What can you say about the President of the United States?

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Sorry for my delayed response - I was away for the holiday weekend. I think we're disconnecting on some level. Since there are many subjects that are required curriculum, but are being given much less time that they have in the past because they aren't included in the test, those subjects are getting left out.

My wife, who is an elementary school teacher has said as much, and I will use it as an example to illustrate my point. English classes now focus much more heavily on reading comprehension - because it's on the test. You can make a test where the students read a paragraph or two, and then you ask them questions to see if they understood what they read. What they don't do is make time in class to focus on writing, because you can't grade a student's ability to write using a bubble sheet. So unless you think it is fairly unimportant for students to learn how to write well, that's what's being left out.

Or let's take math. 5th graders used to learn things like co-ordinates on a graph, raising integers to some power (like learning how to compute 3 to the 3rd power), and basic algebra (like solving: 12 - x = 7). They don't teach those things anymore. Why? Because they don't cover that on the 5th grade test. 5th grade is almost completely arithmetic. So how is omitting parts of subjects aiding the learning process? Do you feel it's simply more important to know how to do long division as compared to solving algebraic equations? (I honestly don't know the answer to that myself, although I'm inclined to think not. I guess it's good that I know how to do long division, although I can't remember the last time I didn't just use a calculator.)

 

What we've found in many districts in Illinois is that the tests are very consistent and the teachers KNOW what the questions will be (with reasonable certainty). The lazy teachers teach ONLY what is on the test, not the breadth of the subject. Basically those teachers are cramming a four hour test into 162 days of class. What we lose by teaching to the test is the broad education base to prepare the child for other topics.

You simply cannot have a test question for every history, english, or science bit of knowledge necessary to make someone proficient in those areas. The only real exception is math -- in math you can test to fundamentals which can demonstrate good comprehension.

I'm reasonably certain I could teach a chemistry class and have nearly everyone pass the exams ... but not have anyone ready for the next course. Ultimately, I would be setting my students up for failure; which is exactly what "no child left behind" allows. It was a good idea, but poor in execution.

 

It's not just a matter of lazy teachers, it can be a matter of teachers whose jobs are on the freaking line. In a world where test results are used as weapons against all teachers, is it any wonder that some teachers, fearful of losing their jobs, will focus on the test results to the exclusion of other things? In some areas teachers have been known to cheat because their livelihoods are on the line.

You cannot treat teachers like you would someone who assembles machinery for a living. In the case of machinery assembly, a worker can take steps and have every unit come out within a 1% tolerance range, or even 100% perfection. The materials and components are not sentient and make no choices -- any problems that arise can be solved by the assembler.

Students are not unthinking machines. They make choices. They are living, breathing, sentient human beings over whom the teachers have very little control. Despite our best efforts, many choose not to learn.

This is not "blaming the victim" or other such horse$!**. It's a simple fact. Especially in today's day and age wherein parents will gleefully come in and tell you "my son doesn't have to do a single damn thing you say!"

Those who take a run at teachers need to step up to the plate and teach for a year. And not options like second languages, art, shop, or phys ed, where the challenging students are more likely to want to be there. No, step into a remedial math class or a language arts class. Step into a history class or a science class that is mandatory for graduation. Step in there for a few months and then tell me that the problems are solely with the teachers.

Now getting back to the issue at hand, teachers need to teach the curriculum, absolutely -- major deviations from it are not acceptable. We had a case here in Alberta in the 80s where a douche named Jim Keegstra was teaching high school Social Studies (Alberta's conglomerated History, PoliSci, Economics, Civics and Current Events course). This A-hole was a Holocaust denier. He was teaching his lying filth to the students. To me, that's grounds for dismissal right there.

But that's not what I'm hearing here. It seems to me that some want student test results to be the end all and be all in terms of teacher evaluation. That doesn't work, and it isn't in the best interests of the students, either.

 

Aw man BTA, you really have no respect or understanding for teachers whatsoever. You must have been traumatized something fierce in your school days.

Your customer gives you impossible requirements and pays you a pittance. It would be so wonderful if you actually did what you suggest to teachers. We would have none left. Fire them all but I get the feeling that you would be ok with that. What is your alternative to school as it is now as you obviously have nothing but disdain for the current system and the people who work in it?

 

I don't think anyone would argue with that. I think the issue that LKD and joacqin have repeatedly pointed out (and to a lesser extent T2 and I) is that judging whether a teacher is a good teacher or a bad teacher based on test scores is not a very precise way of going about it. I don't really have a good alternative, but in the few years where I taught on a collegiate level I can tell you that some students just aren't very good at certain courses.

