least here.
What did you think of the Citizens United decision?
This is true; I did not read the article. I get to reading these slashdot threads about education and the evils of unions and I just start reacting. Your example of the top 10% and bottom 10% teacher being in the same school doesn't sound right to me. Would you be surprised if the top 10% of students in a district and the bottom 10% were in the same school?
Also, "some truth...a large degree...dependent" is not the categorical "all results are due solely to the teacher" that I ususally see. For more on this, consider reading The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch.
If I weren't a teacher myself, I would pay good money to see the results of all these raging non-teachers prescribing that we need easier and faster firing and all the problems of schools would go away. Are you a woman on the wrong side of 40? Bye. Are you a minority who looks like a terrorist? Bye. Are you the superintendent's $RELATIVE? You have a job for life. After all, who better to make decisions about teachers' jobs than mostly former physical educators (administrators, by and large.) No citation needed, just like in all the posts where people claim that some teachers work hard and most do very little. I believe that because I read it on slashdot.
BTW I wouldn't be worried so much for my own job in a scenario with easier firing. I'd be worried about my class sizes doubling and my incoming students being less prepared because their previous teacher was hired as a cost-cutting measure more than anything else. Where I work, the upper admins have got it into their head that they're the ones making the decisions that lead most directly to student success. The success is in the programs and initiatives, not the teachers. Try doing that without us. Success comes from administrators and from community support and whoever else you want to make feel good. Failure is the only thing you can peg to the teacher. I realize this is not the substance of the article, and my post is therefore not on topic as far as that goes. I think it is on the topic of the discussion that has ensued, however.
There are bad teachers, and unions protect them insofar as they protect all of us. If the school administration is unable or too lazy to demonstrate incompetence through an established process, that's on them.
The reason schools can't tell who's a good teacher and who isn't is that the problem itself is very difficult. There are many factors that lead to effect size besides the teacher. Many people in education reform have latched on to the idea that every measurement taken on student progress can be attributed wholly to the teacher. This is absolutely not true.
It's also amusing that you think higher pay won't work and easier firing will work. The problem with schools is not the small percent of phone-it-in teachers.
The TX Rangers are an interesting example. Mr. Bush and a group of investors bought the team when they did not have a stadium. This allowed the acquisition at a bargain price. They then hired a team of lawyers to lobby the city to raise sales tax 1% in order to build a new stadium. A team with a stadium is worth much more than one without, so they were sold at a profit. Where did the money come from? The taxpayers in the city of Arlington were made to subsidize baseball whether they enjoyed baseball or not. The investors then captured the subsidy. This is a case (as are most stadiums) of taking public money and building a private park. The park still charges admission, and the team gets to sell luxury sky boxes. That money does not go back to the taxpayers. I would say the Rangers are a very good example of socialize debt and privatize profits.
If you took all such government subsidy out of Major League Baseball or the National Football League, they'd be operating at a loss. By the way, the entity that built the stadium is prohibited by law from buying the team and getting those revenues.
And what about now? You keep saying "were" and "was" but I said that the Taliban is not a jihadist organization. Which I think is true. I think you're giving them too much credit for honesty. They don't believe in jihad - they don't tell the farmers this because they believe it. They just use religion to further their financial goals. That's sort of the opposite of jihad.
The Taliban have this bogus justification that they explain to farmers that they persuade or force to grow poppy. Islam, of course, bans any use, traffic, or trade in narcotics or alcohol. So, their justification for it is that it's OK because because this is a jihad against the infidels and we're selling the drugs to the infidel west. But as I said before, very little Afghan heroin actually reaches the United States. It's about 70% of the heroin sold in Europe and the UK comes from Afghanistan. But the vast majority of Afghanistan's drug crop ends up in - stays in Afghanistan, or ends up in Pakistan, Iran, central Asia now; countries like Kazakhstan have huge huge heroin problems. So it's a totally bogus argument - completely hypocritical.
If you have time, I recommend the entire video,and her book Seeds of Terror. Ms. Peters is sharp.
The Taliban is really not a jihadist organization, if you measure the degree of jihad by looking at the people doing the actual work. They're protecting their drug trade. Attacks are often diversions to keep foreign military forces away from their convoys of tractor-trailers loaded with narcotics.
This trailer is monumentally stupid. Towards the end, our hero says "Vader can't stop me now...no one can." In that case, why go through the charade of waiting for Vader to leave you with a roomful of hapless stormtroopers at the beginning? If you're sick of Vader's betrayals, why not just kill him immediately? Oh that's right.
So either the first game has a lot of complicated history between the two that makes it OK to kill literal tons of stormtroopers and not the man responsible, or it's hamstrung by its license. I already own STFU and just never finished it because I dislike playing evil. Maybe I will pick it back up.
