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North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#111

Post by danielweber »

debacle wrote: post #44
NoPiece wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Grade 7 NC math test looks pretty similar to the California test. http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/accountability/testing/r...

And I'm teaching someone grade 7 math in North Carolina, so this is something I care about a lot.

There's not a whole lot of secret sauce in a multiple-choice test. Yes, you can do them well or you can do them poorly. But even if you were to assume that California has super-awesome math tests, it would be pretty easy to duplicate them elsewhere.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#112

Post by guelo »

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…

This article wasn't about him getting fired in Oregon, it was a lengthy rant about him quitting in North Carolina. The reason you chose instead to focus your lengthy comment on that one throwaway line is because it reinforces your preexisting view that unions are the main problem with education, even though this article is mainly about some of the other problems.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#113

Post by klochner »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #59
kstenerud wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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."

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…

What about long-run outcomes under standardized testing vs. without standardized testing?

Longitudinal data would be difficult to find, but surely countries differ in their respective levels of standardized testing.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#114

Post by stevenbedrick »

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?

Sadly, that is indeed normal for people looking for jobs as teachers in Oregon, and has been normal for at least the last several years. The only districts that are really hiring are the very rural ones, and even then it is usually just one or two positions.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#115

Post by wpietri »

tptacek wrote: post #68
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…

It's obvious that seniority rules increase the number of laid-off teachers. Teachers with seniority are more expensive than new teachers. Teachers unions see seniority concessions as a way for school administrators to cut costs by shedding senior teachers and replacing them with underqualified junior teachers. This, by the way, is a good example of how complex teacher labor issues are. Not every unionized teacher sha…

It's definitely tricky.

Junior teachers are often more easily pushed around, while senior teachers can have the experience and connections needed to push back against bad administration.

Letting administrators determine who the "best" teachers are can mean that administrators will pick the most obedient, not the most effective. A seniority system has obvious flaws, but I don't see increased bureaucratic power as much of an improvement.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#116

Post by halffullheart »

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…

Obviously this is a complex issue, and I don't mean to single you out here, but I'm surprised how often I hear the argument that teachers aren't good enough from people who are concerned about the quality of education in the US. It seems to me that in most other industries, the workers in the field are given the benefit of the doubt.

In other words, do people really believe that Americans are great at being programmers or fire fighters or lawyers but that we just suck at being teachers?

Maybe I'm biased because there are a lot of teachers in my family, but my impression from hearing them discuss it is that the problem is much larger than whether teachers are good enough or not. Many teachers, like the one who wrote the linked article, are working under incredible pressure, essentially in conditions under which is is very easy to fail. Huge class sizes, inadequate funding, etc.

I think we should stop blaming teachers and assume like we do with so many other workers that most of them are smart and capable and will do well if we give them the support they need. And it would probably be wise to ask teachers how we can improve education and give them the authority and resources to implement their ideas.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#117

Post by wpietri »

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…

This seems roughly equivalent to the argument that we should measure software developer quality by lines of code written per day. Sure, we know it's not a perfect measurement, but it's the easy one to check, and it keeps people from doing nothing.

Of course, we software developers, understanding the complexity of our profession, know that would be idiocy. "But hey," says the MBA, "Some metric is better than no metric."

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#118

Post by danielweber »

wpietri wrote: post #115
tptacek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious that seniority rules increase the number of laid-off teachers. Teachers with seniority are more expensive than new teachers. Teachers unions see seniority concessions as a way for school administrators to cut costs by shedding senior teachers and replacing them with underqualified junior teachers. This, by the way, is a good example of how complex teacher labor issues are. Not every unionized teacher sha…

It's definitely tricky. Junior teachers are often more easily pushed around, while senior teachers can have the experience and connections needed to push back against bad administration. Letting administrators determine who the "best" teachers are can mean that administrators will pick the most obedient, not the most effective. A seniority system has obvious flaws, but I don't see increased bureaucratic power as much…

This is going to be true for any group of professionals. Doctors, lawyers, software developers. Junior ones will do what they are told. Senior ones will push back and say "this is stupid" when management tries stupid rules.

Yet the senior professionals in those fields are valued. I suspect because their employer cares if the organization does a good job. I've seen school administrators range from mildly concerned to completely unconcerned. As long as the bosses' jobs aren't in danger, they don't care, and their jobs tend to only be in danger when something goes really really wrong, like a school shooting. So, like any other bureaucracy, they work hard to clamp down on anything out of the ordinary.

I think school choice is important for getting administrators to care. Of course, if parents pull their kids out of school A and into school B, and some higher power (like a district) simply moves administrators over from A to B, nothing has been accomplished.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#119

Post by jeremymcanally »

guelo wrote: post #112
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…

This article wasn't about him getting fired in Oregon, it was a lengthy rant about him quitting in North Carolina. The reason you chose instead to focus your lengthy comment on that one throwaway line is because it reinforces your preexisting view that unions are the main problem with education, even though this article is mainly about some of the other problems.

I'm not "anti-union," but frankly almost all of the issues he complains about are supposed to be things that the union helps with, especially professional development. It sounds like the whole system is falling over in that area, not just the district and not just the union.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#120

Post by fatbird »

dubya wrote: post #58
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?

I read this as "if any area is well-served by standardized tests, it's math" rather than "standardized tests are the best thing to happen to math". Sort of like a honey badger is best served by a snake bite. The AMS Notices has an interesting article about a mathematician using his sabbatical to teach high school math that overlaps a little bit with this post: http://www.ams.org/notices/201210/rtx121001408p.pdf

I read it the same way as you did, that math is the best-case area for standardized testing. Thus my point: If standardized testing leads to this kind of 'driving out the good' in math, where it's most easily and effectively used to measure performance, what does that mean for less-well-served areas?
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