Aw, that's alright. I'm not that interested in having people agree with me. :)
I just sometimes want to be able to get on a soapbox without someone speaking down to me.
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Aw, that's alright. I'm not that interested in having people agree with me. :)
I just sometimes want to be able to get on a soapbox without someone speaking down to me.
(I kept editing this post over and over, so folks may want to re-read it.)
If you're on a soap box, don't I have to speak UP? :D
I wish I knew how to tone my posts here to prevent this sort of misunderstanding. You can do what you want with this information, but really most everywhere I go people tell me I have good posts, well toned, moderate without the use of name calling and all that. I've had a number of people tell me they wished they could put their ideas in words the way I do... This remains to this day the only place where I post that I have ever even been so much as warned that I might be banned, much less actually banned. I don't know what the problem is, and the only solution I can see is for me to just keep pounding on the fact that I do NOT hold anyone here in any sort of contempt, I do respect everyone elses opinions, and am not interested in becoming Threshold's personal troll. Eventually people will perhaps get to know me better and more intuitively feel where I am coming from when I post.
Maybe it would help if I make sure that you, Ari, and anyone else I single out to comment about know that if I comment on it at all it is because you have already said something that interests me, and I want to get to the bottom of what it is you think and why.
Back on topic, I guess the difference that underlies the misunderstanding is you are looking at it as a parent and all the benefits that acrue from having the child at home, and I am looking at it as a business proposition and feeling it was unfair not to at least try to ballpark some sort of figure for the labor of the stay at home teacher vs. the teachers that work in the public schools. If there is no labor to labor comparison, the statistic is hard to find any use for to me in that particular corner of the overall discussion. All the things you said about it being a hard figure to pin down just more or less exagerate the problem with the stat, for me, for that particular purpose.
I am not AT ALL against either home schooling or vouchers. I am actually all for home schooling for anyone who can afford it. Vouchers I am on the cusp over because it is after all a government program, so its real costs and benefits need to be looked at.
I'm just thinking that in all reality it is going to be one of those things that has to just be tried rather than trying to analyze it to death before it even is tried. Prior analysis may help in easing into it, or how to go about trying it, but no one is going to know all the little unknowns until it is actually put into practice. Call me a cynic, but I doubt it is going to be as revolutionary as some folks make it out to be. But hey, I would love to be pleasantly surprised! By all means, let's move forward and give it a try.
Oh geez. I just re-read what I wrote and realized it makes no sense. What I meant to say is that around here there is a 6-day week in all schools (Friday being half a day and Saturday being the free day. Sunday is just a normal day because it's not a christian country...). From my experience, it's just too long and there isn't enough space and time for the kids and teachers.Quote:
Originally posted by Lokrian
If you're still paying attention to this thread at all,
I don't quite follow the sentence here. They go every day except Friday, which is only a half day, or they go Sunday through Friday with Friday being a half day?
I suddenly noticed this post after rereading a bunch of stuff here, but it is interesting that one of the solutions to our lagging educational performance in this country was often to suggest that we go without summer vacations. Now all of a sudden gas is expensive and it turns out we would have better results with a 4 day week.
That is a Lot of Skewl!Quote:
Originally posted by Jidoe
Oh geez. I just re-read what I wrote and realized it makes no sense. What I meant to say is that around here there is a 6-day week in all schools (Friday being half a day and Saturday being the free day. Sunday is just a normal day because it's not a christian country...). From my experience, it's just too long and there isn't enough space and time for the kids and teachers.
You know in all of this I just realized I don't even REALLY know how they go about comparing one nation's educational results with another's. I was going to ask, "so how are their test scores?"
What tests? What scores? LOL :D
I always hear how bad out results are in the US but I have never dug into it enough to know exactly how we know this.
I am impressed that you challenge this statement. We're so used to it that I think most people take it for fact without thinking hard about it. To compare school systems between countries is -very- challenging to do and still be statistically sound for many reasons. One being American school systems vary intensely from one local area to another. We have no national curriculum. We educate -all- students who wish to be educated in our public school system, regardless of ability level. These factors are often different from those in the countries whose performance ours is being compared to.Quote:
Originally posted by Lokrian
I always hear how bad out results are in the US but I have never dug into it enough to know exactly how we know this.
I am not here stating that no comparison can be made, or that everything in our school system is perfect and should be left alone. Simply pointing out that the next "Japanese students kick the U.S. student's asses at XYZetc." article we come across can and should be looked at with a critical eye. Blaming teachers, or parents, or administrators, or the president, or anyone for why we are not performing as well as another country in my opinion has not served a productive purpose thus far. Our country, and thus our educational system, is quite unique. We need to think about what we want for it on its own terms and work from there.
