Amidst a faltering economy, Walmart announced it would close 269 stores. That’s only a small portion of its 11,000 stores. About 10,000 workers will lose their low-wage jobs.
The Walton family won’t suffer. Every one of them is a billionaire.
But many towns will suffer. When Walmart arrives in a town, the mom-and-pop stores close. They can’t beat Walmart’s prices. The local businesses are shuttered. When Walmart closes, the town is left without an economy, its Main Street desolate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Now if we could just get the other 10,731 stores to close we’d be getting somewhere. Yes, it would be incredibly painful for the low-wage workers who work there, but it would be better in the end. Our addiction to cheap junk and lousy employment supplied by places like Walmart is a drug that is preventing us from finding better ways (and there are better ways). Drug withdrawal is hell, but most of those who survive it say life is better drug-free.
Hi Dienne
I really love your expression. it is absolutely true that:
“Drug withdrawal is hell, but most of those who survive it say life is better drug-free.” =
“Our addiction to cheap junk and lousy employment supplied by places like Walmart is a drug that is preventing us from finding better ways (and there are better ways).” May
Absolutely right, Diane. They are exploiters of people and destroyers of communities. Anyone who has to shop at a big box store can go to Costco which is unionized and pays decent wages and benefits.
I am sorry for the employees, but Walmart is taking advantage of all of us. Because they don’t pay a living wage, their employees can qualify for Medi cal. That means we’re subsidizing these billionaires.
I want to have health care for people, but in this case, Walmart must pay!
And many of them qualify for food stamps, too.
Yes, we are subsidizing those billionaires.
They said they’re opening a bunch more though- I don’t know if that;s true.
The stores here look ratty and run-down. The heirs should maybe concentrate on that business they inherited rather than running US education policy 🙂
Just like in Walmart-underwritten corporate education reform, it’s all about “choice.”
If people “choose” to eliminate mom-and-pop local businesses by “choosing” Walmart stores, and Walmart then “chooses” to leave them high and dry, the only folks that have any blame whatsoever are those that made the bad “choices”—
That’s us, the vast majority. Or as Chiara put it, “choice but no voice.” When we make the “choices” they approve of and benefit from, then according to them we’re smart and savvy customers. When those “choices” turn toxic—for us—then we made bad “choices.”
Any surprise that the Walton family and other rheephormsters like Bill Gates and Eli Broad are quite happy with limiting us to choices that are “win-win” for them and often the opposite for almost everyone else?
That’s the way I see it…
😎
Walmart- Where an elderly U.S. Vet greats you at the door asking about your day, but nobody looks up from their cellphone, or motorized wheelchair on the way to the McDonald’s inside.
Rolling back prices and quality of life.
The carts are sticky and it smells like a hospital.
You gotta go back to a time when there was a five and dime – now you have the Super Store – need you implore – explore plastic.
They got stuff they’d label as fantastic, but in actuality it has little functionality practically some if it’s a catastrophe. Like an extra hand in poker for an amputee – dealers shuffling frantically like dyslexia just got asked to dissect a BiG word in a spelling bee.
Walton’s are snakes but call themselves lizards – because that’s what chameleons claim to be.
Clean up education aisle six, wait that’s not your job,
Please do not discount the impact of losing these minimum wage jobs. Is it a faltering economy or the wish not to redistribute income by the Walton family? During the Depression, my mother’s father kept working three days a week. The owners of the business were able to keep the workers employed but each at a reduced amount of time. I do not know but maybe the owners even took a cut. Walmart is laying off its own customers in a sense and will not be paying them $15.00 an hour. As the nation works its way down and into a competitive world economy, the more the U. S. will resemble any third world country. This was foreseeable when Reagan became president and when Clinton pushed free trade agreements.
I tried explaining to students the need to be educated or well-trained in order to have options in the future. I also thought that perhaps my special education students, many of whom had service-related skills, might just have an advantage over the average student who would get a B. A. but have no practical skill. Hopefully some of those laid off will be able to find another service they can provide in their Walmart deprived world.
The mom and pop stores weren’t very truth be told. And they were really expensive and often over charged.
Dr Ravitch, From what I’ve read, the Main Street is desolate about two years after Walmart opens in a locale.
booklady, I have seen the desolate Main Streets. Mom and Pop give up their store and become greeters at Walmart.
