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The school where I was principal had one of the largest gifted centers in the state. And there had developed, over many years, a tendency for teachers to see only gifted classes as their personal goal. One day, one of those teachers said to me, "Victor, you don't spend enough time with the gifted kids. You're always working with the ESOL, and special ed, and regular kids". And I replied, "Yes. While many of you are fawning all over the gifted kids, I'm trying to give some attention to those who need some attention the most". I think this is one of the reasons -- at least in some schools -- that test scores are so bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phetaroi
I thought it was great, but it did create a lot of resentment on the staff. But my personal reaction to that was, well, if you wanna be classed as exemplary, you gotta be exemplary.
How do you compare an exemplary art teacher to an exemplary business teacher to an exemplary P.E. teacher to an exemplary chemistry teacher to an exemplary learning support teacher?
How do you compare an exemplary art teacher to an exemplary business teacher to an exemplary P.E. teacher to an exemplary chemistry teacher to an exemplary learning support teacher?
That's the weak point on all merit pay for education. How do you determine who's in what category?
Test scores? That's when you have the departmental bloodbaths over who teaches AP and who teaches Multi-Level because the pass rate for both levels is the same. Then you have the time lag for scoring, AP tests are given the first two weeks of May and score aren't released until July 5th. My (former) school system tried to do it (for evaluations) with course benchmark exams every two weeks crafted by Testing Specialist at the Central Office. Those tests were a disaster. Out of 30 questions there would invariably be at least two with no correct answer, two with more than one correct answer and three dealing with a different unit than the one being tested.
Lesson planning? How do you judge a Calculus lesson plan (especially if the person doing the evaluating has no knowledge of Calculus) compared to, using one of your examples, PE.
Principal's Posse? Do they all rate exemplary?
The above also pertains to just doing evaluations without merit pay, as I mentioned.
As an aside, one on the most memorable moments from a staff meeting was when the Principal mentioned that his merit pay (meaning bonus, which teachers didn't get) was at risk because of test scores and one of the Posse stood up and started yelling at the rest of us and told us that we had to do better.
That's the weak point on all merit pay for education. How do you determine who's in what category?
Test scores? That's when you have the departmental bloodbaths over who teaches AP and who teaches Multi-Level because the pass rate for both levels is the same. Then you have the time lag for scoring, AP tests are given the first two weeks of May and score aren't released until July 5th. My (former) school system tried to do it (for evaluations) with course benchmark exams every two weeks crafted by Testing Specialist at the Central Office. Those tests were a disaster. Out of 30 questions there would invariably be at least two with no correct answer, two with more than one correct answer and three dealing with a different unit than the one being tested.
Lesson planning? How do you judge a Calculus lesson plan (especially if the person doing the evaluating has no knowledge of Calculus) compared to, using one of your examples, PE.
Principal's Posse? Do they all rate exemplary?
The above also pertains to just doing evaluations without merit pay, as I mentioned.
As an aside, one on the most memorable moments from a staff meeting was when the Principal mentioned that his merit pay (meaning bonus, which teachers didn't get) was at risk because of test scores and one of the Posse stood up and started yelling at the rest of us and told us that we had to do better.
This. One of the districts in my hometown was known for the trend of having teachers that started south in the “tough” schools and slowly move their way north to the “good” schools. Now certainly there are probably people at the “tough” schools who still get the honors/gifted classes and have no issues. They are likely the ones who have been there decades. Are they the ones who get the merit pay every time? I have a friend who got nominated for teacher of the year as her district’s candidate. She teaches AP courses. Now certainly there is nothing wrong with being nominated teaching AP classes, but how easy is it for people who are teaching the tough classes in tough schools?
