So has beating autistic and queer kids. So had beating left-handed kids, to force them to use their right hands, once. So had beating clumsy and/or double-jointed kids, to force them to use the dy I can’t actually hold anything like this tripod grip, although now it’s just harassing clumsy and/or double-jointed kids, for not using the dyimpossible tripod grip. So has using strobe lights in classrooms. So has grading for penmanship which may be physically impossible for disabled children.
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I don’t even think you need to be a libertarian to recognize that we’re trying to do central planning without any of the strengths of, say, the Chinese, who understand central planning to a T.
Alas, we’ll be shot down as being nuts.
Your Google is broken today?
Why are you being a dick? You made a bold claim and I was interested in your argument. I think it’s pretty reasonable to follow up with an inquiry.
I think he implicitly is arguing for moving away from a one-size fits all, corporate inspired model towards a model that would play to children’s natural curiosity and ability to soak up knowledge, especially when it’s presented in a way where they are pursuing that knowledge. This has worked for my family - it might not work for others, but it does for our adorable spawn:
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Punishment for ambidextrous kids lasted longer, at least in Britain. I remember getting told off for being inconsistent about which hand I preferred to us (corporal punishment was banned in my school the year I started, thankfully)
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[quote=“anon50609448, post:91, topic:30094”]
The run-like-a-business government has a strong motivation to keep teacher salaries low[/quote]
I’m not sure that concept’s ever even entered the mind of those legislating for education. The budget’s almost doubled for K-12 spending since 1980 with nothing to show for it but a negligible hiccup in test scores. That money’s going somewhere. Even if it could be channelled to the teachers’ salaries who could better use it, there’s still going to be a demand for results for all that spending. That’s not about being ‘run like a business’, it’s about assessing spending and ensuring that it’s doing the best job possible for those it’s intended.
Regardless of that being provable, I respect your opinion. I doubt many people would enter into teaching unless they started out wanting to help kids. But in my area, union influence is relatively low, yet there’s always a case involving the institution protecting it’s own. The last case to hit was a teacher who managed to string out more than a decade of sexual assault towards students.
Now maybe that’s an outlier and maybe it’s the tip of the iceberg, but few institutions run “like a business” would allow that kind of of malfeasance. Unless you’re lucky enough to be a cop or a teacher covered by a union. And in that case we’re told not to rush to judgement and that everything’s an isolated example. But how could an institution devoted to the interests of kids possibly attempt to protect that sort of member?
Both good points. And in most any system, gaming the results is usually going to yield more positive results than working within a broken, flawed process (at least on a short-term basis).
Which begs the larger question - how do we gauge the effectiveness of teaching and education? And what do we do in instances where it’s found to be lacking?
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IIRC the punishment over there was pretty brutal…
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And your thoughts in response to the extensive content of my reply to your inquiry are . . . ? (i.e., Why are you being evasive?)
My Sister-in-law is a Kindergarten teacher in California, and thinks that common core is good.
She said that one of the reasons that California schools always look bad is that the federal surveys rank states by what percentage of students meet the standards, but the standards were set by the states. California standards were particularly ambitious, leading to a lower proficiency rating.
(She also has many children of migrant families, who are in her classroom only in the spring, but that’s a whole different problem.)
I think he is somewhat aspirational career wise and high school is considered more prestigious for administrators. There are not that many Montessori high schools. He does stuff like learning through games and creating media. e is really creative and a good admin, but he needs to just start his own school.
There are a lot of similarities between the healthcare and the K-12 education sectors.
- highly labor intensive
- apparently poor performance in the US compared to the rest of the first world, despite
- massive increases in dollar inputs over the last couple of generations
- resistance of the professionals in both fields to standardize methods (“every child/patient is unique”)
- inability to consistently and fairly measure the quality of outputs
- an increasing degree of control at the federal level
The difference is in the “progressive” approach to these two sectors. We are told that we have to “bend the cost curve” in healthcare and relentlessly cut, cut, cut reimbursements. While for education, twice or three times what we are spending now would not nearly be enough.
Why??
Well, I’ve worked for my province’s Ministry of Education in the part of the ministry that sets the funding for schools. I am very sure that this concept has entered into the minds of those legislating for education, and of those implementing that legislation.
