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When I watch gymnastics in the Olympics, I might think I can tell which vaults and bars routines look pretty good to me, as someone who likes watching them on the TV every four years. That does not make me qualified to judge the Olympics and hand out the scores. They leave that to the professionals, people who have served as gymnasts and coaches themselves for many years, and are highly qualified to make those determinations.
Having attended school as a child does not make one an expert qualified to evaluate a teacher. Being a parent doesn't give you any qualification to evaluate someone's professional skills as a teacher any more than TV viewers at home have the qualifications (and lack of bias) to hand out the official scores in the Olympics.
My daughter recently started her Gold Award proposal for Girl Scouts which is to identify a problem within a community and solve it. One of the first questions on the solving it part is "Is the community you want to serve at all interested in your solution?" I get the feeling when it comes to why our educational system is failing certain students, educators really like the "It's the parents fault solution" and since they don't have to deal a lot with their end product, they don't need to come up with any other solutions. Kids get passed along through the system and ultimately the workforce or the prison system ends up having to solve it. As a result, any parent that cares about their kids education is the one to make changes necessary to help their kid learn and we are ending up with a very two tiered educational system. This then mostly reinforces the "It's the parents fault" mindset, since most failing schools are left dealing with the kids that don't have involved parents in their lives.
The president of the regional grocery store here decided he was going to tackle this issue with his own money. So far his solution seems to be to identify talent and potential in teachers and invest in developing leadership skills for those individuals. I think he may be onto something. At least in my experience, most of my frustration with school systems is that we've been promoting people with very poor leadership skills into being in charge of schools. I think our schools deal with way too much group think along the lines that as educators, they are the only ones capable of teaching or having a valid opinion on education. I also think that in recent decades, anyone with good analytical skills can find more meaningful, better paying work doing something outside of education, so there is a lot of brain drain early on within the field.
In my experience, the skill set needed to repair a computer, fix an appliance, figure out why a car won't run are the same skills that can be used to figure out why a kid is struggling with a certain academic concept. The fixation that education is something only educators can do and quick dismissal of parents input I think is a reflection of that lack of leadership skills. I'm just a parent and an engineer that doesn't hire specialist to follow basic diagnostic flowcharts for most of my repair needs. I'm glad I gave up fairly early on relying on the public school system to teach my kids the fundamentals and just tutored them myself. I have 2 very dyslexic kids that were both reading and writing on a college level by high school without receiving any dyslexia intervention or accommodations at school.
I also correctly predicted that my son's high school AP was going to get the district sued with his handling of 504 accommodations. It's unfortunate that no one within that school administration could predict that would be the end result. Even more unfortunate that one of his students ended up hospitalized and almost died because of his students must self advocate for accommodations policy. Plenty of parents tried to point out that if the student was capable of self advocating, they most likely wouldn't need a 504. We're not educators or medical professionals, so our opinions didn't count. None of the educators were bothered by ideas like a kid with epilepsy had the responsibility to inform his teacher he needed 504 accommodations for a seizure during the middle of a seizure. The fact that no one in that school could realize policies like that was putting kids lives in jeopardy along with risking a lawsuit is mind boggling.
Here's the problem. You may be (although not necessarily) an expert on your kid. That doesn't make you an expert on all kids.
And I'll give you a very good example. Our PTA was run -- almost exclusively -- by white upper middle to rich parents who had ZERO understanding of the other third of our student body -- the Black and Latino kids from the poor neighborhoods, not to mention any understanding of our ESL or Sped population.
Since most of these discussions eventually come down to these, let's talk about them.
Let's turn this around. Why do educators assume that someone who has spent years studying management and leadership, and further years actually practicing management and leadership in large complex enterprises, would be less qualified than someone who has never managed before?
I could turn it around to say "It's funny, management is something that everyone thinks they can do better than the people actually in the business, and devoted their lives to it."
Here's an interesting thought I heard once from a manager at <large oil and gas business> when he attempted to recruit me and I told him I know nothing about <X>. He said "we found it better to take people with a background in <Y> and teach them what they need to know about <X> than to take experts in <X> and teach them what they need to know about <Y>."
Perhaps education should by like that an open their doors a little more to outside input.
We get outside input all the time, and administrators often do come from the corporate world, government administration, the military, etc... In fact presidents of major systems are often political appointees. I don't really know what % were promoted "in-house," or internally, but I would wager in the 40-50% range. Instructors often don't like administrators very much.
Having been in the military, I would say that within education, there is a similar phenomenon in that administrators who spent at least a few years as a classroom teacher get similar respect as that given by enlisted soldiers to officers who spent time as an enlisted troop, then went to ROTC or OCS.