I want to append that you should talk to your state board and legislature, which are far more likely to be behind bullshit testing programs than the local board. The law is the law after all. If students need to pass certain tests in order to graduate high school, districts are going to make sure that they pass the tests.
I've been a teacher for a long time now and I've only ever seen parents promote the idea that their children have ADHD in order to get special services. It doesn't take too much of this to make me despair for those kids after they graduate and don't have the environment of handholding. Why on earth would a school want to label children with a condition that forces them to cost more money to educate? That's as cynically as I can put it, in case you're a cynic.
Most of the teachers I have known can pretty well recognize what gets called ADHD these days. Those kids require a certain approach, as do all kids. But the paperwork alone is motivation not to try and get those children special services.
We also don't really enjoy seeing kids on medication that makes them feel ill all day. That's actually kind of a tough call because the right medication in the right dose (both very tricky to determine, as I understand it) makes a tremendous difference for some kids. That's what the students themselves tell me. But teachers don't really push for medication.
Maybe it's different in the elementary grades, with which I have no experience.
This is the first I've heard of this. Can you refer me to specific works? I used to be a mythology junkie when I was younger and I am eager to read some stuff I haven't read.
The Taliban have this bogus justification that they explain to farmers that they persuade or force to grow poppy. Islam, of course, bans any use, traffic, or trade in narcotics or alcohol. So, their justification for it is that it's OK because because this is a jihad against the infidels and we're selling the drugs to the infidel west. But as I said before, very little Afghan heroin actually reaches the United States. It's about 70% of the heroin sold in Europe and the UK comes from Afghanistan. But the vast majority of Afghanistan's drug crop ends up in - stays in Afghanistan, or ends up in Pakistan, Iran, central Asia now; countries like Kazakhstan have huge huge heroin problems. So it's a totally bogus argument - completely hypocritical.
If you have time, I recommend the whole thing. Your post has motivated me to get her book from the library, so thanks.
Actually there's no way for us to know whether he typed it by hand or copied and pasted it...by hand. This just goes to show that manual typing is virtually indistinguishable from copy-pasting! Looks like Myerson is right!
You've only named the tangible benefits. I stay in teaching because it's a lot of fun and personally very rewarding. Being present when a child goes from not understanding to understanding is a great experience. It's like watching babies take their first steps, but all day every day, and with more interesting learnings.
I think you've touched on something else, which is the existence of bad students. At some point (in the 80's?), it became taboo to say that students could be bad. I'm aware there's an ancient saying about this. If anything is wrong in a given classroom, the blame belongs solely on the teacher. You seem to suggest that there's always blame to go around. That's not true. Sometimes it can be purely ascribed to the teacher (I've met them) and other times it is purely the student who is at fault. I haven't seen many situations where I could say it's purely a parent's fault since they're not in the classroom.
Maybe this averages out to a notion of "fair share of blame" but if you look at every particular case and always try to divide it up among the three constituencies, I think that's incorrect.
My point here is that it's impossible, in a class full of bad students (I've met them) to say whether the teacher is any good at all. They could be good teachers (as opposed to the mythical and once-in-a-lifetime superteachers) and not get tangible results.
There's really only one group that has an unquestionable claim to be concerned primarily with education and that's the parents. They're not consulted because they might ask uncomfortable questions like "Will the computer do anything worthwhile?" Neither the activists nor the politicians are interested in having to answer questions like that.
Many parents want the appearance of success, whether there is actual success or not. Grades are important, and it's important that their child not be given a zero, ever. I had a student this year who missed finals week because she had gotten into a fight over the weekend and didn't want to come to school for a week. I had a parent whose son failed for the year who wanted the class removed from his records so that a failing grade would not appear.
I know you said "group" and not all parents are like this, but enough of them are that parents aren't such reliable advocates as you might think.
Slashdot Mirror
I encourage everyone to find out which side of this issue their local teacher union is on. It's very likely the science side, and this is an example of why tenure has an important function of protecting academic freedom. People pooh-pooh the role of academic freedom in k-12 schools, but it does matter.
We used the issue in one of our interview questions when deciding whom to endorse for the local school board elections. And I live in a pretty conservative area.
Maybe I just enjoyed it at the time and it wouldn't survive a replaying let alone a remake. It's like how I liked Yogi Bear cartoons when I was little and now they're terrible. But I don't know. Is there a good example of giant robot FPS we can point to?
Shogo: MAD is from 1998, so it qualifies. There's not enough giant robot in modern games, in my opinion.
I also enjoyed the sarcastic sense of humor in this Monolith game. Other Monolith games include No One Lives Forever, which is fine on its own, and the sequel and spinoff to that game.
