More Education Issues in Idaho (Boise, Nampa: 2014, middle school, university)
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This particular topic seems to be about a distinct Idaho issue Since this forum is about Idaho, and this thread posted in the Idaho forum is talking about Idaho issues, I don't see why Detroit or California or anywhere else you live (who the hell cares?) is even relevant.
In this particular case, which is about an issue in Idaho.. why don't y'all restrict your comments to that? And as per City Data TOS, you're supposed to stay on topic in a thread. If you want to post about corruption in Chicago politics, go to the Illinois forum. If you want to post about how Idaho democrats are corrupt because they voted for X, Y, and Z, make your own thread.
This topic seems to be about a particular issue, which IS NOT PARTISAN IN THE LEAST, seeing as how Ybarra (R), Otter (R), and more than half the legislature (R) cosigned the Office of Performance Evaluation Report.
Rather, it seems to be about one particularly horrible Superintendent of Education we had here in Idaho, who happened to be Republican, adding yet another tally to his unbelievably large pile of mistakes and scandals in his 8 years as boss. There was a recall of his "Luna Laws" by the general public, even.
But I guess it's hard to stay on topic when you're so blindly partisan you fail to read the OP and his article as you stumble around to defend the brand, all while humorously missing the point completely. Par for the course.
"There are six grades of "F" on Idaho's integrity report card, which is troubling enough, but the "F" for the category Ethics Enforcement Agencies is unique. In that category, each of the 24 questions received an evaluation of 0%. You just can't do any worse than that, and the citizens of Idaho should be alarmed that the state government is content to do its business with 0 percent ethical oversight."
This particular topic seems to be about a distinct Idaho issue Since this forum is about Idaho, and this thread posted in the Idaho forum is talking about Idaho issues, I don't see why Detroit or California or anywhere else you live (who the hell cares?) is even relevant.
In this particular case, which is about an issue in Idaho.. why don't y'all restrict your comments to that? And as per City Data TOS, you're supposed to stay on topic in a thread. If you want to post about corruption in Chicago politics, go to the Illinois forum. If you want to post about how Idaho democrats are corrupt because they voted for X, Y, and Z, make your own thread.
This topic seems to be about a particular issue, which IS NOT PARTISAN IN THE LEAST, seeing as how Ybarra (R), Otter (R), and more than half the legislature (R) cosigned the Office of Performance Evaluation Report.
Rather, it seems to be about one particularly horrible Superintendent of Education we had here in Idaho, who happened to be Republican, adding yet another tally to his unbelievably large pile of mistakes and scandals in his 8 years as boss. There was a recall of his "Luna Laws" by the general public, even.
But I guess it's hard to stay on topic when you're so blindly partisan you fail to read the OP and his article as you stumble around to defend the brand, all while humorously missing the point completely. Par for the course.
IMO it had little to do with the fact that the Superintendent of Ed in question was a R or D. It had to do with the fact that he wanted teachers and school administrators evaluated on the basis of their performance. And for better teachers to be rewarded better than poor ones. Quite a concept, right? Needless to say this "radical" idea, while used in virtually every private company that employees professionals other than public empoloyees, was vehemently opposed by Idaho's teacher's unions. The concept of merit, rather than seniority and patronage, being used as a basis of compensation was too extreme.
Even more so he attempted to improve efficiency of Idaho's widely separated school districts, by offering some classes over this radical new thing called "the internet". Perhaps you've heard of it? Again, the introduction of technology scary to an entrenched teacher's union that was not willing to embrace change and technology. Instead of using internet based instruction to offer classes that were not cost justified by insufficient enrollment to have a dedicated teacher at each school, they managed to get the entire program scrapped.
So, they managed a massive advertising campaign to undo some of the few attempts at education reform in the state.
There are many problems with teacher merit pay.
Trying to determine which teacher is more effective than another can't be conventionally tested or measured. A teacher's only measurements of success come through the success of the students that were taught, and "success" itself is arbitrary. A student who goes on to become a wealthy and unhappy individual is a lot different from another who's less well off, but is leading a happy life. Oftentimes, it takes decades to know just how important a teacher's influence was to the kids who passed through the class.
No novice teacher who is just starting in the profession is going to know all the subtle ways experienced teachers use to pull a failing student up, or all the complicated dynamics between the kids, the kids' relationship with a teacher, and all the rest. Teaching is a very complicated skill, and much as much depends on the community, the local culture, and the expectations of the patrons of a school district as the teacher. Nothing in the profession is cut and dried.
Sure- there are subjects that are very cut and dried. Basic math, basic English, and others can all be tested. But trying to measure how the child perceives the need to read and write fluently, or to think in abstract matters using logic and other skills, is impossible. A high school graduate may not need some of the skills that were taught for several years after graduation. If a class is taught only for good testing grades, learning by rote never lasts very long.
