Peter Greene has a ball with the U.S. Department of Education’s latest fantasy plan: Every child has a civil right to a “highly qualified teacher.”
Who is a “highly qualified teacher”? Any teacher who can raise test scores or anyone who belongs to Teach for America and leaves before the third year of test scores are reported.
It is all super but here is the laugh-out-loud deconstruction of Duncan-style logic:
“Discussion of teaching as a civil right often circles back around to the assertion that poor students have more lousy teachers than non-poor students. This assertion rests primarily on a model of circular reasoning. Follow along.
“A) Teachers are judged low-performing because their students score poorly on tests.
“B) Students low test scores are explained by the fact that they have low-performing teachers.
“Or, framed another way, this argument defines a low-quality teacher as any teacher whose students don’t do well on standardized tests. The assumption is that teachers are the only single solitary explanation for student standardized test scores. Nothing else affects those scores. Only teacher behavior explains the low scores. That’s it.
“Ergo, the best runners are runners who run down hills. Runners who are running uphill are slow runners, and must be replaced by those good runners– the ones we find running downhill. Or, the wettest dogs are the ones who are out in the rain, while the driest ones are the ones indoors. So if we take the indoor dogs outside, we will have drier dogs in the yard. While it rains.
“As long as we define low-quality teachers as those who teach low-achieving students (who we know will mostly be the children of poor folk), low-achieving students will always be taught by low-quality teachers. It’s the perfect education crisis, one that can never, ever be solved.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
LOL. Exactly.
The value added models currently in vogue thanks to Arne Duncan and the Obama Administration actually rate teachers of high achieving students just as poorly as teachers of low performing students. According to the Florida Department of Education’s teacher VAM rankings that were published in the Florida Times Union this week, the very worst teacher in Florida teaches ninth grade history in a pre-IB program. The second worst teacher teaches at a magnet school. I was rated the worst teacher at my school, the 14th worst in my district and the 146th worst in the state of Florida. I teach advanced placement world history to gifted students. Under growth models of student achievement, teachers at the very top and the very bottom end up looking the worst. Of course, any fifth grader could have predicted that. You can read more about Florida’s lowest performing teachers here http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/gosh-damn-thats-a-bad-vam/.
This is going on in Westchester County in New York as well. They just haven’t published our scores…yet. It truly is theater of the absurd.
Concerned Mom and Teacher: As you know, in NYC, they DID publish the rankings of teachers .
Somehow, all of this reminds me of the Salem witch trials, where the people accused were damned either way. Seems as if teachers in America have become the new “witches”.
Scares me , the direction that our country is moving in.
I still maintain that this process has been going on in business for quite some time. Teachers and other publicly paid employees didn’t see or feel the pinch until now. We knew “something” was going on but until the evidence of mindless attacks on public employee’s union security, we weren’t aware completely.
And think about it. They have kept us all busy with perpetual changes so we felt like our sense of self worth, of professionalism, of contribution, of intelligence, was being questioned, then kicked, and finally stomped into lower level existence. We are now told , often by the uneducated or the dropouts like Gates who manipulated data to be millionaires, that we are, indeed, stupid and undeserving of professional level pay. The older we are, the worse. We aren’t all savvy enough to DO the job of teaching CHILDREN and simultaneously keep up with perpetual tech nuance (which is always in flux and we are trying to actually teach). I found the whole process to be demeaning and insulting. Since first glance, I wanted to slap Michelle Rhee’s mouth of disrespect and superiority.
Our district spent a ton ofoney sending teachers to NYC to learn about a certain writing program. The author is well known. Her system is bizarre, too regimented, and boring. She is a terrible writer herself. But we bought in. We now don’t use her program. There are elements that are ok. But it isn’t worth the cost! She is wealthy, after only three years teaching. The rest of us who were diligently working are losing ground. Give me a break. It is constant marketing, nudging, rewriting, remarketing. We waste money on that and society doesn’t notice. Yet they convince society that teachers are overpaid leeches. Easy to do if other people have had their nonunion jobs thrown overboard, their salaries reduced, their overtime turned into comp time. On top of that we are bombarded by religious fundamentalists who hate science (but love their doctor’s ability to help them out, love their engineered highways, love their airplanes, etc) esp if they can condemn the weather forecasters and deny that people impact the air, water, and soil every single day.
