http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110328/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_education_2
Standardized tests suck. They suck for kids, they suck for teachers, they suck for America. Paying based on merit rocks, but this doesn't count as merit. It's like judging the performance of my car by how many green lights I hit on the way to work.
doesn't mean we agree about what to do about it.
there does need to be some sort of national standard but yes, it also needs to be relative. my brother is currently a math teacher at an urban high school(teach for america). if he can bring someone from a 4th grade to an 8th grade level, that's a huge jump, but then they'd still fail the test.
Testing and forms is the hallmark of a good bureaucracy. Did you know that some government (most?) jobs, they don't even interview the person (they never meet them), they go entirely off the resume!
And what's the deal with tenure? I kind of get it for a college professor (not having to do research), but for a grade school teacher? What is the point? They have been there a long time, supposedly good at what they do, so you need to protect them from getting fired? It seems like, if they were good, there is no protection needed.
aircooled wrote: It seems like, if the administration were good, there is no protection needed.
FTFY.
And yes, standardized testing is stupid. The problem is trying to legislate something across the board that really has to be done on a much more local level.
And, I know there's a good reason for this, but someone please remind me why $X per child is not a good way to fund public schooling? It seems to me that if you give more based on doing better, you're actually creating more of a problem: the schools that NEED funding because of having problems never get it because they never show merit.
Someone explain to me why more money per pupil will somehow get the kid to read better? Do they need better books or something? The books from 40 years ago don't work anymore? Or do they all need I-Pods? Somehow, one room school houses managed to teach past generations to some type of super-human level, but $20K (whatever) /kid/year gives us Washington DC schools and a 6th grade (whatever) equivalent high school grad?
The biggest part of more money per pupil is to hire more teachers and create a smaller student:teacher ratio, which means students get more attention from their teachers.
My daughter is a teacher and she hates the tests because that's all they are allowed to teach, how to pass the test. The kids don't get any old school larnin'
And as far as agreeing with the great and mighty king obam, it's bound to happen at some time. He's like a leopard changing spots. Don't let it get you down unless it becomes a habit then get real worried.
Dr. Hess:
More money per pupil might pay for tutoring, special education programs, etc?
The fact of the matter is that every student doesn't consume exactly the same dollars out of the budget. Some kids need more help, others not so much. Parents are either unable (which is excusable) to help or want the districts to pick up the slack instead of doing it themselves. (which is a whole other rant I just deleted from the post).
What is happening now (and I think it was covered in previous posts on the board) is that schools start to teach kids how to do better on these standardized tests instead of teaching them hot to use their brains to think. That's the real crime.
Look up Erica Goldson's valedictorian speech. She has an idea of what that is doing to our kids.
ReverendDexter wrote: And yes, standardized testing is stupid. The problem is trying to legislate something across the board that really has to be done on a much more local level.
Amen.
ReverendDexter wrote: And, I know there's a good reason for this, but someone please remind me why $X per child is not a good way to fund public schooling?
I'll try to. I ended up with pie on my face last time we talked about education. I'll try to behave.
To answer your question, because that's not how it's spent. Some schools have new, efficent buildings. Some are old and drafty with boilers from the 40s. Costs more to heat them. Costs more to heat them even if the class rooms aren't full. Some of the money that goes into the "per pupil" figure is spent bussing Private School students, but they don't count against the "pupil" figure. Some districts have more deaf and heard of hearing students. They're required by law to teach them and their scores count against their funding. But they require special equipment that costs more. Some disctricts have to bus students from miles and miles away. Others have mostly local students. Gas costs money. Some schools have more than their share of, um, "troubled" students. They need to pay more for security.
In short, there are a lot of laws that mandate the curiculum, who the public schools are required to teach and what they're required to do, but those laws aren't tied to funding.
In reply to fast_eddie_72:
Okay, but how does that justify giving more money to schools that do better on standardized testing? That's what I don't understand. If you can't teach your students as it is, why is the thought that giving a school less money will help them do their job better?
This next year (or is it the year after?) Texas will be requiring Exit tests instead the mid year tests. Supposedly these will be much harder than the current tests, but also they are supposed to be more broad based which means the kids will actually have to learn something.
An interesting twist is that you could graduate from H.S. but not get a diploma or credit unless you also pass the exit test.
I come from the pre-test era and I can say the tests are at least an attempt to correct the issues of bad teachers. I credit my algebra teacher for my inability to do algebra. Prior to 2 years of algebra with him I was considered the top of the class, but afterward, not only me, but everyone who had to take his classes were the bottom end. My Trig teacher noted that everyone who came out of his classes had problem with basic algebra although we could all grasp the concepts.
