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May 07, 2010 06:50 PM UTC
49 Comments
But you do touch on it – and it’s gigantic:
Having principals who do a good job means having principals that support their teachers, help their teachers improve, fairly evaluate their teachers, and create an environment for teachers to succeed.
Ideally, line managers should be evaluated according to the success of their organizations.
If/when this goes through, step number 1 is working on the evaluation system. Bust step number 2 needs to be training & evaluating the principals. A principal who doesn’t know how to evaluate, mentor, etc kills the system at their school.
when you talk about them only in vague glittering generalities?
Boy, if someone could just figure out how to talk a whole lot without saying anything, I’m sure he could manage to sell a lot of stuff!
The bill proposes very specific things. Why not explain why you like those specific things instead of whitewashing it all into sloganeering?
Specifically, I am a huge fan of a teacher’s evaluation being determined, in part, by multiple measures of student growth. Those multiple measures, as outlined in the bill would contain various assessments including school-based and district developed models, not all CSAP.
I also think it is high time that teachers demonstrate effectiveness (again, measured partially by student growth) three years in a row in order to obtain non-porbationary status.
Finally, the notion that effectiveness could be taken into account in the event of teacher lay-offs is just plain common sense. We should value experience, and there certainly is a correlation between experience and effectiveness, but if I have learned anything it’s that correlations are just that.
Experience is a funny thing. There’s a real difference between 10 years of experience and one year of experience repeated 10 times. A decent evaluation process can discern the difference.
Implement this plan for half of the schools. See which half does better.
See, Colorado tossed out the Iowa tests – which were nationally normed and had been used in the state for years..so there could have been a baseline – in order to use the CSAP….locally created and not nationally normed. See, the CSAP was designed to meet the criteria of NCLB.
One of the mandates of NCLB was that all children would be at the proficient level by 2013. Wellllllllll. Colorado is in the process of tossing out the CSAP and will be creating yet another state, non-nationally normed test- for all students to use by 2013. I believe this will start the clock back to 0….With no way to relate scores on the new,, as yet undeveloped test, to the old CSAP which in turn had no way to compare the CSAP scores to the nationally normed Iowa tests.
All of this makes tons of money for people who print tests.
As for the Race to the Top which is what created this current legislative nightmare. It is just tossing peanuts to monkeys.
Even better, come up with 4 new approaches and do 20% each (1 group staying as is).
It’s a great idea, but it’s never going too happen.
But which seriously ill patient gets the placebo?
You’ll probably find a lot of volunteers for that.
Is that giving the placebo, in some cases, is tantamount to withholding treatment.
It swings both ways. The new treatment may also have unanticipated side effects…that is usually why they do trials.
I have been in a medical trial, with long term negative side effects. I took that risk, knowing all the possible outcomes.
Give parents the same choice.
but why restrict it to parents?
The public education system belongs to all of us.
Parents have the right protect their kids.
The rest of us have elected representatives to make decisions and our consequences are not so immediate.
and just a guy filled with resentment, well of course your opinions about what must be done should count less.
To use your analogy, it’s like if you had a critically ill patient, and you wanted to propose some radical new treatment, but instead of asking the doctors or the family or the patient himself, you did a text-message poll on a game show.
What if the result of the medical treatment for that patient would determine the future economy of our state? In that case we are major stakeholders. The quality of our schools are what determines the future of Colorado so they are very important for all of us.
That one patient might be days away from inventing some wonderful new 3D plastic printer.
Doesn’t make you major stakeholders in his life.
The fact that you care doesn’t mean education-reform-by-text-message-poll is a good idea. What matters is what’s actually possible (which is why the input of teachers and administrators is important) and what will be best for the kids (which is why the input of parents is important). Other people can propose ideas, but they have less at stake and less to worry about if their ideas fail. (Which is probably why they feel so comfortable doing it.)
Most of all our children. My youngest will graduate from a DPS high school in two weeks – my stake in the success of DPS and all Colorado schools will not diminish when that happens.
It doesn’t make you a bad person that you don’t have a personal stake in DPS, and it doesn’t mean you’re not capable of caring a lot. But you don’t have a stake.