The s garbage is funded by Koch Brothers and ALEC – who talk out of both sides of their mouths – stirring discord and division. Koch funds NOVA programs that show exactly what changes in the earth’s climate are occurring and the rapidness of those changes. And they say publicly that they support creationist “science” in schools.
We are all being manipulated by greed. They are trying to push things to a point where we no longer have the freedom to be creative or to think. We will be replaced instantly by a willing person who plays their game. Experience is a detriment.
They say, in this job market, if you don’t like it quit and get a better job. Right. Right. Right.
from the Reformish Lexicon:
failure. What U.S. public schools did before they were replaced by virtual charters run by the grifter brothers, cousins, and golfing buddies of Party members.
Secretary of Education. Expensive, high-end wind-up toy for plutocrats, qualified to oversee creative disruption of education by virtue of having no education experience whatsoever, for any such experience would ipso facto predispose him to oppose education deform; our guy on high.
teacher. 1. Pimply adolescent from a wealthy private school given five weeks of TFA training prior to spending two years doing Great Grates with dark-skinned children before going on to his or her real job in investment banking. 2. Low-wage worker hired to oversee a thousand students to make sure that they are obediently gritful and that their tablets are in working order. 3. Computer running computer-adaptive software (worksheets on a screen that reduce teaching to the bullet list). Motto: “Teaching, there’s an app for that.” See Powerpointing of U.S. education. Archaic usage: Whiny union member with ersatz degree from an education “school,” responsible for failure. See failure.
This should be put in extra large bold print as a full page ad in the NY Times, the Washington Post, The LA Times … it would get the real point across to the public at large in a FLASH! Corporate “ed reformers” would have “egg on their face” then!!!
Great piece from Peter, once again!
I learn my ,theories, postulates, axioms, and corollaries in 9th grade geometry – Muss Cooper. I learned all about the scientific method or design process in 9th grade science class -Mrs. Ash. 1966-67. I know these truths haven’t changed.
The edubullies who are trying to male these changes apparently were not paying attention. We have too much bad science driving this change.
Learned ^^^
This whole teacher rating side trip is more wrong than people know. The reformers have selected one very narrow band of the profession (teaching math and ELA, grades 3 to 8 only) and used it to broad brush the entire profession. Add in the narrowness of the tests and it is like berating ALL major league baseball players for sucking at BASEBALL because the pitchers have trouble throwing their curveball for strikes – all the time. Re-read and re-think what I just wrote and if you are not a teacher please understand that what the reformers claim is equally as absurd.
MLB Reformer: Hey all our ball players just suck these days. They are mostly all ineffective.
Fan: How can you tell?
MLB Reformer: Well, the pitchers just cant seem to throw their curveball for strikes all the time.
Fan: AYSM?
Fan: You mean my second baseman is not highly qualified?
MLB Reformer: Yes.
Fan: How can you tell?
MLB Reformer: Because the pitchers cant throw their curveballs for strikes.
Fan: Oh, really.
yup. This is certainly one of the MANY problems with VAM.
HQT is just codeword for MOOK, er, MOOC …
First,a disclaimer. I’m a lifelong educator and I voted for Obama. Big mistake. If you want to know how the White House works, read Robert Gate’s “Duty.” Yes, the Dept. of Defense isn’t the Dept. of Education but you have the same pols and know-nothing young staffers trying to micromanage the world. Ego…Duncan and Co.
A fascinating book. I just started it. See also George Tenet’s At the Center of the Storm, which details the falsification and distortion of intelligence by the neocon ideologues of the Bush v2 administration.
from the Reformish Lexicon
data-driven decision making. Rheformish numerology.
data wall. Public shaming device and demotivational tool; the equivalent, in schools, of the targets and production figures for pig iron, etc., continually broadcast by every Fascist regime.
VAM. Value-Added Measurement, or Vacuity-of-curriculum-and-pedagogy Acceleration Mechanism; means for enforcing the reduction of the complex, largely unquantifiable, humane enterprise of teaching and learning to a number intended to measure the extent to which a teacher has
a) effectively narrowed his or her curricula to the bullet list of “standards”;
b) based his or her pedagogy on extrinsic punishment and reward;
c) robotically parroted his or her canned scripts;
d) modeled for his or her students proper obsequiousness to superiors; and
e) identically milled his or her differing students to specification, via test preparation, thereby increasing their griftfulness (inuring them to the performance of meaningless tasks) and preparing them for the low-wage service jobs of the future.