I also wanted to respond to this very briefly, because I really don't want to veer hugely off topic, and this probably belongs in an NCLB thread. I'm in fact, not even going to state my opinion. I'm going to pose a question that I'm sure will reveal it. But don't worry, you don't have to answer it here. Just inside your head.Quote:
Originally posted by Lokrian
One of your posts states the NEA, "has long supported measures to encourage teacher accountability and standards that use a variety of measures to evaluate the -teacher- not the children." The problem as I understand it is that the concern is with the outcome after all, and not the methodology. If the students are still underperforming, it hardly matters what method is being used.
I started my teaching career at one school in a fairly high income area. It was an average school. The principal was kind of a dolt. The teachers were old and jaded. The kids came in bright and well read. There were challenges, there always will be. But only two or three each year. Last year every one of my students passed the benchmark. I joked that I'd "Left no child behind"
The school I began at this year has won awards through county and state for innovative programming. It has the PYP curriculum, one you can find on a google search that is an internationally recognized program to promote college level academic achievement (eventually). The teachers are fabulous and motivated. The area is not so well off. Some parents are very interested in their kids education, and some sadly aren't. I have started off the year with students that don't even know their letters. Some have parents who can't support them, due to working two jobs, or just learning the language themselves. But most have parents who try. I highly doubt that having started off with such a deficit, I will be able to get everyone past benchmark in June. We'll make great gains, sure. But it won't be enough for everyone.
How do we hold me accountable for doing my job?
I'm sorry, Cyrinne. I think I must have missed your point completely, and I hate to miss it because I feel like you're giving us some hands-on information.
Am I misreading something? It seems like you say your first school was easier to teach than the school you are now even though the program that you are at now. I think you said that, somehow, parents are involved, but I'm not sure how.
Could you explain a little bit more? I am definitely missing the point we are supposed to draw between your contrasts of the two school and the question you pose at the end.
I am sure that's what they tell you, but that's just the company line. The NEA could easily support vouchers and school choice, for example, but they invest hundreds of millions of dollars in fighting it.Quote:
Originally posted by Cyrinne
As for testing children being the only way the populace has been able to blast through the NEA juggernaut, I'm afraid that isn't true. The NEA has long supported measures to encourage teacher accountability and standards that use a variety of measures to evaluate the -teacher- not the children.
They don't want accountability. They want the illusion of supporting accountability, while shooting down any and all accountability measures they can through lobbying, political donations, etc.
The NEA fought periodic testing of TEACHERS tooth and nail. That's absurd.
Hell, the NEA is so corrupt they actually get involved in non-education political issues. The NEA is a pure leftist political organization that uses its role in education as a shield and a bludgeon. When someone wants to criticise them, they fall into the whole "but we're trying to educate the children!" defense. The fact that they are actively supporting political causes like national health care, pro-choice, etc. somehow seems alright to them. That's nuts.
The fact that they also push for ideologically heavy (left ideology) curriculum is yet another of the serious problems. Crap like teaching Ebonics in California, "cultural mathematics", and other foolishness are all supported by the NEA.
I'd like to see more of this. The whole Spanish Immersion phenomenon is, imho, pure political correctness. We don't have the balls (or the brains) to make English our national language, so instead we pretend we are trying to teach our populace Spanish.Quote:
Originally posted by Cyrinne
I am currently teaching at an elementary school where some students are there by choice because of our Chinese Immersion program. It is piloting this year, and while I think it will be wonderful there have been snags in getting it started.
We are so ass-backwards in the US when it comes to language. We refuse to acknowledge and demand that our country has one national language, and yet as a populace most people totally refuse to learn another language. How about we demand that people who want to live and work here learn English, while at the same time teach more languages throughout the entire education process in all schools (not just immersion schools)? Doesn't that make more sense?
Learning Chineese is of far greater value to our populace. China is going to be our biggest competitor on the world stage over the next 50+ years. We need to better understand them. We need to be better able to market our products to their populace. We need to be ready to compete.
And right there is the problem. The class could be moving a lot faster, and the kids who can keep up could be getting a lot smarter. They could be tomorrow's brilliant scientists and engineers who will keep our country strong and competitive.Quote:
Originally posted by Cyrinne
There is no test to get into the program. There is no cost that a voucher may not cover all of. Any interested parent may apply, and the students involved are a mixture of abilities, backgrounds, and income levels. Does that mean the class doesn't move as quickly as it could? Yes.
Instead, they are held back and slowed down and as a result may never reach their full potential. Other countries who ARE encouraging excellence, then kick our asses.
