dagblog - Comments for "Obama's Man at AEI- Teacher Bonuses Waste of Funds (But OK for Crook$ on Wall Street)"

Privitization may be more

we are stardust — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:44:28 +0000

In reply to Thanks, nothing like advice

Privitization may be more bi-partisan than you think; Arne's a Dem, Race to the Top is the Democrats' baby now, and is well-funded. Just sayin'.

There is no doubt public

NCD — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:22:43 +0000

In reply to I sent 2 bright, eager to

There is no doubt public schools often do not give a crap about, or respect, individual students. I don't know how many times I have had to intervene over the years with teachers and principals. One principal in a big city school district here in Arizona was so out of line he was forced to send a letter of apology to us over his handling of case of grade school bullying of our daughter, and was let go a month later (likely due to more than our complaint).

Some of the teachers think they can say anything and disrespect your kids because so many parents don't have the time or the knowledge of what goes on in class, and only a face to face visit with them/dept. supervisor/or principal will get them to lay off and stop saying the problems are all the students fault. I would certainly agree private schools may be a great alternative if you have one available that you and your kids like.

Thanks, nothing like advice

NCD — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:08:59 +0000

In reply to NCD, I saw this comment at

Thanks, nothing like advice from the front lines of education. I fear with the bean counting, talk of privatizing, and the lack of financial support, while the US shovels out bribes in cash ($100K, $1M?) to Pakistani shopkeepers masquerading as Taliban commanders, it may be that the 50% of teachers still left in education 3 years from now will have no respect for education, students or themselves.

The GOP loves to privatize public services to create a cash flow back to themselves through political contributions from the contracting corporations, they have no more interest in improving education than they have in improving the economy, the government, the deficit, our infrastructure, or ending the perpetual wars they got us into under GWB.

NCD, I saw this comment at

we are stardust — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:00:41 +0000

In reply to Obama's Man at AEI- Teacher Bonuses Waste of Funds (But OK for Crook$ on Wall Street)

NCD, I saw this comment at Huffpo under Arne Duncan's column about national-blogging-about-education day or some such. Thought you might be interested:

(Tim McCown 44 minutes ago (8:54 AM) )

103 Fans

As a Special Education Teacher, Arne's reform is to sell our public system to those who wish to turn education into their private cash cow. None of the solutions posed so far are real bonafide solutions. First of all children are not products yet we educate them using a factory production model where everyone has the same books and reads the same material and then the high stakes test is more like a quality control device at the local Ford factory. We know children learn in at least seven different ways yet our education system teaches to only visual and auditory. We also need to depoliticize the curriculum. To many of the ideas conveyed are ideas that represent someone's ideological beliefs as opposed to material for careful consideration. Three years from now more than half of this years graduating class of teachers will no longer be in a classroom. Much of that is because we force teachers to teach only one way. Teachers teach seven different ways because we learned seven different ways as children ourselves. There is no room for creativity in the classroom. Behaviorism like Free market capitalism is dead. It doesn't work and free will is alive and well. Classroom management has become a series of bribes and consequences instead we should be creating curriculum that engages students and isn't based on teaching methods that made education even before the video age more like waterboarding than learning how to think. Creativity not Charter Schools is the answer.

I'm sure the reason I liked it was because it ballasted some of my opinions, but he mentions seven learning styles; more than I knew about...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arne-duncan/making-real-progress-on-s_b_786999.html

I sent 2 bright, eager to

stillidealistic — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:12:51 +0000

In reply to Obama's Man at AEI- Teacher Bonuses Waste of Funds (But OK for Crook$ on Wall Street)

I sent 2 bright, eager to learn children to public school, was involved in their clases, and provided enrichment over and above what was offered at school. I was rewarded with children who learned that there was no point to working hard, when they could slide and get by, and who resented the extra I required, because the teacher said we don't need to do that. They both found school boring, and couldn't wait to get out. We had so many bizzare experiences with teachers you would think I was making them up.

Additionally, my husband was on the school board for years, and we had numerous friends that were school teachers. The attitude of the teacher's union, and the individual teachers was never one of wanting what was best for the students, but rather looking out for themselves. I do not remember one proposal the unions made that would have a positive effect on the kids. Had we had the option of a private school, we would have taken it.

Now I am encouraging my kids to send their children to private school, which, so far they are doing. We're just a few months into our 1st year, and so far I am very enthusiastic about the private school. The teacher is more responsive than all but one I encountered in all of our time in public school, the school's commitment to kindness is readily apparent, and the class sizes are fantastic (the kindergarten class has 10 students.)I may yet find something to complain about, but so far, I like what I am seeing.

I wish public schools could be the same. I suspect there is a combination of problems, but I highly resent the notion that teachers would teach better if they made more money, that they are entitled to a job for life even if they are no good at what they do, or that they resist merit pay because they think it would result in a popularity contest.

