The Onion Knows How to Fix Our Schools

December 29, 2014 //

Somebody at The Onion is on the right side of history.

Here are The Onion’s suggestions for fixing our nation’s schools. And they didn’t get an i3 grant from Arne or a grant from Gates or Broad or Walton.

Categories Humor

14 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Hannah says:

December 29, 2014 at 11:23 am

Hilarious! It’s what the reform-ys do (with exaggeration of course) while expecting great results. The Onion did a GREAT job of showing the absurdity of the reforms.

LikeLike

Reply
Dienne says:

December 29, 2014 at 11:23 am

Ouch. Truth hurts.

LikeLike

Reply
Edd Doerr says:

December 29, 2014 at 11:41 am

Funny — buy sad.

LikeLike

Reply
RL says:

December 29, 2014 at 11:43 am

– Test More! Give a pre-test, mid-test, post-test for everything you teach. Then, have a high stakes test in every subject twice a year and stack rank the teachers based on the scores. (ok-this is already happening)

– Pretend that everyone can jump over a 20 foot pole (but acknowledge that the special ones can have one and a half times bigger pole vaulting sticks-because that will make all the difference.)

-Use a one size fits all Danielson rubric to evaluate teachers where administrators come in 4 times a year for 15 minutes during the middle of a 40 minute lesson with an ipad or a piece of paper to draw a map of the teacher’s movements (I’m not kidding) and then have the secretary fill in a nasty form that is left in your mailbox saying you were ineffective because you didn’t assess every single one of your 30 students or you didn’t do a “pair share” four times or you didn’t model correctly(during the middle of the lesson) for the 15 minutes that the administrator was there.

LikeLike

Reply
- NY Teacher says:
  
  December 29, 2014 at 12:37 pm
  
  These absurdities must be making the Onion writers jealous. The notion that some know-nothing know-it-all, edu-faker actually believed that these are valuable ways to improve instruction and learning would be hilarious if it weren’t so damaging to all of real stakeholders in the system.
  
  Pleas tell me you were kidding about the map of teacher movement. If this is true, your school district has jumped the shark on evaluations.
  
  Mind boggling that we could collectively write a piece for the Onion based on the ridiculous but real hoops we’re being forced to jump through.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  - RL says:
    
    December 29, 2014 at 1:02 pm
    
    No. I’m not kidding.
    
    LikeLike
  - NY Teacher says:
    
    December 29, 2014 at 1:22 pm
    
    Shall we call that, “nano-managing” the classroom?
    
    LikeLike
  - rockhound2 says:
    
    December 29, 2014 at 1:49 pm
    
    Do they count the number of steps as well, right vs left? How about the length of the stride? Is velocity of the walk something to be factored in? If a teacher moves more quickly to one student than another, could that mean something too, you know?
    
    What a wonderful world of data this makes! It will certainly make us all better teachers, maybe better human beings as well!
    
    –sarcasm off–
    
    LikeLike
  - NY Teacher says:
    
    December 29, 2014 at 2:15 pm
    
    Rockhound
    Sarcasm to you. But I think you may have stumbled upon one of the most significant teacher evaluation techniques ever conceived – and all through simple play!
    
    I can now envision the day when we’ll be wearing motion capture suits in order for principals to complete a full digital analysis of our every move. Perhaps even more sophisticated, “performance capture” technology which can record our full range of facial gestures. Brilliant Rockhound, brilliant! Just think, sharing that insight with us just might earn you an extra Danielson point or two.
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_capture
    
    LikeLike
  - rockhound2 says:
    
    December 29, 2014 at 7:02 pm
    
    Ten years ago in my first year of teaching I had an observation from an admin who noted afterwards in my post-observation conference I moved around the room from left to right far more than right to left.
    
    Seriously. So when my second observation came up I made darn sure I balanced it all out. My guess is that I was doing so well he had to find something to complain about.
    
    At least that’s what I still tell myself (grin)
    
    LikeLike
  - NY Teacher says:
    
    December 29, 2014 at 9:06 pm
    
    Rockhound
    Can I suggest pirouetting next time.
    
    LikeLike
Denise Marie Mueller says:

December 29, 2014 at 7:52 pm

Can anyone answer this question that has been bothering me for many years? As a former NJ school district teacher with inside knowledge of how districts run and school boards work, why are charter schools which are “for profit” companies permitted to take over district schools which were non-profit organizations? The money is definitely not going to teacher salaries as most charter pay teachers much less that districts, especially in Pennsylvania. So the money is going to the top administrators and owners of these companies while the students, in most cases, are not receiving much needed resources. And when the money dries up or it is misspent, the charters pack up and leave parents in and students in a lurch such as the recent news story in Philadelphia with the closing of yet, another elementary school. The charter billed the district for more students than they had and left the district with over a $1 million owed. Why are charters allowed to rob the tax payers? Wake up America. Non-profits who show a surplus at the end of the year, must put that surplus back into the school or district. This is not the case with charters.

LikeLike

Reply
Linda says:

December 29, 2014 at 9:46 pm

In Ohio, when the charters “pack up”, they may still own the school’s real estate, that the public bought.

LikeLike

Reply
Cupcake says:

December 29, 2014 at 10:10 pm

The solution to having your steps evaluated is to show up every day in a wheelchair, which I am wiling to do if it comes to that.
As I am married to a lawyer, I can only HOPE that they would ask me for confidential medical info regarding my need for a wheelchair.
I work with an elderly, old-school teacher. She says she is written up daily for a million petty things but, because she is old and Black, she says she dares them to try to fire her.
She says that as long as she has a white principal and she lives in the south, she is going to keep teaching the way kids should be taught.

LikeLike

Reply