Peter Greene saw an article in Forbes making the absurd assertion that the problem with public schools is that they have certified teachers. In typical fashion, he demolishes this claim.
The article argues that teachers do not need to be paid well, and they do not need to be certified.
Greene says this is nonsense, to put it mildly.
He points out 18 reasons why the authors are wrong.
Here is the 18th reason:
“18) And it offers the best hope of bringing more capable people into the teaching that all agree is so vital.
“This is the final line of the article, and nothing in it has been proven in any of the lines that came before. Great teachers are somehow born and not made, and they alone can fix everything, and they are apparently distributed randomly throughout the population. Somehow by lowering standards, lowering pay, destabilizing pay, and removing job security, we will attract more of them and flush them out.
“That’s 18 dumb things in one short article. I suppose Forbes could get better articles if they paid less and let anybody write for them.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The problem with the assertion made in the original article is you can take the word “teacher” out and substitute “financial planner” or “stock broker” or “lawyer” or “doctor.” These arguments are like the stupid arguments that claim to prove the existence of god; they apply equally to all gods. A moments reflection would have shown the writer that he was arguing against all certifications, not just those of teachers, but that would assume he was an honest factor in such arguments.
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Actually,
Forbes probably undoubtedly COULD get better articles if they let anyone off the street write for them.
B
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Undoubtedly probably
Hah hah hah.
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You must read Dean Baker , that is his line . Here is another of his favorites, that would apply to Forbes.
” How can the people (in my profession ) who could not see a huge housing bubble and the leveraged assets behind it ,presume to have the credentials to tell us about anything” (more or less a quote ) “yet they are seldom if ever held accountable”
There is no moral hazard as it applies to BS artists, when they get it wrong. Especially those who claim to be economists .
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Same is true of education “experts”. Every intelligent person I know who’s taken the practice SBAC ELA tests has essentially the same reaction: WTF? Yet the experts tell us these are “smarter” and “better” tests. Our profession is mired in confusion.
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So TRUE, SomeDAM poet.
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Although maybe they do already. The author of the article obviously has done little to no research, especially journalistically.
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Forbes unintentionally is making a good argument for cutting CEO, COO, CFO compensation down to the nub and eliminating all those perky perks (limos, personal jets, gold-plated toilets), too.
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Chain saw Al Dunlap was a genius, a coveted CEO, who used to throw darts at a board to decide what plants to close. It took years to catch up to him. And bar him from being an officer in any publicly owned company.
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Diane The last line: “I suppose Forbes could get better articles if they paid less and let anybody write for them.”
This is so true because great writers are “somehow born and not made, . . . and they are apparently distributed randomly throughout the population.”
Oh, . . . I forgot, . . . writers aren’t responsible for educating the nation’s children. But still, . . . I guess it follows from the article that the writer would like to see his children spend the day with an unqualified and lesser-paid babysitter. . . . It’s the teacher-as-babysitter assumption; and another exposure of the egregious ignorance that’s out there about what it takes, and how long it takes, to educate human children.
Speaking of education, we need a national campaign to educate the public about what needs to happen for a child to become educated in any qualified sense of that term, and especially educated to live in a democracy where personal responsibility is key to the general peace and civility that underpins our individual and national well-being.
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Forbes and those that put a premium on what it prints, value money and it’s pursuit above all else. It’s not concerned with education, children, fair wages or human dignity – it’s about a high profit margin. At least the old man valued art in the form of his Faberge eggs. Every generation seems to be devolving, even those from the ranks of the most devoted capitalists.
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“Forbes” is fronting for the hedge fund vandals to try to legitimize their attacks on public schools and teachers. Ignore them! Hedge funds want access to public funds and public pensions, and they will stop at nothing to get it. They have no moral compass so they will say anything to make their case.
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Like that word, fronting. It captures truth.
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Allowing non certified teachers to teach their way into certification might indeed be a good idea. But to,make it a good idea, the person would have to be paid a living wage to ease into the profession, teaching a lighter load and auditing classes taught by experienced teachers. They would need to be given time to read the discussions of good pedagogy and the disagreements at an academic level about them. All the while, they would have to be paid a living wage.
Many private schools allow people to teach on their BA or BS. As a result, many private schools are able to hire good kids to develop into good teachers. Some actually earn good wages. Few of these teachers ever see more than 50 kids a day. Few of these teachers ever have to submit their children to be tested by broken testing systems designed to make most students fail.
