<p>marite, I agree that the teacher who raised reading levels among disadvantaged kids by two grade levels is impressive. The powers-that-be will see that, too. If more teachers were willing to agree to strict competency standards & the unions didn’t protect them while kids suffer, perhaps unrealistic NCLB standards would not have been implemented in a desperate attempt to improve teaching quality across the board.</p>
<p>SS,</p>
<p>“Why do you feel teachers should get an exemption?”</p>
<p>They don’t. In fact they are required (at least in publics to retain certificates) to continue to go to school and to continue to upgrade their skills. This is why I question your comments you’ve impiled they live in some special vaccum that exempts them. 30 years teaching and my significant other is still expected (and actually looks forward to) enrolling in college classes to improve herself as an educator. And she is not alone. She has put enough hours in beyond her degree to earn 2 or 3 more. So have her peers. </p>
<p>My point to you about the quality of the patient determining the quality of the nurse. Is that a fair assessment tool to use? Should I as a layperson determine your worth based on a patient who simply dies, even though your professionalism and skill was always there… working hard to attempt to save this patient? I would imagine you’ve run across those who might blame you or one of your peers for a patient’s death, even though said patient lifestyle created the problem that could not be overcome. Does that make you a bad nurse? </p>
<p>Kids aren’t widgets, they don’t come in all the same. Basing your comments about educators is just as bad as me determining your quality as a nurse based on the complete recovery of all patients under your care. I don’t care how hard you tried, the outcome isn’t what I wanted so you must be bad. The patient can’t play the piano after your care, who cares if they couldn’t play before they came in. I don’t think your a good nurse because you didn’t cure the patient’s inability to play the piano.</p>
<p>ss,</p>
<p>again you have no idea…</p>
<p>“If more teachers were willing to agree to strict competency standards & the unions didn’t protect them while kids suffer, perhaps unrealistic NCLB standards would not have been implemented in a desperate attempt to improve teaching quality across the board.”</p>
<p>The nclb is instrumental in creating more charter schools and privatising education. Not unlike the “clear skies act”, it is another misnamed policy that fits your 30 second reasoning. Look alittle deeper and you’ll see the flaws.</p>
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</p>
<p>No, Stickerschock, the powers-that-be only look at the end of the year results. Three years of high rates of failure (defined as students not performing at minimal grade level) and the school is on the watch list. It does not matter that in one year, a teacher managed to get students to read two grade levels above the one they started at. If it’s still below their current grade level, they are deemed to fail and the school with them.</p>
<p>No good deed goes unpunished. A few years ago, our excellent k-8 school agreed to “take over” a school that was failing. The taken over school had a high percentage of low SES students with limited English. Its population was about as large as our own school. The teachers worked mightily to absorb the new students, to weed out incompetent teachers and retain good ones and hire new ones, get everybody up to speed on our school’s excellent curriculum. But these herculean efforts could not totally overcome the deficiencies that had plagued the taken over school. While its students’ performance improved significantly, still a number of them did not pass the state’s tests. So under NCLB, the school is being threatened with being on the watch list. It has some of the best teachers that my kids have been privileged to have. </p>
<p>Another anecdote. Our high school has a large proportion of new immigrants, and sometimes students who are there short-term. Two years ago, it was on a state’s list because Asian students had failed to make “progress.” The problem with this definition of “making progress” is that it is not the same students who are being evaluated but new cohorts, and hence new immigrants. And given the paucity of Asian students at the school, it was only a few students who got the school on the list. </p>
<p>Neither of these stories has anything to do with intransigent unions or incompetent teachers. It has to do with rigid, inappropriate NLCB rules.</p>
<p>Incompetent teachers did not bring about the institution of NCLB. Merely failure of students to achieve. Nor is this failure something new, sudden, significantly more alarming as some recent development. Do not confuse failure to achieve with teacher incompetency. Many factors are, can be, at work --irrespective of the quality of teacher training & the individual teachers.</p>
<p>NCLB was a political move to make it appear that “something was being done” to address the above failure to achieve, which is overwhelmingly in economically deprived households, “headed” by educationally deprived adults. I’m sorry for not sugar-coating it, but that is the blunt truth. Some of those households can be salvaged (but not with NCLB). Those are the households, for example, of non-alienated immigrants (no confusion intended) with earnest intentions but needing support. Those are maybe half the households in question. The other half consist of chronically alienated households out of the mainstream; few of those are motivated to become mainstreamed, but some of those families are, or some of their students are. NCLB is also not particularly helpful to those students swimming upstream against sociological factors working against them.</p>
<p>“Incompetent teachers did not bring about the institution of NCLB”</p>
