Dollie Llama putting the smack down on China?????

[archenemy]

Can you recap it using smaller words?

[tomtom]

the bottom line is, neither the union nor state can have much of a culling effect on teachers. personally, i'm embarrassed by a # of social studies teachers i work with - they don't know what the fuck they're talking about, have no inate interest in the subject, don't read anything (that i can tell) and teach in a way that is utterly boring and off-putting. great - so we fire them. i won't complain, though what the process going to look like and how will it be fair?

 

Considering one of a teacher's responsibilities is to evaluate their student's performances in a fair manner, suggesting that teacher's can't figure out how to evaluate themselves doesn't ring true.

 

I have no interest in ragging on teachers for sport. I believe the best use of tax dollars is to have a strong educational system for all. I went through public school in the small town south (during integration) and had the usual mixed bag of motivated and not so teachers. But I'm not convinced that throwing additional money at teacher's salaries will improve education.

[tvashtarkatena]

I have no interest in ragging on teachers for sport....But I'm not convinced that throwing additional money at teacher's salaries will improve education.

 

I love ragging on teachers during sport. And I agree wholeheartedly that they deserve not a penny more. They'd just spend it on whiskey and cigarettes.

[archenemy]

I wish they'd spend it helping kids learn punctuation.

[ivan]

I wish they'd spend it helping kids learn punctuation.

i, thought; that was waht ms-word! was for?

[ivan]

They'd just spend it on whiskey and cigarettes.

2 of the only things still made in this country! hey, at least i'm trying to stimulate the local economy

[ivan]

Considering one of a teacher's responsibilities is to evaluate their student's performances in a fair manner, suggesting that teacher's can't figure out how to evaluate themselves doesn't ring true.

 

i wasn't saying i couldn't come up w/ one - i'm sure what i'd come up w/ wouldn't be popular though and therefore wouldn't be accepted. the major problem in evaluating teacher though, i think, is that teaching is largely an art - and so evaluating it becomes much like evaluating any other art form. folks who get evaluated poorly get pissed and sue, and the court tends to suppor them unless there's something really concrete for the school to hang its hat on. in every district i've taught it, it seems it has been practically impossible to get fired, save for an act of gross stupidity, and usually only then after 300 warnings.

[JayB]

Adopt the model that seems to work in community colleges. No WEA membership or teaching certificate required. While I'm not a teacher, I am a parent--and a student. I'm sure you'll find flaws in what I came up with, but I didn't want your challenge to be met with only silence, so I anxiously await your flame. Here goes...

 

1.) You'll have to be prepared to kiss some administration ass. Just like folks do in the private sector. Not pretty, I know.

2.) You'll have to gain the respect of your colleagues. They know who's teaching and who's sucking public teat. Their opinions should be part of your weighted eval/merit increase.

3.) Respect of your students. Even hard-ass teachers garner the respect of the students they instruct. Again; some very lightly weighted input on your evaluation would be appropriate.

4.) Standardized tests have to play at least a part. Might not be totally fair. Too bad. (If my district's sales performance is down through no fault of my own; economic downturn, idiotic corporate pricing mandates, competitive disadvantage, etc ...it's still my fault. That's just the way it is.)

5.) Balanced against standardized tests should be some sort of scheme whereby a teacher who demonstrates the capacity to help a student find his/her niche is doubly rewarded. This would probably be somewhat subjective, but it could be done. Maybe each teacher could be quietly and randomly assigned 'project children' through which his performance could be measured.

6.) Abandon the goal of college for all. Bring back vocational/trade school track. Our current system is pushing kids who aren't college material (yet) right out the door.

7.) Restore discipline. Give teachers reasonable immunity from legal and administrative retribution when they take measures to maintain order in their classrooms--including corporal punishment.

8.) Incentives for the recruitment of more male teachers. I don't know what the stats are, but I suspect many boys with "issues" at school already have more than enough female role models in their lives.

9.) Pay educators who teach inside their credentials more $$ (ie: math teachers have a BS/MS Math, history teachers have a BA/MA history, etc...).

10.) Cut admin pay and staff levels. Immediately. Put the money and the bodies into the classrooms.

11.) You will never get the parent(s) of non-performing students to provide meaningful help at home. They are either not academically capable of doing so, working two jobs to pay rent, or just don't care. There is likely a genetic component involved as well. ...Or just maybe, Johnny's hormone-addled brain will finally fire up when he's twenty four and he will go on to do great things. Seriously.

12.) Pay scale for post-union era teachers? Just off the top of my head: $28,000 for probation/no exp/(or shitty ones). $100,000 for outstanding.

 

think i've been pretty flame-low on this thread.

 

i don't see the union as being your biggest opponent or enemy on many of your listed items.

 

i don't happen to put a lot of stock in a teaching certificate either, mostly b/c the process of getting one is pretty bureaucratic and meaningless, as is the process of re-newing it. most education classes are circle-jerks and utterly worthless.

