The author of this op-ed piece in today’s editions of The State
has a point when he says we can’t have open enrollment without providing transportation for all children whose parents want to take advantage of it.
And he’s completely right when he notes the rather obvious fact that income levels are a major predictor of student performance. In fact, it’s the one great objective measurement we have, in terms of finding correlations between measurable factors.
But he’s wrong, I believe, when he says open enrollment is a bad idea. And I suspect he takes the poverty factor, as important as it is, a little too far.
People who want to destroy public schools by paying the middle class to desert them like to lump us at the paper in with the "defenders of the status quo." But here’s where we depart from them. They say it’s purely a matter of poverty, and suggest that there’s nothing a teacher can do to change that. This is why they resisted so strongly the PACT and accountability, which we strongly supported.
As critical as poverty is, we believe good teachers and well-run schools can do a far better job of educating poor kids. The point of accountability for us is to point out, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where those good teachers and administrators are most needed. The true "defenders of the status quo" blanch at the thought of suggesting that some teachers are better than others, which in turn suggests that some teachers are, well, not up to snuff.
But it struck me in reading this piece that there’s a way to settle this dispute: Test the teachers. If their students’ scores are an imperfect indicator of the job their doing because they don’t control what the kids bring to the classroom — and that’s true enough, to a point, we just don’t know to what point — let’s come up with a PACT for teachers. Then we could see how much of the problem in rural schools comes from the students’ poverty, and how much from the fact that good teachers choose to work under better conditions, and they have the skills to get jobs in the suburbs.
This would be extremely useful. We could address the task of improving the quality of education available to all students much more effectively. We could even — gasp — use it as a factor in instituting merit pay. You want to see the system push back, try that. Or for that matter, try testing teachers to begin with.
The argument against it would be that the quality of a teacher lies in many things, many of them unmeasurable in a test. I would agree. But the test would give us some information we don’t have, and it would be helpful. As for taking it as far as using it in calculating merit pay — it wouldn’t be the ONLY factor. Along with the performance of their students (weighted by income levels plus the student’s performance under other teachers), you would have to consider subjective assessments — mainly the principal’s judgment, but you might want to toss in parent surveys.
That would really send those who resist reform through the roof. Subjective judgment, oh my! But what do you think those of us out in the private sector have to deal with, every working day of our lives?
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Brad,
As a fairly newly minted teacher (working in an extremely imporverished area of SC), I can assure you that there are PLENTY of tests for new teachers. As of this year, all teachers must prove that they are Highly Qualified. This is being done by having us underpaid servants take the PRAXIS test ($130 a pop).
Many of your other points are right on track. As an ELA teacher, it is almost overwhelming for me to try to bring a 4th grade child, who is reading at the 1st grade level, up to grade level in 180 days. I am able to spend very little time actually “teaching” in my classroom. Most of the day is taken up shuffling children between “state mandated” pull-out programs that are put in place by lawmakers who have not been in the classroom in 30 years.
Add into that mix are non-existent parents who don’t have a working phone number, the two-ton-elephant-hiding-in-the-corner gang issues (yes, right here in elementary school), an extremely violent culture, and the low-expectations of our state and society for their children.
The point is that there are plenty of Highly Qualified teachers in our state. Let’s get back to adequately funding our schools to start with. Just as an example, my school does not contain one single microscope (nope, not a one), it has a library the size of that conference room in which you interview political candidates at The State, it has a heating system so ineffective that we ALL wear our winter coats ALL day long, 5 year old computers that might have (THE) Internet connection for two days a week, student desks that are so pitted and gouged that you can’t write on them, and a sewer system that smells so bad the children are scared to use the restrooms.
Sure, you can try and add another “test” to put some more blame on the teachers, but that is just trying to find another scapegoat. No, we’re not perfect, we’re not Rhode’s Scholars either, but we are doing the best that we can with what we are given. Come visit my classroom and watch me teach a child to read who has all the above and more going against them. That will be a test that will never get passed.
A Teacher
I have been very quiet for 2 weeks, reading everything I can about Rex, and the educational system as it is today.
My only conclusion is…that there will be no changes, only a little whacking around the edges. For every new idea, there are 5 establishment reasons why it can’t be done.
I am a rich, educated white guy…my life is just fine. I just can’t say the same about the people who need change in the educational system…
I hope I am wrong. Truely, I hope I am wrong.
A_teacher hit the nail on the head.
Brad thinks the government can solve
all the problems of society. He thinks
the solution to everything is more
government involvement. He fails
to recognize that government involvement
is what got us where we are today and
why those who can, choose to pull their
kids out.
Instead of making teachers more accountable,
let’s make parents more accountable. Start holding kids back. Start giving out grades for behavior. Remove bad kids from the system completely. Stop thinking that technology will solve the problems. Stop testing kids and get back to teaching them.
The teachers are fine. The system is broken.
I wonder how Brad would score on a sophisticated exam covering:
Sure, Brad, test the teachers on pedagogy and subject matter– right after your scores come back. None of you should expect to pass with a 65 score, though.
Here’s an issue where there is merit on both sides of the issue. From my own experience in school and from the stories my children share with me there is absolutely no doubt that there are many very poor teachers working in the public school system. But I don’t think it’s a matter of qualifications. Rather, many teachers are either lazy or indifferent to thier students. So Brad, I don’t think testing is the answer. Frankly, even though it’s imperfect, student test scores seem to be the best measure of a teacher’s effectiveness.