They tried to open in an area of Brooklyn about a decade ago. It wasn’t an affluent neighborhood but they weren’t suffering, either. Things were going alright. We voted down the “request”.
Another thing to keep in mind is the domino effect, booklady. Had the Walmart opened in that neighborhood, it would have effected the smaller store owners in other neighborhoods, as well.
I don’t believe that this is an altruistic endeavor. Maybe I’m wrong…?
Diane and Dienne are absolutely correct. Watch “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price”
Wow! I just watched the entire hour and a half Walmart video even though it is well past time to hit the sack. Everyone should watch this. Thanks, Teacher Ed. I am passing this on.
If the wal-marts in our county closed, I think that the mom&pop stores would see more customers come through and buy things. Our Main Street is suffering but still alive. Maybe some of the vacancies would get full and maybe the small businesses would have a better chance. I hope something like that is possible in the areas where these 269 stores are closing.
Diane, so do you want Wal-mart’s or not? I can’t figure out this post. Does the same logic apply to a Best Buy opening/closing? What about a mom and pop store? Maybe the gov’t should make a list of each type of store that we need and appoint a civilian employee to run that store. I hear that’s what Bernie Sanders wants….
Virginia, I want more Costco, fewer Walmart. Costco pays its workers well and they have a union. It has high-quality stuff, while Walmart has cheap shlock. I have been in a Walmart exactly three times and left each time feeling dirty. I went to look for a specific item and left buying nothing. Walmart sells cheap junk and treats workers like dirt.
I go to both Costco and Wal-mart every week. I agree many of Wal-mart’s workers are about as low-skilled as they come. Thank goodness for the self-checkout lines. But Wal-mart doesn’t sell just junk. They sell name brand packaged goods (no different than Costco or any Whole Foods in this area) and often their bakeries are just as nice as any grocery store (get lots of kids’ cakes there). The quality of their produce, meat and other items is typically based on their target consumer (higher in more affluent areas, lower in areas that can’t afford/don’t choose the quality items).
I think this is a little bit of elitism creeping in. Costco targets upper middle class consumers. Meat and wine are two of their critical items because they are high quality and fresh (largely because high volume and turnover). But most Americans can’t afford the prices at Costco for much of their meat. Given the budgets of many Americans, Wal-mart makes a lot more sense than Costco.
It is true that Wal-mart put a lot of local stores out of business because of their superior supply chain. But those savings increased the spending power of the consumers. Everyone can literally afford to purchase more. You can say that Wal-mart could spend more on their workers without affecting their superior supply chain but Wal-mart’s workers are not their competitive advantage.
Walmart destroys communities. I don’t want the Waltons to get another penny.
virginiasgp,
Does sgp stand for Some Goofy Poster?
No, but it could stand for “student growth publication” as in we could publish individual teacher VAMs/SGPs once I win my lawsuit against VDOE next month? Do you want to analyze the data to find out the names of the best and worst teachers in Virginia?
vsgp,
In NJ, we don’t need no stinkin’ sgp; we “Know” that “the best teachers” are in districts such as Ridgewood, Tenafly, Livingston, Mendham. Funny, the poverty rate is just 2 or 3% in those districts (cf >20% in the four state takeover districts).
virginiasgp: your posts indicate an appreciation of numbers, finances, and statistics. Have you read this article concerning VAM?
Click to access asa_vam_statement.pdf
I ask because my overall rating last year went down from a very, very hard earned Highly Effective to a middle of the road Effective specifically because of the VAM.
I know nothing about your lawsuit or the experiences you’ve been through, but I do know that there are some very fine teachers whose names and reputations are being degraded by VAM and SGPs.
It’s not all about the numbers.
va.sgp likes the lies of the extreme right wing and that’s that why he feels smug parroting flawed arguments. Unlike 5 years ago, when the richest 388 people had wealth equivalent to the bottom half of the world’s population, it’s now just 62. “It keeps the bottom half from crawling out of poverty.”
Linda, I guess you are very flexible with the word “lies”. According to those same studies:
1. Worldwide poverty has fallen by 50% over the last decade
2. The middle class has doubled in size over the last decade through 2011
Most of the billionaires are self-made meaning your prototype of kids inheriting wealth is not typical. Many of these billionaires have pledged to give their fortunes away. You just don’t like them making good use of their fortune for intelligent philanthropic purposes as you would rather have the gov’t force these billionaires to give some of that wealth to you and your union buddies.
