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North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#21

Post by fatbird »

xaa wrote: post #9

TL;DR: The writer, a math teacher, is quitting (edit: his) job because of increased bureaucracy and standardized tests. Mostly, it seems, standardized tests. The problem is, math is the subject which is BEST served by standardized tests. There is really no fuzzy aspect to K-12 math: answers are right or wrong. And there are of course many benefits to standardized testing like teacher and school evaluation, providing…

If math is best served by standardized tests, and a well-regarded and skilled math teacher is quitting because they're drowning his class in tests and test preparation rather than giving him the time to actually educate...

What does that say for non-math areas like English or Art or History?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#22

Post by cheez »

Osiris wrote: post #6

My mother is a school board member in a rural school district in Northern California. What I can from conversations with her is that it is often not the district's fault when there are issues, but the state's. The district is forced to come up with a budget months before the state approves their budget, so they don't even know if they are going to get the money they need. When money is low, they have gone to the comm…

TL;DR send your kids to a private school.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#23

Post by lifeisstillgood »

There is a defence.

An engaged, informed, active, body of parents who will take action to ensure their children receive best schooling and care available.

Take 100 irate parents to the next North Carolina State Board meeting and have them raise individually one after the other motions of no-confidence in each member. Then try to elect this woman to the Board.

Will that help.

Yes if you keep up the pressure for the 14 - 18 years it takes your child to go through the system.

There is a website / startup in there...

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#24

Post by ditonal »

Xcelerate wrote: post #12
xaa wrote: post #9

TL;DR: The writer, a math teacher, is quitting (edit: his) job because of increased bureaucracy and standardized tests. Mostly, it seems, standardized tests. The problem is, math is the subject which is BEST served by standardized tests. There is really no fuzzy aspect to K-12 math: answers are right or wrong. And there are of course many benefits to standardized testing like teacher and school evaluation, providing…

The author of the letter is male. I disagree that math is best served by these particular standardized tests. Testing can be useful (particularly something like the AMC or AIME), but when you're given meaningless problems like calculating how many watermelons Jack can carry to the store, there's better ways of assessing a deep understanding of mathematics. Also, tests are frequently too long. This forces a student in…

Those meaningless low level problems are the basis for higher level skills. Studies have shown that students who are more capable of doing arithmetic without a calculator do better in college level math classes.*

This is not the first time I've read complaints about standardized testing being unfair, nor people rolling their eyes at defenses of testing as people who just don't "get it". What I haven't seen much of is a thorough explanations of which tests are unfair and what specifically is bad about them. I just looked at the math section of the EXPLORE test. I would be very concerned if my child was unable to answer those questions and I would want my teacher to prioritize those basic skills before his so-called "deep-thinking" classes.

Which tests are too long? It seems if tests are too long, we should shorten them. As an observer, it seems the standardized testing critics reach for any and all weaknesses of tests as a reason to shun them entirely, and it does raise suspicions they just hate the accountability.

Standardized testing predicts college math performance. http://faculty.etsu.edu/stephen/diss-stephens.pdf

Less calculator usage in grade school correlates to better college math performance. http://www.math.jhu.edu/~wsw/ED/pubver.pdf

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#25

Post by justin_vanw »

It's fine to grumble about testing, but the debate is not about the tests.

Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years. Partly this is because of bad management, partly because of low pay, and partly because of teacher unions preventing any action against the worst teachers and insistance on tenure tracks.

The reason testing is good isn't because it is somehow super accurate. It is good because it keeps teachers honest. Without testing, how do you measure teacher performance at all? How can you tell if someone who is capable of teaching well isn't just being lazy or getting distracted?

So, if you aren't a fan of testing as a way to measure and improve teacher effectiveness, please find an alternative that works better. Just not having any metric at all is far worse than the imperfect tests we have.

It's easy to point out problems. It's useful and important that people find flaws and fault. In this case, however, just pointing out the deficiencies in standardized testing doesn't help anyone unless it either leads to a more effective alternative, or improvements in standardized testing. Standardized tests might be very imperfect at measuring teacher performance, but it's far better to use the tool we have than to just throw up our arms and assume that all teachers are equally competent.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#26

Post by 001sky »

Osiris wrote: post #6

My mother is a school board member in a rural school district in Northern California. What I can from conversations with her is that it is often not the district's fault when there are issues, but the state's. The district is forced to come up with a budget months before the state approves their budget, so they don't even know if they are going to get the money they need. When money is low, they have gone to the comm…

Thought experiment: This analysis is based off a premise that schools are for the purpose of . This is no longer true. Schools are institutionalized means of baby-sitting and controlling large portions of the countries otherwise-unoccupied poplulation. Thus, they are run more like prisions than universities. This seems to explain the empirical data in a way which shows the system as 'functional' rather than 'disfunctional'. Although whether they are 'fit for purpose' is a political question, of an entirely different stripe. =/

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#27

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fatbird wrote: post #21
xaa wrote: post #9

TL;DR: The writer, a math teacher, is quitting (edit: his) job because of increased bureaucracy and standardized tests. Mostly, it seems, standardized tests. The problem is, math is the subject which is BEST served by standardized tests. There is really no fuzzy aspect to K-12 math: answers are right or wrong. And there are of course many benefits to standardized testing like teacher and school evaluation, providing…

If math is best served by standardized tests, and a well-regarded and skilled math teacher is quitting because they're drowning his class in tests and test preparation rather than giving him the time to actually educate... What does that say for non-math areas like English or Art or History?

>"Nothing happened after over 300 applications and 2 interviews.*

Is a 2/3 of one percent application-to-interview rate normal for this field?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#28

Post by phil »

hammock wrote: post #5

I... I... I... I... I... I... I... Is that how he teaches his students to write as well? edit: Hi downvoters, I understand parallelism. When it's used the way this teacher has used it, he risks coming across as whiny and juvenile. His point would come across more powerfully if he reframed his grievances in a way that shows their impact on the real victims, the children, as opposed to himself. "I have a dream" came fr…

You might find the parallel structure listing grievances familiar, since it was used in the Declaration of Independence (and many, many times since).

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#29

Post by kstenerud »

justin_vanw wrote: post #25

It's fine to grumble about testing, but the debate is not about the tests. Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years. Partly this is because of bad management, partly because of low pay, and partly because of teacher unions preventing any action against the worst teachers and insistance on tenure tracks. The reason testing is good isn't because it is somehow super accurate. It is good because it…

"Just not having any metric at all is far worse than the imperfect tests we have."

Are you sure about that? How do you know that a bad metric is better than no metric? It sounds a lot more like "We should be doing something. This is something. Therefore we should do it."

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#30

Post by xyzzyb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27
fatbird wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If math is best served by standardized tests, and a well-regarded and skilled math teacher is quitting because they're drowning his class in tests and test preparation rather than giving him the time to actually educate... What does that say for non-math areas like English or Art or History?

>"Nothing happened after over 300 applications and 2 interviews.* Is a 2/3 of one percent application-to-interview rate normal for this field?

That included applications to places like Toys-R-Us.
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