I'll just use my experience in chemistry as an example. Most people who took freshman chemistry weren't planning on being chemists. They were taking it because it was a graduation requirement if you were pre-med, or if you were a nursing major. (Ah... The fond memories of my classes filled with nursing majors. A classroom filled with women between the ages of 18-20. And since I was only 24 at the time, it didn't feel icky yet. But I digress...)

The point being is that they weren't there because they wanted to be there, they were there because they had to be there. And so even though most of the students were of the mind set to just get through it to check the box for graduation, most of them also performed pretty well in the class. I know I handed out more As and Bs than Cs and lower. And yet, out of the 80 or so students I had each semester, invariably there were 2 or 3 that received Ds or failed outright. (With pre-med and nursing majors, since the courses were not elective, getting a D was still considered a failure - you had to retake the course if you got less than a C-.) So if I have 77 students learning the material adequately, and 3 of them not, I don't think that necessarily is the fault of me, the teacher. I mean, the other 77 didn't have a major issue with my teaching technique... And yet, if I my pay and continued employment were based on having everyone pass, you can bet your sweet ass that everyone would have got at least a C-. And THAT would make me a lousy teacher.

 

We're throwing OUT the outliers? Aren't those the specific people we're trying to identify? And it's the teacher's fault if everyone does good, and everyone does bad? (I'm assuming if everyone does good you're saying it's the teacher's fault in a good way, despite my having shown how one could easily manipulate such a system.)

Of course, if you're saying if everyone does good it shows that the teacher might be manipulating the system, then we have a real Catch 22 on our hands. The expectation is that some students would perform well and some poorly in a "reversion to the mean" type of way. Of course, that would mean that the classes where everyone did bad had bad teachers, the classes where everyone did good had fake good teachers who were just manipulating the system. So we could say everyone who had an average class had an average teacher, and anything other than that was probably a bad teacher.

Again, how does this identify the good teachers? How are we identifying - much less rewarding - the best?

 

My previous university made some lecturers and tutors from my course redundant to save on funds. One of the tutors kept her job because her skills were so out of date she was decided to be UNEMPLOYABLE so they couldn't ethically retire her as she couldn't get a job in her field elsewhere.

Some excellent teachers ended up taking sabbaticals with guarunteed return or being made redundant leaving people who were too expensive or unemployable elsewhere in their stead to teach paying students. If a certain percentage of students couldn't answer a question on an exam it was discounted in the overall scoring of that exam and it would be made a priority in the curriculum for the following year of students.

Teachers themselves should be reviewed just as the students should be by tests and coursework. The review should be subjective based on student experience as well as results in the classroom. When I was at school every student could tell you who the good teachers were and who the bad ones were, very few divided opinion. In some instances it was a simple matter that a teacher was too set in their ways to explain particular methods in alternative analogies to ensure all students had a grasp of the information. Some teachers just stood at the front of the class and read the textbook to us - which to be honest isn't really teaching. We could have quite easily just sat reading amongst ourselves and asked each other if we needed a bit of guidance understanding the information. He wasn't a good teacher. Another for the same subject ran after school classes and would track down students who had trouble to make sure there was extra material available and find ways of explaining and demonstrating information. He excelled as a teacher and the class was much more comfortable asking questions and were relaxed entering the exams for his subject and every person in the class would vouch for him cheerfully.

 

What set me off BTA was you liking teaching to any other job and students to any other material. If I would compare myself to any other profession it would be to a carpenter. A carpenter who has gotten a job to build a house. The material supplied to build the house is one small pot with a green sprout in it. When I ask my employer what I am supposed to do with this he says: "You have plenty of material, in that pot you have the potential for a fine wooden house. You are a trained carpenter, you should know how build a wooden house!" So I start nurturing this little sprout, soon it is a sapling. I use every trick in the book, I ask other experts, I read. As I am nearing deadline after almost two semesters I do not have the mighty oak needed to build a proper house. I have a decent tree though and I manage to build a nice little cottage which I feel pretty proud over considering I started with a tiny little sprout a year ago. When my boss sees the cottage, and his bosses and people like you BTA I am told that I have failed. I wasn't told to build a cottage I was to build a house and I have failed in my job and am a bad teacher, oops carpenter.

 

The expectations are beyond everyone. The expectations are that teachers are to make everyone able to be productive members of society. No regard is given to genetics or social heritage. The message given from above is that everyone can do everything. I do not think you have the slightest idea of the "service" we are expected to provide. You know all the junkies, unemployed, idiots, criminals, hobos and what have you, the expectation I am living under is that I will make it so people like that do not exist. Every "failed" person is my failure. In my "job description" students are not expected to take any responsibility. If my certifiably mentally retarded pupil does not pass a class I am a failure (true example).