See data-driven decision making and technocratic Philistinism.
In Philadelphia the school district is way ahead of the curve as it implements the Obama- Duncan plan for highly qualified teachers in every classroom. Under the recently announced Hite Action Plan, Anchor 3 (of 4) calls for “great” teachers in every school. The plan for achieving this “anchor” has also been announced: 10-13% pay cuts, benefit give backs, longer school day, end to prep time, and elimination of tenure and seniority.
Sadly only one thing stands in the way of implementation – the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery. Hopefully the Obama-Duncan crew is working out a waiver scheme to get around this problem which George Miller finds acceptable.
I’m sure that they are on it, GST!!!
Lordy lordy. Laughing through our tears.
Where does your union stand on this? Or have you been sold out like NY teachers.
The PFT is fighting the good fight but the district is managed by the state which claims the right, not yet acted on, to force a new contract on the teachers. In addition the state management takes the position that Phila. Teachers, unlike teachers in every other Pa. District, do not have the right to strike, and that a strike by them would forfeit their licenses.
Will the PFT take them to court?
If a contract is ever imposed the union will be in court. The real key, though, is for Gov. Corbett to be defeated.
ABC. Anyone but Corbett is the refrain.
You stole our motto:
Anyone But Cuomo
He wants all children to have highly qualified teachers?! What a pile of dung!!! They don’t HIRE highly qualified teachers… they only hire CHEAP teachers! Once you’re of a certain age & education, you’re no longer hire-able! Good grief! With a master’s degree in spec. ed., plus experience in gen. ed. & spec. ed., (14 years total), public school wouldn’t touch me. Hired into a Catholic school though; although they accept vouchers… but that’s a whole other discussion… at least I’m not in a charter school anymore.
This comment mirrors my professional life at the moment. 14 years teaching high school, MA + 45, I’m “of a certain age,” Catholic school is current job, not able to get back into a public school.
Over 40? Teaching in L.A.? Superintendent John Deasey has a “teacher jail” cell waiting for you.
Yes, and that is where they money needs to be. Not in the pockets of the already privileged. Not wasted on testing every student in every school with the goal of finding one bad teacher per 500-1000 teachers. Not on anything but equalizing the playing field for those students. But it won’t happen.
There are pockets of good and bad versions of teaching and learning. But they need to start with dealing with the most severe problems. Cities everywhere have problems like those I listed. It is never addressed honestly by politicians. We dance around the truth. Yet teachers’ lounges everywhere know the truth.
They talk about teachers being paid too much, yet they don’t discuss that dangling ~$100k in a teacher’s face might attract some but they often quit mid-year. The danger and disrespect are not worth the stress and feelings of constant failure.
I once taught in a private school. A man who taught there had come from Newark Schools where he said all he did was spend the day stoppingvkuds from jumping from windows and putting out fights. This was in 1975-76. Has this improved or changed? No.
The kids who need so much attention need parents with jobs, patents who are educated, parents can help their kids, kids with good, sleep, safety, respect, small classes, individual assistance, and consistency. Those teachers deserve the same.
This over the top testing is not good for any students and worst of all for those in need of reform.
I am not in favor of any of these tests that take on punitive rather than diagnostic uses. I think the CCSS is being utilized without common sense or developmental stages as guidelines.
To me learning is sequential and possibly a manner of managing it not tied to age needs to be considered. I have always supported the concept of Individually Guided Education elementary schools. But, because the students can’t be quantified and compared easily by traditional comparisons this has been rejected by the majority of schools.
There are many things to overcome. Example: the bumper sticker mentality of “my jock can beat up your honor roll kid” or vice versa “my school is better than yours” or “impression is everything” …the whole attitude of condescension and competition that segregates students, open doors for bullies and cliques and opportunities for all students brings about the political upheaval in our society. It seems to hav gotten worse.
I guess “highly qualified” means qualified to throw out any education theory and practice embraced before about 2001. Anything else is “old school”. This has always been a process but it used to take a 20 years cycle. Computers and data driven punitive philosophy has created more rapid and valid change. It is present in business as well as schools. The world of multi-trades per second has infiltrated the realm of education where kids are short term commodities. Shame on them.
