California judge says no to homeschooling

[sirs]

sir`s I understand what your saying, remove the job security and make it performance base and natural selection will weedout the bad teachers.

close....I'm not saying do away with it, I'm saying do away with making it near impossible to fire a teacher.  A distinct difference, since the good teachers are not in jeapordy of being fired for.....doing good work, which in and of itself would be counter productive to both the school and to the children's education

[kimba1]

but how about attracting good teachers?

[sirs]

How about it?  What's the dissentive, that doesn't exist in any other job market, trying to attract potentially good employees?

[Brassmask]

but how about attracting good teachers?

The problem you run into is there is no way to factually discern who is and isn't a "good" teacher.

Bad teachers can pass poor students.

The way to solve the teaching situation is to have classrooms run by two teachers of equal years of service but do NOT increase class sizes.  In fact, lower them even more.

Also, we must increase the base pay of every teacher across the country and make the positions more desirable in terms of compensation to people who might like to do the job but don't want to work for pennies and get shot and deal with 40 teenagers all day.

Education should be priority A1Prime.  Every other issue should come like 5th after education four times.  It will cost more money and more money and more money.  Get over it.  Do without a few more bombs to kill kids in other countries.

[Amianthus]

Also, we must increase the base pay of every teacher across the country and make the positions more desirable in terms of compensation to people who might like to do the job but don't want to work for pennies and get shot and deal with 40 teenagers all day.

Interestingly enough, teacher pay in private schools is lower than that in public schools, and there are teachers fighting to get jobs in those private schools.

[sirs]

but how about attracting good teachers?

The problem you run into is there is no way to factually discern who is and isn't a "good" teacher.  Bad teachers can pass poor students.

But not pass standardized tests.  That will FACTUALLY help demonstrate who is and isn't a good teacher

[Brassmask]

but how about attracting good teachers?

The problem you run into is there is no way to factually discern who is and isn't a "good" teacher.  Bad teachers can pass poor students.

But not pass standardized tests.  That will FACTUALLY help demonstrate who is and isn't a good teacher

Well, as we've seen with [Every Poor] Left Behind, that means that teachers can or must then spend every day teaching kids how to pass those standardized tests so they either A) don't lose their jobs or B) don't risk their school losing some kind of funding rather than having their kids just learn and discuss and grow.

But you have to be worried about that ten cents your out each month, right?

[sirs]

 

[Xavier_Onassis]

The main problem with declining performance in US schools is NOT the fault of the teachers. By and large, teachers are better qualified than ever, textbooks are better written, school libraries have lots more books, and pretty much every school and every student has access to the Internet.

The problem is that never before in the history of the planet has everyone had access to entertainment 24/7 via cable, dish or even network TV. This not only drains students' time, it prevents them from getting exercise as well as studying, and it also causes them to think that EVERYTHING they do should be entertaining. I think that, while learning vocabulary words in English or a foreign language can be sort of entertaining for some people, but not nearly as entertaining as watching teevee.

Now pretty much all kids have a cellphone, ostensibly to make them safer, but in reality,they use these to gossip with one another constantly about trivialities even more than they did when they had to wait to get home to chat on the phone.

The consumer society gives them tons to talk about: did you see him wearing FUBU? Doesn't he know that's for BLACK kids? Do you think he's turning into a wigger? Et cetera,  et cetera, et cetera, blah blah blah. In the 1950's kids studied on the schoolbus. Now they chat on cellphones.

The consumer society may be good for business, but it sure as Hell is not good for producing children and adults who think for themselves, or even think at all.

Parents are also occupied with being entertained 24/7, and surely spend a lot less time helping kids with their homework than by father and mother helped me. We got our first TV when I was 13, but my sister and I were banned from watching it after 8:00 PM, and my parents watched it mostly on weekends,

I recall spending most of the day in the summers cycling around town with my friends and most of the evenings reading all sorts of stuff: all the Hardy Boys mysteries, most of the Nancy Drews, tons of comic books, the Book of Knowledge and even a couple of Victor Hugo novels translated into Spanish. This was after I liberated myself at the age of 13 from (ugh!) Vacation Bible School, an activity expressly invented to ruin kids' summers.

During the school year, I also spent a lot of time reading and riding around.
Many of my students at the University do not seem to have ever read a single bool for amusement. I am sure some have never read a book for any reason from cover to cover.

I suggest that this is NOT the fault of teachers or the NEA, and that those who think it is have their heads firmly lodged where the Sun don't shine.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Interestingly enough, teacher pay in private schools is lower than that in public schools, and there are teachers fighting to get jobs in those private schools.
=====================================================================
Here in Miami, the only ones fighting to teach in church-run public schools are those who do not have the credentials to teach in the public schools. The public schools start at around $28K, but some of the private schools pay less than $20K.
Florida is very near the bottom in pay, and Miami-Dade County has the highest cost of living in the State.

My daughter went to a private Cuban-run school through the third grade. The turnover was usually yearly: no one taught there for more than a year. No one was even halfway good at teaching math, by which I mean simple arithmetic, such as the multiplication tables. After that she went to Holy Cross Lutheran. I don't think anyone teaches there for more than a couple of years. It might be a more pleasant teaching experience. I know from my three months teaching at Miami-Jackson HS that the public schools are bloody nerve-wracking. But it is also difficult to get by on $2K a month when your rent  (forget buying a home!) is $1,100 to $1,300 a month, and now gas is $3.50 a gallon.

[BT]

We are not afraid of being accountable, BT. I don't hear/see that where I work.

Perhaps the educators in your community feel that way.

Nonsense. You have claimed repeatedly that the act is punitive in its accountability provisions. That it is unfair. That standardized tests are the problem.

So how do you measure performance other than testing?

[Cynthia]

We are not afraid of being accountable, BT. I don't hear/see that where I work.

Perhaps the educators in your community feel that way.

Nonsense. You have claimed repeatedly that the act is punitive in its accountability provisions. That it is unfair. That standardized tests are the problem.

So how do you measure performance other than testing?

No, there's a difference. The WAY the act punishes is wrong. Not THAT the act punishes.

[BT]

What would be the right way?

[fatman]

But you have to be worried about that ten cents your out each month, right?

Ten cents?  I'm looking at my property tax statement from last year, and the portion dedicated solely to education is $1600.  That's a chunk of change in my book.  I don't feel that it's unfair to demand accountability when it's my money going to fund something, whether it's government, charity, whatever.

I went to trade school for two years, this was 7 years ago.  While I was in my classes, the instructors would run the students through remedial math, because as a welder/fitter, you need to have a good understanding of math to be successful in that field.  I kid you not Brass, there were a number of students in there who couldn't a) couldn't do anything with decimals (add, subtract, multiply, divide), it makes me wonder how the hell they balance a checkbook, and b) couldn't do anything with fractions, which is an integral part to this line of work.  If you can't read a tape, then you're up shit creek with no paddle.  That these people were passed out of high school, or awarded a GED, is ridiculous.  This is math that I learned in elementary school, not calculus, trig (which we were also expected to learn), geometry, etc.

That's just inexcusable.

[kimba1]

well actually
if you don`t actively use those math skills
it will go away
I forgot alot of math myself
but I retained enough to be ahead of most folks