jeff2sf wrote:

mozartpc27 wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Actually, smoothie, it's a combination of things. First, it's an acknowledgement that life isn't fair and that metrics aren't always fair or right either. But that doesn't mean people should start living in some kum-bay-ah world where we don't try to impart some metrics.

There's another point to it though. I, as a reasonable man can re-examine my performance with them. I THOUGHT I was providing the team great support. But perhaps I'm not, perhaps I can stretch more and make things more simple for the team or make things more persuasive to the client. Any metric is not going to be 100% perfect, but that's not a reason to get in the way and be an obstructionist to progress.

And no one, not the AFT or anybody else, is against more teacher training, etc. My point is if someone - you as a manager or me as a teacher - is making an honest effort, doing lots of work, trying his or her best to offer support to a staff or present material and offer support to students - then it can and should be difficult to fire that person. Be required to get more training, sure. Be required to perform more self-evaluation, or adjust his or her strategy, sure. Then you see how that additional training, how those new strategies work, and re-evaluate. Has the teacher (or manager) made an effort to get better? <- That should be the number one question in assessing whether or not he or she should keep his job. If the answer is yes, then they should keep their job, because, most of all, you want people who are willing to wrok hard and make the effort to do their job, and get better at it.

Sorry moz, but no, you're wrong as you've been throughout. You could really use some time in the real world when not protected by unions. Let's say I'm Janie's parent. And Janie has Mrs. Ignorant. Mrs. Ignorant has worked for 3 years and all her metrics say she's a terrible teacher. But she's sweet and she does work hard. I, as Janie's dad am supposed to deal with ANOTHER year of a bad teacher because she tries? NOOOO. $#@! no. She had her turn, she's not a good teacher, she needs to leave ASAP.

No one wants to fire anyone based on one year of bad results, but "an effort to get better" is not enough after continued poor metrics. Because of course, no one knows if her "sincere effort" is all that sincere.

You gotta bring some better ish to this debate bro.

If you want my honest opinion, I agree, there is a problem in K-12 with the way teachers are trained. The education degree has totally taken over, has become a cash cow for Universities and colleges, and thus has become the end in itself, in too many cases, instead of the "finishing school" for teachers. There are too many people who I've met pursuing a career as a teacher in this or that subject who don't know jack about that subject, or evince even a particular curiosity in that subject. But they know all about education theory.

There is now a whole generation of teachers who were trained in a system that elevated the theory of the practice over the content. The result is that there is a crop of teachers, not the majority, but a more significant percentage than there probably should be - who know all about HOW to teach but embarrassingly little about WHAT they teach.

At the lowest levels of education emphasizing theory over content is probably justified - every adult knows what 8 times 7 is, and SHOULD know, anyway, where Canada is on a map, but not every adult can deal with small children. But at the middle-school, and, especially, high school levels, this needs to change: I am not saying education degrees shouldn't be part of the process, because teaching is still an art and teachers need to know about how students learn, how to reach students with different learning processes, etc., but they should also really KNOW their own subject, and, more, should be enthusiastic about it.

I once met a guy who was getting an education masters from Arcadia University. I don't know what he wanted to teach, but it was clearly middle school or high school level he was interested in. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was at this party where I met him, and I used the word "veranda." This guy - who wanted to be a teacher - turns to our host and asks, "What the FUCK is a veranda?" in a pretty hateful tone, like I was some kind of #### (in his mind, and I use the word advisedly, to represent his neanderthalic mind set) for using a word with three syllables. When he hears that a veranda is a "deck," he answers with a rhetorical question: "Then why the FUCK did he call it a veranda?"

This guy wanted to be a teacher. That is frightening, and these people should be discouraged from entering the profession, but I am afraid the elevation of form (teaching theories) over content (you know, actually knowing stuff) only encourages this sort. That is a trend that needs reversing.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/odonnell-in-1996-investigate-bill-clinton-for-murder-of-vince-foster.php_ref=fpb

More about O'Donnell

jeff2sf wrote:So lame, moz, so lame.