 

so, to your list:

 

1. i don't run rough-shod over my admin now, here or in any state. my last school in particuliar had a very strict, command/control style leadership taht was highly effective for the inner-city environmnet it operated it. do you think teachers/unions are in charge? the reality varies from school to school. in my current school, the rich parents pretty much own/control everythign.

 

2. i don't mind being evaluated by my peers, but they'll have to come in for observations, which is extra work for them and will require substitutes. the reality of a teacher's life is we pretty much all work in obscurity - that is, no one really knows what the hell i'm doing or how good i am b/c they're all busy working in their own rooms w/ their own kids during the school day.

 

3. i don't mind some small evaluation from my students/their parents either

 

4. i've already said standardized tests are fine as a part of evaluation.

 

5. i already take on "project kids" each year, and for that to be meaningful, it can't really be evaluated - the kids i try to take special interest in are deeply damaged or deranged, and the succes of any strategy of dealing w/ them heavily governed by chance. if you evaluate someone on this, they'd game the system and pick easy targets, ignoring the kids who truly need them.

 

6. you're mistaken if you think all kids are being pushed towards college. the esd i'm in has a very strong skills center program, and our career center in my school works very hard to put kids in all kinds of apprentice programs and highlight non-college pathways. that said, i believe the stats show an increasingly huge divide between the eventual salaries of folks w/ college degrees and those w/o.

 

7. you want teachers to have the right to strike their kids? i certainly wouldn't mind whaling on some of my charges, but in case you haven't noticed, society at large has turned its back on CP as a discipline tool, for better or worse.

 

8. you want to pay male teachers more than female teachers in order to recruit them more heavily? uhhh, okay. i'm sure that won't piss off a huge # of folks. at any rate, i don't see the need. at least in high school, there are already a large # of males. my humanities department is more than 50% male. assuming we're still somewhat stuck to that 20th century notion as the male in a family being the chief bread-winner though, it makes sense that men would prefer something more high-paying then teaching.

 

9. WA state already requires all teachers to have credentials to teach w/n their subject area.

 

10. cut admin pay? okay. their high pay is necessary to attract competence too of course. even if you pay them the same as teachers you're not reintroducing that much money into the system. i don't see that much "fat" walking around my school. most staff members are doing something useful that directly involves kids. that may not be as true at the district level admin, but then i have no real sense what the hell at all those folks are doing.

 

11. this point is not a suggestion, but does explain why schools are always going to have problems, no matter what you change. schools are mirrors - they reflect society. you can distort the mirror all you want and it doesn't change reality.

 

12. i'll take 100k$ a year and certianly think i'd be good enough to earn it. someone more math-happy then myself can figure this out, but assumign that salaries for teachers makes up the principle cost of education, adn seeing as how 100K is at least twice as much as the current average, are you prepared to increase spending on schools that much?

 

regardless, unless the compensation is made more attractive to attact a much larger pool of qualified teachers, you're not going to improve a damn thing. no one will swim through an ocean of shit for a pair of plastic earrings.

 

my recommendation, at least for high school - make the kids have to earn their place. kids who can't maintain an acceptable gpa or discipline record should be shown the door. public schools are instead essentially jails, housing a huge population of disaffected, disinclined dipshits who divert me from my purpose. feel free to have "work camps" on some sorta ccc-model for those who can't make the schools work for them so you don't have a large teen-gang element on the street. i'm tired of having classes where 50% of the kids are failing and damn near 90% are proud of never studying and never working.

 

I'd be in favor of this last recommendation in particular. We can't bemoan the lack of discipline in public schools and simultaneously deny the teachers the ability to enforce it. On second thought, I guess we can - since we are - but we shouldn't.

 

Figuring out a constructive mechanism for dealing with the delinquents and the deadbeats that doesn't translate into much higher public expenditures in the corrections system later on, and that would let them earn their way back into mainstream classrooms and /or vocational training if they changed their ways would be the kicker - but I think it'd be worth trying to figure that part of the puzzle out.

 

 

[tomtom]

I wish they'd spend it helping kids learn punctuation.

 

 

LOL!!!!1!

[JayB]

"Posts: 1917

Loc: Russia With Love"

 

Hey - is that the real post-count or am I just slow on the uptake...

[tvashtarkatena]

After reading this thread, and harkening back to my own halcyon days of adolescent summer, I've concluded that high school students aren't really good for much other than keeping the auto-body and auto insurance industries solvent. They eat like rhinos, produce nothing but dirty dishes and the occasional unwanted baby, and don't make very good company in general. They do grow fast, however, so I say, rather than waste all this money trying to educate them, let's eat them.

[sk]

Ah, so we can pay to educate your kids, but you won't kick in to keep other people's kids healthy enough to go to school?