We have had our kids in private school, public school and now home school (because private school is far away). There is one thing I can tell you, private school and home school are FAR more advanced than public school and absent the politics which makes them much more accommodating learning environments. The content teachers teach can, should and will be replaced with technology - having to babysit a bunch of increasingly insane offspring probably will not. We should change the teaching paradigm - call it advanced babysitting or something. Home school is very difficult, I cannot imagine being a teacher - it stresses us but my kids are 1-2 grades ahead of their peers in public school and we do not have our kids around other children that claim to be opposite genders or furries because their parents are literally that off the rails that their kids feel compelled to think and say things like that.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pulaskicountyindiana
We have had our kids in private school, public school and now home school (because private school is far away). There is one thing I can tell you, private school and home school are FAR more advanced than public school and absent the politics ...We should change the teaching paradigm - call it advanced babysitting or something. Home school is very difficult,....
and... home schooling is NOTHING like delivering public school content within the home.
Home schoolers are responsible for achieving ACTUAL RESULTS. World of difference to the USA public school system.
and... home schooling is NOTHING like delivering public school content within the home.
Home schoolers are responsible for achieving ACTUAL RESULTS. World of difference to the USA public school system.
Some of the most behind students I saw in my teaching career were "home schooled". Now, I know your head will explode with that so I'll add that the parents in those cases doing home schooling should have had their kids taken from them years earlier for neglect. The same thing happened during the Covid shutdowns, many of the kids being "home schooled" were running the streets 20 hours a day.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
34,712 posts, read 58,054,000 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by North Beach Person
...., many of the kids being "home schooled" were running the streets 20 hours a day.
YMMV, but many of our little group of 300+ homeschooled kids were running businesses while excelling at academics.
If we get the USA public school out of the daycare business, amazing things will happen (for the students)
Since there are 24hrs in a day, I'm not at all surprised PS kids are running the streets 20 hrs / day. School work can easily be done in the other 4 hrs/ day. Get a job. At least do something of merit each day than fill a revenue seat at the feedlot of Public Schools.
I guess it depends on what your overall goal is - if you are intending to boost up as many as possible low achievers to be at least self-sustaining as adults, you spend your time on the dunces.
I personally think it would make more sense to spend more time on the brightest students, who really need to be on a different track than the dunces, you only have to create one Elon Musk or Bill Gates to have far more economic benefit to society than all the dunces ever bred.
Remembering elementary and high school, mostly I was so far out ahead of the rest of the pack that I was just reading on my own. I had problems with math because my math teachers were so damn bad they couldn't teach me. It didn't help that most of my "peer group" were Bible-thumping southern fried dimwits, who didn't apply what little intelligence they had to trying to learn anything.
I guess it depends on what your overall goal is - if you are intending to boost up as many as possible low achievers to be at least self-sustaining as adults, you spend your time on the dunces.
I personally think it would make more sense to spend more time on the brightest students, who really need to be on a different track than the dunces, you only have to create one Elon Musk or Bill Gates to have far more economic benefit to society than all the dunces ever bred.
Remembering elementary and high school, mostly I was so far out ahead of the rest of the pack that I was just reading on my own. I had problems with math because my math teachers were so damn bad they couldn't teach me. It didn't help that most of my "peer group" were Bible-thumping southern fried dimwits, who didn't apply what little intelligence they had to trying to learn anything.
We did that in the past and had large institutions where people with developmental disabilities were warehoused. When I worked at a social service organization that helped this group of people, we were told that at that time, the annual cost of institutionalization was something like $85K a year. So there you have it- $85K a year in ~2010 dollars to institutionalize a person for life. That’s millions of dollars for just one person that the taxpayers have to fund after that child ages out of school. Now assume you can get that person to be self sufficient so they don’t cost $85K a year from 21-75. Instead, they are working as a bagger or cashier at Publix or Kroger, making a modest but otherwise self-sufficient living. Even just using the millions of dollars saved can go a long way to help other people later on. My agency served 50K people a year. People who were actually able to work were not eligible for services, so that’s 50K people who would otherwise be institutionalized at the cost of $85k. They didn’t actually get that much each, but the agency’s annual budget allotment was over a billion dollars. That was just for one state.
Contrast this with schooling and the average spending per student in that state is only $10K. So yeah, I do think it makes more sense to spend more on the neediest folks in the K-12 years to avoid spending. $85K a year in 2010 dollars on that same person.
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