<p>NO people who thought they could use the public schools money did to profit.</p>
<p>I’ve addressed the NCLB as unrealistic. Individual teachers are not penalized. The district may be taken over by the state, but no individual teacher is held accountable. I thought my point was clear. If teachers unions all along had admitted that accountability is a necessary part of their profession, then the drastic NCLB measures would not have been implemented. The teachers unions are in business to help teachers, regardless of how students are harmed. The next town over from me, which used to have a seperate elementary school for gifted & talented kids, is now eliminating that program because of NCLB. That way, the high scoring kids are spread around & each elementary school’s teat scores will rise. Dumb solution. But failure to hold teachers accountable led to NCLB. For decades the unions pointed to societal ills as an excuse. Schools of education consistently had the lowest SAT scores of any department at the universities. In fact, the education schools were considered the “slums” of the universities because there was no body of knowledge, no structured knowledge base with firm pre-requisites.</p>
<p>Marite, I am glad that you’ve had excellent teachers for your boys. But have you ever had a really bad one? Or two, or three? My kids have. They are coated with teflon & continue to earn longevity pay bonuses and generous raises, all the while refusing to contribute to health care plans. Excellent, average, or terrible —doesn’t matter a lick. Every teacher is rewarded the same way. </p>
<p>Whlie Opie thinks I know nothing about the isssue (aparently you must be a teacher or be married to one to have a valid opinion,) I’ve followed the problems in our education system for many years. I’ve known many professionals who attempted to enter teaching via the alternate-route & were treated with disdain by the bureaucracy & teachers who had attended the teachers colleges. The teachers feared the content-driven knowledge base that an engineer or experienced journalist would bring to the classroom. Their gaps in knowledge would be exposed, and they could no longer hide behind the latest pedagogical fad.</p>
<p>Stickershock:</p>
<p>I did have one teacher whom I thought was inappropriate. In an earlier post, I explained how I got that teacher moved. We have an extremely active teachers union. But that did not get in the way of having that teacher replaced. I and other parents have also been involved in the hiring of teachers, deans, principals and superintendents. The union has not stood in our way. </p>
<p>I realize that things are very different in different parts of the country. In some areas, the unions are intractable, many teachers incompetent, principals appoint their friends and relatives. But that is not the case across the board, and it is not the case where I live. That is precisely why I think it is wrong to paint with a broad brush and wrong to apply a one-size-fit-all “solution.”</p>
<p>My kids have had a few less than stellar teachers. None that were truly incompetent. As a parent rep on a teacher hiring committee, I know there are some would-be teachers (some of them already teaching) who don’t speak grammatical English. (We didn’t hire them.) But I think by far the more common problem is kids who come from such disfunctional families that they are already lost. A friend of mine teaching in the Bronx had a 10 year old girl in her 3rd grade classs who still couldn’t read. She’d been abused, she’d been homeless. She needed one on one help and rescueing from her home situation. There was no spec. ed or tutoring available in the school. My friend couldn’t reach her - is she a bad teacher because this girl still couldn’t read at the end of the year? Is she a better teacher now that she’s moved to a wealthy suburb and everyone is on grade level or better?</p>
<p>We have had a full range of public school teachers, from outstanding to plain abyssmal. A few have actually been damaging to my children.</p>
<p>I tried like the dickens to affect change in the classroom of these teachers. No luck. We have dead weight teachers, whom NO one wants, and they are still there, waiting until retirement. My daughter had a teacher last year who was so depressed that the kids’ morale was very low too. Guess who is still there?</p>
<p>It’s a broken system, and NCLB is only making it worse.</p>
<p>“Whlie Opie thinks I know nothing about the isssue (aparently you must be a teacher or be married to one to have a valid opinion,) I’ve followed the problems in our education system for many years.”</p>
<p>Really, I find that hard to believe or you would know more about the subject rather than throw a blanket statement out that teachers are unaccountable for their work. NO MORE or LESS than you are. my dear. Actually teachers are accountable in many way more than you are. You don’t think testing results are not without names? </p>
<p>“I’ve known many professionals who attempted to enter teaching via the alternate-route & were treated with disdain by the bureaucracy & teachers who had attended the teachers colleges.”</p>
<p>And without knowing your friends personalities we must assume all teachers across the land treat any new educator that way? Or were your friends put off by nobody bowing and throwing praise in their general direction? How would anybody know or care where your buddies recieved their teaching certificates? </p>
<p>“The teachers feared the content-driven knowledge base that an engineer or experienced journalist would bring to the classroom.”</p>
<p>Please, they FEARED? Why would they care what another teacher does in Their classroom? Who cares? Who has time? C’mon you really don’t understand how it works do you?:)</p>
<p>“Their gaps in knowledge would be exposed, and they could no longer hide behind the latest pedagogical fad.”</p>
<p>Youre very comical in your dramatic presentation of a teacher.