I can’t quite understand why the creation of wealth is a bad thing. For millennia, growth averaged 0.1%/year. If we went back to a 0.1-1.0% growth rate, it almost seems as if you’d be happy. When Facebook is created, wealth appears out of thin air. It’s new technology. But all you want to do is tax it so you can get “your fair share” of somebody else’s idea. It doesn’t hurt you for somebody else to generate wealth. You just envy them and want your piece.
The real “justice” issue in these reports is that the US dominates the wealth charts. What most world citizens see as “justice” is forcing the US to give them wealth, not for the rich Americans to give money to the less rich Americans (i.e. unions). When you talk about the stagnating middle class in America, others talk about how the globalization of trade has lifted so many Asians out of poverty and into middle class in their countries. In a worldwide sense, that is a “good thing” for global inequality. Your “exploitation” of US workers is everyone else’s equalization of opportunity.
Now Linda, please go back to complaining to your friends that your life is so hard because you are only in the world’s top 5% and not in the world’s top 1%.
The high cost of low prices!
Predators deplete their food supply, then move on.
Walmart and the other anti labor union billionaire oligarchs are going to be their own demise. As the middle class decreases and those who live in poverty increase, corporate parasites like Walmart will continue to see sales drop because workers will not have enough money to spend on the junk that leads to profits for huge corporations. Most of the poverty wages workers earn will go to paying for basic food and shelter only. The auto industry will also start to take a hit as fewer people have the money to pay for new cars. The same for housing.
For instance, public school teachers and public school support staff are middle class and pays on average more than $10,000 annually compared to Charter school teachers. What happens to consumer spending when millions of workers in the public schools end up losing their jobs and are forced to take decreases in pay. How many cars, houses, food, clothing, gasoline, etc. can a Bill Gates buy to make up the difference.
But Lloyd, public schools are largely funded by property taxes which everyone pays. By cutting (or avoiding a rise) in school costs, aren’t we returning money to the people’s pockets so they can purchase more cars, houses, food, clothing, gasoline, etc.?
It sounds like the only difference between you and the “billionaire oligarchs” is whether the extra $$ goes into your pockets or theirs, no?
It’s not all about the money, virginiasgp. See hope1’s posting below. I’d gladly pay more if it meant getting local control back to the community.
gitapik, if it’s not about the money, why are all teachers always begging for more? And why is Diane and others on here begging Wal-mart to pay their workers more? And why are so many of you embracing Bernie Sanders who rips the employers and blames them for income inequality? And why when stores offer both US-made and foreign products does nobody by the US-made ones (they are more expensive)?
In the end, this is a lot of talk. You want only US workers to make our products. You want to pay them a lot. But then you, yourself, buy foreign goods because more US citizens have a high standard of living when the latter (trade) occurs.
Teachers claim it’s all about the kids and that money doesn’t matter. Folks should be given “local control” to determine what’s effective. That local control only extends to the teacher and staff. Parents aren’t allowed to pick their students’ teacher or even see the effectiveness of those teachers. You want all that data hidden even though you claim it’s inaccurate. If it’s so inaccurate (SGPs/VAMs), why do you care if it’s released? Everyone will just ignore it. Because deep down, you know while not perfect, those scores do reflect the best picture of your effectiveness. And even if you are an effective teacher, you can’t stand for the public to know that some of your peers are ineffective. Why should parents have local control of whether an effective teacher instructs their child? Why, that’s the privilege of teachers who get to tell everyone else what to do.
Virginia,
Teachers need to earn a middle-class living. It is not because they are greedy but because they have a mortgage, they have to feed their families, they have to make payments on their car, etc.
I don’t want our country to be one of extremes, where people go hungry or sleep on the sidewalks. It offends my sense of fairness to know we have billionaires who can never spend what they have, at the same time that children and families live in squalor because they can’t earn enough to live in.
We have different views of life. Life is unfair; we know that. But we should lessen unfairness when it is in our power to do so.
Read “The Spirit Level.”
Lloyd, I have never understood this rush towards paying people less and less. Sure, that increases business profits in the short run, but ignores the future. The less money people have, the less they will buy, and in the long run, companies will lose sales and therefore, profits.
