Brian Crosby, a teacher in California, notes the dramatic decline in the number of people enrolling in teacher preparation programs. We know why. Loss of autonomy. Scripted curricula. Low pay. Teacher-bashing by politicians and the media.
Yet some people persevere. Why?
“California needed more than 21,000 teachers to fill positions this school year because the number of teacher candidates has declined by more than 55%, from 45,000 in 2008 to 20,000 in 2013, as reported by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
“With fewer people going into the teaching field, shouldn’t the powers that be examine how to increase interest in it?
“Working conditions and salary clearly are not selling points.
“Much of the negative aspects of teaching stem from the lack of control teachers have over their own profession.
“Schools are still structured top-down as they have been for a century, with teachers viewed more as factory workers, not master-degreed professionals who can problem-solve without the intervention of those outside the classroom.
Teachers know how to improve their profession, but do not have a voice in the matter, impotent in their subservient roles. How many college students would gravitate toward such a future career?
“It wasn’t that long ago that the concept of site-based management was seriously championed as a way to involve teachers in the decision-making process at a school. But that grand idea vanished.
“So, education bureaucrats continue to mandate so-called reforms such as Common Core standards and standardized testing that teachers are expected to deliver with little input….
“Let’s face it. We all hope that selfless people join the military to protect our country. We all hope that decent people become firefighters and police officers to protect our society. And we all hope that quality people join the teaching ranks to mold our future commodity — children.
“But hoping will only get so far. If schools expect a line outside human resources of people applying for jobs, then a major overhaul of the teaching profession has to happen. And it will take teachers themselves to blast the clarion call since those in the upper echelon of education show no interest in changing the status quo.
Is there any chance of that happening in our lifetime?
“One can only hope.”
Because many people, especially those sending their children to private schools, view a teacher as a highly paid baby sitter for poor families and they do not want to pay for this service any longer. I have decided to finally retire after 44 years because the system is so messed it by all the involvement by the rich and powerful. I still love working with the young adults and we have a good time learning mathematics. I stopped teaching to the test a couple years ago and I focused on teaching young adults how to work collaboratively to solve interesting problems, instead. A Funny thing happened when I was able to convince most of our high school math teachers to do the same. For the first and only time our lower middle income family school’s students scored high enough to be the ONLY COMPREHENSIVE ORANGE COUNTY CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOL to reach the bar set for API and AYP by the government! I guess we should have focused on our students sooner and not on the test, but now all my colleagues are focusing on the SBAC! TIME TO GO AND DO SOMETHING ELSE.
I think you have hit on a truth that some high performing districts have espoused all along. With a rich, engaging program, students thrive and the tests validate that belief. Toot your horn loud and clear even if no one seems to be listening.
“. . . the tests validate that belief.”
Um, no 2o2t the tests don’t validate that belief. The results of the tests are just an incidental side effect of having a well thought out teaching and learning process (until recently known as curriculum and a quality teacher).
Invalidities (test results) cannot validate anything. It is a logical impossibility.
I get what you are saying, Duane. My point is that if you give tests geared to the experience of a certain class of kids, you are likely to get higher scores from that group of kids. Any child who is exposed to a rich curriculum over a long period of time is most likely to perform better than the child who has endured a narrow test prep curriculum. Does the test tell you anything useful? No. My druthers would be to eliminate them. Making the goal of education scoring well on standardized tests is not going to translate into the ability to be a confident, contributing member of a democratic society.
But then you have elitist douchebags like Roland “Two Tier” Fryer, who think that until any school delivers high test scores, they should
1) have constant testing and test prep—“they need to be tested every day.”
2) denied any parts of a rich curriculum—art, music, dance, drama, “Shakespeare.”
It somehow eludes Roland “Two Tier” Fryer that if you continuously to No.1, they’ll never qualify for for the rich curriculum described in No. 2.
And that if you start with No. 1 from DAY ONE, the student will get higher scores he and his corporate reform allies are so overly obsessed with.
