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North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#141

Post by wpietri »

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…

Math may be best served by standardized tests, but it's still not very well served.

The point of a math class isn't so you can get correct answers on the test next month. It's so that for the rest of your life you have a reasonably mathematical intuition and decent math skills.

We all know people who crammed for quizzes, did ok, and forgot everything. That was a double waste; not only did they learn nothing, but they were trained to treat mathematics as hostile territory. Standardized tests reward the same sort of shallow behavior.

That's ok when there's no particular incentive to do well or poorly on the standardized test. But now that jobs and funding and careers are riding on the results, there's every reason to be suspicious of the results, and worried about a negative effect on people actually learning anything lasting.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#142

Post by hindsightbias »

Bud wrote: post #102
yummyfajitas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct figure is 38.5 hours/week for 9 months/year. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf That's about $33.5/hour for wages alone. It also ignores the value of gold plated health care + pensions, etc.

"Gold plated" (sic) health care? Tuck in your pants. Your bias is peeking out. (Edit after being downvoted, in an attempt to be more constructive): Seriously, you seem to have an animus against teachers having decent health care. What's your problem with that, and why do you feel it's appropriate to label their quite average health care plans as "gold plated", as if they were unfairly receiving more health care than…

It's always easier to hate people in your own class who have fought for rights than to fight for those rights yourself.

Sorry, I have to get back to believing whatever the 1% wants me to believe.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#143

Post by yummyfajitas »

wpietri wrote: post #131
yummyfajitas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct figure is 38.5 hours/week for 9 months/year. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf That's about $33.5/hour for wages alone. It also ignores the value of gold plated health care + pensions, etc.

According to the NEA, that's only scheduled hours, not actual work hours. http://www.nea.org/home/12661.htm That certainly matches the teachers I've known; they put in a ton of non-classroom hours, and often put in a fair bit of their own money. A Gates Foundation survey puts it at 53 hours per week: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/survey... And for teachers involved in extracurricular activitie…

The numbers I cited are actual hours worked "last week" according to the BLS's American Time User Survey. It includes work performed "at a work location", "at home" and "at another location" (I assume this last one means starbucks).

You'd have known all this if you bothered to read even the introduction.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#144

Post by acdha »

danielweber wrote: post #98

I will not spend another day wondering how I can have classes that are full inclusion, and where 50% of my students have IEPs, yet I’m given no support. I had to fire our public school (in North Carolina; this was in the first district he moved to in the state) because it took them 3 years to do an IEP. In another example, a family member moved out of state, and it took the school two years to call up and ask if she…

> Teacher responsibility is a great thing, but we also need administrator responsibility.

I cannot upvote this enough. All too often, the administrators get a free pass for blaming everything on the teachers and/or insufficient funding. If you have 30% annual turnover, at some point you have to ask who was the constant in the system.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#145

Post by yummyfajitas »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135
yummyfajitas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that things were better before 2001?

For anyone that knows anything about the current system, its almost obvious. Education in the states is much more of a wreck now than it was BB (Before Bush). The only thing kids have improved at now is....taking standardized tests.

tl;dr No evidence but I hate Bush SOOOO MUCH!

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#146

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> Identifying teachers with good "value-added" is not at all easy,

Coming up with a rule is very hard. But it's pretty easy to identify the good teachers - everyone at the school knows who they are. Just ask.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#147

Post by MaysonL »

wisty wrote: post #84
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 studen…

Of course, there's also the alternative of teaching the teachers how to teach. Teaching is an ability that can be taught, and learned.[0]

[0] "Building a Better Teacher" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html...

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#148

Post by seanmcdirmid »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #145
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone that knows anything about the current system, its almost obvious. Education in the states is much more of a wreck now than it was BB (Before Bush). The only thing kids have improved at now is....taking standardized tests.

tl;dr No evidence but I hate Bush SOOOO MUCH!

If you have kids, do you really want them to be educated in fill-in-the-bubble hell? Because that is how school is these days, teachers don't teach, they do test prep and then administer those tests, and the testing companies have gotten rich in basically a corrupt cycle. Read the linked article for crying out loud.

Also, NCLB passed with bipartisan support at the beginning of Bush's term, it wasn't his fault, but it was symptomatic of the simplistic shallow thinking that he would use the rest of his term. States are finally able to opt out, thank god, and you can bet I will make sure my kids are educated in one of those states.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#149

Post by milesskorpen »

xenofanes9 wrote: post #96
jimbokun wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Charter schools. There are a wide range of approaches, but the charter school I attended provided an alternative for both teachers and parents looking for flexibility in their child's education.

Some charter schools are amazing, and some are awful ... just like public schools. Research has failed to find any evidence that charter schools perform better as a group -- which is surprising, since they can (by and large) select their students and have flexibility in hiring. Moreover, they undercut public schools in the same district.

Seems like a net-negative to me.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#150

Post by natrius »

danielweber wrote: post #110
enraged_camel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A private school education is not really expensive in most of the country. Think around $5000 a year. I know that's not pocket-change to many people, but you hardly need to be "upper middle class" to do it.

It'd be within the reach of more families if they could take the money that would be going towards their child in the assigned public schools with them to the school of their choice. I don't understand why that idea became a partisan one.
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