Any group of taxpayers want to support public education at the same rate as a traditional college prep school? That might make certification less important. Still, it is an expensive solution. Moreover, turnover at even the most distinctive private institutions reflect the low pay given to a significant number of one and done teachers. Some of these might be good folks and teach well, but their positive impact on students is short.
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Wise thoughts, Roy.
I’m confused why few people talk about this: the widespread phenomenon of very bright, decent, knowledgable tyro teachers getting driven from the profession by unruly students. We’re losing many of the best and the brightest because of mean and rude kids. Our school has just hired a kindly, refined older woman with a newly-minted MA in teaching. I’d put the chances of her surviving at 10%. If schools had the tools to condition kids to behave civilly from an early age, and to exclude those who chronically refuse to behave civilly, we’d have have better schools, and better kids.
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So, then ponderosa, it’s unfair for charters to try to enforce that students behave or find ways to workaround the behavior problems by convincing them that it’s not a good fit, while professonal public educators cite that there should be a mechanism for unruly students to be excluded from school because they interfere with their professional success? That’s very interesting! I wonder how many here would agree publicly to that?
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There is a huge problem in what you said:
It is very easy to turn a struggling student into a child who “won’t behave” if an inexperienced teacher believes that berating a child over and over again for not “getting it” or “working hard enough” is the same as teaching. Especially when they are young.
Far too many “high performing” charters specialize in turning struggling students into behavior problems and anyone who has raised children knows how very easy it is to turn a child struggling into one who supposedly “acts out”. Sometimes it is acting out against themselves by harming themselves.
It happens in private schools all the time and those parents pull their children.
It may happen in a public school but because the public school SYSTEM is financially responsible for the education of that student, they can’t simply force a child “out”. Because paying $100,000 year for a private placement for students so disturbed that they are “chronically violent” is not easy when it comes out of the entire school system budget. Especially when you find one school where 20% of the students are supposedly chronically violent and need $100,000/year placements.
I believe that with good funding and staff, you could set up a school that addressed the needs of students acting out without simply writing them off or – in the case of public school teachers — blaming the teachers for not controlling the class better. Make it easy to remove a child from class and provide trained staff who can figure out what is going on AND make it easy for a kid to return to class. There are such a myriad of reasons why children act out and many of them can be addressed and in some very few cases those children do truly need to be privately placed.
One thing that galls me about the “reformers” is that they have harmed the majority of children with their lies that it’s just a simple issue of providing no-excuse charters for the “strivers” and letting the rest — the unworthy — warehouse in underfunded public schools. No money necessary and it’s all wonderful for the low income kids who are worth it. The others can rot for all they care because their education is not profitable.
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M: I am not following your statement. It sounds like you are accusing public school teachers of doing the same thing as charter schools. That might be true on a personal level. NYC points out some of the problems with what you are saying. I would like to add that most public school and traditional private school teachers I know are professionals who want to function in a redemptive environment. It is hard to imagine that an active attempt to remove a student from a learning community is a part of a functioning, redemptive environment.
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Roy, it was in response to Ponderosa’s statement that unruly students are negatively affecting the profession and the longevity and success of the professionals as well as his last line: If schools had the tools to condition kids to behave civilly from an early age, and to exclude those who chronically refuse to behave civilly, we’d have have better schools, and better kids.
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M: I know I am in a minority among commenters on this blog about discipline. While I do not whole-heartedly endorse it, neither do I deplore no-excuses-style discipline. I think that one of the legitimate achievements of the charter school movement is its break from education school orthodoxy on the issue of discipline. Do you acknowledge that many good, gentle teachers get driven from the profession by mean kids? Do you think that chronic class disruption is a problem in many public schools?
NYC: I do not agree that schools turn struggling students into discipline problems. Do you think it was the school’s fault that little Donald Trump punched his 2nd grade music teacher in the face? Every classroom has its little Donald Trump. I do think public schools fail to nip anti-social behaviors in the bud, and allow utterly gratuitous repellent behavior to go essentially unchecked. I think you would be shocked if you could be a fly on the wall of an ordinary public middle school classroom with a vulnerable teacher. My fellow liberals turn a blind eye to this odious behavior, and I’m not sure why, though I have my guesses.
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Thought experiment: imagine that black teachers were getting driven out of the profession by white students’ racist taunts and failure to cooperate. We’d be outraged, right? We’d want stern discipline for those students, and we’d implement policies to enable black teachers to stay in the profession. Now substitute “bookish and mild-mannered” for “black”. The students’ cruelty and subversion is just as gratuitous and odious, but there’s no outrage, no demand to bring the students to justice. If we want to raise the academic level of our schools, we need policies that will enable bookish and mild-mannered teachers to stay in the profession.