In a whole lot of ways, Henry Ford was a remarkably unpleasant man. But he angered the other company owners of the time by paying his workers more than they paid theirs. As Ford explained at the time, he wanted his workers to be able to afford to buy his cars. In this particular case, he got it right.
” As Ford explained at the time, he wanted his workers to be able to afford to buy his cars.”
Seems like a real “duh!” Of course, they plan to be the only game in town, like the old company store model. I’m waiting for them to start buying up cheap housing for their workers (like China?).
The “company store,” indeed. Shades of the Tennessee Ernie Ford song.
Unfortunately, the Walmarts of the world will survive on the company store model. however they don’t seem realize that their own business will shrink drastically because people will no longer be shopping for anything but necessities. They are killing the consumer economy.
Virginia,
It sounds like you’ve had a rough road with your kids in the educational system? Or maybe you just don’t agree with the philosophy of a public education? I know people who feel that it’s a form of communism (Dewey did have leanings in that direction). If so, would you also want private police and fire departments?
I can relate, to a degree. My daughter’s happiness and success in life mean everything to me and she had a few teachers (both classroom and cluster) in her K-12 career, here in NYC, who I was not at all thrilled with. All the parents, students, teachers, and admins knew who these teachers were and why they weren’t performing at levels of expectation. We didn’t need statistics to show this. Word of mouth is by far the best advertisement. We’re talking some big schools in NYC and the word still got out in a big way. The teachers were put on notice. Both face to face and by the administrators who were confronted.
Somehow my daughter survived the “bad” ones (one of whom had a daughter who’d just be diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of the year, btw…if that means anything to anybody) (I gave her a pass on that one, personally). She’s now attending an excellent college that we couldn’t possibly afford without the loans and scholarships she earned the hard way (a whole ‘nuther story which we might see more eye to eye on?). Even with those “bad” teachers, she managed to excel. That’s because the sub par teachers were, by far, in the minority, we were actively involved in communicating with the schools, and we worked with her at home .
“In the end, this is a lot of talk. You want only US workers to make our products. You want to pay them a lot. But then you, yourself, buy foreign goods because more US citizens have a high standard of living when the latter (trade) occurs.”
That’s your opinion and your entitled to it. I disagree. Please don’t tell me what I do and don’t do/buy and don’t buy. You don’t know me.
“You want all that data hidden even though you claim it’s inaccurate. If it’s so inaccurate (SGPs/VAMs), why do you care if it’s released? Everyone will just ignore it. Because deep down, you know while not perfect, those scores do reflect the best picture of your effectiveness.”
Again: Your opinion and I respect that. But I want the same respect, thanks. Don’t tell me what I’m about, “deep down”. You don’t know me. Do you really think everyone will “ignore” the scores? Publishing them just adds validity to them. Did you read the article I linked for you? VAM has been discredited for the use of evaluating teachers by professionals who live in the world of statistics. They do NOT reflect the best picture of a teacher’s effectiveness. Some teachers go from highly effective to developing in the span of two school years. Classroom dynamics change from year to year with the changes of children/teens in the class. And class size. Just one student can change the entire playing field in any classroom, regardless of a teacher’s effectiveness. Is there a VAM to gauge a teacher’s effectiveness in behavior management? No. And that’s just ONE aspect of classroom and curriculum management that a teacher has to deal with. Just like testing (VAM’s lifeblood) is only ONE..
Peer and administrative observations (with administrators who have previous experience in the classroom) will give you the best picture of a teacher’s effectiveness. Parental involvement/observations during and between parent/teacher conferences will give you the best picture of a teacher’s effectiveness. Community blogs/meetings/parties/etal will give you more information about a teacher’s effectiveness which you can then investigate further and determine credibility, thereof.
I understand a parent’s concern for their child. I also understand a citizen’s concern for his/her society. But if someone’s going to go about making changes to perceived wrongs and excesses, I believe it’s important to find valid examples to support the claims. VAMs and SGPs only tell a small part of the story. The people who are supporting them, both financially and through the media, would have us believe otherwise, partly iin order to push their agenda of standardizing education on a national scale. My opinion, yes. And one held by others, as well.
YMMV, lol. There’s a lot more involved, to be sure…but I’ve written a lot more than I intended. Gotta go watch the Seahawks/Panthers game, after all. Should be a good one.