During an interview on C-SPAN, when asked about Florida’s intense emphasis on standardized testing, Harvard Economics Professor—and the privatization industry’s bought-paid-for theorist—-Roland Fryer bloviates the hypocrisy of the elite… (which, after growing up in poverty, Fryer has joined and now sadly parrots their specious, elitist cant).
When it comes to testing requirements, Fryer wants a two-tiered system —
TIER ONE: The elite kids in the suburbs—including his own—should be excused from the whole testing and test prep regime, and in its place, get Shakespeare, art, drama, music, and other enriching electives.
TIER TWO: Meanwhile, the urban kids in failing schools should get TEST PREP… followed by TESTING… followed by more TEST PREP… followed by MORE TESTING… followed by MORE TEST PREP…. and on and on and on…
He says urban children in “failing schools”…” ought to be tested every day” in lieu of the rich curriculum that their peers in suburbs—again, including Fryer’s own children— receive and enjoy.
Fryer has it exactly backwards… a big part of the reason the kids in the suburbs are “high-performing” is that, from DAY ONE, they have a rich curriculum devoid of constant test prep and testing, and that’s due to massive advantages in funding that they enjoy over urban schools.
Watch the video:
http://www.c-span.org/video/?304111-1/roland-fryer-education
(it’s somewhere between 48:00 and 50:00… it varies every time I try to find it)
TRANSCRIPT:
(somewhere between 48:00 and 50:00)
———————————————–
———————————————-
MODERATOR: “Well, as a follow-up to that, this question from the audience is:
” ‘What would you say to Governor Scott of Florida regarding his emphasis on standardized tests as a way to rate all of our schools? And that’s what’s happening in Florida right now.’ ”
–
ROLAND FRYER: “Yeah, ya know… I… I think… uhmm… I haven’t figured out why no one has tried out a two-tier system for standardized testing, soooo, you know… if you’re-… I live in Concord, Massachusetts, which is a wonderful suburb of Boston. My wife and I just moved there, annnnd… ya know, I actually don’t want standardized testing in Concord because it will crowd out my kids learning Shakespeare and those types of things, things that I never really read…. uhmm…
“However, in the schools that are… failing, we really do need standardized tests, because at least, we know… where they are, and that’s really, really important. Just because we don’t test them, doesn’t mean they’re not failing.
“And so I would actually say if schools are high-performing—high-performing suburban schools, or high-performing schools—ought to be able to say,
” ‘You know that? 90% of our kids have passed the test in 2008. Let’s not take the test for two or three years, so that we can focus on more different and more wholistic types of instruction.’
“For schools who are in the bottom, I think that you oughta test those kids every day. I think we just need to be (unintelligible) to be (unintelligible)”
–
MODERATOR: “Well this (next question) is something… be careful what you ask for… you asked for this… but…
” ‘Would you expand on the reasons for those differences between Math and Reading on standardized tests (between socio-economic groups). and the reasons for those differences?’ ”
–
FRYER: “I have no idea. Uhhm.. That’s the great thing about being a professor. You can say you don’t know and keep talking…. ”
——————————————————
This was an opening for Fryer to acknowledge the difficulties in education posed by poverty, but because he’s following the corporate reform playbook, Fryer won’t go there. Even given his own first-hand experiences with poverty, he’s totally bought the corporate reform agenda. Someone at the HARVARD CRIMSON should do a take-down of Fryer based on the above quote.
Here’s an answer from Ravitch’s “REIGN OF ERROR”:
RAVITCH (p. 55-56) : “Poverty is not an excuse. It’s a harsh reality. Poverty matters. Poverty affects children’s health and well-being. It affects their emotional lives an their attention spans, their attendance, and their academic performance. Poverty affects their motivation and their ability to concentrate on anything other than day-to-day survival. In a society of abundance, poverty is degrading and humiliating.
“… it is easy for people who enjoy lives of economic ease to say that poverty doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to THEM. It is an abstraction. For them, it is a hurdle to overcome, like having a bad day, or a headache, or an ill-fitting jacket.”
