In response to an earlier post, a reader suggests a simple way to evaluate the oft-repeated assertion tat low test scores are caused by bad teachers:
I wonder why the reformers don’t try this experiment: Take the staff of an underperforming school and switch them for a year with the staff in a high performing school. Let’s see if the results are that different.
I say try it for three years. Compare the results in both schools. Good idea.
I have heard this proposed many times. With privatizers in control of so many districts and states (e.g. Louisiana, Tennessee, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Indiana, Maine, Pennsylvania), this should be easy to arrange.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As someone who is considered an excellent teacher at a high performing school I know about this first hand. Before this school I was briefly at a high FARM school, with chronic misbehavior, absenteeism, and low reading skills. I was also teaching 50% of the time out of my discipline. I was a terrible teacher under those circumstances. I was the same teacher in both schools with vastly different results.
Well, in case there was any uncertainty about the attack on schools of education in New York, this piece dispels them:
http://gothamschools.org/2012/10/16/department-of-education-wants-the-state-to-let-it-certify-teachers/
One way to ensure that teaching is deprofessionalized is to uncouple it from institutions of higher education.
Excellent idea. That will certainly level the playing field.
Because the don’t care about education. They care about profits and a business-friendly, passivating educational system. Actually learning the facts in any sort of scientific way is a waste of time and a risk.
We have to stop thinking about this as a quality issue. This is a money-grab and another nail in the coffin of democracy.
What it is is an attempted bank heist. Same with the attempt to privatize Social Security and other public institutions and programs.
It’s the theft that’s the issue. I wish people would wake up.
Attempted? So far it’s looking pretty darn successful. The few protests that have happened have been like an old lady trying to beat an armed robber over the head with her purse. The armed robber, being a sociopath, just shoots the old lady and leaves her for dead.
I teach English as a second language at two elementary schools in Indiana. One school is an “A” school with about 3% free and reduced lunch students. The other is soon to become an “F” school (Thanks, Tony Bennett) with a 76% free and reduced lunch population. I see teachers in both school working very hard. They all care about their kids and do whatever they can to support them. They all use similar “best-practice” techniques. I guarantee that switching the teachers in the schools will not change the performance of the students. It’s the teachers in the lower test scores school that are at school on the weekends, putting in extra hours before and after, because they HAVE TO. A teacher in the “A” school, which has enjoyed accolades for years as a great school told me, “We’re not miracle workers. These kids come to school already reading. They’ve traveled, their parents talk to them about current events. We just keep them going.”
I love this idea and would love to hear a politician or charter sponsor explain why it can’t be put in place…
One need only look at a teacher’s test scores over several years. I have had classes with children who listened, worked well together, and had supportive parents. I have also had classes with major behavioral issues and apathetic parents. Because my district is small, my class size varies from year to year, from a low of 11 to a high of 20-something. I try my damndest every day to do my best for each of my students. My scores are not consistent because my classes themselves are unique with their own strengths and challenges.