A re-test 10 years later would tell more about what was really valid for both teacher and student in the permanence of what was taught. I have never heard of any program like that, but adults are the proof of any teaching philosophy, not the kids.
There are a lot of ads on TV right now encouraging kids to Go On and get higher education. A young person who graduates without a curious mind isn't going to go on. Learning by rote isn't going to increase curiosity, and curiosity is the first step toward inspiration. Inspiration is what builds innovation.
A good teacher inspires and sparks curiosity. How they do it is something beyond any conventional measurement that i know of.
This is why we need to go with a voucher system for public (with private option) schools and why private/homeschooling may be preferred. Make schools more competitive instead of them all subscribing to some low bar down standard. Anything the govt. does is more expensive and less quality, pretty much!
Public schools across the nation suck and the ones that suck the least no doubt are funded by ridiculous amounts of tax $$$ no doubt.
I'm not sure you're following along. He made several arguments for merit based pay and performance evaluation. That is NOT what SchoolNet was. That is NOT why $61 million was flushed down the drain.
Moreover, that was NOT what IEN was either. IEN was his proposal to create a centralized IT / broadband system for the schools which was supposed to save the state money and help kids learn in the 21st century. Maybe you didn't see the FACTS that this year, when the districts went to find their own provider, they saved nearly 67% on the costs.
What you're talking about was one part of the so-called Luna Laws, which if you don't remember were turned over the next year by public referendum. All three laws.
These laws, and many think IEN and Schoolnet, were a not-very-well disguised attempt for Luna to pad the pockets of his friends and campaign supporters, including curriculum developers, laptop purchasing companies, and higher ups in educational IT.
Seriously, one of his proposals was to buy every student a laptop. Tell me again how that relates to merit pay or performance evaluation, or improving student performance?
Luna was a failure; his sister at the Dept. of Administration was a failure; Gwartney was a failure; and these are all pretty concrete proof of cronyism and corruption at its finest. For anyone to deny that... well, they're just mistaken or ignoring the facts.
SchoolNet is a data base program that was designed to measure individual school's performance within one school district.
The company was never able to adapt their programming to work to measure one state school district against another. Either Luna approached them or vice versa; I don't know which happened, but once offered a cow that gave solid gold milk, SchoolNet milked us taxpayers for as long as they could before they were caught, and Luna's people never seemed to have bothered to check or verify anything SchoolNet produced.
$61 million dollars of completely wasted money later, Director Ybarra's guy finally found them out, but Idaho is still contracted to this spendy boondoggle, to the tune of $4 million a year for Big Nothing, for several years to come.
Meanwhile, Tommy skates away free as a bird. It pays to be Butch's long-time buddy coming and going, it seems. Since Mike Gwartney was Butch's closest friend, don't hold your breath waiting for any forthcoming justice for his misdeeds, either. Won't ever happen.
We ain't seen the end yet, folks. There is more to come.
Don't expect Idaho to bounce off the bottom of the U.S. education rankings for at least a decade to come. As always, it was a lot easier to dig the hole than to climb back out of it.
SchoolNet is a data base program that was designed to measure individual school's performance within one school district.
The company was never able to adapt their programming to work to measure one state school district against another. Either Luna approached them or vice versa; I don't know which happened, but once offered a cow that gave solid gold milk, SchoolNet milked us taxpayers for as long as they could before they were caught, and Luna's people never seemed to have bothered to check or verify anything SchoolNet produced.
$61 million dollars of completely wasted money later, Director Ybarra's guy finally found them out, but Idaho is still contracted to this spendy boondoggle, to the tune of $4 million a year for Big Nothing, for several years to come.
Meanwhile, Tommy skates away free as a bird. It pays to be Butch's long-time buddy coming and going, it seems. Since Mike Gwartney was Butch's closest friend, don't hold your breath waiting for any forthcoming justice for his misdeeds, either. Won't ever happen.
We ain't seen the end yet, folks. There is more to come.
Don't expect Idaho to bounce off the bottom of the U.S. education rankings for at least a decade to come. As always, it was a lot easier to dig the hole than to climb back out of it.
Exactly. Very precise post.
We should all be concerned and contacting our representatives to demand accountability on this.
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Look...
This issue, and this thread, is NOT a liberal v. conservative thing, though some posters continue to try to make it about that. I don't know how many more times it needs to be said. At this point he's just trolling and trying to get the thread closed.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Legislative budget writers are matching Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's request to restore public education money slashed during the economic downturn by adding roughly $101 million to the Idaho schools budget.
The Joint Finance Appropriations Committee approved increasing the schools budget by 7.4 percent on Friday. The proposal now needs to pass both chambers, but the legislation is expected to pass.
The proposal includes allotting $33.5 million to boost teacher pay, part of a five-year teacher pay increase plan lawmakers approved earlier this week.
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