As for A_teachers plight. She makes a good case for additional funding for schools in poor areas. Of course even with better desks and a few microscopes the problems with indifferent parents and perhaps poorly nourished children would still render a successful education program extremely difficult if not impossible.
Perhaps if we address the poverty issue first. The best way to do that is by improving the marketability of the labor force. And what does that require? Well- educated workers. So the first thing to do is improve the education system. I think we’re trapped in a circle.
I have an idea: a PACT test for Brad Warthen, Gov. Know-It-All, all the members of the General Assembly, the Club for Growth, and South Caro-line-ians for Responsible Government. Teachers take numerous tests before being given the honor of teaching students—many of whom (students) would rather be anywhere else in the entire world than in a classroom; many of whose parents have helped to instill that feeling in their children. Yes, let’s make it harder every year for people to become teachers. Only half of new teachers in SC leave the profession during the first five years now. Maybe we could strive for 75 or 80 percent. Then all of our teachers could be from India, Romania, and Africa, and none of the students would be able to understand a word the teachers say. Yes, that would definitely improve public education. One more thing, Mr. Warthen, why don’t you teach for a year—say 8th grade in Denmark? Then, you can return to The State and tell us how much harder you have it than teachers have it. What a joke.
I think anyone who reads me knows the tremendous value I put on public education, and on the wonderful people who dedicate their lives to it.
But there is one way in which teachers have never helped me support them — they have always resisted accountability. They don’t want any more objective measurements, and they faint dead away at the thought of subjective ones. I’ll never forget the first time I ran into this.
It was in the early 80s. There was all this talk then, as now, about how American kids don’t do as well academically as their counterparts in other developed (and sometimes, undeveloped) nations.
I was an editor in Jackson, TN, and I thought of what considered a good enterprise story idea: How about if we found one of those tests used to show how smart kids in Japan are, and give it to a class, or a grade, or a school, full of kids right there in Jackson, and then report the results? It would either debunk the idea that our kids weren’t measuring up, or actually identify weaknesses that folks right there in our community needed to work on.
Totally innocently, I enthusiastically brought this up to a public school teacher I knew and respected — I had gotten to know him through a very bright young person who admired him more than any other teacher he’d ever had. I thought he might share my enthusiasm for the idea, or at least have some thoughtful criticism of it.
He went ballistic. This guy whom I had never see get angry about anything became furious at me for even suggesting such a thing. He went on and on about it. It floored me.
After all these years — and after having seen the same attitude reflected in others, over and over again — I’m still taken aback by it.
I am tested in front of hundreds of thousands of readers every day, and they’re not shy about grading me. If I could take an objective test that would score me based on my skills and knowledge, I would love it, because I could wave my score in the faces of my subjective detractors.
Of what would such a test consist? I don’t know. I guess it would have a mix of history, political science, current affairs, grammar, rhetoric, popular culture and the like. And as long as the test was practical and relevant rather than purely theoretical, I would ace it. (For instance, I always scored 100 on tests that asked me whether to use “lie” or “lay,” or “imply” or “infer,” in a specific contest. I just knew which one was right. But ask me to recite the rule involved, and I might stare at you blankly. I never needed to know the rule, because I always got it right. So I didn’t bother.)
This is a little unfair, I’ll admit — but only a little. My confidence arises from the fact that I’ve always been good at tests. Some people are good at playing the piano, and aren’t worth squat at anything else. I’m good at tests.
So why do I want to test teachers? Well, I don’t. Personally, I think whether they should keep their jobs, or be promoted, should be up to their bosses. That’s the way it is for me, and for most people in the private sector. If a publisher doesn’t like my face and is determined not to have to look at it anymore, I’m gone. Is that always fair? No, but that’s the way the world will be for most of the kids the teachers are trying to teach.
But I don’t understand why the idea of being tested tends to produce such a visceral response. And it bothers me that it does.
Oh, and as long as I’m listing things that bug me about teachers — a category of people I normally support and praise to the skies, because I truly admire them for what they do — here’s another one:
Where do they get off being so huffy about being judged by lawmakers, and parents, etc.?
HELLO!?!? You work in the PUBLIC schools! You work for the PUBLIC. You need to please the public, if you want the public’s support.
They’re not professionals, you say? They don’t know what it takes to do your job? You think it’s bad to be dictated to by lawmakers who haven’t been in a classroom in 30 years? Well, welcome to the real world. How many of the yo-yos who tell ME what I’m doing wrong do you think have EVER edited a daily newspaper? But I have to listen. More than that, I WANT to listen. You know why? Because they can choose to quit buying my product ANY TIME. While they might gripe and moan, and resist spending any more on you, they are at least required BY LAW to shell out to pay your salary.
And I’m one of those who think that’s fine. I’m one of those who is perfectly willing to pay MORE so you can have a decent living, so you can have better classrooms, so you can have a microscope. Have two microscopes. I think that’s great.
Just don’t suggest that because I’m not a teacher I shouldn’t have a say about the job that you’re doing.