Gitapik, Great article on VAMS. And wonderful explanation of the many ways parents can learn about the effectiveness of the teachers in their children’s schools. Thx for sharing.
Thanks, Jill. At one time, those suggestions would’ve been a collective, “Well…duh!”, but the propaganda campaign against teachers and public education has been long term, relentless and, unfortunately, very effective. To the point where people are more prone to trust the interpretations of “BIG DATA” than what they can see and hear with their own eyes and ears at their schools and within their communities
Diane, I do not oppose teachers earning a middle class living. And based on my research, I will admit that some states have been unnecessarily frugal (NC comes to mind after looking at their salaries over the past decade). But I would caution that we compare the total compensation of teachers against the median household income in their local area. I am not suggesting that teachers should earn lower than the median income. But intentionally disregarding tax-deferred compensation (whether it’s a CEO’s salary deferred for tax reasons or a teacher’s significant pension contributions) when comparing salaries is disingenuous.
Ultimately the way to improve middle class salaries of all is to improve economic growth and limit immigration of unskilled workers. When we had the economic boom of the 1990’s, labor shortages caused even fast-food jobs to increase their pay. When you have labor markets with excess supply, salaries stagnate. This is a more complex issue than just education/teacher salaries but given that all residents pay property taxes to support teachers, it is relevant. Bashing the entrepreneurs who mostly are self-built is inappropriate. Retained capital (the wealth associated with the successful companies such as Google, Microsoft, Wal-mart, etc.) is necessary to conduct research and build new companies. Most entrepreneurs are giving away their entire fortunes (Zuckerberg, Gates, etc.). But I have no problem with high estate taxes since I don’t think generational wealth is good policy nor is it fair to not tax wealth handed down (no different than salary earned).
I think Duncan, King, Gates, Chetty, etc would argue just like me that providing every child with an effective teacher is the most effective way to lessen the unfairness of life. Will it overcome not having good parents? No. Will it overcome not receiving optimum genes (as Buffet puts it, losing the gene lottery)? No. Will it overcome living in a bad neighborhood with few resources? Not completely. But doing everything we can to provide great teachers to every child should be our top priority. I would direct your readers to the following article on income inequality. For the most part, our country has social mobility with the exception of the very top and bottom. One might argue that much of that is inherited in the genes. But it’s even more mobile when you consider successive generations. If a child has a 60% chance of moving out of the top/bottom quintile, then his/her kids have a 75% chance of moving out of the grandparents top/bottom quintile. That’s nearly an even distribution. Parents do count but I just simply cannot advocate removing children from ineffective parents. Parents and kids have a fundamental right to remain a family. Unfortunately, the kids’ future economic prospects may suffer.
gitapk, you imply that I want private schools or charters (“you just don’t agree with the philosophy of a public education” and ” would you also want private police“). That’s not true. I want effective public school teachers. Many are but some are not and we deserve to see the data. You, yourself, claim your daughter had a “few” teachers that were not effective. According to the numbers put forth by teachers, that is impossible. Over her K-12 career, your daughter likely had no more than 50 teachers (4/yr but when you count 1/yr in K-5, 50 is being generous). Since 99%+ (more likely 99.5%+) of teachers are rated effective by districts, your daughter should have only had a 50/50 chance of having a single bad teacher in her career. Half of students should have NONE.
But I believe you that your daughters had a few bad ones. I think she likely had 3-7 teachers out of ~50 that were ineffective (fewer if she only had ~30 teachers). That equates to 6-14% of her teachers being ineffective. That is exactly the % of Ts the reformers have used VAMs to identify as being ineffective (typically 5-8%). So your anecdotes correspond to what every parent and the VAM data indicate is true.
RetiredTeacher and I have debated the merits of some districts’ “PAR” system (peer review). But when you dig through the numbers, only 1% of teachers have been removed. Maybe a few more were counseled/mentored and improved but it’s still much less than what you claim to have witnessed in your daughter’s K-12 school. Are Diane, Aubrey, Linda, Mercedes, Peter, Randi and others forcefully advocating to improve our evaluation systems to better identify/remediate/transfer such ineffective teachers? Of course not. They claim virtually all teachers are great and if we just paid the same ones more money (never a specific number just “more” regardless of what their current district pays), then all would be well. When the reformers see these union activists put in 10% of the effort towards actually improving instruction and evaluation, then maybe we will believe they might possibly care about identifying/correcting ineffective teachers.
