Good for Dr. Atkinson! Anyone who doesn't think teachers work hard enough, care enough, or are skilled enough is full of it. When I go to my kids' after school activities and see teachers there night after night, on their own time and dime. When I see teachers buying supplies out of their own pockets. When I see teachers in school weeks before start to ready their classrooms. When I see these things I have little tolerance for the sentiment that teachers just slack off. All that happens with this approach is that the best teachers say, "I don't need this crap" and leave.
North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#72It'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…
"partly because of low pay"
Teachers are actually some of the highest paid people in society. When you don't include benefits teachers make about $40/hr while engineers make $42/hr. If you do include benefits, a teachers compensation far exceeds that of an engineer due to their pensions. Source, BLS via Forbes.
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#73One of the big tragedies here is the seniority based tenure system that caused a beloved energetic teacher such as this to have to leave the west coast. There was an interesting discussion about this in an interview on reddit with a teachers union president: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/124dur/i_am_the_presid...
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#74Earlier 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?
I'm related to two teachers, and the answer is yes, if not worse.
In IT/CS we're used to extreme pigeon-holing of personnel (So, I'm the guy who was hired to install using LVM and ext2 but we'd never hire a guy who listed ext3 on his resume...) Its all about the pigeon-holing and resume keyword scanning.
In the teaching world, its simpler, more like "we want to hire a grade school teacher". Aside from some HR fluff, that's pretty much it for the hiring ad. If there are 200 districts in your state, all of whom hire "someone" every year because of quitting / retirement / firing / whatever, then you have to send out 200 resumes to each district, just like every other unemployed teacher and/or new grad. The majority of new grads end up as retail clerks or waitresses, of course, but some do get hired. Most get hired because someone knows them... but the eternal hope of being the only applicant somewhere springs eternal, and each application only costs a small amount of time and money, so its a lotto mentality.
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a question about the philosophy of science. How do you know clinical trials are better than observational methods? How do you know controlled experiments are better than post-hoc reasoning and logical deduction? Standardized testing is just the application of the scientific method to education. If you don't believe in the scientific method then you shouldn't apply it here. But if you are asking for an empiric…
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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
TL;DR send your kids to a private school.
right. why fix the system, when you can be part of an elite?
Or part of the broke.
You can try and help fix the system (and probably fail) while your children suffer, or you can opt out of the system altogether and make sure your kids have the best education you can provide for them.
Many people make an entirely rational decision that their resources are best spent keeping their kids out of a broken educational system.
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#77It'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…
The contention here, though, isn't that standardized tests are useless, it's that they're worse than useless and actively cause harm when they're required.
It's a very different proposition.
As for measuring performance, there are ton of ways to do it (some of which incorporate tests) without mandating standardized testing.
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#78There seem to be quite a few people who want to do away with tenure and seniority rules as a means of fixing a broken system. Is there any evidence that doing this would fix the system or make it better? Academic freedom, tenure, and seniority (to a lesser extent) have a lot of positives. Getting rid of these should only be done if the reasons are compelling and valid. What is required is not a collection of anecdote…
> There are large portions of the United States where parents without any training or knowledge on teaching have very strong opinions on what should or should not be said in the classroom. Getting rid of tenure and academic freedom will, in some areas, lead to ignorant people making important educational decisions.
It's a very slippery slope, denying some people input into "important educational decisions", or any decisions, based on one person's criteria of ignorance.
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#79It'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…
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. This is a gigantic assumption which you have tossed out there without any support whatsoever. You are basically making an assumption which encompasses the entire issue in question, and then just blithely…
What evidence do you have that things were better before 2001?
Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
right. why fix the system, when you can be part of an elite?
How does being part of an elite come into play when it comes to parents wanting their children educated in the manner of their choosing?
Because that privilege costs a ton of money that only the upper middle class and the elite can comfortably afford?
That said, i agree with imbracio: parents' primary responsibility is to ensure their kids get a good education, rather than worrying about fixing a system that is unfit able in its current state.