And I’m not trying to pick on A_Teacher, who sounds like a very nice person. I’m just addressing ALL the teachers, most of them also very nice people, who I have heard say the very same things, many times.
Any attempt at REAL change, which is change that affects the pay check receiving adults, will be resisted.
After a long and hard fought election campaign that was supposedly about “new ideas” we find ourselves back discussing the same “ideas” that the educational establishment has been discussing for ages.
As the saying goes, “maybe next time”…
Brad, the objecting teacher should not have bothered you. First, why single out just one profession for routine exams as indicators of merit? Especially teaching, which already carries quite a load of numerical evaluations of uncertain value. Surely you have noted Dave, Randy, RTH, Lex, etc arguing education statistics?
Second – in your own words, you would like to take an “objective” exam. Your teacher friend would probably like one too (I sure would like to see one for my job). Any ideas on who would write it? Perhaps our state education oversight committee, with the legislator from upstate who wants to scrub out evolution from biology, would be the one to approve the test? I bet that would be an objective exam.
Why do teachers object to being dictated to by people out of the loop for decades? Well, maybe because they are reasonable people. Nobody would VOLUNTEER to have people who don’t know them or anything about them setting their performance goals. Come on.
I have a challenge for you. Merit pay doesn’t seem to be an idea that’s flying with our teachers, probably because they know the criteria would be heavily politicized and frequently changed (Brad you know that too – we can’t even agree on something as basic as cigarette taxes in this state! Even seat belts barely made it!). What other positive incentives can you come up with? The extra $$/national teacher certification program has worked wonders (if certification is the best goal). What goals would you like to see teachers set that you would reward them for? Bear in mind that many of them are the second income in a household and can’t easily move long distances.
Great thread!
Why do teachers resist accountability? Two reasons: In our profession we are isolated in our classrooms with the door closed for the most part. Most don’t want this freedom curtailed. This is not a good reason. Also, the accountability measures often suggested are derived in ivory towers with little understanding of what we actually do in the classroom. This is a good reason. BTW, because the private sector suffers this, does it mean we should too Brad?
The trick is how do we measure the good teaching. I agree that subjectivity can’t be avoided and content knowledge should be included. Simply testing this knowledge and letting bosses make the decisions is horribly misguided.
On multiple occasions I have had a parent who is an engineer or math person who could not help their student because they didn’t have the patience to tutor the child. My point is content mastery isn’t sufficient for good teaching.
Many administrators make decisions not on student mastery, but “pleasing the public”. If I as a teacher am a hard butt (and I am), I may upset many students and parents for holding to rigorous standards. They complain and pass on the grief.
On the other hand, if I am a friendly teacher who is easy, the students are happy. They rave about how “cool I am because I let them do what they want” (I have heard this many times about others). Students are happy, parents are happy (and answer surveys accordingly), the admin is happy. Education loses.
Another issue is what happens when teacher evaluations are made public? Does Brad Warthen want his daughter in the classes of the poor scoring teachers? There’s already a teacher shortage so you can’t give them the boot unless you pump more students into the classes of the higher rated teachers.
Merit pay has similar issues. How do yo measure and compare the effectiveness of a PE or art teacher with the math teacher who works on PACT content?
Despite this, I strongly favor accountability for my profession. I like getting feedback on my teaching from AP exams and End of Course exams (given to freshman level classes). To me this is the way to “test teachers”. Holding people accountable also makes them work harder – human nature I suppose.
Brad, we spent all summer and fall debating school choice. This would have been an important issue to bring up back then. Rex didn’t have to answer such questions. He simply ran as the savior of public education.
Brad,
I think that you missed my point. We teachers already are tested on all of the things that you are talking about. You are supporting a further testing on information that has already been accomplished.
Let me tell you about what I have been tested on over the past few years while getting my teaching certificate and getting a graduate degree.
1. Inital Graduate School Test – Miller Analogies Test (MAT) – it has been called the Ultimate Jeopardy Test.
2. PRAXIS Social Studies Content Area Exam – a test on what I know about history (American & World), geography (same aspects), and political science (again same aspects)
3. PRAXIS Principals of Learning and Teaching (PLT) – a test of what I know about teaching children across the broad spectrum of multi-cultural, multiple-intelligence, and mult-faceted students.
4. PRAXIS Assessment – a test of what I know about how to administer tests that are valid towards SC content stanadards.
5. PRAXIS Elementary Content – a test of what I know about the SC content standards for elementary age students.
If I had not passed each one of these tests, then I would not be a teacher today. Further testing is REDUNDANT. As of this year, all teachers, new and old, had to pass the PRAXIS PLT in order to be Highly Qualified. If they didn’t pass it, then they lost their job.
The induction process into the profession is a rigoruous three year period of further testing and proving yourself according to the SC ADEPT Teaching Standards. If you don’t pass ADEPT, then you do not become fully certified and may no longer teach.
The point of the rest of the post is that teachers can only do so much with a student given the economic, cultural and political climate of our state.
If the taxpayers want us to be accountable for what it is that we do…then let us TEACH. We actually spend very little time teaching anymore because of everything else that is on the periphery. In a nutshell, that is why so many people leave the profession.