As I’ve said before, my kids have me to teach them what they do not learn in school. Other kids do not have educated, informed parents at home. In fact, our schools do everything they can to prevent us from seeing the emails of other parents so we can communicate with each other. Since many parents work, how exactly do we use “word of mouth” if we haven’t met the other parents? And when my school bans me from its grounds for asking a critical question at a PTA meeting, how exactly are parents supposed to organize/express concerns about the curriculum/methods or even specific teachers?
But let’s just consider a single, working, disadvantaged parent. They work long hours and never went to college. Should they reflexively believe their child every time he/she says his teacher is awful? I think you would tell the parent to give the teacher the benefit of the doubt, no? And if the parent doesn’t understand the assignments or what is a “normal” pace, how can they know whether the teacher is good? We know that such disadvantaged kids might learn slower than affluent students. How can parents know what is an appropriate pace without seeing hard data? If they look simply at average test scores, they will undoubtedly misjudge teachers since they won’t consider the capability of the students. Without VAMs, and more importantly, without knowledgeable parents like me speaking out for such disadvantaged kids, who else will speak for them? The ineffective teachers who claim they are perfect (did your kids’ ineffective teachers admit they were ineffective)? The admins who claim their system is always great? The disadvantaged kids themselves? Who else but the reformers like Duncan, King, etc. have spoken out? When has Diane ever spoken out about getting ineffective teachers retrained or removed? Maybe she has but I missed it.
As for the Wal-mart question, I can show you data that when foreign and US-made products are put side-by-side in the stores (with different prices), consumers overwhelmingly purchase the cheaper foreign goods. Maybe you don’t, but you would be in the extreme minority. You should complain about your fellow middle/lower-class citizens, not Wal-mart for meeting the demand of those consumers.
As for the VAM article by the ASA, I have dissected it more times than I can count on these blogs. One of the researchers in the CFR study (Friedman) testified for my side in Richmond City Circuit Court so I can assure you I am intimately familiar with the arguments. It was funny. Everyone in the courtroom (the judge, Virginia DOE, opposing counsel) was completely sold on the value of VAMs. The opposing counsel/VDOE was glad because they thought such “proof” would result in the SGPs being withheld since they alleged SGPs can only be used for teacher performance indicators. They had no concerns that by blocking the use of SGPs, ineffective teachers would reamin in the classroom and take future income out of the pockets of disadvantaged kids. They only cared about “winning” by not having to release anything. That is the very definition of evil. You are misinterpreting the VAM statement. It never says not to use VAMs. It says to be careful under the conditions that you use them and be careful for second/third order effects that result. It actually unequivocally encourages the use of VAMs for larger sample size (policy or school results).
So I have never advocated the use of VAMs alone. They should be used in conjunction with independent observations and student surveys at least. A variety of assessment tools is the advice of the “people who support them… to push their agenda of standardizing education“. If you would like, I can point you to MET study results that show VAMs not only gauge academic growth, they tangentially measure teachers’ inspiration and connection with their students. But the MET study recommends observations, VAMs and student surveys in evalautions.
Jill Lancaster, my county is very affluent. The avg household income of $122K/yr is tops in the country. First-year Masters degree teachers earn $64K/yr. That means if two teachers marry to form a “household”, they already earn more than the median household in the most affluent county in the nation. How is that not “keeping up with the middle class”? Btw, step 30 (i.e. max) teachers can earn $130K/yr (more than a household with only a single salary). And they work less than 200 days/yr. What planet are you living on to claim all teachers are underpaid?
You are so right, Diane! Teachers just want to keep up with the middle class and the cost of living! Yet every year the teeny raises get eaten up by rising health care costs or pension increases. In the end, we just barely scrape by!
virginiasgp:
“gitapk, you imply that I want private schools or charters (“you just don’t agree with the philosophy of a public education” and ” would you also want private police“)”
What I wrote was, “…Maybe you just don’t agree with the philosophy of public education”. I can see where you would think that I’m implying another step there, but I’m not. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, either. I know people who feel very strongly about this subject and I’m not averse to discussing it with them, at all. I’m glad to hear that you see value in the area of public education. So do I.
