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North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#41

Post by jbooth »

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…

Software developer performance in the US has been terrible for many years as well.

Maybe we should institute some standardized tests?

And if you're gonna complain about how measuring KLOC doesn't make any sense, well, it's not enough to just point out problems. You've gotta point out solutions. Be a team player.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#42

Post by lifeisstillgood »

We have a brilliant system for determining the quality of teachers - and it is one used throughout the private sector with considerable effect.

Its called a competent boss

Every Head knows which ones to get rid of and which ones to keep. Every Head also knows if they get rid of the bad ones, they will need double the budget to hire in new, also good teachers. Especially if every other Head does this at the same time.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#43

Post by xaa »

DanielStraight wrote: post #34
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…

Consider the last few real-world problems I've solved (or attempted to solve) with math: If you have a widget (roughly shaped like a cone with the tip chopped off) held at angle a and the widget is tapered at angle b and the tip of the widget has a diameter d , how far is it in x and y from the center of the tip of the widget to the theoretical tip were the taper continued to a point? If two 14" pizzas feed five peop…

I agree with all this, but consider that the type of math being tested on a standardized test is a subset of the skills you mention. You certainly can't perform complex word problems unless you can do the algebra or geometry calculations, whereas the converse is not true.

IOW, standardized testing of math is testing the bare minimum, and a successful teacher should be able to teach this bare minimum. If a teacher can do better, great!

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#44

Post by debacle »

NoPiece wrote: post #38
debacle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While math benefits from standardized tests, what is being tested is not math. It's memorization. It's recital. If I want to hire someone that's good at reciting memorized fact to me, I'll hire a postgres instance.

Take a look at the recently released questions from the 2012 california math standardized tests. Looks like math, not memorization to me. Here is grade 7: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf Here is algebra: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqalgebra.pdf

Now show me the same test from Alabama, or North Carolina.

Chances are it's not of the same quality. California actually has a relatively good educational system, compared to the rest of the country.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#45

Post by justin_vanw »

fiatmoney wrote: post #37
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…

"Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years." Terrible at what, exactly?

It's all over the map, and there are hardworking teachers.

I can tell you about my experience in the 90's. There were exceptions, but generally teachers I had would hand out worksheets and assignments, and then class time would be spent doing what was effectively homework. Very rarely would there be an actual lecture. I had several completely incompetent teachers as well, who were completely tolerated by the schools administration.

One teacher, Mrs. Rushing, was completely incompetent. During the lesson on vector addition, she claimed that if you added a bunch of vectors together, it was the same as taking a vector from the beginning of the first vector to the end of the last vector, if you put the source of each vector at the end of the previous one. Well, that's what she was meant to say, she actually insisted that the length of the paths was the same, and she argued for it despite it being obviously wrong. She had at best a weak and often incorrect understanding of the material she was meant to be teaching. She also used her entire planning period each day to sell Avon or Mary Kay or something, which I witnessed every day as I was an aid in the math department and was in the planning room during her planning period. Every day some random lady would come in to the school and chat with her for an hour and try cosmetics during the time she was meant to be preparing for classes. During class she would often get stuck and go ask other teachers questions mid class.

So it would have been great if they had tested the outcomes of the students who were in her class, and compared them to the several wonderful teachers teaching the same subject at the same school. Instead, she is still there.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#46

Post by clarky07 »

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…

2 things.

1. Where does it say the author is a male? I didn't see that, and the name "Kris" is used as a female name just as often as a male name[1]

2. I'm not sure the parent is saying that this is the best way to test math, rather that it is better for math than any of the other subjects. i.e. 2+2 is always 4 but writing essays is a whole different ballgame.

[1] http://www.nameplayground.com/Kris

EDIT: I think standardized testing sucks mostly, just wanted to offer an alternative interpretation on the math testing part.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#47

Post by justin_vanw »

jbooth wrote: post #41
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…

Software developer performance in the US has been terrible for many years as well. Maybe we should institute some standardized tests? And if you're gonna complain about how measuring KLOC doesn't make any sense, well, it's not enough to just point out problems. You've gotta point out solutions. Be a team player.

You're right, it's exactly the same in every way. No strawman here!

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#48

Post by namank »

tokenadult wrote: post #31

"I lost my job only due to my lack of seniority. I was devastated." He ("he" is correct; I was confused by the given name at first until looking the person up with a Google search) should blame the typical master contract with the teachers in the school district for that. That is a standard contract provision recommended by schoolteacher unions whether a state has a "union shop" or "right-to-work" rules. Usually, sch…

Imagine businesses before disruptions became commonplace; that's the state of K-12, maybe even worse.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#49

Post by curtis »

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?

It's possible that there was a state-wide hiring freeze on teachers. State revenues, like federal revenues, declined substantially during the economic downturn. And since education is usually a major part of state budgets, it becomes a primary target for spending cuts if the state government is trying to reduce the amount of debt they're accumulating. A lot of states have balanced budget requirements, but I don't know if Oregon is one. Even if Oregon doesn't have a balanced budget requirement, there will still be substantial political pressure for the state government to reduce spending.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#50

Post by sodomizer »

The school bureaucracy is a symptom of something else, as is the monotonous testing and the union power. The American educational system changed its premise back in the 1960s.

Since that time, we have become addicted to assembly line, one-size-fits-all, bulk format education in which we put kids through a ton of information and measure them by how much they retain. Not the quality of what they retain, and not their actual skills, but what they've memorized.

By prioritizing memorized facts over learned application, we are losing a lot of our most talented kids. To compound the problem further, this one-size-fits-all approach isn't calibrated to the smart kids, but to the average. In public schools, it's also impossible to send home the disruptive kids.

The result is a system that is so hobbled by contradictions that it is dysfunctional. Dysfunction attracts lazy administrators who like to use test metrics to force teachers to teach to the test, thus making everyone look like a success, even when the graduates aren't good at doing anything.

The recent spate of test-cheating scandals should show us exactly why these tests are in favor among administrators. Instead of a broad open-ended task like "teach these kids to reason," all you have to do is make sure they make a pretty bell curve on the standardized test.

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