At the beginning of my teacher education classes, a college administrator came in and gave us the statistics. Out of the 25 people in my (USC) cohort, she predicted that five of us would not make it through the program. Five of us would graduate but never teach. Five more of us would quit after the first year. Five more will quit after the fifth year. That leaves five people out of the original 25 teaching in the sixth year. As of this date, she has been right on the money and I might be one of those who doesn’t make it past five years.
The teachers who have come into the workforce over the past 10 years are some of the most highly trained, and highly tested, professionals that you will ever meet.
What possible further test can be laid at our feet?
A Teacher
I believe that everyone sincerely wants to improve the educational system. However, regardless of how we arranged the educational system, poverty as a relative measure will remain unchanged given the same tax rates. A poor educational system does not cause poverty. Rather, capitalism creates poverty (as a relative measure) because it redistributes the wealth generated by the entire population to a small fraction of the population. Capitalism also tends to segregate the population-wealthy people live near other wealth people, and poor people live near other poor people. Arguably, since the quality of education depends upon the tax base of the community to be educated, great disparities exist among disparate communities. Wealthy districts have first class educational systems while poor districts have dysfunctional educational systems. It’s the Porche vs. the Pinto.
We should instead be focusing on the inherit unfairness of capitalism. Remember that wealth is in no way normally distributed-it’s not even close. For those who have not seen the wealth distribution, here it is. If we want to improve the overall educational system, then we should start by using re-distributive taxation to help correct for the huge inequities caused by capitalism. We should make it a national goal to create an economic system that distributes wealth normally. Capitalism, by its nature, creates a wealth distribution that looks hyperbolic (i.e., a 1/x hyperbola in the 1st quadrant-from richest to poorest).
Brad, I didn’t pull the 65 score out of thin air.
RTH,
You’re grading scale is far too easy.
100% wrong on Iraq
100% wrong on taxes
100% wrong on the role of government in improving society
100% wrong on education
Brad thinks that because he has his job that somehow that means the public agrees with him. It may hurt his ego, but I would guess the number of people who read the comics in The State exceeds the number who read the opinion page by a factor of 10 to 1 or more.
Brad – why don’t you and Cindi Ross Scoppe and Warren Bolton take a basic SAT test (you can get a book of 10 of them for $15).
Post your scores and let us decide if you’re smart enough to figure out what changes should be made to the educational system.
To paraphrase an old axiom: Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, write editorials.
Steve,
Until you stand in a classroom yourself, please dont’ demean.
A Teacher
Haven’t been a “real” teacher but I have taught hundreds of day long technical classes to adults (probably 1000 or more students), taught four years of 4th grade Sunday School, and been a high school basketball coach. It’s a hard job, no doubt. I was aiming my comment more at people like Brad whose sole purpose in life is to tell everyone else the best way to do something he wouldn’t do himself.
Most of the best teachers my kids have had have left the profession. A good friend who went back to school after the age of 30 to get a teaching degree quit after one year. The bureacracy, the unruly kids, the parents who think their kid deserves an education tailored to their whims… all of this stuff you see in public education today is what’s wrong with the system.
Here’s an example of the bureacracy we now have in place. High school students going on overnight field trips must have a school administrator present in person all the rules that must be followed during the trip to both students and parents. Things like consenting to search of all bags at any time, medicine (prescription or over the counter) must be given to the teacher to administer, cell phones may not be used unless expressly permitted by the teacher,
and on and on and on… we taxpayers actually pay for who knows how many of these administrators to sit around all day coming up with more and more policies — all of which could be replaced with a single sentence “Do what the teacher tells you to do or don’t go on the trip”.
Brad thinks we can solve everything with
more programs, more “accountability”, more
bureacracy…
Brad doesn’t like to get down and dirty with the realities of the big issues. He’s a big picture guy… except the big picture is usually done in crayon.
Follow on to the bureacracy example — did you know that a school district has policies related to the minimum number of students who may be left alone together on a field trip? It’s four. Why? Because if one student get’s hurt, one can stay with the injured party while the other two go to get help – because one person going alone to get help might result in grave danger. There are really people who sit around all day coming up with this B.S. AND WE PAY THEM TO DO IT!!!
You got it wrong, Steve. The saying, at least within my profession is, “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach journalism.”
And I have taught. At the college level. Journalism. I’ve had my own classes, and I’ve been a guest lecturer. The experience has persuaded me that I don’t want to teach at the undergraduate level, and certainly not below that. My wife, on the other hand, teaches pre-school, and is wonderful at it. It’s not something I could do, even though we have five children I love with all my heart.
And if you can’t lecture at the graduate level, at least in your subject area, you shouldn’t be writing editorials.
You know, I really hope I haven’t hurt the feelings of A_Teacher, who sounds like a really nice person whom I would like and admire. But I’m not talking about rites of passage on the way to a profession. I’m talking about how to prove yourself over and over, every day, to an unforgiving public. In my business, we tend to quote, or at least paraphrase, Boss Tweed: “What have you done for me TODAY?” (Don’t know who Boss Tweed is? Well, you should.)
As far as SAT is concerned — well, my wife told me years ago how unappealing it is when I work my scores into conversations, so I won’t. But they were quite high, by 1971, pre-inflation standards. The highest in my graduating class of 600 students, in fact. Oh, there I go again. Let me take myself down a few pegs:
Judging by grades, I was a poor student, until my last couple of years of college — mainly because I never tried studying up until that point. Fortunately for me, people were way too impressed by test scores. As I said, I’m good at tests. It’s like an idiot savant talent; I certainly can’t take credit for it. But I was seriously lacking in work ethic, until I was well into adulthood and had a family to feed.