To be fair I have to put some of the blame on me. My teacher literally wrote the book they taught from and the teacher gave us homework and tests from the book (because it was an awesome book since he wrote it). The answers to everything were in the back of the book. He never checked our procedures, only our answers so of course everyone took the easy way out. Who knew algebra might be the least little bit useful in our adult lives? Who could even think about an adult life?
ReverendDexter wrote: In reply to fast_eddie_72: Okay, but how does that justify giving more money to schools that do better on standardized testing? That's what I don't understand. If you can't teach your students as it is, why is the thought that giving a school *less* money will help them do their job better?
Boy, I sure hope I didn't say it does. If I did, I didn't mean to. I completely agree with you. Taking money away from the schools that need the most help doesn't seem like a good idea. I would think we'd want to attract the best possible people to those schools. Cutting their funding won't help do that.
And as an employer, if I may rant for one second...
We have a world of kids graduating from college who have been trained to find "the right answer". Good Lord, I don't even consider that work. If I have the luxury of a problem with a clearly defined "right answer" I either delegate it or dispense with it so quickly it doesn't make my to-do list.
What we have very few of is people who can figure out how to do something there are no instructions for. When I find someone who can actually help with that I'm elated and they invariably go off to run a department of their own, with my blessing, in a couple of years. I have asked an employee to figure out which hole to color in with a #2 pencil exactly zero times and I don't anticipate I'll ever need one to do so.
So if we can't use standardized testing, how do you propose we judge the performance of the students?
MrJoshua wrote: So if we can't use standardized testing, how do you propose we judge the performance of the students?
Let the teachers test the kids as they see fit. If the teachers are no good, fire them and get better teachers. If ever there were an example of system the government should be less involved in, this is it.
We started the testing to improve the schools. Well, did it work?
fast_eddie_72 wrote: ....We have a world of kids graduating from college who have been trained to find "the right answer Good Lord, I don't even consider that work". ...
This is especially true when you realize the "right" answer is many times a Google search away.
I believe the phrase "confident idiots" has been used to describe many of the people coming out of schools these days.
Teachers have unions, you can't just fire them for doing a bad job. There has to be a standard, hence the testing.
How do you judge the teachers?
So, right or wrong, Obama rose to the highest office by organizing the masses against the man. Now, he is the man and there are quantifiable metrics available to judge his performance against those that came before him.
I don’t profess to know his inner thoughts and motivations, all I’m saying is:
"How Convenient"
carguy123 wrote: Teachers have unions, you can't just fire them for doing a bad job. There has to be a standard, hence the testing.
The way the Teacher's Unions are set up is part of the problem. Testing is not the answer. Hire good administrators and give them the means to build good schools.
In reply to fast_eddie_72:
I can't argue with that one!
MrJoshua wrote: How do you judge the teachers?
How does your boss judge your performance? How does her boss judge her performance? Hire good people to run things then trust them to run them well. There's no point in having anyone to run a school if the ability to make decisions has been taken away from them.
Let teachers teach. Let administrators run things. You can't legislate performance. You can legislate resentment and build an environment almost guaranteed to fail. We had done exactly that.
In reply to fast_eddie_72:
Now this I can argue with. The performance has been fading for years with the exact freedom teachers claim they need. Blindly giving money to institutions that have historically judged their own performance as satisfactory while outside indicators proved otherwise is foolish. You must evaluate that performance somehow. Whether its judge the students, judge the teachers, or judge the administrators someone along the line needs to be evaluated to see if the desired results are being met.
I'm actually going to back out of this thread and just read the rest. I have made my school opinions plenty clear in other threads and would prefer to read those of others instead of just repeating my own.
MrJoshua wrote: How do you judge the teachers?
The same way professionals are judged. I am not judged at work based on the quantity of reports that I complete either. My boss makes a decision based on a mix of subjective and objective things that he can use to justify my increase (if any) to his boss. If I didn't like the way my administration did it, I'd find another to work in. Why should teaching be any different? It would be a lot easier if you could choose which school to send your kid, but standardized testing pretty much ensures that teachers will teach to the test, the kids will learn the test, and that the administration will continue to really be a government arm that spends their cash on E36 M3 rather than pay for better teachers.
My old hometown had district X, where I went to school for a short time. They voted on, and got, a double digit % increase every year. Teachers get paid the same now as they did 10 years ago relative to everyone else. What did they do? Build an addition, a big fancy one, paved the old mall, built this giant building. Two years later, they knocked it down and started again.
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