“After more than a decade of No Child Left Behind, we now know that a program of more testing and more accountability leaves millions of children behind and does not eliminate poverty or close achievement gaps. The growing demand for more testing and more accountability in the wake of NCLB is akin to bringing a blowtorch to put out a fire.
“More of the same is not change. The testing, accountability, and choice strategies after the illusion of change while changing nothing. They mask the inequity and injustice that are now so apparent in our social order. They do nothing to alter the status quo. They preserve the status quo. They are the status quo.”
Speaking of parents like Fryer. Ravitch says,
RAVITCH: “An educated parent will not accept a school where many weeks of every school year were spent preparing for state tests. An educated parent would not tolerate a school that cut back or eliminated the arts to spend more time preparing for state tests.”
Here’s an account of the non-stop test prep that Roland “Two Tier” Fryer, Jr. wants for poor kids of color—but not his own kids, mind you. It’s from Emily Talmadge Kennedy, a former teacher at Brooklyn Ascend, one of the militaristic, no excuses charters that Roland wants to subject low income minority children to, while his own kids out in Concord are studying Shakespeare:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2015/09/teaching-based-on-doug-lemovs-robot.html
EMILY TALMADGE KENNEDY: “Starting from Christmas break onwards, you were only to teach these test prep lessons that I had nothing to do with. I had no business in deciding how we were going to teach these, or what we were going to teach. I was really just administering what they had given me. I just remember one morning putting the projector on, and putting the overhead, and looking around the room. I had one kid falling asleep. They just looked miserable. They looked bored. I was miserable. I was bored. I remember just feeling like I can’t teach this lesson right now. I remember turning the overhead off. We need to do something that actually matters, that’s actually going to get these kids going. I don’t remember what we did, but it was this sense of I can’t do this. This is not fair to them.
“It was just so clearly all the way through, not about the kids. It was so blatantly obvious that it was about the scores that they were going to get on these tests. We weren’t teaching writing. We weren’t giving them any time that they needed to rest.
“All the conversation we’d have during our meetings was about had they mastered this concept? It’s going to be on the state exam. This concept might be on the state exam. When they ended up taking the state exam, I don’t know how they did.
“I remember there were certain questions that asked them to use the concepts that we had tried to teach them. We basically were teaching them these tricks and formulas. I remember one was number patterns. We had to teach them very explicitly the way to find the answer to a number problem problem. A number problem question is you have a series of numbers like four, eight, twelve, sixteen. What’s the next number? The way to find it is you had to teach them step by step, follow what I do. Step one. Look at the first two numbers. Step two. Find the difference between the first two numbers. Step three. Write down the rule. Step four. Apply the rule to the final number. Let’s say the rule we figured out was add four. That was how they had to go about doing it every time.
“They got to the state exam, and I remember the question was two, four, eight, basically it was multiplying by two so it didn’t work to use that formula. You’d just subtract the first two numbers. My kids, at least, they had no idea what to do because they didn’t know the concept. They didn’t know the idea of what it meant to look for a pattern. All they knew was this formula.
“To me it was, of course, they got that one wrong. The formula is not going to work all the time. That’s how math works. Sometimes you have to be able to look into it, and think critically about it. [Sighs] There were a lot of low points.
“There was a low point where this little boy, K_____, got suspended for the fourth time. He just wasn’t that bad. I had seen kids in the Bronx that were bad, that got in fights, and they were disrespectful. [K_____] wasn’t like that. This little boy was just a busy body. He tapped his feet all the time. He would make these little humming noises while he worked. He was really bright. He was really sweet. Because we had this very rigid behavior system that we absolutely had to stick to, we had to mark every time he talked. We had to mark every time he turned around in his seat. He had to go the Dean. It broke my heart because this poor kid basically lost the majority of his third grade year. He didn’t have to. If we had been teachers that were allowed to actually teach, and actually allowed to do at least what I learned how to do when I got my Masters in Education, then when I did my first three years.
“Actually really get to know a kid, and really figure out what’s going to work for them, he could’ve been fine. Even if seventy five percent of Brooklyn Ascend scholars passed the state test, I can tell you for a fact that there were some of them who we, personally, completely failed. Completely and utterly failed them because we did nothing for them, because they didn’t fit this total compliance model. They got completely left behind.