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Again, could be turned around. Consider that we're more representative of what most students see in schools and your experience was the one that was unique. Just for the heck of it, a couple months ago I sat down and plotted all the teachers I ever had on a scale of Outstanding, Good, Average, Mediocre, and Should be Fired Immediately.
Here's what I found: Most teachers were below average. Remember, the "bell curve" is only one of many possible distributions. The two largest groups were Mediocre and Outstanding, followed by Should be Fired. Taken together the Mediocre and Should be Fired groups totaled most as below average, while the Outstanding group pulled the average up into a range with very few in it.
So why the assumption that only teachers can evaluate teachers? I'd propose that the best evaluators of teacher performance are students and parents. I don't need to be a chef to know if the meal tastes good or not. I don't need to be a tailor to know if the clothes are good quality or not. I don't need to be a soccer coach to know if a player is good or not. I may not be able to distinguish the subtleties between two outstanding players, but I can tell outstanding from a weekend kickballer.
I submit the same is true of education. As a student or esp a parent, I don't care about the subtleties another teacher might see. I care about the end result.
I'd use movies as an allegory.
An educator inherently knows something about "the magic behind" that goes on beyond the classroom, or beyond the screen if discussing an online class. The way someone who's been an actor, director, writer or technical crew of a movie knows what kind of work had to happen to produce what's on screen. This is why people's choice awards feature different movies compared to the the Academy Awards. The Academy Awards often feature movies that did not do all that well at the box office, but were a better product when evaluated by knowledgeable practitioners.
What the student sees and experiences is kind of like what the audience of a movie sees. They don't know what it's like to do the production work or the editing, and what's good or bad. They only know that they "like" it, or did not like it.
Also pretty well qualified to judge are professional movie reviewers. They may not be experts at making movies, but at least they have seen thousands of movies and have a broader range of comparisons. A typical audience member may only have seen the particular type or genre of movie a few times.
Ideally, the best judges have not only worked on films themselves but have also seen hundreds or thousands of movies; not only that but they should WANT to see as many as they can, by the best practitioners.
A student likely only takes any given class once, or maybe if in their major, maybe 5-10x of similar but not the same classes.
An educator with an advanced degree probably took many more classes in the subject. They probably worked as a teaching assistant and thus sat through more with multiple instructors (when I worked as a TA I asked to get assigned to as many instructors in the department as I could in my time there; got to see almost all of them). They professionally collaborate with people who teach the same thing so they are more aware of best practices within the subject.
So they know the subject matter better than a typical student, they have more frame of reference for what good and bad classes look like, been in charge of classroom themselves, and they've and evaluated other teachers. So they have both broader and deeper experience and points of comparison that most students or parents, who likely only have their own singular experiences as relevant comparisons.
Students, on the other hand, are often heavily biased based on their rapport with the instructor, influenced by charisma, looks, and personality. Same way a typical moviegoer may have a particular like for an actor, and judge a movie good just because he's in it.
However, this is not to say that audience input is not important. Audiences and critics/creators are often not on the same page regarding what movies are good, but they are often in consensus regarding which ones are bad. And of course the movie needs to make some money, and so it needs an audience. Most of us know what bad teachers look like, and educators need students to pay for their services and so they have to cater to them to some extent. So students and parents are relevant.
I'd like to know what exactly was so BAD about the teachers you all had? I would say mine were largely average to above average. If I showed interest in the material they usually gave me A LOT of personalized attention.
I was one of those students who went to office hours with extra subject matter questions and queries for more information. I'm pretty sure I was one of the only ones these instructors saw in their office hours for anything in a year or more. Most of them were MORE than happy to talk about me. For example, in freshman philosophy, after learning about Plato's cave, I went into the prof's office hours later on to ask about what other philosophers that we'd read, Plato would think were in or outside the cave. He discussed it with me about it for about 45 minutes, and I'm quite sure I was the only student who had asked him a follow up question of that nature on my own time in months or years. I went to talk to him a handful of times later during and after that class. He ended up writing me some GREAT recommendations.
Last edited by redguard57; 06-27-2021 at 07:34 PM..
I have family members who are educators. They are hard working, kind people who are not social engineers!
But teachers teach the curriculum that is chosen for them. And if the admin wants high test scores, the teacher will be instructed to teach the test.