He's trying hard. "Sorry sir, your father died. I'm trying real hard in the operating room, but I have twitchy hands."

"Look, we're sorry the food we served you tastes awful, we've got a kid in there who's totally busting his ass to serve you good food, but he doesn't actually know how to cook beyond his culinary school education where he got straight C's. But again, I hope his effort made up for everything else".

These are more like the Juan Castro example, Jeff: no buffers. If I kill my patient because I fuck-ed up, I can't blame anyone else. If I cook food and it tastes bad, I can't blame anyone else.

If I work hard to present material, make myself available to kids for extra help, and keep lines of communication open with the kids' parents, and the kid still screws up the test... well, the kid has agency in this too. I did everything I could do, I know I did, and I can show you what I did.

The kid?

One kid isn't at issue, moz, it's ALL your kids. You're just doing a terrible job carrying the union's water. If you have bad metrics, you get fired after a couple years. It's the way of the world and it's RIGHT.

pacino wrote:

kopphanatic wrote:No one right here, but that is a common argument put forth by people opposed to teacher unions. That they have an easy job with summers off and have enough money left over to drive BMWs to school. Some teachers only get paid for the nine months they work in the building, even though the workload and stress they face certainly entitles them to paid for the full calendar year.

well, to be fair 1 basically chills nonstop. Dont know how he does it.

He teaches computers. That's how. BURN.

Also, when did Moz become as long winded as PTK?

jeff2sf wrote:The kid?

One kid isn't at issue, moz, it's ALL your kids. You're just doing a terrible job carrying the union's water. If you have bad metrics, you get fired after a couple years. It's the way of the world and it's RIGHT.

Again, I'm not disputing that a teacher whose kids don't learn anything, or don't learn enough, ought to keep his job, nor is the AFT arguing that. What we're talking about is what types of metrics are used, and in what context. A teacher can do everything in his or her power to educate, and not succeed, because the kids don't WANT to be educated. You need to take that into account, especially in schools that are historically underperforming. If kids don't have any parents or caregivers at home who care, and the school has no effective discipline tool to use, then the teacher really can't be held accountable for the performance of the students in the same way we might hold a teacher accountable at a fancy private school.

This is one of the things that really bugs me about education reform. Most of the time, people are talking about doing it in the underperforming schools, which of course are almost always the public schools in poorer districts. Nobody, including me, believes a teacher who has all the advantages of a well-to-do suburban public school should be protected if he or she consistently underperforms.

But this debate is almost always happening in places like Philadelphia or Washington, and it's almost always the teachers who are getting blamed in these places. One of the things that to me just isn't talked about enough when discussing the difference between public schools in shaky urban areas versus schools in other places and private schools as well. At private schools, the most important difference is that someone cares enough about each child's education at that school to pay for it. So, when that school calls home to say, "Hey, you're kid is acting out in class, not doing his homework, and, in general, not behaving," there is someone there to answer that call and to care about it. And, underlying the whole enterprise, is one legitimate threat every private and charter school has that public schools don't really: behave, or you'll be expelled. Teachers therefore don't have to expend most of their energy just maintaining control of their classrooms, and therefore teachers in those circumstances can be evaluated differently from those in tougher schools.

Any school administrator will tell you that you don't really need all that many badly behaved students to make a bad classroom, because the badly behaved students will set the tone for any classroom that they are in, because they will disrupt the education process in lots of different ways. At a private school, or a charter school, or at most nicer suburban public schools, you can give those kids a legit threat: cut it out, or we call your parents. Most kids don't want that, because most parents don't want that call. And, if the bad behavior continues, at least at the private and charter schools, you have an even better threat guaranteed to swing parents into action: get your child in line or out he goes.

