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North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

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Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#171

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Locke1689 wrote: post #152
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is crazy. If you have another metric for student performance other than test scores, just say it.

Why are standardized test scores a good metric? A more accurate metric might be standardized testing company profits...mission accomplished!

The US educational system is evaluated against other countries, and we've only gotten worse in our rankings despite paying those testing companies all that money. Does Finland have standardized tests? No, they kick our butt simply by treating teachers as professionals and paying the, accordingly.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#172

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bloaf wrote: post #153
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"I still have no evidence, but I'm going to use more extreme appeals to emotion and stronger language to try to make you overlook this point"

Ya, when it's kids at stake, I get emotional, and the hellish system in place has to go.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#173

Post by saraid216 »

Locke1689 wrote: post #156
wpietri wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then you create a new metric, you don't just throw your hands up and say, "well, I guess this stuff just can't be measured!"

Believe it or not, this happens on a regular basis. You never hear about it, though, because standardized testing is our current gold standard and people refuse to use something else.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#174

Post by jessaustin »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #165
milesskorpen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you so much for pointing this out. For people who are so focused on "data-driven education" they always seem to ignore this. The fact of the matter is that collectively they perform no better than public schools, while undermining those very schools they are trying to 'fix.' Perhaps part of the issue is that people are focusing on a 'silver bullet' for education. Standardized tests, charter schools, and even th…

Why can't there be more than one school serving a particular area? Does the mere existence of charter/private/parochial in a community undermine that community's public school? Why would that be so?

Education is far from the only service industry for which there is no silver bullet. Other such industries function by fostering expertise at management levels in addition to the "work" level, but always leaving the final decision in the hands of the consumer. On the other hand, USA public education takes no consumer input at all, and it's crap. The reason we continue to attempt doomed one-size-fits-all strategies (and really, always using a single poor tactic is poor strategy, despite what we think we may know) is because we intentionally ignore the primary input that helps other industries regulate quality.

I actually don't think teachers as a whole are that bad (of course there are individual exceptions), but the management/administration of USA public education is abysmal. If most current administrators were actually responsible for firing underperformers while recruiting talented new teachers, they would fail miserably at those tasks.

I'm all in favor of teacher autonomy when we have sufficient public vouchers and other similar mechanisms in place to guarantee parental choice as well.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#175

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Locke1689 wrote: post #156
wpietri wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then you create a new metric, you don't just throw your hands up and say, "well, I guess this stuff just can't be measured!"

In science, no metric is better than a bad misleading metric, definitely.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#176

Post by icelancer »

wpietri wrote: post #136
imbriaco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your responsibility is to your kids and not to some idealistic vision of what you could be doing to improve the school system as a whole.

False dichotomy. Your responsibility as a parent is to your children. Your responsibility as a citizen is to run your government effectively. Captain TLDR above is basically saying "fuck other people's kids", which is abdicating his civic responsibility.

>which is abdicating his civic responsibility

He pays taxes that goes to schools, doesn't he? Otherwise, I am pretty sure he didn't sign a contract that said: "You are responsible for improving the well-being of kids you will never meet."

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#177

Post by [deleted] »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #88
drivingmenuts wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

[deleted]

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#178

Post by icelancer »

enraged_camel wrote: post #80
schreiaj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Because that privilege costs a ton of money that only the upper middle class and the elite can comfortably afford?

It's almost like people should take some responsibility for their kids' futures instead of handing them over to the state and saying "Well free education is right there, it better be damn good!" Doesn't work that way.

(This coming from a guy who went to a not-very-good public school and plans on sending his kids to public school, mind you.)

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#179

Post by jessaustin »

king_jester wrote: post #138
waterlesscloud wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of us have been to public schools. We have direct, first-hand observations about the quality of teachers. I had a few stars, most were just getting by, some actively sucked. From everything I've ever heard, most people had the same experience. It's not like we're talking about something none of us know anything about. We've been there, seen it.

The first hand experience of people having been a student once isn't enough information in which to judge a whole profession. If that were the case, we should be letting only users of software direct how software is made. Also, experiences can be really variable for different people. Some students might have many great teachers and be in a position where school is very positive for them. Other students could be facin…

"Some students might have many great teachers and be in a position where school is very positive for them."

I've never met anyone who said this about her public high school education. In university, many people said this about their educations in private schools, so I assume such a positive experience is possible. I'm convinced it's rare in public-funded secondary schools in the USA.

Re: North Carolina teacher's resignation letter

#180

Post by saraid216 »

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.

Actually, pre-university education also includes things that require academic freedom and the protection tenure affords for that.
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