I’d like there to be much less emphasis on test scores, personally. And I’d rather colleges be run less like corporations, with emphasis on smaller class sizes, teaching lower division classes by teachers instead of non native English speakers TAs, and more rigorous writing assignments.
do they understand that unless you're hiring a history, English, or PE teacher, there may not be a "great" teacher candidate, or even a "good" teacher candidate available.
Was there a surplus of those? Having hired for both history and english, I was shocked that despite getting about 4-7 dozen apps, maybe only 10 of them were "good," and then some of the good ones were only good on paper. In reality the good and great candidates were single digits at most, and a couple we chose revealed themselves to not be good over time.
English especially. Every Tom Dick and Harry with an MFA applied for one of our English positions.... but many had never TAUGHT writing to anyone.
Actually history wasn't that different now that I think about it. A lot of people who had degrees in history from back in the day but hadn't cracked open a journal in 15-20 years, and then people who were more enthusiasts than scholars or teachers. Hiring good teachers of anything is actually pretty hard.
Teacher dating a high school student? Naughty, naughty, wink wink nod nod. Same teacher is the football coach and benches the starting QB. Somehow his contract was terminated in less that a week.
Was there a surplus of those? Having hired for both history and english, I was shocked that despite getting about 4-7 dozen apps, maybe only 10 of them were "good," and then some of the good ones were only good on paper. In reality the good and great candidates were single digits at most, and a couple we chose revealed themselves to not be good over time.
English especially. Every Tom Dick and Harry with an MFA applied for one of our English positions.... but many had never TAUGHT writing to anyone.
Actually history wasn't that different now that I think about it. A lot of people who had degrees in history from back in the day but hadn't cracked open a journal in 15-20 years, and then people who were more enthusiasts than scholars or teachers. Hiring good teachers of anything is actually pretty hard.
I should explain that since my school was one of the top 5 middle schools in the state, within a top notch country school system with excellent benefits, and a personnel office that actively recruited, that often we got better candidates than some schools and systems would get.
However, finding a good math applicant was perhaps the hardest, as we struggled through that for a whole year. Next hardest was science applicants. English and history applicants -- it took days just sifting through applications and resumes; same with PE. I only ever regretted one history hire, because he pushed the enveolope too much in making comments in the classroom about his political philosophy.
Do you know what separated the men from the boys, so to speak, among applicants. Each interviewee had to write an essay for us. They had half an hour, give or take. They had to do the first half of their essay in writing -- by hand -- with no resources. The second half of the essay was then done on the computer with all of its resources.
Here's the problem. You may be (although not necessarily) an expert on your kid. That doesn't make you an expert on all kids.
And I'll give you a very good example. Our PTA was run -- almost exclusively -- by white upper middle to rich parents who had ZERO understanding of the other third of our student body -- the Black and Latino kids from the poor neighborhoods, not to mention any understanding of our ESL or Sped population.
What is the point you are trying to make? I fail to see how that is a very good example.
I know which school you were at & other posters on this board that also know that have pointed out to you that your recollection about your school's demographics may be a bit fuzzy since it was a long time ago. SchoolDigger shows that free/reduced lunch never topped 6.6% during your tenure, so how big of a deal was it that your PTA didn't cater to them? You aren't sharing any examples of how you addressed it & lack of leadership is my complaint. Your school had a reputation of being overwhelming upper middle to rich parents and that every student there had involved parents. I imagine that had its own problems, but uninvolved parents wasn't one of them. During my college tour of Virginia Tech in 1994, your school district was used as justification for their rather highly priced student parking passes because your district had it set at $100 & theirs was only $30 I think. The $100 stuck in my memory, what VT wanted, not so much, it was less than a third.
When I watch gymnastics in the Olympics, I might think I can tell which vaults and bars routines look pretty good to me, as someone who likes watching them on the TV every four years. That does not make me qualified to judge the Olympics and hand out the scores. They leave that to the professionals, people who have served as gymnasts and coaches themselves for many years, and are highly qualified to make those determinations.
Having attended school as a child does not make one an expert qualified to evaluate a teacher. Being a parent doesn't give you any qualification to evaluate someone's professional skills as a teacher any more than TV viewers at home have the qualifications (and lack of bias) to hand out the official scores in the Olympics.
You're correct in that non professionals don't have the skills to distinguish a Nadia Comaneci from Simone Biles. But we're not talking about distinguishing minute differences in Olympic caliber performers. We're talking about distinguishing between a Simone Biles and Mary Jane Hawkins doing a tumbling routine in the gym. Same thing applies here. We're not trying to distinguish minor difference in teaching style between two top rated teachers. It's separating the A's from the F's. And that doesn't take an expert to do.
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