But in inner-city public schools, that threat doesn't mean much if you deal with kids whose parents don't care. And guess which kids act out the most? The ones whose parents don't care. So what are you left with? Law says they have to be there. When they are there, they disrupt, and drag the whole enterprise down with them.

It's a different ballgame at poorer schools than at richer ones, but the reformers are, understandably, always concerned about the poorer ones, since those are the ones where the "underperforming" happens in its most concentrated forms. Problem is, you can't judge the teachers at those schools the way you would judge teachers at richer schools. It's not the same thing.

CalvinBall wrote:

pacino wrote:

kopphanatic wrote:No one right here, but that is a common argument put forth by people opposed to teacher unions. That they have an easy job with summers off and have enough money left over to drive BMWs to school. Some teachers only get paid for the nine months they work in the building, even though the workload and stress they face certainly entitles them to paid for the full calendar year.

well, to be fair 1 basically chills nonstop. Dont know how he does it.

He teaches computers. That's how. BURN.

Also, when did Moz become as long winded as PTK?

I've always talked alot, it just took a long time for it to come out in board form.

Also, I think serious issues deserve lots of thought, serious discussion, and deliberation. Can't do that in the BSG-standard two-lines-or-less post.

I wish i could ignore people

Michelle Rhee thinks you can figure a way out. She's smarter than you. I have never said the metrics have to be the same, but metrics can be figured out. You CAN improve your students lots in life and part of that will involve measuring test schools.

But if we take your silly argument all the way, then it doesn't matter who teaches them - they're hopeless. So don't mind us if we move you out of the way and put in some other babysitter. At the end of the day, in your mind, it won't make a damn bit of difference.

Metrics, metrics, metrics, they're not just for Juan Castro.

I swear - before yesterday, I was probably a mild anti-union guy. I mean obviously not anything that really mattered to me given how often I vote with unions. But hearing you guys talk makes me want to go work for Walmart or some other union busting place. Ugh.

mozartpc27 wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:

mozartpc27 wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Actually, smoothie, it's a combination of things. First, it's an acknowledgement that life isn't fair and that metrics aren't always fair or right either. But that doesn't mean people should start living in some kum-bay-ah world where we don't try to impart some metrics.

There's another point to it though. I, as a reasonable man can re-examine my performance with them. I THOUGHT I was providing the team great support. But perhaps I'm not, perhaps I can stretch more and make things more simple for the team or make things more persuasive to the client. Any metric is not going to be 100% perfect, but that's not a reason to get in the way and be an obstructionist to progress.

And no one, not the AFT or anybody else, is against more teacher training, etc. My point is if someone - you as a manager or me as a teacher - is making an honest effort, doing lots of work, trying his or her best to offer support to a staff or present material and offer support to students - then it can and should be difficult to fire that person. Be required to get more training, sure. Be required to perform more self-evaluation, or adjust his or her strategy, sure. Then you see how that additional training, how those new strategies work, and re-evaluate. Has the teacher (or manager) made an effort to get better? <- That should be the number one question in assessing whether or not he or she should keep his job. If the answer is yes, then they should keep their job, because, most of all, you want people who are willing to wrok hard and make the effort to do their job, and get better at it.

Sorry moz, but no, you're wrong as you've been throughout. You could really use some time in the real world when not protected by unions. Let's say I'm Janie's parent. And Janie has Mrs. Ignorant. Mrs. Ignorant has worked for 3 years and all her metrics say she's a terrible teacher. But she's sweet and she does work hard. I, as Janie's dad am supposed to deal with ANOTHER year of a bad teacher because she tries? NOOOO. $#@! no. She had her turn, she's not a good teacher, she needs to leave ASAP.

No one wants to fire anyone based on one year of bad results, but "an effort to get better" is not enough after continued poor metrics. Because of course, no one knows if her "sincere effort" is all that sincere.

You gotta bring some better ish to this debate bro.