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ponderosa,
What does Donald Trump in 2nd grade punching his teacher have to do with what I said?
I said that high performing “no excuses” charters turn struggling students into discipline problems. I did not say ALL discipline problems are caused by this. I did say that when a charter school claims 20% or 25% of its 5 year olds are acting out, your claim that they were all little Donald Trumps is nonsense. How many little Donald Trump’s punching their 2nd grade teachers do you think an average school has? I can tell you from my own experience as well as my child’s that there aren’t lots of violent children acting out punching teachers. It is rare. Unless there is something very wrong with the school system.
I am sympathetic to the notion that kids will act out and schools can address that but suspension and no-excuses does nothing but get rid of them. How exactly do you propose to “exclude” huge cohorts of 5 year olds from school? Kicking them out is easy and every public school would immediately be amazing if they only kept the kids who wanted to sit quietly and learn.
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M and ponderosa: everybody knows that dysfunction in society and in school is a problem. Good, professional educators develop ways to minimize these problems. Extreme poverty maximizes these problems. Extreme wealth also maximizes these problems. What we are to do about all of this has made teachers and administrators wring their hands and each other’s necks for decades. Just read Thread that Runs So True, by Jesse Stuart for an older description of this tension.
Regardless of this problem, it makes no sense to create two,separate systems in our communities, one of which is obliged to keep all students and the other that can pick and choose on the taxpayer’s dime. As for me, I want to work in a redemptive situation with students. If this is not possible, I want a society that has a plan to deal with those who are not capable of being in the system. I want this system to be fair and above board. It is only fair.
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Roy Turrentine says:
“it makes no sense to create two,separate systems in our communities, one of which is obliged to keep all students and the other that can pick and choose on the taxpayer’s dime.”
Thank you! That is exactly what charters have become.
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NYC: There is a long history to the debate about whether kids are inherently good or bad. Modern liberals seem to have come down on the side of “good”; in fact, I think a significant number of secular liberals have unconsciously substituted children, especially minority children, as their stand-in for the Sacred. With 19 years of teaching under my belt, I come down more on the “Lord of the Flies” side of the debate. Some kids are usually good; most kids are part-time evil; and some kids are full-time evil. I think it’s our job as adults to steer kids away from evil, and I believe the traditional method, discipline, remains one of the most effective medicines. Giving punishments of varying intensity signals to kids which behaviors are unacceptable, deters many of them from those behaviors, and fosters the habit of not acting that way. Given the anti-discipline orthodoxy emanating from education schools, our schools are now derelict in this important child-rearing duty. Most of their alternatives are unwieldy and weak; homeopathy, when Cipro is needed. Do I want 20% of 5 year olds to be banished from schools? No. I think that effective discipline would condition most kids to behave in ways that would avoid such a necessity. Elementary school principal’s failure to draw the line and properly enforce rules signals to disruptive little kids that their disruptions are tolerable. I think early intervention would prevent all but a few kids from having to be excluded from regular school. But I do think there needs to be a feasible and affordable last-resort option to exclude in order to give teeth to the lighter, preliminary punishments. The lack of this extreme option seems to me the root of public schools’ often severe discipline problems.
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ponderosa,
I certainly hope you don’t teach 5 year olds.
There is a world of difference between enabling “evil” and recognizing that a 5 year old child who can’t sit still and might need to run around is “evil” and that if you just “discipline” him enough he’ll turn into the perfect scholar.
I have no doubt that there are teens and even pre-teens who are real discipline problems and in each comment I have made a point of saying that I don’t believe every child is an angel and your implying that I would say “no non-white chid could ever deserve any punishment” is quite condescending. Give me a break. The fact you keep turning my comments about harsh charter school “discipline” of “bad” students into “let’s let children do whatever they want because they are always right” makes no sense to me. Why are you putting words in my mouth?
You say “The lack of this extreme option seems to me the root of public schools’ often severe discipline problems.” Wrong. There is no evidence that suspending a young child over and over again changes his behavior. And every study shows that if suspension is just as likely to lead to drop outs. And not bothering to look at why a 2nd grader might suddenly punch a teacher out of nowhere because you are certain he is evil and “suspending” him will cure him of it and understanding that you can remove him from the class and try to figure out what led to that punching is not a waste of time. Maybe you’ll find out that you have the once in 100 or 1000 kids “bad seed” who would murder her own mother if she got in her way. Or maybe you’ll find that there is something else going on in that kid’s life that might be addressed.
