Still Hating America.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
FWIW, I'd never ever compare a teacher's 2005 class at Westbury High School in Houston, Texas against the 2006 class. Katrina had an effect on other places than New Orleans.

Do Katrinas happen every year? A real estate company shouldn't compare their employees performance the same in a year prices go up to a year when prices go down. That is why you never rely on one year's statistics. But over time the averages will kick in and the objective truth will come out on who is performing and who is not. Actually determining competance in a school environment should be a lot easier than most environments. Teachers have a pretty simple and limited goal: to teach basic math, reading and writing. In many business there are a variety of things most employees must balance and accomplish, but teachers just have one task to perform, educate their students.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
I recently met a "friend" and we sort of hit it off, iykwim. We discussed getting together for some future play, but now I have googled this person and discovered campaign contributions to Senator Maria Cantwell and Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

Should I call it off now? How do I explain the sea change?

Bad idea.

Progressive chicks get wild in the sack, if you can pretend to respect their worldview long enough.

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
By the way, at the convention this weekend I ran into one of the guys I sit with on the board, Bill Evers. He has just been appointed Undersecretary of Education by the President. We had a nice chat about education that would have gone way over Adder's head.

Who sez Elvis died?

S_A_M

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Spanky
Do Katrinas happen every year? A real estate company shouldn't compare their employees performance the same in a year prices go up to a year when prices go down. That is why you never rely on one year's statistics. But over time the averages will kick in and the objective truth will come out on who is performing and who is not. Actually determining competance in a school environment should be a lot easier than most environments. Teachers have a pretty simple and limited goal: to teach basic math, reading and writing. In many business there are a variety of things most employees must balance and accomplish, but teachers just have one task to perform, educate their students.

I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that teachers end up doing a lot more than just educating students. They become cops, guidance counselors, advocates, friends and disciplinarians.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that teachers end up doing a lot more than just educating students. They become cops, guidance counselors, advocates, friends and disciplinarians.

I think spank's point, if clearly stated, might be that some teachers may have all those roles, but EVERY teacher MUST teach basic skills. And while it may be really hard to do so in certain schools, that doesn't change the fact that teaching is perhaps more important in problem schools. A teacher who cannot teach in a problem school might not be a bad teacher generally, but there is no reason to leave them in the problem school if they can't do it there. Give someone else a chance to fail, or maybe suceed.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Bad idea.

Progressive chicks get wild in the sack, if you can pretend to respect their worldview long enough.

S_A_M

Correct. W p, p!

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I think spank's point, if clearly stated, might be that some teachers may have all those roles, but EVERY teacher MUST teach basic skills. And while it may be really hard to do so in certain schools, that doesn't change the fact that teaching is perhaps more important in problem schools. A teacher who cannot teach in a problem school might not be a bad teacher generally, but there is no reason to leave them in the problem school if they can't do it there. Give someone else a chance to fail, or maybe suceed.

I agree with most of that, but I still think that even the most angelic of classrooms will require activities outside of teaching. A kid that masters the material in a second is often going to be more trouble for the teacher than a kid who is struggling. The former is going to be bored and disruptive. The latter will be working on the material.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
You are blowing this stuff way out of proportion. I can imagine that it may not make it to work tomorrow because I may get hit by a car (or imagine many other things), but how probable is it? How much of a boost in education is a computer going to make for one year in a students life when it comes to basic math and reading. Teachers taught this stuff for years without computers. Yes a computer might help a little, but don't you think the effectiveness of the teacher will be signficantly more determinant in what the student will learn. And if computers are given out to all the K-2 classes, then the grades can be compared to classes that get them. And you won't get new conputers every year so if there was a spike because of computers that year, all the other years won't have that same spike. Schools don't change that much every year, and the teacher is the biggest factor that changes.

You asked for an example, so I gave you one. There are something like seven bullets on that page I linked to -- that was just one.

You seem to think I'm suggesting that teachers are irrelevant. Hardly. Of course they matter. My point is that a bunch of other things matter too, so you can't simply look at test scores and start canning people.

People wonder why I repeat myself, but I keep getting asked the same question. You look for patterns over time. You move a principle around, and if schools keep performing less well after he is put in you know he is bad principle. Just like with teachers you don't go with just one year. But over the years you will see which teachers consistenly out do their collegues and which ones don't.

The more you talk, the more subjective this sounds. Which is fine, if you trust the "you" here -- the school administrators -- more than you trust the teachers. We all agree that there are bad teachers. What I don't understand is why you think that giving school administrators lots of discretion is going to help.

So whatever works in Business doesn't work in education because education is not a busines. That is absurd.

That is absurd. It's also not what I said. My point was that if it were easy to assess outcomes in education, it would be easier to make it a business. But it's just a fact of the world that it's hard to do, unlike many businesses. You can tell how many widgets a factory makes, or how many hours a GA bills. You can't quantify how much a 3rd grader learns.