You cannot just throw everyone together. It doesn't work. It blunts excellence.
One of the biggest reasons we are falling WAY behind the rest of the world is because we do not encourage and cultivate excellence. Our best and brightest get watered down and dumbed down by being thrown into the cuisinart of education with everyone else.
I am not saying only the best get an education, but we certainly need to focus more resources on the top. The only people who get special attention these days are the dumb kids. That's a recipe for disaster and mediocrity.
Why should smart kids with involved parents be punished because of dumb kids with worthless, uninvolved parents?
Putting Kobe steak and a Big Mac into a blender ruins the Kobe steak and confuses the Big Mac.
Have we gotten to the point in our fucked up society where we just ASSUME both parents work away from the home and need public school to serve as surrogate parent and day-care?Quote:
Originally posted by Lokrian
This statistic seems more opaque the more I think about it. How are they going about determining the cost of home schooling? Are they taking the loss of time at work for the parent who stays and home schools at all? Are they talking about food in either statistic, or only in the one dealing with the public schools?
Unbelieveable.
One of the parents is home teaching the kid. Is that such an impossible thing to comprehend these days? *boggle*
In some neighborhoods, parents work together to split up the topics depending on how the parents were educated.
Furthermore, the teacher's salary is such a puny portion of the average per child cost of public education, that it really isn't statistically relevant if they have factored in some kind of "potential income" the parent could have earned. Think about it. 30+ kids per teacher, teacher is making $25,000 per year, that's about $833 per kid. With a per kid cost of almost $6,000, paying the teacher is not where the money is going.
The point of the statistics is simple: home schooling results in better performance for a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the time spent. That is why home schooling provides such a brutal indictment of our failed public education system.
That doesn't mean everyone should home school. But it does mean that throwing more money at the public school system, or making kids spend more time at school, or giving them more homework, are definitely NOT the answer.
That is one of the sloppiest and poorly researched articles I have ever read on the issue. Talk about some gross abuse of anecdotal evidence.Quote:
Originally posted by Lokrian
It also turns out that voucher resistance is coming from a whole different sector than one might at first have suspected.
Only the most elitisit snobs on the planet would make the conclusion this article seems to think is widespread. If this article were even partially true, you wouldn't have every independent (private) school association vehemenly in favor of vouchers. You wouldn't have the parents of kids in those schools as some of the most vocal proponents.
In fact, that article was so looney, I almost suspect it might be an exampe of political reverse psychology: "Make people think snobs don't want vouchers, and maybe they'll wise up and see that vouchers actually benefit the lower and middle classes more than the upper classes!"
I totally had to quote this for truth.Quote:
Originally posted by Dalaena
We can complain all we want about teachers and administrators, and I'm sure that there are truly some problems there. However, until society starts putting a greater emphasis on education and reward children for excelling at school as a whole, the parents need to be the ones to step in and put that pressure on their kids. When teachers are seen as nothing more than glorified babysitters, they will act accordingly. Teachers were once valued as the important people that they are, people who have a great impact on our children's lives and who need our help to keep our children in line. Now, a teacher is weighed down by the threat of lawsuits and parents claiming that what happens at school is "not my problem." When I got in trouble at school and my parents were told, I got owned at home as well as at school. Now, there's a good chance that the teacher is the one getting owned for the discipline that they try to do, which is severely limited now by the multitude of lawsuits that stretch across the country.
The whole "school as day-care" and "teacher as babysitter" issue is probably one of the most insidiously negative root problems with our whole education system. It points to a huge societal shift in our country that people do not even want to talk about. [EDIT: The tangent I almost went off on really needs its own thread, but even I am afraid to get it started.]
That one is easy. Compare the performance of your class this year to their performance last year. Even if the entire class does not pass, that doesn't mean there might not have been improvement. Furthermore, the NCLB grade doesn't require that every kid pass every test. As a school, you have to meet certain results overall.Quote:
Originally posted by Cyrinne
How do we hold me accountable for doing my job?
Like I already said, I think testing kids is a poor way to bring accountability to the system. It just happens to be one of the only things the People have been able to get past the NEA blockade. That's a damn shame.
School choice is the real answer. Let the magic of social darwinism clearly illustrate which schools and educators are worthless, and which ones aren't.
Finally, from knowing you, I imagine you are a good teacher. One of the whole points behind the NCLB system is to motivate an underperforming school to bring in a teacher like you and help their kids start performing better. You say they have brought in a good curriculum and teachers who are "fabulous and motivated." Your example indicates to me that at least one portion of the system is working.
NOTE: Sorry for posting 3 times in a row. I had to catch up!