By the way, I would not dare compare SATs with Cindi, because it would probably humiliate me. She was such a grind in school, from what I hear.
Oh, and Steve: Nobody is 100 percent wrong on Iraq. Not even you. Now, don’t prove me wrong with your response.
1480 SAT (taken two years ago when my kid was getting ready to take it)
Ranked #1 in class of 330 about 30 years ago. Mensa eligible.
Go ahead… take the test and post the scores. It’s no harder than running a video camera… oops.
My previous sentence should read as follows:
We should instead be focusing on the inherent unfairness of capitalism.
Please forgive.
For all of those who voted for Rex, and also for those who did not, let’s not get too excited or depressed until we see the Rex committee’s plan.
Mark,
Get the “working class” guy off of drugs and booze, and those stats would change dramatically. My family has several “blue collar” type businesses and “dependency” is the single and most important predictor in a working man’s (and woman’s) life.
We have full time secure jobs paying $10.00 to $22.00 per hour plus benefits that are continually unfilled…and only a require high school diploma or equivalency, and a valid drivers license. But dependency, and the issues resulting from regular use or occasional binging, keeps these people in poverty.
Surely you would not posit that your “preferred economic system (are u a Marxist or socialist?) would render these problems obsolete?
Chris
It’s an unavoidable fact that an educated elite usually consists of people who are naturally very smart. In my professional career, I’ve been a technical trainer to hundreds of people. A couple of years ago, I taught a series of courses to a mixed audience. Most of the ones who graduated from high school in SC, and got no other education, struggled to understand basic math and topics such as heat transfer, temperature-pressure relationships. The ones who were veterans of the Navy nuclear program (all high school graduates with little or no college) taught ME stuff. Given the strong positive correlation between native intelligence and educational achievement, and the additional fact that native intelligence is undercut by being raised in poverty, the problem of educational under-achievement is only a subset of the general problems associated with being citizens of a very poor state.
Great points, Uncle Elmer, Steve, Randy, A Teacher, and Ready to Hurl. I began teaching public school in 1985. I have been a teacher and an administrator. Most of the work that district-level administrators do is caused by the federal and state governments and attorneys. As an administrator in small, poor, rural districts, I regularly worked 50 to 60 hours per week. There was no extra pay of any kind. I often wrote grants and caught up on paperwork during vacations. It would take a book to write what is wrong with public education. For 20 years, as I attempted to do my jobs to the best of my ability, I watched as numerous tests, techniques, laws, regulations, and systems were offered as “the answer.” Rarely, have any of these solutions been tried long enough to find out whether they would provide at least part of the solution or not.
Certainly, there are teachers who should not be teachers and administrators who should not be administrators. I would love to know, however, how many effective educators versus ineffective educators have left the profession because of all the “reforms.” I’m betting fewer ineffective educators have left. The effective, caring educators have been ground down by the students who won’t behave, the students who don’t care, the lack of parental support, the inability to contact parents, the lack of disciplinary support by many principals, the lack of needed supplies (unless the teacher buys them), the hours and hours after school and on weekends spent planning, preparing, grading, and doing paperwork to prove that you are teaching, the bus duty, the playground duty, the unpaid extracurricular sponsorships, the disrespect of our society, the snarky comments from the governor, and the general belief by many citizens that since they have sat in a classroom they are education experts.
By the way, teaching adults in any setting, teaching college, teaching private school, teaching Sunday School, teaching a civic groups, etc., etc., etc. are not the same as teaching pre-K through 12 public school. I have taught adults, Sunday School, and civic groups; it is not the same as teaching public school. It isn’t even close.
My husband has taught public school for 30 years. As soon as he finds a job to take up the financial slack, he will be retiring. He is such a good teacher that he frequently tutors former students (for free) while they are in college. My husband agrees with me that the public school system has declined exponentially during the last 20 years. Why? As society has changed in many ways, teachers have been made accountable for not only the things over which they have control but also the things for which students and parents should be accountable.
I don’t know what all the answers are for public education, but I believe that parental accountability—could it ever be instituted—would solve many of the problems. Poverty is definitely a huge problem. Parents who don’t want to be bothered are another huge problem. When a child is more familiar with the television set and the video games than he/she is with the parent or parents, something is terribly wrong—something that the school cannot fix.
By the way, I made 1280 on the SAT (650 math; 630 verbal) in the spring of the llth grade in a very small, rural, poor high school. That is equivalent to about 1330 to 1380 the way the test is scored today. The math courses I had taken: Algebra I and II. We did not have vocabulary courses or many vocabulary lessons. We did not have SAT prep classes. Many of our textbooks were rebound books from schools in Columbia or Greenville. I took the SAT once. How did I do it? My parents were far from perfect, but they considered parenting their two children to be one of their most important tasks. Even though my mother was an invalid (paralyzed), she talked to us each day about our schoolwork and taught me values and the importance of God, work, and family. Daddy expected me to go to college. I read constantly. My summers were spent reading, swimming, and playing board games. My school did not offer a lot of advanced classes; however, most of my teachers thoroughly taught the subjects that were offered. Third graders memorized the multiplication tables; calculators were not available. We diagrammed sentences, thus we learned the parts of speech and how to use them. Starting in the fourth or fifth grade, English class could be a time to write an essay—any day, without warning. It was finished during class, and grammar, spelling, and punctuation did count.