Are you saying it wouldn't be helpful, or would have no effect, to be able to determine which teachers are using the tools given them more effectively than others in their goal of providing an education for children?

No. I'm saying that it's hard to do, and that's it's fairly subjective. It's not just a function of spitting out some test scores and canning the low-scoring teachers.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I think spank's point, if clearly stated, might be that some teachers may have all those roles, but EVERY teacher MUST teach basic skills. And while it may be really hard to do so in certain schools, that doesn't change the fact that teaching is perhaps more important in problem schools. A teacher who cannot teach in a problem school might not be a bad teacher generally, but there is no reason to leave them in the problem school if they can't do it there. Give someone else a chance to fail, or maybe suceed.

Vis-a-vis my local public schools, I've been told by someone who should know better than I (hi gwinky!) that people are too impatient, and keep running out the top officials and bringing in a new program before the old one has had a chance to work. In other words, a "give someone else a chance to fail" approach. And they do.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that teachers end up doing a lot more than just educating students. They become cops, guidance counselors, advocates, friends and disciplinarians.

That is true but that is not what they are there for. They are simply there to educate and that is what they should be judged on. If you had to choose between a teacher that was a good cop, guidance counselor, advocate, friend and disciplinarian, but didn't teach anything, and another teacher who taught her students but was a bad coop, guidance counselor, advocate, friend and disciplinarian, you would keep the latter and get rid of the former. Of course some of this stuff leads to helping a teacher teach, but in the end teaching is what they are there for.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I think spank's point, if clearly stated, might be that some teachers may have all those roles, but EVERY teacher MUST teach basic skills. And while it may be really hard to do so in certain schools, that doesn't change the fact that teaching is perhaps more important in problem schools. A teacher who cannot teach in a problem school might not be a bad teacher generally, but there is no reason to leave them in the problem school if they can't do it there. Give someone else a chance to fail, or maybe suceed.

Exactly.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Spanky
That is true but that is not what they are there for. They are simply there to educate and that is what they should be judged on. If you had to choose between a teacher that was a good cop, guidance counselor, advocate, friend and disciplinarian, but didn't teach anything, and another teacher who taught her students but was a bad coop, guidance counselor, advocate, friend and disciplinarian, you would keep the latter and get rid of the former. Of course some of this stuff leads to helping a teacher teach, but in the end teaching is what they are there for.

I am not sure these things are as easy to separate out as you think. And, frankly, I am not sure you can be one of these things without being pretty strong in all areas.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Spanky
Schools don't change that much every year, and the teacher is the biggest factor that changes.

You can't really mean this. The single biggest factor that changes in a school each year is the kids. Both from the change to different students, and changes within the individual students. Kids develop physicially, emotionally, and intellectually at different rates, and in fits and starts. A teacher can't change that.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You asked for an example, so I gave you one. There are something like seven bullets on that page I linked to -- that was just one.

Yes but none of them would really have that much influence on how much a student would learn in a single year. In other words they wouldn't effect how teachers were reflected in the test much.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop You seem to think I'm suggesting that teachers are irrelevant. Hardly. Of course they matter. My point is that a bunch of other things matter too, so you can't simply look at test scores and start canning people.

What other criteris would there be besides tests scores?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The more you talk, the more subjective this sounds. Which is fine, if you trust the "you" here -- the school administrators -- more than you trust the teachers. We all agree that there are bad teachers. What I don't understand is why you think that giving school administrators lots of discretion is going to help.

Actually that is the way if may "sound" but addinng data makes it more objective. You just don't fire a teacher over one or two years data, or from one placement. But over time, if a teacher pefroms significantly less well than their peers in many different situations over time, that is about as objective and as fair as you can get.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
That is absurd. It's also not what I said. My point was that if it were easy to assess outcomes in education, it would be easier to make it a business. But it's just a fact of the world that it's hard to do, unlike many businesses. You can tell how many widgets a factory makes, or how many hours a GA bills. You can't quantify how much a 3rd grader learns.

Actually, I think you are wrong. That is where annual testing comes in. It is not hard to test for progress in basic learning skills.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No. I'm saying that it's hard to do, and that's it's fairly subjective. It's not just a function of spitting out some test scores and canning the low-scoring teachers.

If there are multiple tests giving in multiple situations, and teachers results are matched against their piers and they are doing signficantly less well, I think it is that simple.

In any event this is an irrelevent argument. The point is whether you agree that annual tests should be taken and such data collected. Right now we are not using annual tests so we can't even use such data as part of the teacher evaluation. I think collecting such data would be really valuable for both the student and the system. You can debate its relative, cut don't you agree such information is really useful?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No. I'm saying that it's hard to do, and that's it's fairly subjective. It's not just a function of spitting out some test scores and canning the low-scoring teachers.

Why not? This is how Spanky runs his business - each year he administers a test to his employees and fires the low scorers, regardless of what their performance numbers (aka, "grades") are.

Why haven't law firms instituted this?