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NYC: I didn’t mean to imply that YOU are a liberal who sanctifies children; I was speaking generally.
I don’t mean “evil” in the cosmic or theological sense; just the ordinary daily kind –cruelty, selfishness, deceit, etc.
I agree with you that talking to kids and understanding where they’re coming from does sometimes help curb bad behaviors. But often it does not. Many kids behave badly not because of any trauma, but because of what past generations would have called humanity’s natural perversity. And in middle school the influence of peers amplifies that natural perversity –the all-powerful social group. Kids get lots of positive reinforcement from their peers for being “bad”. Talk is often impotent in these situations. Only actions –e.g. detention or a call home –have potency.
I have a very liberal friend who tends to deplore discipline. However his tune changed when I told him the story of a kid who drew a giant swastika on the classroom carpet in permanent marker, along with the message “I hate Jews”. THIS, he believed, demanded punishment. I completely agree. But why then does he demur on punishment when a kid cruelly baits a teacher, or chronically prevents education from occurring in the classroom? These behaviors he extenuates. I don’t: I think bad behavior deserves punishment. It’s better for the student that way –it helps teach him right and wrong, and helps break bad habits. But even if it weren’t better for the student that way, doesn’t justice demand it?
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I’m just pointing out that there is punishment and there is out of school suspension. The age of a child matters. And a 5 year old who draws a swastika is different than a 17 year old who does. And I don’t believe that lots of 5 and 6 year olds “cruelly bait teachers. Is it possible that a rare one does? Yes.
I certainly get that a kid who struggles to learn “prevents learning” of kids by taking away the teachers’ attention. If you recall, the model teacher in that surreptitiously taped charter school video told the kid who wasn’t coming up with the answer fast enough that she was “ruining it for everyone” and sent her to the “calm down” room as if she was bad. And if a 6 year old eventually acted out after being told constantly she was ruining it for everyone, do you think suspension would turn her into a perfect student?
And of course there are 5 year olds for whom sitting still for long periods of time is not as easy as it is for others and the notion that if you suspend them enough they will be able to do it is nonsense. There will be some young kids that fidget and no doubt if they perform very well academically their fidgeting is overlooked as it is in almost every affluent school in the country. And if they don’t perform well, then they can be targeted for punishment because they ruined the learning for the rest of the class.
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^^sorry, the girl was sent to the calm down CHAIR, not room.
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Utah is allowing anyone with a bachelor’s to teach. All the teacher has to do is pass a PRAXIS within the first three years of teaching.
I am tired of the “easing people into teaching” thing, as well as the “pay beginning teachers, but no one else, better.” That’s because what ends up happening is that career teachers end up with many additional preps (I had five completely different preps last year), so that new teachers have only a few, or smaller class sizes for new teachers, meaning that career teachers have unmanageable classes (I had 270 students last year, and this year I’m scheduled to have 285). And career teachers don’t get raises, because the money’s all going to new teachers, many of whom won’t last past five years.
Improve teaching conditions for EVERYONE, not just teachers for the first year or two.
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The commonwealth of Virginia, has an excellent program, to bring in people to teaching careers, who already have college degrees. This program is endorsed by the VA education association.
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/educator_preparation/career_switcher/
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Virginia’s program appears to be pretty solid. it certainly does not allow anyone with a pulse to teach. I have no objection to alternative programs to certification that require such a thorough grounding and do not add extra responsibilities to career teachers who followed a more traditional route to the classroom. Threatened Out West outlined how not to institute such a program.
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“Who does not believe that education is vital, that it is crucial to personal success, economic prosperity, and social mobility? America has excellent higher education. Yet primary and secondary school students have long performed poorly on tests compared with students from many industrialized countries.”
Wherein two law professors announce that public school teachers are the cause of all problems in the US.
They both work in higher education so they helpfully begin with “America has excellent higher education”.
I sometimes think the main reason ed reform exists is to provide a convenient punching bag for the rest of the country. If we blame public schools for everything then none of these very comfortable “experts” have to change anything they actually control.
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You are correct. I distinctly recall watching Bob Dole call out teachers in his acceptance speech for the nomination in1996. Ever since then, teachers have been the scapegoat for societal problems. All the solutions have made us do a poorer job.
