Education news: Same old shit...

More of the same. Bashing experienced teachers, teacher unions and pushing for more standardized testing. It never ends. All the procedures are in place to remove the so-called bad teacher. In my 34 years years of teaching I have seen but a few. Administrators need to get in the classroom and work with those few who need improvement. Content knowledge and rapport with students is a key factor in educating kids. I have not seen much of it with the so called new teacher. Mastering the profession comes with experience for most. But experience costs money. But all this proposal is, is a way to bust unions and to cut costs. It is also a way to dumb down our educational system to create a mindless population who will not question authority. It has been going on for years and teachers are doing their best despite these continued attacks on our character and professional abilities. How about listening to us for solutions? People die and get sick all the time. Do we blame doctors because folks don't take care of themselves or follow instructions and advice given to them by medical professionals? We must contend with students who come to school tired, hungry, abused, distracted by family issues and other societal problems. They are preoccupied with cell phones, iPods, Facebbok, texting, television, video games and the like over reading books and finding the time to study and do homework. It's not the 1950's people. Teaching is the single most difficult job today. It is time to hear our voices and not some academic from some university or some government bureaucrat who hasn't set foot in a classroom for the past 40 years telling us how we should educate kids.


How to fix our schools: A manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and other education leaders

It's time for all of the adults -- superintendents, educators, elected officials, labor unions and parents alike -- to start acting like we are responsible for the future of our children. Because right now, across the country, kids are stuck in failing schools, just waiting for us to do something.

So, where do we start? With the basics. As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income -- it is the quality of their teacher.

Yet, for too long, we have let teacher hiring and retention be determined by archaic rules involving seniority and academic credentials. The widespread policy of "last in, first out" (the teacher with the least seniority is the first to go when cuts have to be made) makes it harder to hold on to new, enthusiastic educators and ignores the one thing that should matter most: performance.

A 7-year-old girl won't make it to college someday because her teacher has two decades of experience or a master's degree -- she will make it to college if her teacher is effective and engaging and compels her to reach for success. By contrast, a poorly performing teacher can hold back hundreds, maybe thousands, of students over the course of a career. Each day that we ignore this reality is precious time lost for children preparing for the challenges of adulthood.

The glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher -- and our discomfort as a society with criticizing anyone who chooses this noble and difficult profession -- has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future.

There isn't a business in America that would survive if it couldn't make personnel decisions based on performance. That is why everything we use in assessing teachers must be linked to their effectiveness in the classroom and focused on increasing student achievement.

District leaders also need the authority to use financial incentives to attract and retain the best teachers. When teachers are highly effective -- measured in significant part by how well students are doing academically -- or are willing to take a job in a tough school or in a hard-to-staff subject area such as advanced math or science, we should be able to pay them more. Important initiatives, such as the federal Teacher Incentive Fund, are helping bring great educators to struggling communities, but we have to change the rules to professionalize teaching.

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705078.html