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No they ensure that working families earn enough to put food on the table. Meanwhile your coveted charters operate on a for profit basis, and so Eva Moskowitz gets a six figure salary on the backs of teachers whose cut she pays. News flash, no good teacher wants to work for a charter! their life blood is a heavy rotation of over eager fresh out of school graduates who leave quickly when they realize how exploited and underpaid they are. That's not a fix to the school system. public shaming of poor performing students (often with learning disabilities)? public scolding of students who squirm in their seats? What is this, Mussolinis' Academy come on you can't actually by this ****.
And the voucher system is a conservative wet dream that would never work. You seriously want to hand tax dollars to for profit companies that will keep the baseline low (educational quality) and shareholder's profits high? education is a right, it's not something that should be profited off in the market. That's what you did to healthcare, and it's now a disaster with pharmaceutical monopolies raising drug prices 5000% overnight? Not buying it. The real leeches are your charter school boards.
People direly need to educate themselves about the corporatization of education.
It would correct some of the know-nothing opinions.
No ... profiteering is not the answer the everything.
These theories were developed in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
And I agree about the leeches - need to be extended. They are presencing themselves in higher education, on the boards of the "eh," soon to be bottom, schools.
No they ensure that working families earn enough to put food on the table. Meanwhile your coveted charters operate on a for profit basis, and so Eva Moskowitz gets a six figure salary on the backs of teachers whose cut she pays. News flash, no good teacher wants to work for a charter! their life blood is a heavy rotation of over eager fresh out of school graduates who leave quickly when they realize how exploited and underpaid they are. That's not a fix to the school system. public shaming of poor performing students (often with learning disabilities)? public scolding of students who squirm in their seats? What is this, Mussolinis' Academy come on you can't actually by this ****.
And the voucher system is a conservative wet dream that would never work. You seriously want to hand tax dollars to for profit companies that will keep the baseline low (educational quality) and shareholder's profits high? education is a right, it's not something that should be profited off in the market. That's what you did to healthcare, and it's now a disaster with pharmaceutical monopolies raising drug prices 5000% overnight? Not buying it. The real leeches are your charter school boards.
No good teacher wants to work in a public school in a bad neighborhood either. This is was lead to the creation of programs like Teach for America and this is how business interests used the Charter School system to attack public education.
I really don't care how much Eva Moskowitz makes IF she is IMPROVING the lives and the opportunities of the STUDENTS. It should be about the STUDENTS, not just the teachers job security. Sadly the teachers union has often been more about being concerned about teachers job security rather promoting the interest of the students.
The harsh condition of charter schools replicates what many Asian students told me they went through. And we see how well it has served Asian students, don't we?
Perhaps public schools have things to learn from Eva Moskowitz and Success. And in fact they will need to learn from Success in an era in which underperforming public schools can close and where everyone involved at said school can lose their jobs.
I know teaching is a challenge and it is hard (and there are a lot of things people outside education don't appreciate). But this is the world we live in teachers will have to perform or they will find themselves collecting UNEMPLOYMENT and no amount of bickering or defending teachers we all know to be crap can change things.
No good teacher wants to work in a public school in a bad neighborhood either. This is was lead to the creation of programs like Teach for America and this is how business interests used the Charter School system to attack public education.
I really don't care how much Eva Moskowitz makes IF she is IMPROVING the lives and the opportunities of the STUDENTS. It should be about the STUDENTS, not just the teachers job security. Sadly the teachers union has often been more about being concerned about teachers job security rather promoting the interest of the students.
The harsh condition of charter schools replicates what many Asian students told me they went through. And we see how well it has served Asian students, don't we?
Perhaps public schools have things to learn from Eva Moskowitz and Success. And in fact they will need to learn from Success in an era in which underperforming public schools can close and where everyone involved at said school can lose their jobs.
I know teaching is a challenge and it is hard (and there are a lot of things people outside education don't appreciate). But this is the world we live in teachers will have to perform or they will find themselves collecting UNEMPLOYMENT and no amount of bickering or defending teachers we all know to be crap can change things.
No good teacher wants to work in a bad neighborhood because there is no incentive to do so.
Let's stop pretending education is mission work. It isn't. It's a job.
Agreed the job of educators is to serve the students, but if the job has no protections, no benefits, at-will-employment... it actually can stand to not serve students best. When rocking the boat means a loss of job, nobody is going to rock the boat- students get passed along regardless of educational attainment. See the debacle that occurs in catch-up online academies and online schools like Florida Virtual which operates as a diploma mill. There's probably quite a bit SA is doing right- but you can't replicate it without a charter, and without parental permission.
It's fairly common to see your lowest 20% at a public HS take up 80% of the resources.
Let them close all the low performing schools though, and let the students scurry like rats over to other schools. At the end of the day it's the same students, and likely the same teachers. Privatization of education creeps a little closer in some sects- it's no threat to those who are qualified at what they do.
No good teacher wants to work in a bad neighborhood because there is no incentive to do so.
Let's stop pretending education is mission work. It isn't. It's a job.
Agreed the job of educators is to serve the students, but if the job has no protections, no benefits, at-will-employment... it actually can stand to not serve students best. When rocking the boat means a loss of job, nobody is going to rock the boat- students get passed along regardless of educational attainment. See the debacle that occurs in catch-up online academies and online schools like Florida Virtual which operates as a diploma mill. There's probably quite a bit SA is doing right- but you can't replicate it without a charter, and without parental permission. It's fairly common to see your lowest 20% at a public HS take up 80% of the resources.
Let them close all the low performing schools though, and let the students scurry like rats over to other schools. At the end of the day it's the same students, and likely the same teachers. Privatization of education creeps a little closer in some sects- it's no threat to those who are qualified at what they do.