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Bob Dole, “Viagra Man”, the posterboy for “dumb politician” (please forgive the redumbdancy)
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Higher ed needs to update their programming as well to better reflect the student population of today and how to effectively teach them to read and write and about numeracy. Too many educators graduate with Special Ed credentials and no very little about Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia or how to remediate these such learning needs, which is the most common learning needs of those struggling in the classroom academically. SLDs are statistically thought to be approximately 1 in 5 students, while students on the Autism spectrum are about 1 in 100 students, yet Autism spectrum students get much more support in the classroom and more behavioral leeway as well.
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know … ps- there really needs to be an edit option so when we typo we can go back and correct what is noted afterwards…
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Right, uncertified teaching is already happening and it has a negative effect on school outcomes. It’s already been tried and failed. I was talking about this to some people who are not in the education field and I mentioned the fact that some policy makers are kicking around the idea of taking away the certification process. They were dismayed at the idea. It isn’t going to happen.
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My son had a chemist with a Ph.D. in chemistry for his teacher in high school. This middle aged gentleman floundered because he could not manage the class. The worst was lab time as this career changing gentleman had no clue how to run the labs. It was a shame because this man had lots of knowledge, but couldn’t convey it to the students.
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Uncertified teachers have a 100% success rate with kids who can learn with uncertified teachers!
Mothers doing homeschooling have a 100% success rate with kids who are able to learn from their mothers who homeschool them!
High school graduates with no college who teach Algebra 1 have a 100% success rate with kids who can learn Algebra 1 from high school graduates with no college math!
Who could ever argue with Forbes’ logic?
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One does not need to be certified to successfully teach. Certification is a relatively new requirement of a bureaucratic system, put in place because the prior system was failing and the thought was that certification woud solve the original issue and result in better teachers and better end results in remediating the academic, social, emotional and other struggles students have at school (in regards to professional teaching certifications.)
[Plus it can also generate revenue by charging fees for licensing and certifications and gives a sense of prestige too.]
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I pointed out above that using uncertified teachers would increase the cost of education due to the process needed to successfully bring them into the classroom. Are you advocating higher taxes? In this political climate?
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I live in a high tax state. We are used to it.
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And actually homeschooling resutls show that those students tend to be successfull academically in a higher ed setting as well as more successful in adult life (especially when the student was homeschooled after prior lack of success in traditional classroom settings.)
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And high school students would make excellent college professors if not for those silly credential requirements.
There are some parents who home school well. There are some who are poorly educated and should not home school.
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Those poorly educated students from poorly educated families are still falling through the cracks in the public school system, stuck in a cycle of generational poverty and being left behind, becasue as I hear on this blog so frequently, it is their parents fault that they are arriving on the door steps of the school illiterate and behind their better off peers academically and behaviorally, and they stay that way for the entire time statistically; so if they stay home and do not lose self esteem they might fare batter off in the long run (and most likely not any worse off either way.)
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M,
There is a mountain of social science about the important influence of family and family income
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M,
I have no idea what your point is but if you are saying that as a parent I should feel perfectly fine sending my kid to a school with a bunch of inexperienced teachers because they have an Ivy league college degree then you don’t know very much about education.
The “smartest” people often don’t have a clue how to teach a child who struggles to learn. They interpret the child’s failure as being “bad” or “not listening” because they can’t imagine why a 7 year old isn’t learning when they told them 20 times over and over again the one way that worked for them when they were 7. Or maybe it didn’t work but no matter because they know they learned it somehow and why can’t the 7 year old get it already? He just isn’t trying hard enough and if they punish him enough he’ll try harder and get it.
This happens in those fancy private schools with non-certified teachers all the time. The only difference is that parents either hire a private tutor who will teach their child what the uncertified teacher has failed to teach or the child is counseled out. Ironic isn’t it that there is far more use of tutors in the most expensive private schools than in public schools. Guess those uncertified teachers aren’t as good as they should be – even when they only have classes of 15 instead of 30!
Public schools don’t have that luxury which is why you need to be certified. Charter schools should not have that luxury but since charters believe they should be able to counsel out any child who can’t learn with an inexperienced teacher, their push for uncertified teachers makes sense. Financially at least. Morally and ethically it serious flaws, but that certainly never stopped charter school advocates anyway.
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M Certification is not merely a concept, and not merely a piece of paper with a signature and gold star on it. It means nothing in this context without teachers having undergone a rigorous set of courses and training specific to their field and (commonly) their students’ age-group. Such courses are developed by people who themselves are field professionals, who have met high qualification criteria, and who commonly have their fingers on the pulse of old and new movements in their fields. It’s not a factory-setting, nor is a child a “product.”