“That’s one thing that I wish I’d thought more about. I was a special education teacher to start out, so I have a special place in my heart for these special education kids. That’s what I’m most passionate about, and most committed to. A school like Brooklyn Ascend, maybe it does work for the kids who can do it, the kids who can keep their hands still, and who tend to sit and nod, and say things back. It doesn’t work for the kids who have learning disabilities, or have special education needs. It just doesn’t.
“I had another little girl in my class. To me it was just blatantly obvious that she had dyslexia. She would flip her numbers. She would flip her words. There was nothing I could do. She had to go through the exact same structure, exact same I Do, We Do, You Do lessons, with the same worksheets, and the same thing as everybody else. She’ll probably get left back. She’s probably going to have to repeat third grade. That’s another thing at Brooklyn Ascend is that they’re very proud of the fact that they don’t do social promotions. Very proud of the fact that if the kid doesn’t meet the cut off, that they have to repeat the grade.”
———————-
Brought to you, courtesy of Roland “Two Tier” Fryer, Jr. (and others)
Keep sellin’ out, Roland!!!!!
This professor represents Harvard? How embarassing!
I totally agree that one can only hope. The teaching profession has been hit with all those who think they know how to reform the educational system. When the real reformers are those who know what students need in order to excel…the teachers!
And yet we, the teachers, allow this to go on with little real challenge. We are not marching in the streets and shutting down cities and legislative bodies like our colleagues in Mexico or Australia. We passively accept whatever is done to us and often become advocates, cheerleaders, and trainers of policies and programs designed for our own destruction.
Until we are ready to put some skin in the game, to suffer and take some damaging hits for our cause little will change. We can partner with parents and others but sitting and waiting to be rescued by Opt Out or some other movement is not going to win back our profession, although it may change the dialogue.
Unions were formed for a reason, with blood, sweat, and tears. We need to first take back out unions or form new ones that fight for us and our profession and then we need to hit the streets and cause a ruckus. It’s the only thing that has ever brought about lasting change in this country.
We must fight to gain control of teaching and soon or we will lose it forever.
I agree because teachers do tend to be passive. Sitting back and expecting that their union will fight for them since they are paying them to do so. Unfortunately, unions sell membership out sometimes and you have to change your Union. Those teacher activist are the first ones the powers that be try to get rid of, hence , teacher jails. Older, experienced teachers next since they know their rights and could cause trouble. What’s left is younger, compliant teachers that go along with the program. Teachers as a whole have to unite and stop this destruction of their profession. Or else!
Agree with Chris and Paula. Teachers have to fight to keep their unions in line as well.
Diane, let me help Mr. Crosby out
1. Teachers earn on average $57K/yr in salary
2. Teachers receive another 15-20% in pension contributions from their districts over and above salary.
3. Teachers’ health benefits are the most generous of any industry.
4. Teachers only work ~200 days/year.
5. Teachers don’t work holidays (can’t tell you how many Xmas, Thanksgiving, New Years I spent on my sub as I’m sure other professionals like doctors/police do as well)
6. Kids and their parents love teachers. Why they are always bringing them all kids of gifts.
Yesterday, I attended the fundraiser for my kids’ school where the kids run laps and receive pledges from friends/family for running these laps. An elementary school raised about $80K in pledges and gets to keep $40K for themselves – quite impressive. The PA announcer said toward the end “Kids, let’s thank your excellent teachers for all that they do”. I have nothing wrong with that statement per se. But let me compare it to my field: consulting. We have clients who hire us for the work we provide but they get to choose who to hire. Kids don’t get to choose their public schools. To make a fair analogy, our clients would be forced to hire just our firm without any other options. And then pretend that:
1. We asked our paying clients to hold a fundraiser to provide us with additional funds over and above the agreed contract (per pupil spending).
2. In that fundraiser, the client performed the work (running) and received pledges from their friends/family..
3. The clients know that many of us are not very effective but their is nothing the client can do to swap consulting firms.