There are so many things wrong with education today, most of which I believe stem directly from societal problems, that I don’t know if there are solutions to most of the problems. I am relieved, however, to say that my years of working from “the inside” are over. I still care, but now I get to have a life.
Nice post, Former Teacher…
A great friend of mine that was chairman of one of the larger school districts in the state maintains that if he could get rid of 1% of his students, and 1% of his staff and teacher, 98% of his problems would go away.
Rules, rules and more rules.They only serve those making the rules…
Still think testing teachers is a great idea, Brad?
Do you ever actually go out and see the world as it is or is it all visible with a telescope from your ivory tower?
I agree with almost everything Former Teacher said except the part about education declining over the last 20 years. My public education experience in the 70s was very poor. My kid’s is better by comparison.
The issue of discipline seems to come up again and again in these posts. Let’s work on that one area then re-evaluate.
There are alot of things RIGHT with education today. It is also better now that is ever has been…for those who take advantage.
Far more students are taking algebra and geometry in middle school which allows them to progress farther in high school. How many of us had the chance to take statistics, for example?
We have far more AP courses available and students can get take dual credit courses to get high school and Midlands Tech credit simultaneously.
Technology allows exponentially greater information available to students – in audio and video. I can show students the path and coordinates of a hurricane in real time or satellite images of our school.
In Richland 2, we have community service projects in which Ridge View and Spring Valley collect tens of thousands of canned goods for the homeless, provide over 200 foster kids with Christmas presents.
Every SC student can qualify for a state scholarship simply for having good grades.
Students with disabilities are provided services and mainstreamed and provided for at a vastly greater level.
There are greatly problems to overcome, but I scoff at the notion our system is in decline as a whole.
That’s a fair question. Do I expect the system I am proposing to make these problems obsolete? For the most part, yes, I do expect these problems to greatly diminish.
Am I a Marxist? No. Am I a socialist? Yes, I am a Christian Democratic Socialist.
What points do I want to make? The first point was realized only a few years ago with the advent of stochastic programming techniques and the availability of relatively inexpensive computers: the idea being that huge levels of wealth inequality are statistically built into capitalism independent of differential ability. This idea was proven by at least 2003. I keep bringing it up because it is not yet common knowledge, yet this bit of new knowledge can dramatically change the way that people view most of our problems.
You’ve probably noticed that most comments concerning education, for example, have to do with personal qualities of individuals or the perceived traits of entire groups of people. We are all prejudiced, and we all tend to believe that people similar to ourselves are doing right, and that people unlike ourselves are in the wrong. We are full of talk about accountability (i.e., holding those people unlike ourselves accountable) and we find any number of punitive measures to implement against others.
We’re trying to deal with what is really a severe statistical bias intrinsic to capitalism with what is tantamount to class prejudice. That’s the power of the new knowledge-it destroys the differential ability argument as the cause of capitalism’s inequity. In fact, capitalism unfairly redistributes wealth in spite of differential ability.
Hence, my call for a new economic system that distributes wealth normally is based on the notion of fairness, and it takes variations of personal attributes into account in a most fundamental way.
The second point has to do with abolishing hierarchal divisions of labor and replacing them with democratically determined divisions of labor. There are many valid reasons for doing this, but it all comes down to the imperfect knowledge and creative capacity of a few individuals vs. the much more powerful and efficient system of using teams of equals to create new knowledge and ideas to reduce constituent variation of some process.
I’d much rather discuss the second point, but considering the huge economic inequities of our current system, there is no real hope of changing much until enough people become aware of the true nature of economic inequality and its origin.
I ran this one by my sister, who was, until recently, a school administrator out in Texas, but spent years in the classroom also. Her answer: yes, Texas has instrumented accountability, and it’s needed, but the bottom line is that you won’t be able to make a whole lot of difference. The problems are too massive; you’ve got too many kids to educate, too many with learning disabilities all grouped with the others, and our society will not allow us to separate them into different tracks like they do in Europe. (And I might add that I’m not sure that is the answer, either, though some type of creaming off would help, I think.) So there is not much that will really make a difference–the kids reflect the families they come from.
I can only say for my part, I hope that there are still teachers who brave it, and invest at least a good part of their lives in it, just because of the difference that they might make in the lives of a few kids. In a way, it’s similar to being a foreign aid worker–the need is massive, and you feel like you can only pour a few drops on a lot of hot rocks–what have you accomplished? And yet, if a few people’s lives are changed as a result, it’s worth it.
Core solutions that, if implemented, will bring about the direct radical change needed to enable excellence in schools:
1. Put God back in school. Actually teach the Ten Commandments as a priority class.
2. Uniforms required and paid for by the state.
3. Discipline – The state should pass laws enabling physical punishment while removing all liability for teachers except for sexual molestation. By the way, more teachers sexually molest kids each year than clergy. Little known fact.
4. Transportation – ALL kids up to 8th GRADE are required to ride buses to schools. How long are taxpayers going to pay for all the empty buses driving all over.