If you want my honest opinion, I agree, there is a problem in K-12 with the way teachers are trained. The education degree has totally taken over, has become a cash cow for Universities and colleges, and thus has become the end in itself, in too many cases, instead of the "finishing school" for teachers. There are too many people who I've met pursuing a career as a teacher in this or that subject who don't know jack about that subject, or evince even a particular curiosity in that subject. But they know all about education theory.

There is now a whole generation of teachers who were trained in a system that elevated the theory of the practice over the content. The result is that there is a crop of teachers, not the majority, but a more significant percentage than there probably should be - who know all about HOW to teach but embarrassingly little about WHAT they teach.

At the lowest levels of education emphasizing theory over content is probably justified - every adult knows what 8 times 7 is, and SHOULD know, anyway, where Canada is on a map, but not every adult can deal with small children. But at the middle-school, and, especially, high school levels, this needs to change: I am not saying education degrees shouldn't be part of the process, because teaching is still an art and teachers need to know about how students learn, how to reach students with different learning processes, etc., but they should also really KNOW their own subject, and, more, should be enthusiastic about it.

I once met a guy who was getting an education masters from Arcadia University. I don't know what he wanted to teach, but it was clearly middle school or high school level he was interested in. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was at this party where I met him, and I used the word "veranda." This guy - who wanted to be a teacher - turns to our host and asks, "What the $#@! is a veranda?" in a pretty hateful tone, like I was some kind of $#@! (in his mind, and I use the word advisedly, to represent his neanderthalic mind set) for using a word with three syllables. When he hears that a veranda is a "deck," he answers with a rhetorical question: "Then why the $#@! did he call it a veranda?"

This guy wanted to be a teacher. That is frightening, and these people should be discouraged from entering the profession, but I am afraid the elevation of form (teaching theories) over content (you know, actually knowing stuff) only encourages this sort. That is a trend that needs reversing.

This is the point I raised several pages ago that no one but Doc Smooth even noticed. A lot of people go into teaching because they want to be coaches. This is dumb. And has nothing to do with unions.

pacino wrote:I wish i could ignore people

Oh come on now, pac. You and me see eye to eye on a million different things. We just differ on unions. I love ya otherwise.

This argument over education comes up every 6 months. Just an FYI.

TenuredVulture wrote:This is the point I raised several pages ago that no one but Doc Smooth even noticed. A lot of people go into teaching because they want to be coaches. This is dumb. And has nothing to do with unions.

Sorry, TV, I started to read your post but then got distracted

So yeah, I agree.

jeff2sf wrote:Michelle Rhee thinks you can figure a way out. She's smarter than you. I have never said the metrics have to be the same, but metrics can be figured out. You CAN improve your students lots in life and part of that will involve measuring test schools.

But if we take your silly argument all the way, then it doesn't matter who teaches them - they're hopeless. So don't mind us if we move you out of the way and put in some other babysitter. At the end of the day, in your mind, it won't make a damn bit of difference.

Metrics, metrics, metrics, they're not just for Juan Castro.

I swear - before yesterday, I was probably a mild anti-union guy. I mean obviously not anything that really mattered to me given how often I vote with unions. But hearing you guys talk makes me want to go work for Walmart or some other union busting place. Ugh.

Did I say that there was NO way to evaluate teacher in inner city schools? Nope. I am just saying that the methods that have been to this point proposed assume way too much about the cooperativeness of the students involved. Your combative tone ain't helping matters, but then that is the way with you, I know.

jeff2sf wrote:

pacino wrote:I wish i could ignore people

Oh come on now, pac. You and me see eye to eye on a million different things. We just differ on unions. I love ya otherwise.

Right now I wish AFT tactics were more Teamster like.

Here's another dumb thing a school has done with money that has nothing to do with unions. It's not in the text I linked but the key is the school won't normally have anyone monitoring the video, and of course has no money for upgrades or maintenance.

TenuredVulture wrote:Teacher's unions may not help, but I doubt they're the root cause. For evidence, consider much of the South where unions are weak to non-existent some of the $#@! public schools out there.