Republic Commando is from 2005, so that's still quite recent but I would love to see more star wars games in that vein.
The political donor class pays good money for loopholes like these.
There's something to be said for spoiler effect, but frankly if Gore couldn't convince enough people to vote for him, then that's on him.
I read something really interesting about this. The people who advertise in trade channel with "please be geared and know the fights" or "gear will be checked" are simply lazy. They want a raid of experienced people to carry them through an instance because they're too stupid or socially inept to explain fights to people. Or maybe they just lack patience. Regardless, excessive gearscore requirements or demands that you already know the fight means that those people are garbage and why bother?
No wonder people leave PUGs at the drop of a hat.
Some countries with strong union presence like Finland do really well, and others don't. Some countries with little or no union presence, like Japan, do really well and others don't. There's not much evidence that unions have an inherent effect on students. There is, however, a lot of gut reaction that unions are there to ensure that your worst teacher in school still has a job if she wants it. Or he I guess although usually it's she. And where I work, unions are prohibited by law from using dues money for political contributions. I've heard a number of ideas get shot down because they would amount to using dues money for politics. I haven't worked at the state or national union level, but NEA has a PAC that is separately funded, again at least here.
What did you think of the Citizens United decision?
This is true; I did not read the article. I get to reading these slashdot threads about education and the evils of unions and I just start reacting. Your example of the top 10% and bottom 10% teacher being in the same school doesn't sound right to me. Would you be surprised if the top 10% of students in a district and the bottom 10% were in the same school?
Also, "some truth...a large degree...dependent" is not the categorical "all results are due solely to the teacher" that I ususally see. For more on this, consider reading The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch.
If I weren't a teacher myself, I would pay good money to see the results of all these raging non-teachers prescribing that we need easier and faster firing and all the problems of schools would go away. Are you a woman on the wrong side of 40? Bye. Are you a minority who looks like a terrorist? Bye. Are you the superintendent's $RELATIVE? You have a job for life. After all, who better to make decisions about teachers' jobs than mostly former physical educators (administrators, by and large.) No citation needed, just like in all the posts where people claim that some teachers work hard and most do very little. I believe that because I read it on slashdot.
BTW I wouldn't be worried so much for my own job in a scenario with easier firing. I'd be worried about my class sizes doubling and my incoming students being less prepared because their previous teacher was hired as a cost-cutting measure more than anything else. Where I work, the upper admins have got it into their head that they're the ones making the decisions that lead most directly to student success. The success is in the programs and initiatives, not the teachers. Try doing that without us. Success comes from administrators and from community support and whoever else you want to make feel good. Failure is the only thing you can peg to the teacher. I realize this is not the substance of the article, and my post is therefore not on topic as far as that goes. I think it is on the topic of the discussion that has ensued, however.
There are bad teachers, and unions protect them insofar as they protect all of us. If the school administration is unable or too lazy to demonstrate incompetence through an established process, that's on them.
The reason schools can't tell who's a good teacher and who isn't is that the problem itself is very difficult. There are many factors that lead to effect size besides the teacher. Many people in education reform have latched on to the idea that every measurement taken on student progress can be attributed wholly to the teacher. This is absolutely not true.
It's also amusing that you think higher pay won't work and easier firing will work. The problem with schools is not the small percent of phone-it-in teachers.
The TX Rangers are an interesting example. Mr. Bush and a group of investors bought the team when they did not have a stadium. This allowed the acquisition at a bargain price. They then hired a team of lawyers to lobby the city to raise sales tax 1% in order to build a new stadium. A team with a stadium is worth much more than one without, so they were sold at a profit. Where did the money come from? The taxpayers in the city of Arlington were made to subsidize baseball whether they enjoyed baseball or not. The investors then captured the subsidy. This is a case (as are most stadiums) of taking public money and building a private park. The park still charges admission, and the team gets to sell luxury sky boxes. That money does not go back to the taxpayers. I would say the Rangers are a very good example of socialize debt and privatize profits.
If you took all such government subsidy out of Major League Baseball or the National Football League, they'd be operating at a loss. By the way, the entity that built the stadium is prohibited by law from buying the team and getting those revenues.
So why are you surprised?
And what about now? You keep saying "were" and "was" but I said that the Taliban is not a jihadist organization. Which I think is true. I think you're giving them too much credit for honesty. They don't believe in jihad - they don't tell the farmers this because they believe it. They just use religion to further their financial goals. That's sort of the opposite of jihad.
If you have time, I recommend the entire video,and her book Seeds of Terror. Ms. Peters is sharp.