I always hesitate is giving a post-modern critique of our current educational situation, but as I have noted in the past, whether we are talking about VAM scores, or some number on a standardized tests, or in this case the definition of highly qualified teaching, it all depends on who has the position and power to control the vocabulary we use. The post-modern slight of hand is founded on a governmental official (e.g.Arnie Duncan) having the power to objectify highly subjective traits.Sitting in his office and with a stroke of a pen he can define quality teaching, or quality schooling. Farther down the power chain, we have all kinds of educational specialists who have defined intelligence, defined what it means to be gifted, defined what it means to read at grade level. I could go on, but whenever a new metric walks through the school house door, the two post-modern questions that I always ask are: 1) who is benefiting from this new metric; and then 2) who developed the “objective” metric/standard/cut score, etc. Certainly, there are crude measures we could apply to a definition of quality teaching– knowledge of subject matter. But after that teaching is a highly subjective craft that defy’s single definitions (or a number) of quality. The answer to the two post-modern questions above is obvious: 1) the accountability/corporate/charter school lobby; 2) the accountability/corporate/charter school lobby in the name of Obama/Duncan administration — the source and function of “quality teaching.”
Modern day snake oil salesmen. They get to create the symptoms and the disease AND then they get to create and sell the snake oil cure.
Ethics aside, its actually a pretty slick business model.
Profile
50 +
PhD level pay scale
25 years experience in field
Question
What is the probability of scoring an Effective rating?
Depends what, where, and who you teach.
I’d love to see Arne Duncan and those other school “reformers” working with the population of students that many of we special educators work with daily at a specialized high school. Our students have multiple disabilities, many are non-verbal, are severely autistic, must be assisted with toileting and feeding. Many require special services ( OT, PT, and speech), and exhibit challenging behaviors.
A daily topic of conversation among teachers at this school is how we can meet the “standards” for our population of students, while effectively trying to reach IEP goals for the students. We are expected to teach these students at a general education high school level, though, in reality, many are at a pre-emergent, or emergent stage of learning readiness.
The methods that we use behind closed doors to reach our students are frowned at by the standards currently used to judge teachers, but these methods WORK for our student population.
Does that make us ineffective teachers, in the eyes of people like Arne Duncan?
Business practices are using these kinds of evaluations. I think the point is that now, the only way to achieve maximum profit for the one % is to rid the workplace of unions and stop demands from middle class workers and white collar layers from the job force, making mre workers accept low paying jobs with no security. I has happened to factory workers foe years as the iron, mining, chemical and paper industries have dried up. Many of those workers have voted against tax levies for schools for years. They have been convinced that public workers have a gravy train since the voters no longer have security in their jobs and they are willing to follow the lead of the business community. Anything to save them money. Taxes are “evil” but without them public things can’t thrive. Privatization is what they want. Then there will be no security at all. Except for the 1% who answer to no one. In enters the religious community who is anti-science. So homeschoolers a fires are fueled. In NC vouchers are wanted to fund religious and homeschoolers. No accountability. No rules. No expectations except by golly whatever the parent wants. So many are so afraid of tolerance and science. So many want absolute control of suppressing everything they don’t want their children exposed to…as if when they become adults they will remain insulated from everyone else. Maybe they will, on their farms or gated communities. Seems feudal to me.
In any case schools and other public services “must be” corralled in order to pretend that free markets are the only viable “American” way to thrive. We are the last obstacle to their dominance.
I was never a pro-union person until the powers that be began thinking students were widgets and teachers were just robotic delivery systems.
I see the dots connecting business practices, Six Sigma, so-called efficiency, to teaching practices and a throwing the “baby out with the bath water”. I am sad.
ESL
High Poverty
Renew School
How true!
In my opinion, it’s basically insane to expect students that are not yet speaking the language that subjects are taught in ( English) to perform at the same levels of students for whom that language is their native tongue.
In terms of high poverty, that is an issue that really needs to be addressed by our politicians and all of those interested in educational reform. If basic needs are not being met ( shelter, food, safety), how is it possible to expect students of families that are living at or below the subsistence level of income to perform well academically? The parents/guardians of these students need JOBS that allow for a home environment that will foster academic success for their children.
“Renewing” schools does not solve the problems of the society in which the schools are located. A school, after all, is just a building, and the student population is a reflection of the neighborhoods in which the school is located.
I often wonder why those that push for “educational reform” and are fond of blaming teachers and schools for “failing” students DON’T address these issues head on, and attempt to strive for societal solutions.