Why you’re attempting to villify a group of dedicated people who work hard everyday to help kids get somewhere just amazes me. Such Drama.</p>
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</p>
<p>Of course not. This is a red herring. </p>
<p>No doctor can cure an end-stage sufferer of pancreatic cancer. And he would not be expected to do so. Like doctors, teachers are not miracle workers. Some children will get left behind, and it can’t be blamed on the teachers when home life is so extreme. But don’t you shake your head, mathmom, when a graduate holding a bachelors degree in education can’t speak grammatical English? And had been hired by another district? Don’t you wonder why a union would fight to protect such an ill-prepared teacher? Doesn’t it sully the profession when standards are so low?</p>
<p>“My friend couldn’t reach her - is she a bad teacher because this girl still couldn’t read at the end of the year?”</p>
<p>Absolutely in SS’s opinion. </p>
<p>My spouse faces things like this every year. Last year 6 different languages were the primary ones used in class. The district only has translators for two, so she had to find a way to reach these kids along with teach the other 20+ kids in the class. This doesn’t include the couple of kids living in their cars. </p>
<p>More than politics this is what makes my blood boil, these know nothings who throw out these blanket statements of how bad it is in education when they have absolutely and I mean absolutely no idea of what goes on today. Go spend some days in a classroom, sit by the kid who hasn’t bathed in a week because their water was shut off. Or another whose main meal is the school lunch. Or by another who has no jacket and it’s freezing out. Or another who can’t read and parents never show up for anything. We buy shoes, jackets, mittens and what not every year. I know what it is like to be a teacher these days. I have nothing but respect for the profession. It’s too bad some others don’t. </p>
<p>To them I simply say…
Make a difference. Till then shut up already about those who do.</p>
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<p>For someone who paints himself as an expert on teaching, I’m surprised you are so ignorant on alternate route certification. </p>
<p>Incompetant teachers do fear new blood. Their inability to reach students will be made obvious if the new guy strolls in and succeeds, despite the disadvantaged homes from which the students might come. The good teachers are always happy to mentor the alternte route candidates. The dead wood grumble and moan.</p>
<p>Posters are telling stories of intractable teachers unions and damaging, abyssmal teachers. You call this drama. Fine. In your little world, all teachers walk on water. Good for you. Back in the real world…</p>
<p>"Don’t you wonder why a union would fight to protect such an ill-prepared teacher? "</p>
<p>How could a union do this SS? They don’t hire the teacher, the teacher joins or decides not to join a union after being hired. Don’t you really want to say the administrators as they ARE the ones who hire and fire? I guess it’s easier to blame the union then understand the process.</p>
<p>Again, there are students who achieve despite bad, incompetent, depressed, or underqualified teachers. There are also students who have everything going for them (including home support & educated parents) who do not achieve despite exemplary & energetic teachers who are also academically grounded & excellent role models. Clearly, it is an optimal to have a solid teacher & a prepared, motivated student paired together, but NCLB & other superficial fix-its are not the solutions, nor will they guarantee such optimal pairing. Hiring, teacher review, consistency of preparation, oversight of standards, & attention to appropriate placement (not putting a kindergarten oriented teacher in charge of 8th graders) would help ensure better outcomes. </p>
<p>Understand that administrators vary in their own competency to evaluate, manage, hire, supervise, & make appropriate decisions. NCLB does not address that, either. In 6th grade, my daughter was cursed with a teacher who was BOTH clinically depressed & oriented toward teaching First Grade. Yet there were a few other teachers in the school who were fantastic, & would have been far more appropriate for that placement. It was a very poor, in fact disastrous decision on the part of the principal.</p>
<p>I agree with AllMusic that the system is broken. That’s why charters are growing by leaps & bounds. It’s the only way for families to begin taking control over their students’ education. Charters are by no means perfect; & our State is stingy about the level of funding for them, but they are doing anywhere from slightly better than the site schools to phenomenally better, depending on the particular school.</p>
<p>"I’m surprised you are so ignorant on alternate route certification. "</p>
<p>No, you’ve missed the point again. Who cares? Do you really think teachers sit around and ring their hands about how somebody else got certified? Laughable. </p>
<p>“Incompetant teachers do fear new blood. Their inability to reach students will be made obvious if the new guy strolls in and succeeds, despite the disadvantaged homes from which the students might come.”</p>
<p>So they take turns? How exactly are classes held in NJ? Is it like tag team? Do they show up each day and get a new room? What youre suggesting happens doesn’t happen in most states… maybe just yours. </p>
<p>“The good teachers are always happy to mentor the alternte route candidates. The dead wood grumble and moan.” </p>
<p>If you’ve ever tried teaching or been around them long enough you’d understand there are much easier jobs to be “deadwood” at than education. The pay is far too low for too long to sit on your thumbs. People who aren’t interested usually leave the profession within 5-10 years. I really haven’t run across a bunch of deadwood with 20-30 years experience…maybe it’s different in NJ.</p>
<p>This is the quote from mathmom: “I know there are some would-be teachers (some of them already teaching) who don’t speak grammatical English.”</p>
<p>She has evaluated CURRENT teachers who do not speak grammatical English. That teacher is offered the same union protections & benefits & automatic salary increases as the finest, most dedicated teacher. You don’t have a problem with that, I guess. Many of us do.</p>
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<p>It is. We have teachers who peel out of the parking lots at 3:15 in “Eat my dust” fashion. In the next classroom sits a gem who stays late working with kids who need extra help. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for the excellent teachers who carry the dead wood year after year.</p>
<p>“She has evaluated CURRENT teachers who do not speak grammatical English”</p>
<p>How would someone from NJ know what quality grammactical english is? </p>
<p>And gee, What if it’s a chemistry teacher? or a math teacher? or a science teacher? </p>
<p>You go dog.</p>