I care whether people live or die at Boulder Community Hospital, but it doesn’t give me a stake (to use the favorite analogy of the weekend). I can support more funding for the hospital or support closing it down, but if I start micromanaging the hospital, I’d likely make things worse.
My company is very dependent on a very well educated workforce. So I do have a stake. I also have a stake that I will have grandkids attending one of these days.
Until they don’t.
is not the type of involvement that we generally find helpful. Besides, it’s parental involvement that teachers are always asking for, not bitter old man involvement.
I put two kids through the system here. Since they were ten years apart, that was more than a 20 year commitment.
Served on Accountability. PTA. Got fingerprinted and carried a freakin walkie-talkie at the bus stop. Judged science fair. And on and on and on. Even when my kids were out of the system, I volunteered teaching 7th graders to get their ham radio licenses.
You keep fabricating shit without even knowing me, SXP. It doesn’t become you.
Neither does insulting parents. You know, customers.
We are all stakeholders in public education. If you want to restrict interest in public education only to “educators,” good luck getting future ballot initiatives passed.
Teachers want parental involvement, or so they say. What they really want is compliant parents who won’t ask pesky questions.
All of us have a stake in the schools. Teachers who don’t like that concept can sit on it.
Really? Are you from the cast of Happy Days?
Teachers love having parents involved in their children’s education. Anonymous critics on message boards are less helpful to teachers. Sorry you’re not as useful as you think you are in this debate.
The schools say they want parental and community involvement, but NO critics and NO questions. You want to decide who gets to be involved and you attack anyone you don’t deem qualified to be involved.
We all have a stake in education, directly as parents, uncles, aunts or other relatives, directly as employers and damned well directly as taxpayers.
So if you don’t like “sit on it,” try “stuff it.”
Just you and Ralphie, whom I have never seen post anything about education except anti-teacher one-liners, and from whom I have never seen a single constructive proposal. At least critics like David and Laughing Boy and Raphael have the guts to propose ideas even if they get shot down.
And look how defensive you get! After months of criticizing teachers who are doing the best they can with very limited resources and support, finally someone has the nerve to reply! Oh the horror! Oh your poor nerves! Oh the injustice of it all!
This “dishing it out and not being able to take it” is characteristic of bullies.
If you want to criticize, try and be constructive. What are teachers not doing that you want to see them do? Many of them are happy to get useful advice from anyone. If you want to ask questions, go ahead! People often have only a vague idea of what teachers do, and many teachers are happy to answer questions. But if you just want to piss on teachers all day long, don’t be surprised when one of them is unhappy about it.
The “limited resources” line tells it all. Money alone is not the answer. It’s got to come with accountability.
When a third of third-graders can’t read, that’s a problem.
So what do teachers do? Whine about lousy parents, bad lives at homes for the kids, classes that are too big, not enough money.
Teachers should know going into the profession that all kids aren’t equally endowed with brains and parents willing to be involved according to teacher specifications. There isn’t enough money to do everything.
Teachers, just like all the rest of us, have to deal with what we find on the job and do the job in spite of the problems.
A one-third failure rate gets people fired in the real world.
So, as per your request, a couple of suggestions:
Quit whining.
Produce kids who can read, and then ask for more money.
That would be a start.
that you would write something completely useless yet again. Or that you wouldn’t have any actual ideas.
Clearly you don’t actually care enough to think about the problem for more than the 5 seconds it takes you to type a sentence of snarky bullshit.
At least you have the courage to openly admit how much you hate teachers, unlike some people around here.
I think incompetent teachers should not be teaching. I think good ones should be paid more. So teachers need to be evaluated, and there’s nothing wrong with using students’ performances to do so.
If I produce a crappy product, I get fired. When teachers produce ignorant kids, they whine about not having enough money, how unengaged the parents are, how poor the kids are, etc.
My ideas, as stated above:
Quit whining.
Teach kids to read and then we’ll talk about more money.
Oh…but those aren’t ideas that meet your specifications, are they?
that even when specifically asked twice, you can’t come up with a single useful suggestion.
I was thinking of writing a paragraph explaining something to you, but what’s the point? You’ll just copy and paste your previous post again, patting yourself on the back each time for how very clever you are. It is useless to engage you in any way whatsoever, except mockery. You hate teachers, and you likely will for the rest of your life.
