North Carolina teacher's resignation letter • Hacker News Board

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#81

Post by drivingmenuts » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #62

drivingmenuts wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not a problem for teaching, since the output of teaching is homogeneous (and is defined by the syllabus). The syllabus is typically defined politically, which is anything but homegeneous. In fact, pretty much everything surrounding the teacher is defined by politics, which makes it a huge problem. Until we're mature enough to get rid of the politics surrounding the teaching of even core subjects, like scienc…

The syllabus is typically defined politically, which is anything but homegeneous. Please look up the definition of homogeneous - being defined politically has nothing to do with it. All calc 1 classes are the same, and some politician demanding that pi=3 doesn't change this.

Fortunately, math hasn't been caught up in the same horse manure that science, history and language instruction have been, all of which have ongoing political surroundings.

Additionally, the modern teacher has to deal with and put up with rather a lot of things that aren't directly related to their subject areas, but are politically determined.

FYI, denotatively, homogenous and homegeneous have different meanings. Connotatively, they are somewhat interchangeable. I suggest you look up the meaning of "thesaurus" and "pedantic". Or skip that and ask yourself, did you understand what I meant?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#82

Post by samspot » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

I was in public school in the Greenville, NC area from 1985-1998, and I felt I had mostly good teachers and was adequately prepared for college. I happen to be a good test taker, and so my experience is likely different from others with different skills. At the time we only had end-of-grade tests, and not for every subject.

My impression is that things have gotten a lot worse/more political since I went to school. I wonder if any long-time teachers care to comment on the changes over the last 30 years?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#83

Post by drharris » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:18 PM UTC

aroberge wrote: post #64

yequalsx wrote: post #52

There 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…

Tenure and Academic freedom are applicable to University professors, not to teachers.

Why? Source, or are you just making stuff up?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#84

Post by wisty » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:21 PM UTC

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…

> Actively identifying the most able teachers and encouraging the least effective teachers to find other employment, regardless of seniority, could do much to improve the efficiency of the public school system and free up resources to reward the best teachers better than they are rewarded now.

How do you think should they do this? If you use test scores, teachers will try to "teach the test", or even encourage students to cheat. Student surveys might work, unless the students just dislike certain teachers (who are effective, but strict). Performance reviews can be rubbish.

I'd bet properly designed teacher assessments (tests, student surveys) could find the worst 10% of teachers, though.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#85

Post by capnrefsmmat » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:21 PM UTC

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?

Standard teaching methods for science and math don't work by many measures. That's not the fault of poor teachers; even well-rated teachers do poorly at improving student understanding.

This is largely the fault of our notion that teachers are explanation delivery devices and students explanation receptacles, where the only improvements can be found in better explanations and better student engagement. The notion is wrong. Students need to actively test their understanding by making predictions and failing, and no courses I've ever experienced attempt to do this.

If you're interested in the mounds of research:

http://www.refsmmat.com/articles/shutup.html

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#86

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

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…

Reading this comment from this teacher's blog article

"And if the choices have run out for my toddler when he’s ready for school, I will do it myself. Maybe I’ll do it for others, as well. Who knows."

questions about a potential education system hack popped into my head. Maybe many others have already had this idea...

What about uniting the home-schooling and frustrated-teachers movements?

I'm sure there are onerous restrictions on setting up a "school" in the U.S. But what about an intensive tutoring system catering to home schooled children? If you had a tutor (who happens to be a formerly disgruntled public school teacher) in a home, how many other children could be in that home, receiving personal tutoring, before no longer being considered a "home school" environment? What if the formerly disgruntled public school teacher drove to various homes during the day or the week? Can "home school" instruction happen in a place other than the child's residence and still be considered home schooling?

Obviously, this could be supplemented with online curricula.

If anything like this is legally feasible, seems like an online service allowing parents to personally select educators sharing their vision for how they want their children to be educated could be hugely disruptive to the current K12 educational establishment.

Does anything like this already exist?

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#87

Post by sirmarksalot » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

curt wrote: post #72

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…

"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.

I looked that up on the BLS website, and while you're not using the same units as them, your numbers don't seem to match up.

According to BLS, the median pay is $53,230 per year, which would be closer to $26.50 an hour, assuming a 40-hour work week.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high-s...

Maybe the Forbes article you're referring to about is only counting classroom hours, which is a pretty absurd notion. Teaching is a full-time job, and any figure based on an assumption to the contrary is going to be flawed. Not meaning to straw-man you, it's just that without a link to the article in question, I can only speculate where your figures come from.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#88

Post by yummyfajitas » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #81

yummyfajitas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The syllabus is typically defined politically, which is anything but homegeneous. Please look up the definition of homogeneous - being defined politically has nothing to do with it. All calc 1 classes are the same, and some politician demanding that pi=3 doesn't change this.

Fortunately, math hasn't been caught up in the same horse manure that science, history and language instruction have been, all of which have ongoing political surroundings. Additionally, the modern teacher has to deal with and put up with rather a lot of things that aren't directly related to their subject areas, but are politically determined. FYI, denotatively, homogenous and homegeneous have different meanings. Co…

I didn't notice you used a different word (and one that isn't in the dictionary, no less). At this point I concede that I have no idea what you meant.

I do agree with you that people who dislike politics should not work for the government (which is, by it's very nature, political).

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#89

Post by brigade » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:36 PM UTC

yequalsx wrote: post #52

There 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…

I truly do not see it helping, especially as a first step. The vast majority of those bad and mediocre teachers that everyone wants fired? They're still around primarily because the school administration is comfortable with them. They don't complain, they don't cause problems, they don't garner parental complaints, they simply implement whatever new schemes administration comes up with to try to increase standardized test scores, etc.

Removing tenure isn't going to make administrators magically start firing bad teachers that they like, even if standardized test results were a good measure of such.

And your comment about parents with strong but ignorant opinions is spot on - one of the best teachers in my high school was fired directly as a result of parental complaints.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#90

Post by keithpeter » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 7:37 PM UTC

cheez wrote: post #22

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.

I work as a teacher in the UK, in a Further Education college ('community college' in US I think). The UK has a completely different system for funding and quality assurance in state schools, so I'm not commenting on the original article or much of this discussion as it would not help.

I will say that some of the best and worst teaching I have seen has been in institutions outside of the state funded sector. Caveat Emptor.