5. Boot camp alternate schools – I explained those a while back.
6. Teacher pay – Immediate 25% increase for all.
7. Job Protection – Pass laws for principals to remove any teacher that the principal and an outside panel of parents deem incompetent.
8. Get rid of teacher certification – Allow schools to hire people with work experience and college degrees. I.e. – open UP the profession.
Dave, with regard to your first suggestion: Whose Ten Commandments? The Jews’? The Catholics’? The Lutherans’? The Southern Baptists’? Doctrinally, not all the Abrahamic faiths break the Ten Commandments down the same way.
Mark,
Thanks for the comments. U make some very interesting points.
Would u point to an example of a system that u admire? I am interested in the “modeling” of your ideas.
Chris
PS…is this the Mark W that went to BC high school
I can’t be sure about this, but after reading his posts on a number topics, I’ve decided to believe that Dave is just yanking someone’s chain… it’s the only explanation that doesn’t leave me flabbergasted.
IF it indeed is a “fact” then it’s probably “little known” because it’s of the “dog bites dog” variety.
Just a few idle thoughts, Dave:
(1) What would you say is the ratio of teachers to clergy in the U.S., Dave? 50:1? Even if there were twice as many child molesters per capita in the clergy they’d have to work overtime just to equal the kids molested by a relatively tiny minority of teachers.
(2) Since clergy are ostensibly chosen for higher morals and better ethics than almost any other profession then one would reasonably expect fewer clergy molesting children than teachers.
Again, the Mary McCarthy quote springs to mind.
Lily, Try, and I know it can be difficult for some, but try to post some substantial thought, a new idea, process improvement, innovation, anything on this subject rather than playing the mother hen role. You might enjoy the former more than the latter. And, I do believe my ideas would improve the education situation.
Steve, let’s not nitpick over whose Ten C’s. How about the ones carved into marble at our Supreme Court in DC? That will work. OK, now that we have that settled!!!!!
Brad — Seems to me that you’ve got many worthwhile ideas about public education, but I’m not sure I get this “PACT for teachers” thing. As you noted, actually, a part of the problem is that there are aspects to teaching that cannot be “tested.” That may seem to you a minor issue in all this….I would say it’s a major problem with the notion of trying to test teachers. Really: How would you do it? A written test? Observations of ALL teachers by a team of educators, business leaders, and parents? Is that realistic?
I don’t honestly see any “PACT for teachers” that would turn up the answers you might be looking for.
In fact, PACT probably gives us the means to do such testing. If the folks in the various districts or at the state department would take the time, it seems to me that they could break out PACT scores for each teacher based on poverty levels, race, gender, whatever — setting up the grounds for fair comparisons.
I would have no major problem with that. In fact, I think it would tell us a lot about teacher quality in our state.
But whatever — I’ve long said that I think we need to do a better job of making the education field more attractive to sharp young college students and college graduates. The way to do that, in my opinion, is NOT by creating more hoops to jump through; more requirements that seem overly technical; and a longer set of courses, forcing students to make up their minds about teaching before many are ready. A first semester college senior at a good college is someone we need to be able to get into the classroom by the following fall, in my opinion — but it seems that would be nearly impossible under our current guidelines.
Finally, one reason I think teachers are so resistant to certain accountability ideas — and perhaps TOO resistant — is that they fear the public doesn’t understand the complexity of what’s really going on….that politicians out to demagogue the issue will have an easier time if we give them easy fodder, and possibly that truly figuring out what’s working and not working in education is trickier that some simplistic set of “accountability” criteria. Moreover, I think there’s the thought that even PUBLIC EMPLOYEES deserve some space, some privacy in the way they do their jobs.
If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.
Dave, how about posting a verbatim copy of that version.
Hurl, I don’t have time to fly there and write them all down. You do it and get back to all of us. I actually work for a living.
We haven’t seen much of Lee lately, but his latest post made me laugh: “If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.” That is just plain dumb. It’s written in English, so how else would you read it?
Let’s talk about Dave’s ideas for a minute. In spite of my many disagreements I have with most of his posts a couple of these actually have some merit.
1. The 10 commandments idea is just plain wrong. The first 3 or 4 are nothing but religous indoctrination. We don’t need that in PUBLIC schools.
2. I used to be oppossed to uniforms but the more I think about it the more merit it has. Why not just remove dress code issues from the mix with one fell swoop and move on to more important issues.
3. Dave goes way to far with the physical punishment stuff but more discipline is desparately needed. The sexual harrassment point is irrelavant to this discussion.
4. How a child arrives at school is irrelevant.
5. Some form of alternative school is needed. Perhaps a boot camp approach can be justified in some form. But it will take money and probably lots of it.
6. Increasing teacher pay for the best teachers is a great idea and (7) getting rid of the bad teachers are both great ideas. It’s not all that hard to identify bad teachers. My kids tell me about them all the time. These are the ones that simply do not do any real teaching.
8. I’m undecided on the teacher certification issue. Perhaps it is focused a bit too narrowly. One or two education courses along with a degree in a given field should be sufficent to qualify as a teacher.
Bud, I have to admit that I ignored the blatant dumbness and moved immediately to contemplating what Lee was attempting to imply.