As with most problems, this one has been left unresolved for so long the entire system has rotted, and finding a solution will be way too hard. It's easier to just keep pushing it off on the next generation to deal with. Who cares how many kids get lost in the process.

I agree with pretty much

Atheist — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:31:59 +0000

In reply to From oceankat's NYT link, an

I agree with pretty much everything you've written, but I want to point out that the existence of bad evaluations does not preclude the existence of good evaluations. Without some form of evaluation, how do we identify which teachers to get rid of, or less drastically, which teachers to devote extra time to? (I.e., in order to help them become better teachers, something that evaluations helped me with.) So, yes, we need to fix evaluations where they are broken, but we must not eliminate all evaluations because some are broken, right? (Just to be clear: I'm not saying that you're claiming otherwise.)

I should also point out that the school I taught at was near-poverty level, if not below-poverty level, and it also happened to be the school I attended. When I was a student there it was majority white (and the income level of the students' parents was higher). As a teacher, it was majority minority. Some differences were undeniable (such as demographics), other differences might have been merely perceived, since I was a student primarily in advanced classes, and a teacher for all levels. What I saw in the advanced classes was not significantly different from what I remembered, but I also witnessed the racial and income-level stratification of advanced versus basic/remedial classes that has been much reported on. I was only able to withstand two years of the soul-sucking experience, so I have a lot of respect for those who manage to hang on for longer.

From oceankat's NYT link, an

NCD — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:11:40 +0000

In reply to I'm not against including

From oceankat's NYT link, an analysis of success of schools in poverty areas:

When he tightened the definition of success to include only schools that had high scores in two subjects in two different grades over two different years, Harris could find only 23 high-poverty, high-minority schools in the Education Trust’s database, a long way down from 1,320....

They offered an extended day and an extended year that provided KIPP students with about 60 percent more time in school than most public-school students.

The 'success' measure of these schools in high poverty communities dropped by 98% with the same data when the requirement for success was expanded from 1 subject 1 grade 1 year, to 2 subjects 2 years, 2 grades. It shows performance and measures of success are easily manipulated.

In my experience with public schools the administrators at the school level change every year or two. They try to survive long enough to go somewhere else, often to a district job where they don't have to deal with hundreds of kids, parents and scores of teachers. Many principals wind up as bean counting managers, counting kids, classes, teachers, budgets etc., the ones that know about education often don't have the time or the budget to put their knowledge into action. I note the school in the quote above had 60% more time in class for the students, what public school has the staff or budget to do that? In the article it also says the teachers had a higher level of advanced degrees.

The best teachers are usually the more experienced ones, they have been around for many principals. A good young teacher may leave the school for another profession with higher pay or status. Of course, not all experienced ones are great, they may be not so great but the only ones left who didn't leave or retire. On administrator 'peformance' evals, I saw a superb teacher with a heavy Hispanic accent marked down, for the accent, even though the grade schoolers she taught understood her every word, and paid attention like troops in basic training because she knew every child's name and weaknesses/strengths and demanded they pay attention, respect classmates, and work hard. The evaluator never understood all that, although wiser heads prevailed, fortunately, the teacher was not let go. It's just an example of eval BS.

"In short, I support

we are stardust — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:31:39 +0000

In reply to I'm not against including

"In short, I support increased pay with seniority and education, but only if along with that comes the ability to get rid of bad teachers when they are identified,..."

Yes, agreed. I spoke above that teachers in our district never even had performance jackets in their files, so no trends could accumulate for them. In our system, teachers evaluated the principal, and vice versa. Guess how that worked out? ;o)

I'm not against including

Atheist — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:13:30 +0000

In reply to The day the chicken-shit

I'm not against including seniority and education level of a teacher into performance considerations, but aren't they also biased measures? In my experience, teachers with more seniority and more education were usually better teachers, but not always. I also agree emphatically that standardized testing by itself is a horrible idea, as teachers with less experience typically get stuck with worse students, thus skewing the results against them. Where I used to teach, we had a performance evaluation system that seemed quite reasonable. Of course, maybe it worked exactly because it wasn't tied to your pay (or rather, was very very loosely tied to your pay*). These performance reviews required having a senior teacher or administrator (at least one of each for different reviews through the year) come to your class and evaluate your teaching. I found that they often provided valuable feedback (more so from the senior teacher than from the administrator). The only problem with that system is that it required common sense, and hence was fallible. Eliminating common sense isn't the answer, though.

In short, I support increased pay with seniority and education, but only if along with that comes the ability to get rid of bad teachers when they are identified, and the ability to reward exceptional teachers (beyond what their experience and education would suggest) when they are identified.

*If you failed 3 or more performance reviews a year for three years in a row, your pay was frozen. In my opinion, if you failed 3 or more performance reviews in a year (let alone for three years in a row), you shouldn't be teaching.

What he said.

we are stardust — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:02:58 +0000

In reply to The day the chicken-shit

What he said.