The other day there was a "best-of" on Reddit where a teacher said that "only martyrs teach now in America."
http://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_wan...
The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
61–70 of 273 posts
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#62> SOL tests are inherently unfair, I regularly see claims that tests are at odds with learning. What I don't understand is how anyone can tell what kids have learned without some sort of test.
I've found the best way to discern what kids are learning at school is to, you know, talk to them for a few minutes.
I think the idea of trying to stack rank teachers and schools works about as well as stack ranking engineers. It's garbage-in garbage-out. The entire premise is faulty.
"You can only improve what you can measure" works great on manufacturing lines and click-through-rates. Not so much, strike that, not at all on humans.
Edit: analog31, exactly that, you are spot on.
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now you're talking about school choice and maybe admission exams, both of which are anathema in US educational politics. As a Euro living in the US I can see why the busing policy implemented following Brown v. Board of Education seemed like such an urgent necessity, but it seems to have ended up as an unworkable mess, with those who can afford it (most of whom are white) sending their kids off to private schools and…
Bussing is stupid, having rich neighborhoods get better schools is more stupid. All schools should get the same. We fund all schools equally, across the board, no questions. The fact that property taxes funded schools IS THE CRIMINAL construction. It sounds democratic, but so does pulling ones self up by their bootstraps. It only cements the class order.
> We fund all schools equally, across the board, no questions.
Equal funding doesn't actually fix anything, especially if equal means equally low. And money doesn't help if it gets spent on worthless bureaucracy. Moreover, the home life of the students matters a lot. The difference between going home to a decent meal and supportive parents vs. absentee or abusive parents is not something you can lay on the schools.
These things coalesce into the fact that DC has one of the highest per-student budgets in the country but gets some of the worst results. Because they have an enormous amount of bureaucracy and a very poor student population.
Making the funding unconditional would solve half the problem by eliminating a lot of the bureaucracy and giving the local communities an incentive to show up, but the other half of the problem would still be there.
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#64The Reason Education Sucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98
Edit: for those wanting something less cynical and more serious, I recommend some John Taylor Gatto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CeWip5BpU#t=1m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCuc-2tfgk
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#65Great points. This, I think is one of the fundamental problems: --- If parents and local decision-makers really value education (and there is a small portion of the community that does), student and teacher morale would be much different. --- The overall environment matters more than the teacher. We've mentioned it here not too long ago as well. Doesn't matter how fancy the workbooks and new materials or how hard we…
If the problem is community, why not take the students/families who really do care (from all the schools in a metropolitan area) and put them all in the same school? That would at least be a start.
> If the problem is community, why not take the students/families who really do care (from all the schools in a metropolitan area) and put them all in the same school? That would at least be a start.
A big part of the problem is that federal law ties the community's hands. Even if you got all the like-minded people together, you can't get out of the fact that a very large quantity of federal dollars are contingent on you doing a very large quantity of bureaucratic nonsense. Which is why the communities are so disinterested -- if they have no power to change anything then why bother showing up?
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those of us not from the US, which [conservative groups] are you talking about? Republicans in general? Or some other group?
Anti-government conservatives. Republicans in general fall into this category.
Most Republicans are in favor of public schools and, in general, of having a much larger government that a night watchman state, including a pretty robust social safety net.
You cannot call these people "anti-government."
Look at George W. Bush. A good example of a Republican. He certainly expanded the US government, which (in my opinion) was already massively oversized.
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#67Do we care more about student progress or our appearance? We care about both, and we have to. Proposed solutions will have to cater to this reality to have any hope of success. Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests? Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still past the test, it's a quantifiable…
Because while great teachers exist, they are sitting on top of a pile of good, decent and bad teachers that largely can't be fired or forced to improve.
But that is true for all countries, while the pervasive test culture is a phenomenon mostly observable in the US. The quality of teachers (or their education) can't be the major reason for the test dependency of the educational system in the US.
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#68A calm rational deep and insightful explanation that will be completely ignored and forgotten.
Oh I know, let's spend more money on weapons for police and the military while draining all resources from schools, that will solve everything.
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#69Do we care more about student progress or our appearance? We care about both, and we have to. Proposed solutions will have to cater to this reality to have any hope of success. Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests? Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still past the test, it's a quantifiable…
Because while great teachers exist, they are sitting on top of a pile of good, decent and bad teachers that largely can't be fired or forced to improve. But that is true for all countries, while the pervasive test culture is a phenomenon mostly observable in the US. The quality of teachers (or their education) can't be the major reason for the test dependency of the educational system in the US.
Pervasive test culture is far larger in Asia than in the US. Wealthy Asian nations perform very well, though admittedly most of that performance is likely due to unmentionable factors.
Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
#70Great points. This, I think is one of the fundamental problems: --- If parents and local decision-makers really value education (and there is a small portion of the community that does), student and teacher morale would be much different. --- The overall environment matters more than the teacher. We've mentioned it here not too long ago as well. Doesn't matter how fancy the workbooks and new materials or how hard we…
If the problem is community, why not take the students/families who really do care (from all the schools in a metropolitan area) and put them all in the same school? That would at least be a start.
They have those- private schools. Unfortunately they're not financially accessible to everyone.
The public school district I was in did not have magnet schools, so my parents had to look for an external solution. I attended a Catholic college prep school (I'm not Catholic), and it was great to be in a place that prioritized education over football BS.