Could it be that it’s easier for these “reformers” to blame, instead of seeking REAL solutions?
NJ Teacher
You wouldn’t stand a chance in NYS.
If the “highly qualified ” teachers in schools located in middle class neighborhoods are put into those schools with higher poverty rate, they will then become the “low perfuming” teachers. If those ” low perfuming” teachers transfer to the schools with higher income families, they will indeed become the new ” highly qualified” teachers. Problem solved! just keep moving teachers between schools.
I don’t disagree with Greene. But I would note that people have been making the argument that poor students have lower quality teachers for a long time, for various reasons, and not just based on student test performance.
In the Campaign For Fiscal Equity lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that NYC teachers were sub-par (‘inadequate” was the term) when measured by certification rates, their results on content-specific certification exams, and experience. This was one of the key arguments that the plaintiffs to support the claim that NYC students weren’t receiving an “adequate” education as required by the NY Constitution. The court agreed.
Ironically, the State argued that the best way to measure the quality of NYC teachers was by their ratings as assigned by principals. Because an overwhelmingly high percentage of NYC teachers were rated as satisfactory and a minuscule percentage were terminated for performance reasons, the State argued, it couldn’t be the case that NYC teacher quality was inadequate. The plaintiffs (the Campaign for Fiscal Equity) argued that these facts were unreliable because it was extremely difficult for principals to fire bad teachers. Again, the court agreed.
A real bizarro world compared to today. The State arguing that the old rating and due process systems were adequate, and the education activists arguing that it was almost impossible to fire bad teachers.
Seems to me that city students have had some compromised learning environments for reasons outside of the school’s control. Danger in neighborhoods, having to have teachers walked to cars after dark, being advised to leave school and never work alone, intimidation by students, disrespect from students, little administrative support, parental disrespect, turnover, constant substitutes because people don’t want to deal with the dangers, etc. Even with really high salaries people go and are driven away.
Deb- you have touched on many of the realities of what public school teachers face, particularly in the inner city areas.
Until these issues are addressed and corrected, learning environments for the students that live in these neighborhoods will continue to be compromised.
Yes, and that is where they money needs to be. Not in the pockets of the already privileged. Not wasted on testing every student in every school with the goal of finding one bad teacher per 500-1000 teachers. Not on anything but equalizing the playing field for those students. But it won’t happen.
There are pockets of good and bad versions of teaching and learning. But they need to start with dealing with the most severe problems. Cities everywhere have problems like those I listed. It is never addressed honestly by politicians. We dance around the truth. Yet teachers’ lounges everywhere know the truth.
They talk about teachers being paid too much, yet they don’t discuss that dangling ~$100k in a teacher’s face might attract some but they often quit mid-year. The danger and disrespect are not worth the stress and feelings of constant failure.
I once taught in a private school. A man who taught there had come from Newark Schools where he said all he did was spend the day stoppingvkuds from jumping from windows and putting out fights. This was in 1975-76. Has this improved or changed? No.
The kids who need so much attention need parents with jobs, patents who are educated, parents can help their kids, kids with good, sleep, safety, respect, small classes, individual assistance, and consistency. Those teachers deserve the same.
This over the top testing is not good for any students and worst of all for those in need of reform.
I am not in favor of any of these tests that take on punitive rather than diagnostic uses. I think the CCSS is being utilized without common sense or developmental stages as guidelines.
To me learning is sequential and possibly a manner of managing it not tied to age needs to be considered. I have always supported the concept of Individually Guided Education elementary schools. But, because the students can’t be quantified and compared easily by traditional comparisons this has been rejected by the majority of schools.
There are many things to overcome. Example: the bumper sticker mentality of “my jock can beat up your honor roll kid” or vice versa “my school is better than yours” or “impression is everything” …the whole attitude of condescension and competition that segregates students, open doors for bullies and cliques and opportunities for all students brings about the political upheaval in our society. It seems to hav gotten worse.
Deb- I’ve been a teacher in the NYCDOE system for 12 years now.
As you say, even having a higher salary doesn’t compensate for the many indignities that we teachers suffer from, and aren’t addressed by these “reformers”.
One of the main topics of conversation among the teachers at my school is how soon we can get out, via retirement or some other means.
Sad, because I’ve yet to meet in my 12 years, even one person within the system that isn’t burnt out and has good things to say about working for the DOE.