4. If the client ever tried to measure our effectiveness to justify having a choice in consulting firms, we actively block with all our might any objective measurement of our performance. Instead, we demand that we, the consultants, rate ourselves as 99%+ effective in every consulting arrangement across this nation. We then tell the client how lucky he/she is to have such great consultants.
5. We, the mandatory consulting firm, have the fundraising coordinator ask the client to thank us (the consultants) for what a wonderful job we do even though the client has no other choice in who to hire.
That about sums up the state of education today. But yet, your readers are still saying “whoa is me….”. This would never happen in a million years in the field of consulting.
Virginia, in most cities in the US, you can’t live there in a salary of $57,000. That is in no way adequate for a professional.
I feel bad for you. You must be a very shallow person if you think teachers are in it for the money.
Incidentally, I get paid significantly more than $57,000 and my job is significantly easier. I work with legal documents that don’t talk back to me.
dianeravitch and Dienne: requiring someone to actually read and grapple with the info contained above just requires too much “rigor” and “grit.”
Forget about not understanding math and substituting rheephorm 3DM [data-drivel decision making] for the ethical and accurate use of numbers & stats. For example, “4. Teachers only work ~200 days/year.”
From personal experience, teachers are often called in (or come in on their own; see P.S.) on “off” days for various reasons. And as for the amount of time spent during scheduled days—
From a thread on this blog, yesterday, Firstgrademonkey:
[start]
Another big issue that needs to be addressed is the massive amount of overtime that is required of teachers. If one adds these hours and then divides these added hours into amount paid, new teachers make around $13.00 per hour. One of my teacher friends commented the other day that teaching is actually two jobs. The first is the teaching itself and the second is everything else: the planning and lesson preparation, parent meetings and communication, faculty and training meetings, data entry and disaggregation of data. Both jobs require full time hours. All these extra hours are volunteer hours.
During the school year, I often arrive at the building by seven, leave between 5:30 or six, and do more work after dinner. I often work Saturdays as well. This week I’ve spent a little over 54 hours of time working in the building and I will be going into work tomorrow as well. Even with extra hours teachers are often feel like they cannot get it all done. It leaves us exhausted and frazzled. We have a running joke in my district. The district will leave the building open this Saturday so I can work for free. The teachers actually petitioned that the building be available on weekends as outside teacher responsibilities prevent teachers from completing the needed work during the week.
In many districts, elementary teachers get no prep time and must also do playground duty during recess. During inclement weather teachers also lose their lunch break. It is difficult to grab a drink of water or use the restroom.
[end]
On Rhee World, facts don’t “count” so you don’t have to be “accountable” for getting it right like those of us on Planet Reality feel obligated to do. Just from personal experience I can attest that in the two LAUSD schools I worked in the above was simply assumed to be part of a teacher’s working conditions. One of the two or three most important reasons why I did not follow the well-meaning (and I am not bragging, in some instances strong) suggestions of many of the teachers I worked with to enter the teaching profession.
And from the same newspaper that contained the Brian Crosby piece, in today’s [9-26-15] print edition I provide simply the first part of another story:
[start]
Glendale High teachers began their day Friday morning by educating parents, not students, about their desire to secure a pay raise with the Glendale Unified school district.
Nearly 20 teachers wore red and held banners that read, “Fair Settlement Now” as some handed out fliers to parents who were dropping off their children at school.
The fliers featured a graph showing the disparity between the cost of inflation that has occurred over the past several years compared to pay hikes Glendale teachers have received.
Many drivers honked in support of the teachers as they drove near the school.
During the 2013-14 school year, Glendale teachers received a 3% pay raise — the first for local teachers in about seven years as the state grappled with the brutal recession, and teachers — along with administrators and classified employees, including secretaries — across the state went without raises.
Teachers and other staff did secure automatic salary bumps that kicked in during those years as they acquired more years of experience or earned degrees, however.