But we’ll get right to work on your great advice. Until now teachers have been teaching kids to play Super Mario Bros. and clean the dust off erasers, but that “reading” thing is a great idea. Thanks again for being so thoughtful!
is to quit whining and grow up.
No wonder the kids can’t read.
Actually, I’m wrong, I kind of predicted this response.
How did you get to be such a sad and bitter person? Did a teacher try to teach you something you didn’t want to learn once? Did someone try to make you learn the quadratic formula? What happened to you?
I do not hate teachers. One of the best ones I had taught me to solve quadratic equations and how to do linear algebra.
The great teachers I had were smart, well-educated, knew their subjects cold and taught them passionately.
Not one whined. Ever.
Not one complained and blamed others.
I doubt any of them could exist in the bureaucracies our public schools are today, filled with whiners who never stop making excuses.
You’re not in their league, sxp, sorry to say.
Have a nice night. I’ve had enough.
but I guess that’s just your posts talking.
Since we’re speculating on each other’s job performance, I’m going to guess you’re not a creative type in your job. You kind of say the exact same thing over and over again.
Let me guess: whenever you had trouble with a subject, it was because the teacher sucked (not because you didn’t study hard enough)? Whenever your kids had trouble with something, it was because the teacher hated them (not because they didn’t study hard enough)?
Public schools are the same as they’ve been. Don’t know how old you are, but kids have also been dropping out of school for many years. And (yes this is shocking) some kids did better than others, even back then. I know nothing’s quite like the good old days, but I suspect maybe you’ve changed more than the teachers or the schools.
As for what your teachers thought about you or their jobs, what could possibly make you think they’d tell you? Your high opinion of yourself?
Where did this statistic come from?
Ralphie wants to pay for performance, not longevity. I have said that three times. You seem to think that’s an attack on teaching as a profession. Let me assure you, it’s not. I’ve been evaluated on that basis for my entire professional life. It’s not a negative, trust me.
Let me ask you a simple yes-or-no question.
Are you a teacher?
So tell us why you are so afraid to have your performance evaluated on its merits.
I’d like to know that.
By the way, do you make stuff up in the classroom too, or just here?
And I’m not interested in giving you any more information than I already have about my job or identity. As someone who only divulges information about himself to make himself look better, I hope you can understand that.
But just to reassure you, I’m nothing like this in front of students, although plenty of people before you who disagreed with me have made that accusation. This is just where I go to yell at people.
Making shit up.
My short-form bio is at the link in my profile.
Whether it makes me look “better” or not is immaterial. It’s been there for years.
Regardless, I’m still not interested in revealing my identity.
Ralphie asked you why you’re afraid to have your performance evaluated.
because doing so might help divulge my workplace or my identity.
I understand you can’t respect teachers, but could you at least respect anonymity, one of the main things about this site that keeps me here (for better or worse)?
I’ll be happy to discuss educational issues in the abstract, but I do not want to discuss my personal job experiences. Thanks.
There are plenty of good teachers in the system, most of whom migrate to schools with adequate buildings, competent principals,well-behaved kids, and supportive parents. Teaching is a tough job with compensation structures that have historically stressed retirement security, not salaries. That alone discourages young entrants into the profession.
The basic problem is that few people are willing to spend their working lives being poorly compensated for the difficult work of teaching the very children who would most benefit from their skills. SB191 will make the profession a less, not more, attractive career choice. Principals of suburban schools with tractable student populations will use its provsions to weed out less capable teachers, and sign up better ones. The notion that there’s some vast reservoir of competent idealists just aching to devote their lives to presently dysfunctional schools is a comforting mirage.
You want better teachers? Pay them more. That, alas, is exactly what the voters have refused to do.
until we get better results.
Strangely, we will find that we won’t get better results by just waiting around for them and doing more tests. Even more strangely, this won’t prevent us from continuing to wait around for them while issuing stupid pronouncements about our own wisdom that’s somehow invisible to others.
It’s as if we had a seriously ill patient in the hospital and while the doctors were trying to save him, some old men in T-shirts sat in the waiting room drinking beer and yelling, “Do another test!”
Awesome debate we’re having. You can tell how much people REALLY care by how snide and thoughtless their comments are.