Younger teachers leave as soon as they get experience for more conducive environments. Older teachers are staying in, simply because we have become vested, and don’t have a lot of time left within the system.
Given this kind of environment, I’m not hopeful for the teaching profession in NYC.
Who will suffer? The NYC public school students, unless the issues that you have brought up are addressed, and real solutions are implemented by those that have the power to address these issues, rather than their own self serving agendas.
In negotiations with administration our reps were told to stop whining, be quiet, and do our jobs. Our wages never went up again if we were at the top end. Our top salary was at 18 years. No steps after thst. We were flatlined in 2007. We were no longer tied to the base and index used here.
When we were confronted with a union vote on whether to take the paltry RttT funds we receive for Professional Dev we voted no. Our supt went to the papers saying we just didn’t want evaluated. The union backed off in negotiations. We were stuck with Pearson and other half hour training with no follow up. Our district was in a too quartile and didn’t get the training funds. We did hundreds of modules on our own time. We figured out how to implement as best as possible, on our own time. Our 4th grade team wasn’t a sharing group. It was simply awful. No consensus. Miserable. Almost 80% of teachers there are under 38 with less than 20 years experience. The rest have retired or were forced out by a tyrant principal.
Here is a paper looking at teacher sorting in New York in the late 90s. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/TeacherSorting.pdf
Thanks NY Teacher! It is not much better in NJ!
Teachers should have the same performance goals as students and other professionals. They should be accountable for the time they input into their learning, and the implementation of classroom strategy. The overall goal of a teacher is to teach students so that they can use their inner motivation and creativity to add to society. Sometimes the student grades on standardize test is not a clear resemblance of the teachers performance; however, it could be a factor in determining their competency in teaching.
And here is another looking at how the composition of teachers in a building changed with the end of forced bussing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg:http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=workingpapers
How come there is never any discussion of curriculum when it comes to evaluating teachers? Most public school teachers (myself included) are required to teach a mandated curriculum. If I teach that curriculum and my students still don’t do well on the standardized tests, how can they blame me? Wouldn’t that be the fault of the curriculum not meeting the needs of the students? I never see the connection between student test scores and curriculum mentioned.
How about teachers that are working outside of their license and content areas, as is common in NYC, particularly in areas such as special education?
If a teacher is placed into a position where he/she does not have the necessary education, credentials, or knowledge to work with a certain population of students, how is it possible to fairly rate such a teacher? I’m thinking of people that have come into teaching via alternate teacher hiring programs, and invariably are placed into “high needs” schools.
I would say it is not possible to be accurately evaluated.
APPR in NYS does not allow for valid, reliable, and fair rating of any teachers NONE. Any accurate rating is simply accomplished by chance or accident. PERIOD.
It seems like the lawsuit misses the mark a bit. The lawsuit seems to argue that civil rights is the right to a minimally adequate teacher, but it is fine to send all the above average teachers to the wealthy or non minority students.
One would think that civil rights would be the right to the equitable access to even distribution of teacher quality throughout a district. Which rarely happens, so I do believe there is a case for that.
I don’t know what lawsuit you’re talking about, but if you’re talking about the CFE lawsuit I referenced above, the focus was on a baseline level of adequacy because that’s what NY law says students have a right to. They don’t have a right to an “equal” education, they have a right to an “adequate” education.
Ask the teachers on this blog whether they support the idea of equitably distributing teachers within a district. I think they likely view the right to choose what school they work at differently than they view than students’ right to choose what school they attend. (As would I.)
I hadn’t read your comment, but now I have. When I read “civil rights”, I thought of the Vergara lawsuit currently in CA.
I do not think that the adequate that is separate and unequal follows the spirit of civil rights. School districts need to level the playing field by providing financial incentives to teach at less desirable schools where a harder job merits higher pay.
‘ “As long as we define low-quality teachers as those who teach low-achieving students (who we know will mostly be the children of poor folk), low-achieving students will always be taught by low-quality teachers. It’s the perfect education crisis, one that can never, ever be solved.” ‘
Do you understand that Arnie? Duh!
This circular logic is the entirety of $1B Gates MET “study.” Read through the executive summary if you don’t have time – it’s clear as day.
If you want yo be a better teacher, just teach children whose parents have more money!
precisely
I just read this blog. It is spot on.
http://simoneryals.blogspot.com/2014/02/im-one-of-worst-teachers-in-my-state.html?m=1