However, I must say that it would probably be equally true if one were reading it in German or French or Italian or Spanish. Soldiers probably had a large role in determining whatever your native language.
I suspect that most people are happy enough to be whatever nationality they were born.
Of course, Lee’s version of American exceptionalism leaves no room for that thought.
If we were to get truly pedantic then we’d have to recognize that some English-as-a-second-language folks might not have any reason to thank a soldier.
Bud, hey, common ground on some points. Thats encouraging. The teaching profession needs to be elevated with higher pay. However, teachers would also go on a 12 month work plan like the rest of us. During the summer, optional advanced courses, research, private tutoring etc would all be helpful. Why let super teachers work as waitresses and lifeguards in the summer. More money but more work..
Teachers are already tested, on lots of subjects and skills.
The questions to ask is, “How important are the skills currently tested, and what important skills are not being tested?”
For example, we may have a lot of people teaching subjects who have scored high on the soft administrative skills, but not demonstrated any competence in the subject matter.
We also have to avoid continuing to demand things which would have been monumental reforms 25 years ago, but are now less important, and we are just pushing for them because the teacher unions refuse to yield. There were lots more incompentent teachers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, due to merging the black and white schools, and no one being evaluated, because the political reality was that no one was going to be demoted or fired.
Brad, I don’t think any honest school administrator would argue against the fact that some teachers are more effective than others. This is no different than any other profession. Some doctors,mechanics,programmers, etc. are better than others. Where we differ is in the concept of any test consistently measuring the effectiveness of a teacher. As a school administrator, I have seen brilliant people that were extremely ineffective teachers. Test do a good job of measuring knowledge, but teaching is so much more than simply having knowledge.
In regard to schools and testing:
I teach in a public middle school. I am the data specialist and response to intervention staff development cooridinator. I am certified to teach reading K-12, special ed K-12, elementary education, early childhood education, early childhood supervision and educational leadership. I hold an MA in labor relations. I have about 70+ post graduate credits. I teach intensive remediation to a VERY LARGE roster of struggling readers. I also teach struggling teachers.
I am currently preparing to take the middle school math praxis. I still need to take the science and social studies “teacher’s tests”. I had a 3.6 undergrad and 3.9-4.0 in all graduate level programs. Back in the cave called undergraduate school ( I am 44), I successfully completed courses like collegiate level mathematics up to calc and statistics. I had chemistry, cell and microbiology, 2 semesters of anatomy and physiology, lots of humanities, social sciences, probably even a WRITING course or two… and on and on. I don’t know about my own SAT scores, I never took the SAT, but two of my kids have and they both got over 1200? Not that I paid particular attention to the number- I didn’t. I was a terrible public school student.
I was a great college student. Earned the faculty scholarship- but gave it to my younger sister who couldn’t pay her tution that semester. As one of 8 children from a very “poor” family, I identify strongly with children from dysfunctional famillies and low socio-economic status. I know them.. I was them…. I grwo weary of hearing the biased remarks of citizens and YES, EVEN TEACHERS… “What do you bother with that kid for, his mother was in special ed too..” “Don’t you read the police blotters? That kids whole family is in jail for drugs.” and so on…. TERRIBLE attitudes… terrible injustices directed at children who are so very vulnerable.
Here’s an interesting fact..: I AM STILL NOT “HIGHLY QUALIFIED” TO TEACH all that I must teach. So, I keep paying for more “tests” to PROVE? that I am in fact qualified. Interestingly, as another reader posted teh tests are at least $130.00 each. Additional score reports cost additional money- and so on. My salary is a whopping $34,000/ pre tax. I am single. I have three kids, two are in college.
I agree that teachers need to be masters of the subject matter that they teach. However, the majority of content teacher Praxis tests (math, chemistry, history etc.) contain only questions related to CONTENT. There has been little initiative to measure “teaching” ability aka pedagogy.
Yes, there are those who teach well (we remember their names don’t we?) , there are those who are not so capable (unfortunately, their names are also memerable). But unfortunately, the skill of teaching is really not measurable with paper and pencil.
One might argue that student scores indicate teaching skill. However, students are exposed to many many teachers, and the results + or – are logrithmic. For example, the pile up of academic deficits is often most visible in the MIDDLE SCHOOL, where a bottle neck effect occurs and NCLB testing is required for grades 6-7 and 8- something that does not occur at the elementary or high school levels.
So, yes, families have problems, and teachers have deficits and kids have deficits, and schools have deficits. However, I can attest from experience, that education can reverse the trend of dysfunction and social and academic failure. It is necessary to carefully evaluAte the strengths and weaknesses of students, LOOK FORWARD instead of back- stop blaming everyone but the plumber- and SOLVE the problem, one student, one teacher, one school, one community at a time. If every teacher and school administrator begins to LOOK FORWARD and diligently strives to take care of their own backyards, much will be accomplished.
And in case you are doubtful, I close by saying that I work in a school that is highly populated with “at risk’ students, and we have no big cash reserves, and a declining tax base. But hey, the toilets still flush, which is better than many schools have it. ( see: Jonathon Kozol- ‘Savage Inequality)
Now, I am off to work. I found this blog by accident, looking for PRAXIS information? Bittersweet irony.
KP
positive attitude
exceptional brand area positive attitude.