4 Day School Week in Some Parts of the Country

[Cyrinne]

Originally posted by Aristotle
I am sure that's what they tell you, but that's just the company line.

Not quite. The NEA used to have on their website points of praise for school systems that gave out salary increases for Board Certified teachers, and worked at least in this area to help teachers pay for certification classes as well. The National Board judges teacher performance based on hours of videotapes, lesson plans, observation and reflection, as well as the data he or she brings back from the classroom. It's costly and time consuming which is why it is voluntary. But from what I've seen of NBC teachers, it is an extremely valuable measure. Last year I knew five who attempted to get certification. One did. I like to think I'm a good teacher, but I'm honestly not sure if I could manage it.

I don't defend a lot of what the NEA does. I am a member of the MCEA because it is often that teachers and administrators are not on the same side, and I need someone to help me fight for my planning time and my cost of living increases. But when classic conservative/liberal and good/evil lines are drawn against the organization, I just think it needs to be looked at through a bigger lens.

As far as NCLB is concerned, yes it doesn't require that every kid pass the test. It looks at results overall. But time and time again the results are lacking in the same poor areas. The point I was making that Dalaena asked about, is that it is easy for an entire class to meet standard in an upper middle class school. It is much more challenging in a poorer school. And that is not because rich parents are more involved, necessarily. Some are, but some aren't. For every stable upper middle class home where one parent stays home or works part time to care for the child, there is an unstable one where mom and dad are both lawyers who spoil and ignore him.

NCLB requires school improvement plans, but they don't ultimately use them to judge success or failure. You meet standard or you don't, period after your 'chances' are up. And when schools end up taken over by the state and the companies the state sends in, the teachers usually leave to be replaced by who knows who. So it either leaves the students who couldn't use their vouchers or get into the other local public schools in an even worse place, or you end up with an empty useless building and a waste of money.

So it just boils down to a wealth of issues that are working in tandem with one another to create the challenges that schools today are facing. My point with this, and with all of my posts really is that none of this is easy. Education is a touchy issue because people have very strong opinions on it. Many people are parents and everyone has been a student so we are all very connected to this topic. But no one party's talking points have come forth with the right answer yet.

I firmly wish that the federal goverment would back the heck off for a while. That way different states and local goverments could try their thing, and perhaps somewhere among the lot of us, someone would figure out something that worked well. They could contact the rest of us and we could give it a whirl.