I suspect a big part of the blame lies with colleges of education, the utter lack of any real standards for research in the field and its grabbing onto trends with little or no empirical justification.

Learning styles is a huge trend, but there's little evidence suggesting that it works.

The researchers found that, out of thousands of studies purporting to show the effectiveness of teaching to different learning styles, none managed to prove scientifically that students learn better when taught according to their preferred modality.

There's all kinds of $#@! like this going on--the fact is that most kids need to work hard to do well in basic skills, and while there's nothing fun about memorizing multiplication tables and things like that, it's the only way to really build a strong foundation for learning more advanced math.

Or another ridiculous idea--the amount of money schools waste on computers. Every school today has computer labs, every class room has computers in it, but no one really has ever demonstrated how this helps kids learn anything. What problem are these computers supposed to solve?

Agree with all of this.

Memorization of rote facts went out of fashion a long time ago, and what we've seen is a self-perpetuating decline in knowledge. Teachers don't know, so students don't know. When those students become parents and teachers themselves, they don't know, so they don't impart to the next generation, and on we go. I include myself here. My Mom has more poems memorized to this day than I have EVER had memorized, and I am the one working on a Ph.D. in litertature. It's isn't the way I was taught (and for which blame the system which should be reformed), and I haven't forced myself enough (I blame myself, though I did memorize some poems on my own to try to combat this).

In general, though, factual knowledge has been totally devalued, and it's little wonder that interest in being educated among people has followed suit. Everyone's attitude is "I can use the computer to get it," and if it's not available through Google, then it isn't worth pursuing.

I would yank the cord on all computers in schools, calculators too, at least at the eighth grade level and earlier, except for Word Processing programs (so they can still write papers). Learn to do it in your head, on your own. Then use those things as tools.

George Carlin once said that Americans have been bought off by gadgets and gizmos. To an extent, we see this in schools. Many kids have been conditioned to expect instant gratification and no longer feel the need to find and analyze information or perform tasks on their own. The explosion of the internet, cell phones, ipods, and other technologies hasn't necessarily been a good thing.

I was always happy taking notes and listening as the teacher lectured, even as this technological explosion was happening around me. Teachers increasingly have to cater to shorter and shorter attention spans from students who see sitting and listening quietly as a foreign concept.

I will admit that in talking to my crusty father in law it amazes me how many historical facts he remembers from high school. But I suspect that if his family had a modem and he could have quickly found a nude photo of the Pamela Anderson of his day he wouldn't be aware of Idaho either

mozartpc27 wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Michelle Rhee thinks you can figure a way out. She's smarter than you. I have never said the metrics have to be the same, but metrics can be figured out. You CAN improve your students lots in life and part of that will involve measuring test schools.

But if we take your silly argument all the way, then it doesn't matter who teaches them - they're hopeless. So don't mind us if we move you out of the way and put in some other babysitter. At the end of the day, in your mind, it won't make a damn bit of difference.

Metrics, metrics, metrics, they're not just for Juan Castro.

I swear - before yesterday, I was probably a mild anti-union guy. I mean obviously not anything that really mattered to me given how often I vote with unions. But hearing you guys talk makes me want to go work for Walmart or some other union busting place. Ugh.

Did I say that there was NO way to evaluate teacher in inner city schools? Nope. I am just saying that the methods that have been to this point proposed assume way too much about the cooperativeness of the students involved. Your combative tone ain't helping matters, but then that is the way with you, I know.

You keep talking about this cooperation of the students. It's NOT required, or at least, not at the beginning to judge success. Do you not understand the baseline idea? Let's test the kids at the beginning of the year. Let's test em at the end. Did they improve? No? Why not? Every single kid didn't want to learn? This has nothing to do with the teachers? You stood up there preaching multiplication tables and the kids either refused to learn it or learned it and then got one over on the teacher by deliberately diving on the test?

You've got to be fucking kidding me.