[olecapt]

Originally Posted by SportyandMisty

I understand your point of view, but at the end of the day, personal responsibility of the student and the educational focus of the family will trump the efforts of even the best teachers in the world.

If there is no consequence to the student and the family, the behavior of students won't reflect the importance that you and I place on education.

That of course is a recipe to continue what we have. An under class that will never go away. And fact likely get slowly worse.

It is quite unlikey that we are going to turn the bottom strata into high performing parents. So if we don't do it in the schools it does nto get done...unless we really want to get off into extreme sociological experiments.

[cecnj]

Absolutely not Mr. Bator. I left a public school position with tenure and a union, to accept a position in an independent school with no tenure and no union. I couldn't be happier. Teachers do not enter the profession for the "huge" paycheck. I know that my students learn a great deal without standardized test mania driving my curriculum. How do I know? I use a variety of formative and alternative assessments. Very few tests. Tests are boring and measure short term recall and how well one can regurgitate data. Very little meaningful connections are made when one studies for a test. Synthesis of information learned, demonstration through meaningful assessment, and creating something new all lead to true, long-lasting learning. None of these important assessments are utilized in standardized testing. Read up on standardized testing---then proclaim.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by cecnj

Absolutely not Mr. Bator. I left a public school position with tenure and a union, to accept a position in an independent school with no tenure and no union. I couldn't be happier. Teachers do not enter the profession for the "huge" paycheck. I know that my students learn a great deal without standardized test mania driving my curriculum. How do I know? I use a variety of formative and alternative assessments. Very few tests. Tests are boring and measure short term recall and how well one can regurgitate data. Very little meaningful connections are made when one studies for a test. Synthesis of information learned, demonstration through meaningful assessment, and creating something new all lead to true, long-lasting learning. None of these important assessments are utilized in standardized testing. Read up on standardized testing---then proclaim.

Obviously you did not go to an engineering school or a hard physics program.

We considered open book tests the ultimate disaster. You had to solve the problem and then explain how you arrived at your conclusion.

Sometimes writing an exam took days to weeks.

While standardized tests should not drive your curriculum they should validate that in fact your students have mastered the material. You have a way to validate mastery without testing?

How do you decide personally whether you are doing well or not so well? You don't quiz the little buggers to determine if they really understood what you said?

There appears to be some belief that teaching is an existential discipline...where hard data results detract from the performance. I do not agree.

[unf0rgiven6262]

Originally Posted by olecapt

Obviously you did not go to an engineering school or a hard physics program.

We considered open book tests the ultimate disaster. You had to solve the problem and then explain how you arrived at your conclusion.

Sometimes writing an exam took days to weeks.

While standardized tests should not drive your curriculum they should validate that in fact your students have mastered the material. You have a way to validate mastery without testing?

How do you decide personally whether you are doing well or not so well? You don't quiz the little buggers to determine if they really understood what you said?

There appears to be some belief that teaching is an existential discipline...where hard data results detract from the performance. I do not agree.

It's not that we need to ban tests from schools. We need to change how students are tested. In other words, get them to express ideas and knowledge instead of regurgitating words line for line. You do realize there are kids that can memorize material, write it down and not have a clue what they just wrote down right?

America is getting progressively dumber. Is it the sole result of ineffective teachers? I think not. Everyone thinks technology is going to make everything so simple that they don't have to use their brain anymore. I saw a guy at McDonalds a couple months ago trying to speak into the bathroom door knob to get it to open after the manager told him the code.

Kids aren't going to learn unless they want to. Giving little johnny a cell phone at age 7 to fiddle around with in class isn't the best idea. Neither is creating situations were teachers get fired for taking control of a class. Playing games where everyone wins and allowing children unmonitored access to the internet. You think that stiff standing in front of the classroom is really the teacher to these kids? Most of the time kids are using google as their teacher. The only way for a teacher to create an environment for kids to truly learn is to be creative. Creativity+ cramming for standardized testing do not mix. So do you want to see results that say johnny figured out how to memorize and write down a series of words as he saw them or do you want to see johnny write a report or stand in front of the class and engage in a debate on a subject. One is garbage in- garbage out and the other actually a memorable experience that they can build off of.

You want to hold crappy teachers accountable? Get the principal to actually get off his ass and sit in on random classrooms every day.

[quixotic59]

I believe I have found the foolproof test for teachers:

Touch test
The most infamous employment of the belief in effluvia – and in direct opposition to what Parris had advised his own parishioners in Salem Village – was the touch test used in Andover during preliminary examinations in September 1692. If the accused Teacher touched the victim while the victim was having a fit, and the fit then stopped, that meant the accused was the person who had afflicted the victim. As several of those accused later recounted, "we were blindfolded, and our hands were laid upon the afflicted persons, they being in their fits and falling into their fits at our coming into their presence, as they said. Some led us and laid our hands upon them, and then they said they were well and that we were guilty of afflicting them; whereupon we were all seized, as prisoners, by a warrant from the justice of the peace and forthwith carried to Salem". Rev. John Hale explained how this supposedly worked: "the Teacher by the cast of her eye sends forth a Malefick Venome into the Bewitched to cast him into a fit, and therefore the touch of the hand doth by sympathy cause that venome to return into the Body of the Teacher again".

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it",George Santayana

[quixotic59]

Originally Posted by olecapt

There appears to be some belief that teaching is an existential discipline...where hard data results detract from the performance. I do not agree.

I respect the wisdom your years and experience have bestowed upon you, and as someone with an engineering degree I understand some of your logic, but you would never make that statement after having spent 25 years teaching teenagers.

[SportyandMisty]

Here's an interesting technique:

Oakland Lazear elementary students read for trophy

When just 11 students at Oakland's Lazear Elementary School earned a trophy for reaching their reading goals in the first three months of school, Principal Kareem Weaver knew he had to do something to boost that number.

His solution? He made it twice as hard for students to reach the prize.

His bit of psychology worked.

On Friday, 65 students stepped up to accept a shiny trophy; engraved on each one with the child's name was the Latin inscription, "Datum perficiemus munus."

"Mission given, mission accomplished," Weaver translated for the students.

It took 90 minutes to hand out all the trophies, medals, certificates and other awards to students who achieved grade-level proficiency or other academic goals in reading.

Second-grader Carlos Peña declared Friday the "best day of my life," as he hugged his trophy, the first one of his life...

Read more: Oakland Lazear elementary students read for trophy