 

Funny, I paid taxes which educated "other people's" kids before I had kids in school, and will be paying for "other people's" kids in just a few years. Ditto for medical care of others. And I'm sure I've kicked in more than my fair share over the years, since I've always paid income and payroll deduction taxes.

 

And I'm coughing up at least $1000 a month for insurance, but hey, keep pretending that YOU pay for MY kids.

 

 

I assure you that I pay significantly more taxes than you do. But that is beside the point. Why would it seem like I am "pretending" that I pay for your kids, but you feel justified in saying that they will support me when I am old? Can you see the problem there?

 

wont it be the children of today who pay your social security, medicare and medicade? we are certinly paying for our parents generation now. the problem being, their generation out numbers ours drasticly. because they had fewer children it will be a significant strain on the economy when all the boomers hit retirement.

Muffy, have you looked at what SSI pays? My answer to your question (the same I answered to K3) is no, I do not expect to rely on SSI. I save more than 20% of my income every year in preparation for retirement and have done so for a long time. I have no plans to ensure my care to the hands of strangers with a system that may not be there when I am old. I was raised to believe that I must take care of myself. I have done so since I was 16 and I plan on doing everything in my power to be able to continue to do so until I am 116.

 

my parents have done well for themselves and have retired. they will still need to use medicade and medicare despite the fact that they are both vets. becuase the cost of medical insurance is astronomical.

 

i hear what you are saying and i am working hard to follow in your footsteps. I am saving now as i don't believe SSI will even exist when we retire. however, i firmly beleive that we have an obligation as members of this society to pay taxes to fund our government. Part of that money goes to public education at this time. If you don't think that is a good idea I would hope that you run for office and work at making that change.

 

out of curiosity, did you go to public school?

[ivan]

They do grow fast, however, so I say, rather than waste all this money trying to educate them, let's eat them.

a most modest proposal, my good man!

[Dechristo]

 

5. i already take on "project kids" each year, and for that to be meaningful, it can't really be evaluated - the kids i try to take special interest in are deeply damaged or deranged, and the succes of any strategy of dealing w/ them heavily governed by chance.

 

I wish you the best of success with "Project Tvash".

[RuMR]

Ah, so we can pay to educate your kids, but you won't kick in to keep other people's kids healthy enough to go to school?

 

Funny, I paid taxes which educated "other people's" kids before I had kids in school, and will be paying for "other people's" kids in just a few years. Ditto for medical care of others. And I'm sure I've kicked in more than my fair share over the years, since I've always paid income and payroll deduction taxes.

 

And I'm coughing up at least $1000 a month for insurance, but hey, keep pretending that YOU pay for MY kids.

 

 

I assure you that I pay significantly more taxes than you do. But that is beside the point. Why would it seem like I am "pretending" that I pay for your kids, but you feel justified in saying that they will support me when I am old? Can you see the problem there?

 

wont it be the children of today who pay your social security, medicare and medicade? we are certinly paying for our parents generation now. the problem being, their generation out numbers ours drasticly. because they had fewer children it will be a significant strain on the economy when all the boomers hit retirement.

Muffy, have you looked at what SSI pays? My answer to your question (the same I answered to K3) is no, I do not expect to rely on SSI. I save more than 20% of my income every year in preparation for retirement and have done so for a long time. I have no plans to ensure my care to the hands of strangers with a system that may not be there when I am old. I was raised to believe that I must take care of myself. I have done so since I was 16 and I plan on doing everything in my power to be able to continue to do so until I am 116.

i always thought you were gonna live to be 666!?!?!

[RuMR]

 

5. i already take on "project kids" each year, and for that to be meaningful, it can't really be evaluated - the kids i try to take special interest in are deeply damaged or deranged, and the succes of any strategy of dealing w/ them heavily governed by chance.

 

I wish you the best of success with "Project Tvash".

Trash is the best argument yet walking for a retroactive abortion, imo...

[ivan]

Trash is the best argument yet walking for a retroactive abortion, imo...

don't know about you, but on long alpine trips i'd much rather be w/ an intelligent misanthrope than an idiotic flanders-type - the make the miles melt away more melodiously

[tvashtarkatena]

 

5. i already take on "project kids" each year, and for that to be meaningful, it can't really be evaluated - the kids i try to take special interest in are deeply damaged or deranged, and the succes of any strategy of dealing w/ them heavily governed by chance.

 

I wish you the best of success with "Project Tvash".

Trash is the best argument yet walking for a retroactive abortion, imo...

 

Mom thought so, too. I still have the vacuum suck marks to prove it. *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*With apologies to Joan Rivers.

[tvashtarkatena]

 

5. i already take on "project kids" each year, and for that to be meaningful, it can't really be evaluated - the kids i try to take special interest in are deeply damaged or deranged, and the succes of any strategy of dealing w/ them heavily governed by chance.

 

I wish you the best of success with "Project Tvash".

 

I name my turds before I flush them.