Perhaps the lowest 20% belong in separate schools from the other students. That does stigmatize them, however in more well to do communities parents have a lot more choice in what schools to send their kids to and who to send them to school with.
I don't think rocking the boat means losing your job. Not being able to demonstrate good results can lead to one losing one's job and the school losing funding. There's performance pressure on teachers to do well, just like there is on other jobs. That's what has some public education advocates hysterical.
Re: Whatever things Success is doing right, public schools will have to engage communities and work out ways of implementing these things in the public schools or else they risk losing funding.
Mind you public schools in better neighborhoods do have much better results, so this isn't much of an issue with them.
Re: Whatever things Success is doing right, public schools will have to engage communities and work out ways of implementing these things in the public schools or else they risk losing funding.
Mind you public schools in better neighborhoods do have much better results, so this isn't much of an issue with them.
So what if they lose funding? What incentive does the public school have to compete with charters who have amended rules, and lower paid / lesser benefited staff?
Take an awful teacher in Brooklyn and move them to Lynbrook, and are they all of a sudden a better educator? I'm sure their kids scores will reflect it.
So regardless TFA people tend not to stay and that's the bottom line. It's hard to get teachers to stay in bad schools or in poor neighborhoods for a variety of reasons.
Honestly you may have done too much or tried to do too much. I've heard a lot of teachers talk about burn out.
But I'm glad you mentioned lack of cooperation from the parents and issues with administrators. Some on this thread seem to think there is some magical formula that enables teachers to just transform all students into straight A students.
To be fair to the parents, many of them maybe in or out of jail, have untreated mental illness, have addiction issues, etc. So how much can you as a teacher expect from them? You're assuming everyone has middle class parents with middle class values. Not everyone does and you cannot deal with people that way. These parents for various reasons have lived with lifelong poverty and expect their kids to do more of the same.
It is true they do not stay but I think it's more than just "burn out." For the people I knew in TFA/TF, many of them used it as an in between---like, "I am not sure I want to do XYZ yet, and I don't want to just jump in after undergrad---bonus I get to live in NYC for a few years if I agree to teach for two years. Sounds okay."
I absolutely did NOT believe the part you bolded. I have lived here all of my life and I know better. But that tends to be the generalization and regardless, that is what you are expected to do. You are supposed to work magic. I had a student who was pretty smart, good kid, but he suddenly stopped coming to school. They pulled him in one day and we found out he was trying to figure out a way to stay with his sister because I guess DCS was involved with the children and trying to remove them from the parents. We tried our best to get him to keep coming into school but what could we really do? I completely understood why he wouldn't give a crap about coming to school either---obviously his home life sucked.
Administration is a joke. We constantly had meetings about how WE needed X% to pass when we didn't even have our daily attendance rate that high. Lots of pressure from every possible angle to have kids pass, without the kids really having to do a thing. I felt bad for the kids who really tried, since it apparently didn't matter---you didn't have to try to pass. I had this super senior they threw on my attendance roster that I had never seen a single day and they came to me on the last day and asked if he had ever attended my class and if there was a project that he could do to pass since they just wanted him out of the school. The kid was nothing but trouble but we weren't a charter school so it's not like we could just kick him out.
I think people are completely oblivious as to what goes on, especially in these schools with high passing rates that had previously been in failing schools. There are so many schools that do "credit recovery" or "projects" that are all complete and utter nonsense. Everyone thought when they made it mandatory that you had to pass five Regents examinations to graduate from HS that the city was making an improvement and that finally, the standards were being raised! Another joke---of course it's easier for kids to pass exams when you change Biology to Living Environment, cut down on the curriculum by a huge percentage and scale the exam so it's curved.
I'm not sure if I would have stayed if I was in a better environment.
No good teacher wants to work in a public school in a bad neighborhood either. This is was lead to the creation of programs like Teach for America and this is how business interests used the Charter School system to attack public education.
...
I know teaching is a challenge and it is hard (and there are a lot of things people outside education don't appreciate). But this is the world we live in teachers will have to perform or they will find themselves collecting UNEMPLOYMENT and no amount of bickering or defending teachers we all know to be crap can change things.
Again - patently false. People deliberately choose the "bad" schools.
That's what they want to do.
"Teachers we all know to be crap" ... ? And how would you know anything about this at all.
Oh, I forgot. The quantification methods proved that they are not "good." And then you briefly scanned some random wikipedia entry and posted the link. That's how "we" all know.
Very interesting article about the Ft. Green Success Academy which apparently does push to get students who they don't feel will succeed there to leave. And the school lets the whole staff know -- in writing -- that certain students have a bulls-eye on them in terms of getting them out, often by making life for the parents so miserable that the parents decided to withdraw.
This just reinforces what I said way earlier in this thread that parents must really have a strong idea of what type of educational philosophy a school offers before sending their kids there. It is perfectly possible and totally understandable that any particular school is woefully wrong fit for some kids. But some parents have been so dazzled by the school's ability to churn out high standardized test scores, that they're hoping the same will be true for their child.
Military boot camp for grade-schoolers isn't my cup of tea, and we'd never have sent our kids to anything like a Success Academy. But for truly informed parents and the right kid, these types of schools can work wonders. But for others, whether in special education or whether just not ready to learn the three Rs in such a harsh atmosphere, it can be a disaster.
I just wish SA and Eva Moskowitz would quit lying that they don't "counsel out" kids who don't fit in. They clearly do.
Very interesting article about the Ft. Green Success Academy which apparently does push to get students who they don't feel will succeed there to leave. And the school lets the whole staff know -- in writing -- that certain students have a bulls-eye on them in terms of getting them out, often by making life for the parents so miserable that the parents decided to withdraw.
In this way they are able to "sell" their product, especially to people who know nothing at all about education.
That is precisely the point.
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