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Teacher reform is only going to drive everyone out of teaching, which will cause another shortage down the road.
Kids failed when parents fail.
Don't get me wrong, excellent teachers can help, but it's not gonna change what these kids go home too.
Most of them are barely eating and living in cramped conditions, how can we expect them to get good grades and pass those tests.
the teacher is a very minor factor in the education of a child.
I generally disagree with this specific statement, teachers can have a huge impact on your life, in terms of motivating you or, on the other hand, turning you away from something. I agree with the rest of what you wrote though.
I generally disagree with this specific statement, teachers can have a huge impact on your life, in terms of motivating you or, on the other hand, turning you away from something. I agree with the rest of what you wrote though.
i think there is romanticizing over the role of the teacher to pretend they are some kind of real driving force behind a child's education. i think real examples of that are few and far between. they have an important job, but its really just to run program.
Yup- and they needed all of those fancy buildings with skylights, stainless steel curtainwalls, terrazzo floors, and "themes" like barns and lighthouses, that the taxpayers paid for when the SCC pissed away $8 billion a while back. Those buildings were designed to "inspire the children to learn and grow up to achieve great things"- or at least that's the line of BS I heard repeatedly when we were building them.....
Not for nothing but agree more money is not the psolution less doesn't exactly help things either. My wife teaches in an urban city and she does not exactly have a state of the art school. No ac,skylights or anything else that looks fancy. Just a regular school built in the 40's.
2) And Nancy Solomon's Peabody Award-winning "Mind the Gap: Why good schools are failing black students." It looks at Columbia HS (South Orange/ Maplewood) and doesn't focus on Abbotts, but I think many of the problems and suggestions can be applied to other communities and groups.
Now for teachers? If you took all the best teachers in the state, put them in a failing school would you see results? Well, scores would rise, Chris Christie certainly feels this way as he looks like he's willing to pay more money for teachers to work in tough districts.
But I agree with the original author of this post: I personally feel a good family who interacts a lot and has library and/ or internet skills and utilizes them, will be fine off, even with just average teachers. However, of important note (and personal feelings) I feel it is easier for girls than guys to get away with this. Many times boys in Abbott districts will get made fun of for being smart as Solomon's doc emphasizes. I've seen it because I went to a rougher HS in NJ myself, though not an Abbott. The pressure to be "gangsta" or a "playa" or a "slacker" can be very difficult for a young male trying to fit in. But with good parental support, you can survive & succeed I feel. I learned as much from my dad taking me on day trips and our set of encyclopedias then I did in many classes.
Are teachers in poorer districts worse? Impossible to answer. There are some amazing bleeding hearts fighting the fight every day. Others who hand out worksheets and daydream of what their life has become. Now I'll say that I'm a teacher in a very good school district. Would I go to a poorer district for more money? That would be nice. But two things would be more important: 1) to have a charismatic leader like Michelle Rhee or Geoffrey Canada. I would like to know someone's got my back and will be there to talk during the awful days (there will be many of those, but will also be great days). I know teachers at a couple rougher districts and their comments on the administration and other staff aren't pretty. You can't generalize, but you can go back to psychology. Does spending even just five years in a failing district affect teachers outlooks and motivation? Do teachers there also suffer from a poverty of the mind? Like Office Space, but with kids and a classroom.
2) Most of all I want respect. I teach and entertain kids all day and I'm good at it. I would have to adapt my game for a different population.
Sorry for the long answer, but if the worst performing districts got an all-star teaching staff, then I'd place my bets on the teachers. The kids will improve too. Maybe a reality show about it, since this state seems to excel in that?
My daughter, a tennis player in high school, arrived at an Abbott school a few years back for a match. She thought she was at a fancy hotel...the school was that nice, her teamates looked around in awe.
Next day she was back at her regular school, built in probably the 1940s or 50s, where all most of the kids got into good colleges. Crappy building, but the kids do great!
It's NOT the building STUPID.......it's the kids.
This isn't the roaring 2000s (before the crash). It's 2011 for heavens sake.
We can't keep giving our hard earned money to the urban schools to be politcally correct. Screw the PC stuff already. Keep your hands off of my wallet.
I generally disagree with this specific statement, teachers can have a huge impact on your life, in terms of motivating you or, on the other hand, turning you away from something. I agree with the rest of what you wrote though.
I think a great teacher can certainly go a long way to polishing the rough edges and creating a better product. However, you can't hand the teacher a slab of marble and expect them to hand you back David. They need something to work with in order to do their job and that something starts at home with the parents.
There was a very interesting article in Newsweek about Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart. In it he details the conservative antithesis to the current left attitude regarding European social welfare as the solution. He dissects wealth inequality with a strong focus on why it happened, that is quite surprising. He believes that the social safety nets put in place have underridden the social community that is based on four pillars: family, work, community, faith. While these elements have gotten weaker in all of American society, they have plummeted in poorer and middle class communities. Essentially social welfare replaces the necessity of community, which essentially destroys the community.
It's a very interesting article (and book) that is well worth a read. Given, this is a conservative having his work praised in Newsweek, so there needs to be something there...
interesting, people think they are being so good by creating these safety nets and social services, but as a whole they are undermining the strength of the family.
honestly, since when does someone who had a private school education come and decide how public schools are supposed to be ran? is his kids even in public school? he's making things more worse than they are. fighting the teachers and all the public officials is NOT going to make things better. how about he come up with a real solution instead of bs'ing around trying to bully people?
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