But for many educators, a 3% raise in the last eight years is no match to the 13% estimated cost-of-living increase that has occurred, teachers say, and they are seeking a salary bump to make up the difference.
[end]
Link: http://www.glendalenewspress.com/news/tn-gnp-glendale-teachers-rally-for-cost-of-living-raise-20150925,0,3269595.story
I urge viewers of this blog to read the whole piece. If one weighs the significance and import of different parts, then—IMHO—it agrees with the newspaper’s previous piece by Brian Crosby and with the comments by Firstgrademonkey. *Hint for those that brag about their world-class expertise in pawning themselves off as experts in data analytics to paying customers: mitigating factors don’t mean you can ignore the most significant and telling ones. I am referring to REAL expertise in using numbers & stats & info, not RHEEAL expertise.
Game, set, match, dianeravitch and Dienne. And they didn’t even have to match a 13th percentile with a 90th topped off with a hero.
Go figure… [a numbers/stats joke]
😎
P.S. I couldn’t help but add these two comments from the same thread that included the three paragraphs I reproduced above:
2old2teach: “I ran into a retired teacher a while back who had taught a couple of my kids. We got into a discussion about retirement and the free time it afforded us. She laughingly shared that her kids used to say that she was married to the district.”
Firstgrademonkey: “I have laughingly asked my administrator how much is the rent as I practically spend most of my time there.”
Not uncommon.
The above are not hard to find. Is it just me, or is it considered a fundamental feature of 21st century cage busting achievement gap crushing rheephorm to not do one’s homework anymore?
😧
As a teacher, I spent countless hours attending after school meetings, events in evening or weekends, served on numerous committees for which I received no remuneration. I did it as salaried professional.
As an ESL teacher, I worked with the poorest of the poor. For several years I spent at least several weeks tutoring a young Hispanic girl with reading problems, but with a strong desire to make it. My payment: tamales, satisfaction that she was not going fall through the cracks, and a thank you “for not leaving me dumb.” She went to community college and has a decent job in CAD.
In LA, cleaning help, gardeners, and caregivers make $25 an hour and require no university degrees, or even high school degrees. Most do not even speak English.
People who feel that public school teachers in classrooms often without AC in 100 degree heat, and most often trying to teach in these conditions, over 50 young students in room meant to hold 30, and who must give out meds since there are no nurses on staff, all the horrors of now being a teacher….should give it a try.
How about it Virginia…wanna trade places with a teacher?
virginia – I have been reading you all over the net and I get the feeling you’re on a reform payroll. I get to the point that I no longer read whatever you write because it is the same old same old lies.
It is clear Virginia understands nothing about the demands and commitment required to be a teacher. Her opinions come from a place of bias and misunderstanding peppered with a smirk.
Donna:
good catch.
But he is very very good at one thing, and that thing is: exposing the bankruptcy—pedagogical, moral, managerial, fiscal—of the entire self-styled “education reform” movement.
Not unexpected when he himself exposed Michelle Rhee as a complete fraud—by the numbers no less—and then proclaimed this very exemplar of fraud as his hero!
Rheeally! And in the most intensely and Johnsonally sorts of ways too!
😱
Yet nary an admission of foot-in-mouth disease but, to paraphrase the NJ Comm. of Ed., he just doubles down on whatevers and finds new feet to stuff in.
Credit where credit due. He is obviously a big fan of John Steinbeck. It’s just that a friendly warning against is not the same as encouragement.
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.”
I guess too much of that CCSS ‘closet reading’ of informational text when the lights go out and he’s run out of flashlight batteries.
Rescue party, anyone?
😎
Perhaps she (as well as “John”) is one of those ringers recruited by StudentsFirst to hijack debate and introduce lies, distractions and misdirection to these discussions.
http://www.alternet.org/education/anti-union-group-stedentsfirst-launched-astroturf-campaign-undermine-teachers
“2. Teachers receive another 15-20% in pension contributions from their districts over and above salary.”
Even though the above is completely inaccurate in TN, that’s not the main point. The main point is that teaching differs from all other jobs out there: Teachers need to energize, dscipline, entertain kids. This cannot be done well for more than 4 hours a day.