Of course, there is informal teaching and, in some sense, every conversation anyone ever had has the seeds of teaching-and-learning in it. And between 1 and 5 ages there is no end to what occurs in that informal teaching-learning experience for the child.
But this is a formal field we are talking about with a history of research and writing associated with it aimed at professional excellence. And the criteria for good and bad teaching (pedagogy) has been thought about and written about for years by more intelligent people than me or you, along with specific content and curriculum developments applicable at every level of children’s growth. It’s a burgeoning and vibrant field also connected with all of the social sciences, philosophy, and history and THEIR vibrant developments.
What is it, then, about the “certification” requirements in the field of education, in your mind, that makes it any different or where certification is less needed than any other professional field? A good analogy is pilots flying planes–who have other people’s lives depending their training. Why, in your mind, is educating children to becoming mature adults, in a culture deserving of that name, any less significant? Is it the faulty teachers as baby-sitters idea? Or is it because it’s traditionally a women’s profession–and we know that what women do is not as important as men? What?
I’m just real curious. Or again, perhaps because education cannot be reduced to a factory and doesn’t put out a “product” to make money for the “owners”? And as you say, it costs. What? More taxes? Scandalous! Or maybe it’s a deeper philosophical problem; that is, nothing that cannot be immediately seen or otherwise sensed is really real? Everything else is mere sentiment and not worthy of financing–e.g., education of persons beyond their physical health? Or simply that it necessarily takes a long-term commitment and then doesn’t always “work” providing no hard-and-fast guarantee for those who like to speculate?
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Catherine Blanch King …. Socrates & Plato … were they certified or licensed to teach? Were they successful teachers?
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**M writes: “Socrates & Plato … were they certified or licensed to teach? Were they successful teachers?”
My first response was: Ha! Are you kidding? My second response was that, poor thing, you reveal a gross ignorance of history, OR just another red herring? Or was that it: Socrates and Plato weren’t certified but were excellent teachers? So let’s do that now? Do I really have to explain to you how Socrates and Plato, and their historical situation, were so different from now, or the difference between single informal teaching and the formalization and systematization of it in a complex culture?
My third response is: You didn’t answer my question? My fourth response is this: If you are not a troll, do you really think because you have no understanding of an entire profession, and apparently don’t even want to ask but to merely judge out of your own apparent ignorance, that, therefore, that profession is not worthwhile as having to reach formal degrees like most or all other professions? aka certification and diplomas? and in this case, as essential to the education of children in your own country? Good grief.
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I have actually expderienced working with non-certified teachers. One assigned to aan elementary class was less able to conduct a day long schedule than my son when he was seven. He simply had no idea how to teach his students to read. My son on the other hand knew enough to make lots of worksheets and to read to his classmates. He copied his teacher’s tasks and had heard his mother’s discussions about reading instruction. Guess he had a step up because he had some training. Maybe those “natural-born” teachers have had some education in how to work kids just not in ed classes. So are we to hire only people from large families in which the parents are educators?
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It might help Forbes to look at education in the countries that score so high on the conservative investment magazine’s beloved PISA test. None of them would ever consider making teaching a temporary gig instead of a lifetime occupation. None of them would ever consider cutting education costs to pay for such a huge military budget or such low taxes for millionaires and billionaires. They’re not that stupid.
But hey, as an aside, where is Wendy Kopp in all this? Where’s Wendy? Why isn’t she up in arms about charters “certifying” teachers? Teach for America would be out of business, out of the business of “certifying” teachers! (I never thought I would read something suggesting five weeks was too MUCH training!) Is there some corporate lizard king, some invisible hand keeping Kopp quiet?! Where’s Wendy?
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IMHO, there are three basic dimensions: body, mind and spirit.
I hope that people will acknowledge and agree that an empty stomach, an empty love and caring CANNOT lead to have a good mind = learning and a good spirit = a civilization or a compassionate attitude.
Regardless of from a poor or a rich family, children will learn and imitate their parents’ behaviors and its surrounding environment.
First of all, we need to universally define the basic level of poverty, and the basic level of success in learning in K-12 system toward society.
What good is to have a successful learner who will become leaders without decency?
If all employers are allowed to RIP OFF their employees’ labor = work long hours without benefits and sufficient wages for employees and their family to afford their basic living, then the stress will cause sickness and chaos within employee’s family.
The root of all chaos is from the deprivation of basic economy in the workforce. Lack of food will cause worry. As a result, frustration and sickness will cause unstable emotion.
There is no need to have any research or expert to tell us that people CAN LEARN when people are in an unstable emotion. Period (=Un point final). Back2basic
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