I don’t know why you would think this. Lots of businesses have harassing workers and managers who get away with it for years. Lots of businesses can’t figure out what to do about their employees who come in drunk every day, or let people act in bullying and abusive ways. I don’t disagree that unionization may protect bad workers. This can be justified by likening it to the way that defence attorneys protect criminals - everyone is supposed to be treated fairly (even if the fair thing is to fire them).
When an organization gets large enough you’ll always hear horror stories both ways. There are awful, abusive teachers who are on some kind of indefinite paid leave and there are great teachers who lost their jobs because of false-and-later-retracted accusations and can’t get them back. That happens in business as well as in the public sector.
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Are the kids wearing masks? Or is it a poorly encoded video?
The best teacher in the world can do only a little for the child of parents who have the curiosity, and the intellectual development, of flatworms. We seem to have more and more such parents with each generation.
I think a lot of the problem here is what’s not addressed.
Problem: Failing kids. “Solution”: Testing to identify the bad teachers/schools and do something about them. Note the hidden assumption here: That it’s the teaching at fault.
While there are bad teachers out there the real problem isn’t in the classroom in the first place.
Also, in various discussions of CC I have noted multiple people whose objection with CC seems to stem from word problems in math. The real world is word problems–if you can’t translate them to the math your math skills are basically useless outside the classroom.
You can argue otherwise all you want, but the accuracy of standardized testing predicting life time success approaches 100%, while all alternatives are closer to flipping a coin % wise. Pointing out inevitable exceptions means nothing when proposed alternatives are horrible.
Cory. What a painful article to read. Too biased. Some is good, means you are taking a position, a stake in the discussion. Too much, well you end up sounding like a nut. Usually its the right side of the political spectrum, but every now and again…
Not everything can be subjective. Education needs standards. Standards need measurement. Both need consistency. If Teachers think they can come up with a better way to do things, great. However I suspect that the current system was developed by educational professionals, not just some random guy in a cubical someplace. Saying that we are not all round pegs that don’t all fit in square holes is basically like throwing your hands up in the air and saying “Forget it!”. It is entirely reasonable that Student X must learn Y before going to grade Z. Hell I know I got screwed when I graduated many years ago trying to get into universities with a computer science degree because they mostly required calculus. However it wasn’t even offered at my school so I couldn’t even take it. Many offered equivalency tests, but try taking a calculus exam when you have never taken it… spoiler alert: Not good. Heck I barely past it after eventually legitimately taking it at university. Anyway that isn’t to say that all student must take calculus, heck students today seem to have much more choice and flexibility in what they decide to take. However I don’t think anyone will be doing any favors to students by getting rid of a system of standards and measurements. If it has flaws, then address them, while you can’t overhaul it constantly if you want any kind of consistency it should necessarily be reviewed and enhanced over a set schedule,
Another example is I had pretty hippy dippy English teachers in high school. Which while I would say made for a rewarding and useful experience, also left me bereft in other ways. Many years ago I got sent through work to a business English course as I tended to be too long winded and verbose (help a lot, can’t you tell). Anyway they did go over some of the basics, and while I always got the answer correct, I usually had no idea why, how or what the rule I was enforcing. All I knew was that was how it should be constructed.
Anyway I have many friends who are teachers, and while I like to bug them a bit about their summers off etc… I am not exactly biased against them but I found your analogy and content pretty far fetched. However while I am also in a union, hearing friends stories about how the teachers union works is weird, weird, weird…
What progress you want to measure?
Outside of standardized testing, teachers have measured student progress within subjects with homework assignments and tests. The students work is graded and they receive the feedback about what they are struggling with. Likewise, the teacher sees where students are having difficulties and can alter the teaching to accommodate. Ideally, this is a tight closed feedback loop that includes feedback to parents so that adjustments can be made to create a more optimal learning environment for the student.
Standardized tests are not about measuring student progress, they are about making assessments to justify changes at a level beyond the individual instruction of a student. e.g., change the teachers, change the curriculum, change the principal, change the paradigm, change the funding–and where we are heading–change the business model.
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