It is NOT like any other job. To go back to the carpenter analogy and apply it to an entire class you can start with a few more or less finished houses, some that are cut into timber, some pretty hefty trees and of course the little sprouts I was talking about. When I was in school any idiot could teach me, sure I found some teachers better than others but I was smart enough and responsible enough to make sure I pass whether I found the teacher good or not. The challenge is the stupid people, the lazy people, the people with such horrible living conditions that school is at the very bottom on the list of their problems but it seems like according to you and your ilk those people do not exist. "Tommy's dad died and his mother has started drinking, Tommy hasn't been able to focus in school and is failing." Somehow that is my fault, I am to make Tommy forget his problems and focus on what the underlying causes to the French revolution were. If I do not I am a bad teacher.

You should be happy though, teachers are doing what you say. We are realizing our limitations and opting out to cushy relaxed jobs with double the pay in engineering, finance or law. The good ones that is, the ones that actually can get other jobs. You are left with the bad ones which seems to be the objective of this exercise. As I understand things it has gone even further in the US and if your attitude keep spreading do not expect it to change. Who would want to be a teacher under those conditions? I guess you couldn't imagine yourself being a teacher, could you? Think about that and then think about why anyone else should be expected to be one, altruism only gets you so far.

 

You think teachers haven't been "informing the employer" about conditions? We've been doing it for years. We've shown them studies that overly large class sizes reduce student effectiveness. We've pointed out that having to cater to someone who can't do basic ****ing arithmetic in a high level high school math class in the name of "inclusion" drags the whole class down. We've begged them to institute attendance policies that ensure students actually come to class so we can give them the instruction they need, we've asked for enough prep time to get interesting lessons together for our students, we've asked for computers so that we can actually, you know, teach the computer component of the curriculum mandated by the government. And while progress has been made, we are always told that we are being unreasonable, despite first hand data and scientific studies that tell otherwise.

People like to cast teachers as lazy slobs horking out at the public trough but that is simply not true. It's utter horse doots, in fact.

And don't get me started on the "romanticizing" of the profession. Almost every "feel good" teaching movie features an unskilled piece of **** who gets thrown into the classroom managing to achieve amazing results because he truly cares about the kids, as opposed to the folks who've been doing the job for years, who are all burned out, bitter losers who don't give a damn about the students and are totally clued out as to the realities of the world.

That's horsecrap. I would say over 90% of the teachers I have worked with in my career have cared deeply about the students and are doing their damndest to help the students grow and develop. But they also have actual experience at the job, and they know what works and what doesn't.

Yet everyone thinks they are experts on teaching simply because they went to school. Well, I have been to a lot of doctors in my time, and I don't presume to split hairs about their skills. I mean, in obvious cases of unprofessional behaviour (humping a patient, or in the case of teachers, humping a student) it's easy to tell the good from the bad. Outside of that sort of thing, it requires some firsthand experience and a well-crafted policy to determine a teacher's competence.

Believe me, there are plenty of ways to get rid of a poor teacher, or even a teacher who has simply ruffled the wrong feathers. This idea that once teachers have some form of tenure they have it on easy street is . . . inaccurate, to say the least.

 

I have spoken to quite a lot of former teachers in different professions and they are very relaxed. They find their new jobs much more relaxing and monetary rewarding. As for personally rewarding, very few things I have done has been more rewarding or more fun than to teach in a class that works. A class with reasonably bright and interested students. That is something that is wonderful and something worth much more envy than all the breaks in the world. Sadly that is rarely the case, instead we are forced to spend all our time and effort on the "weaker" pupils, ignoring the ones that might achieve greatness cause they tend to make the cut anyway. We are sitting in eternal meetings, writing documents, basically doing everything short of sawing open the head of people and jamming knowledge into it. Last week there was a ruling in a court in Sweden that teachers just like police officers should expect a bit of violence in the line of duty and can thus not sue for damages if attacked by a pupil.

If getting rid of the good teachers isn't your objective BTA why do you argue a line that is making good teachers leave the profession?

 

Another corporate puppet child with too much delegation and not enough intelligence to back up their position. Sounds familiar.

 

I used to think a lot like BTA, and I thought that being a teacher was relatively easy work. Then I married a teacher, and my perspective changed.

Truth be told, I cannot imagine why anyone would be a teacher if they were intelligent enough to do something else. Given the amount of education and training you have to put in, compared to what you get paid, almost any profession with similar work loads would pay more.

I'm sure a lot of people get into it because they care about kids, but I think very few people can appreciate what they do until you see it firsthand - either doing it yourself or living with someone who does.