My daughter had three teachers who we were dissatisfied with. Math in 7th grade (8th grade was stellar), Science in 9th grade, and Spanish in her junior year. You don’t need to assume anything based on statistics. That’s what it was. NYC public schools.
I think that you and I have a basic philosophical difference. You either disagree with my points regarding changes in classroom dynamics from year to year (one of my principal objections to statistic oriented evaluations) or you didn’t pay attention to them. So let’s agree to disagree on the area of statistics and put it aside for the moment.
You show insight in saying that there should be other factors included in teacher evaluations, citing independent observations and student surveys. No mention of peer or administrative observations and evaluations, based on standard measures such as portfolio assessment, classroom organization, etc, however.
I could easily be assuming incorrectly here (as you did about my previous post), but what this implies to me goes straight to the heart of what I believe to be one of if not the biggest area of weakness in education reform: a basic distrust of teachers, administrators, and the system they work in, together. The concept that we’ve been and are continuing to fail our students (as evidenced by our scores in PISA) and are working in consort to keep the system afloat in order to earn our pensions and wring as much money as possible from the public coffers. To protect and further advance our livelihood at the expense of the students we serve and the citizens who pay our salaries through taxes.
It’s this kind of thinking that kept K-12 teachers and child psychologists out of the loop in the planning of the CCSS. Many of the people in the forefront of education reform see the teachers as being a big part of the problem and, therefore, not to be trusted with a seat at the planning table. Why they didn’t include child psychologists; I don’t know.
My philosophy is for parents to become more involved in their local schools and show some trust (not blind…but trust) in the professionals who work there. If there’s a problem, bring it to the administrative level. If that doesn’t work, then move on to the district level. Yours would SEEM to be to impose a system of evaluation from an outside management source in order to create a more objective result. I don’t believe we’ve been failing our kids. Arne sure does and, from the tone of your posts, here, it would seem that you are in agreement with him.
I work with great teachers. We can’t believe that Governor Cuomo wants to send in people who know nothing about us or the kids we serve to conduct the observations which might determine whether we’re worthy of the profession or not.
As far as student surveys go: it sounds fine on the surface and, sure, it would net a few of the obvious sandbaggers, but, in my experience as a classroom and cluster teacher and a teacher coach, there’s a very large probability of abuse within that as an evaluation source.
This move by Walmart is a very large microcosm (is that possible?) of the last 4 plus decades.
Small farmers forced out of business by agribusiness. Now we have Monsanto.
Media outlets being bought out and controlled by billionaires.
Huge store chains like Walmart, Lowes, etc forcing local main street businesses to close.
And the latest takeover push is none other than our locally controlled systems of public education. The reason we visit this blog so often.
Big business wants total control. Big business isn’t interested in democratically controlled decisions and isn’t concerned with the livelihood of the neighborhoods it serves. “Collateral damage” when they close. It really is terrible. And they control our lawmakers.
Campaign finance reform is far and away the most important political issue of our times, imho. The bought and paid for candidates would lose their bigger than life stature like a Thanksgiving Day Macy’s Parade float the day after.
I went to a little town in Nebraska, where my dad grew up and I played in the streets as a little girl, the square is boarded up leaving only an old theatre and the municipal center. WalMart has taken the sweetness of community that always made the town special. No cars around the beautiful square, but WalMart is packed. It is the only place the people have to shop. It made me sad and mad to see how much a lovely little town changed because of one store. I think they should all close and give communities their life back. Also sad to say their Legion Club had turned into a charter which is the only choice in town for the little ones. We are ruining America….
The website,”Walmart Shootings, Save Money, Die Faster” references the scores of incidents involving guns, at Walmart’s across the nation. In addition to their listing, media reported on an active meth lab found, last year, in a Indiana Walmart restroom. In Ohio, media reported that a customer, playing with unpackaged merchandise, a bb-like gun, was shot and killed. Adding to the tragedy, a mother shopping in the store at the time, a nurse in her 30’s, died at the scene, as the result of a heart attack.
In summary- Walmart- employer of last resort. Walmart- suppliers’ buyer of last resort. Walmart-shopping location of last resort.
Tragic comedy- During the period of Jade Helm conspiracy theories, “death domes” and shuttered Walmarts featured prominently. USA Today reported on the story.