The Taliban is really not a jihadist organization, if you measure the degree of jihad by looking at the people doing the actual work. They're protecting their drug trade. Attacks are often diversions to keep foreign military forces away from their convoys of tractor-trailers loaded with narcotics.
Here's some support for your argument: BioWare RPG Cliche Chart.
This trailer is monumentally stupid. Towards the end, our hero says "Vader can't stop me now...no one can." In that case, why go through the charade of waiting for Vader to leave you with a roomful of hapless stormtroopers at the beginning? If you're sick of Vader's betrayals, why not just kill him immediately? Oh that's right.
So either the first game has a lot of complicated history between the two that makes it OK to kill literal tons of stormtroopers and not the man responsible, or it's hamstrung by its license. I already own STFU and just never finished it because I dislike playing evil. Maybe I will pick it back up.
I want to append that you should talk to your state board and legislature, which are far more likely to be behind bullshit testing programs than the local board. The law is the law after all. If students need to pass certain tests in order to graduate high school, districts are going to make sure that they pass the tests.
I've been a teacher for a long time now and I've only ever seen parents promote the idea that their children have ADHD in order to get special services. It doesn't take too much of this to make me despair for those kids after they graduate and don't have the environment of handholding. Why on earth would a school want to label children with a condition that forces them to cost more money to educate? That's as cynically as I can put it, in case you're a cynic.
Most of the teachers I have known can pretty well recognize what gets called ADHD these days. Those kids require a certain approach, as do all kids. But the paperwork alone is motivation not to try and get those children special services.
We also don't really enjoy seeing kids on medication that makes them feel ill all day. That's actually kind of a tough call because the right medication in the right dose (both very tricky to determine, as I understand it) makes a tremendous difference for some kids. That's what the students themselves tell me. But teachers don't really push for medication.
Maybe it's different in the elementary grades, with which I have no experience.
Planescape: Torment just missed the deadline by being released in 1999.
This is the first I've heard of this. Can you refer me to specific works? I used to be a mythology junkie when I was younger and I am eager to read some stuff I haven't read.
g a n d h i
Gretchen Peters: Seeds of Terror - BookTV start at about 37:00.
The Taliban have this bogus justification that they explain to farmers that they persuade or force to grow poppy. Islam, of course, bans any use, traffic, or trade in narcotics or alcohol. So, their justification for it is that it's OK because because this is a jihad against the infidels and we're selling the drugs to the infidel west. But as I said before, very little Afghan heroin actually reaches the United States. It's about 70% of the heroin sold in Europe and the UK comes from Afghanistan. But the vast majority of Afghanistan's drug crop ends up in - stays in Afghanistan, or ends up in Pakistan, Iran, central Asia now; countries like Kazakhstan have huge huge heroin problems. So it's a totally bogus argument - completely hypocritical.
If you have time, I recommend the whole thing. Your post has motivated me to get her book from the library, so thanks.
Actually there's no way for us to know whether he typed it by hand or copied and pasted it...by hand. This just goes to show that manual typing is virtually indistinguishable from copy-pasting! Looks like Myerson is right!
You've only named the tangible benefits. I stay in teaching because it's a lot of fun and personally very rewarding. Being present when a child goes from not understanding to understanding is a great experience. It's like watching babies take their first steps, but all day every day, and with more interesting learnings.
I think you've touched on something else, which is the existence of bad students. At some point (in the 80's?), it became taboo to say that students could be bad. I'm aware there's an ancient saying about this. If anything is wrong in a given classroom, the blame belongs solely on the teacher. You seem to suggest that there's always blame to go around. That's not true. Sometimes it can be purely ascribed to the teacher (I've met them) and other times it is purely the student who is at fault. I haven't seen many situations where I could say it's purely a parent's fault since they're not in the classroom.
Maybe this averages out to a notion of "fair share of blame" but if you look at every particular case and always try to divide it up among the three constituencies, I think that's incorrect.
My point here is that it's impossible, in a class full of bad students (I've met them) to say whether the teacher is any good at all. They could be good teachers (as opposed to the mythical and once-in-a-lifetime superteachers) and not get tangible results.
There's really only one group that has an unquestionable claim to be concerned primarily with education and that's the parents. They're not consulted because they might ask uncomfortable questions like "Will the computer do anything worthwhile?" Neither the activists nor the politicians are interested in having to answer questions like that.
Many parents want the appearance of success, whether there is actual success or not. Grades are important, and it's important that their child not be given a zero, ever. I had a student this year who missed finals week because she had gotten into a fight over the weekend and didn't want to come to school for a week. I had a parent whose son failed for the year who wanted the class removed from his records so that a failing grade would not appear.
I know you said "group" and not all parents are like this, but enough of them are that parents aren't such reliable advocates as you might think.