The fact is that US teachers work more than twice as much as their colleagues in Finland, and I heard of only one country where teachers work more than in the US: Chile. Here is part of the stats
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/06/25/number-of-the-week-u-s-teachers-hours-among-worlds-longest/
Virginia,
I was a consultant. Made $300 an hour just like you and others like lawyers and doctors do. What are you mucking about teacher pay, it’s horrible!?
And Diane,
I must take you to task for this statement, “We all hope that selfless people join the military to protect our country. We all hope that decent people become firefighters and police officers to protect our society. And we all hope that quality people join the teaching ranks to mold our future commodity — children.”
Children are commodities to be molded? WTF? Ahhh, N.O. Not in my book. Are they commodities so Raytheon can have someone operate on a new weapon system? Or against? Are they commodities for the private penal system? Are they commodities so teachers to earn an income? (and I’m a teacher asking this!) What, exactly, kind of commodity are children?
I think that’s messed up, just saying.
“And we all hope that quality people join the teaching ranks to mold our future commodity — children.”
That hit me too. All I could think was that Diane was reading and writing so much that the words leaked out in the wrong place and context. It sounded like a phrase that should have a snark alert attached and/or credited to a reformista of the corporate class.
Have you thought about the fact that other professions are underpaid?
Let’s give this problem 2 more years, and the brilliant new idea will surface to save the day: let’s expose the kids to true 21st century education: online education to the rescue.
Kids, of course, cannot stay home, so they will be divided up into classes of 100, with one or two armed guards in each who’ll make sure kids sit still while playing with interactive software prepared by Microsoft. Kids will take daily tests, prepared by Pearson, to measure how much they digested the prescribed daily dosage of facts, formulas and concepts.
So you see, those who caused the teacher shortage are not idiots. They know exactly why they are doing what they are doing.
“Where we went wrong”
Where we erred was giving
The benefit of the doubt
To folks who make a living
By counting others out
AMEN, SomeDAM Poet.
“Where we erred was giving
The benefit of the doubt
To folks who make a living
By counting others out”
Are you saying, we played too nice? I agree. And we still do it. We need to stop that.
“. . . shouldn’t the powers that be examine how to increase interest in it?”
That vaunted free market is screaming: “Raise salaries, benefits and professional autonomy (well maybe not the last one but might as well try).”
The problem isn’t that we need to raise interest in teaching – if someone needs an external motivator to induce them into teaching, they probably ought not to be a teacher (which is, to clarify, not to say that teachers shouldn’t be paid and paid well – they should, in line with their education and experience like any professional).
The problem is that we need to stop decreasing interest in teaching. There are lots of people who would like to be teachers but they’ve been scared off by the tests, the Core, the evaluations, and all the other top-down nonsense.
I hope this change to an educator focused profession with decent wages like pice and firefighters happens. If not, we’ll lose a lot of students who will only be trained to rotely take tests instead of taught to be well rounded educated members of the community. As the Pope said, you have to have social responsibility in society.
I think the emphasis on how the reforms will discourage young people from entering the teaching profession is very helpful in grabbing the attention of those with only a lukewarm interest in education reform. Who will teach the children when all the teachers have gone?
TFA, at least that’s what many of the “reformers” hope.
“Who will teach the children when all the teachers have gone?”
As I wrote earlier, computers will “teach” the kids. That’s the reason fro the teacher shortage.
“Shock and Awe”
When teachers are all gone
The bots will teach the children
Shock them when they’re wrong
Like Dr. Stanley Milgram
” And we all HOPE that quality people join the teaching ranks to mold our future commodity — children.”
Our state superintendent says that all we need if FAITH.
If you add in CHARITY, what do you have?
(other than stripper names)
It kaes 3 months for a out of state teacher to get considered for a California credential. It’s easier get immigrant papers through USCIS, I know, I’ve done both.
The teacher shortage was highly predictable. Who wants to work for people who are not as smart as you. My middle school students understood better than our “leaders” what the job entails and frequently told me they would never teach.