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<p>Emerald kity is right. Catholic schools do not have perfect kids attending; some can “forget” to study or do homework. And yes, sometimes CS will accept some “problem kids” with the hope of “turning the around.” Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.</p>
<p>Many Catholic schools are now employing resource teachers to help kids with special needs…not serious needs, but some reading or math issues.</p>
<p>Education majors have, at least in theory, good people skills and should be able to use those skills in the job market. My next door neighbor has an education degree and he’s been a health care administrator for twenty years and credits the organizational skills, along with people skills learned as an education major…</p>
<p>Received some info in the mail yesterday from one of the schools my son is considering attending majoring in secondary education. In their info, they state:</p>
<p>“A 100% job placement rate for education graduates”. Do you think I can believe that? They do mention that many find teaching positions across the country. They also mention that their graduates have maintained a 100% passage rate on the Praxix II exam for teacher licensure for the last five years - is that unusual - I need to do more research on this exam…</p>
<p>My daughters college has a 100% passing rate for the state licensing but the program is rigorous enough, or maybe the tests are easy enough that it wasn’t that big a deal. She passed the IL and PA tests with high scores without studying. As to a 100% placement rate, I find that very, very hard to believe.</p>
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<p>Tom1944 - you may find this article interesting. The Gates Foundation is putting big $ behind a handful of pay for performance / teacher effectiveness initiatives:</p>
<p>Gates Foundation awards $40 million to city schools
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette</p>
<p>In what officials said would be the largest grant ever made directly to the Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has offered the district $40 million for sweeping initiatives to maximize teacher effectiveness.</p>
<p>The school board will hold a special meeting at 6 p.m. today to vote on accepting the grant, which would help finance an $85 million-plus campaign to improve the way teachers are recruited, inducted, evaluated, recognized and compensated.</p>
<p>The district would be one of the Gates Foundation’s four “intensive partnership sites” for teacher-effectiveness initiatives nationwide.</p>
<p>“For us, it’s the perfect partnership at the perfect time,” school Superintendent Mark Roosevelt said, calling the foundation’s support an endorsement of previous improvement efforts and an opportunity to accelerate the district’s academic overhaul.</p>
<p>Breaking with traditional methods of compensating teachers and staffing schools, the district’s plan would put faculty members on performance pay, give extra pay to those tackling especially important assignments, establish a teachers academy, overhaul the tenure system, broaden recruitment efforts and take steps to improve discipline in schools. Some changes would require collective bargaining.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that effective teachers can help students achieve, even if the kids are poor or face other disadvantages.</p>
<p>The district’s plan would seek to ensure that effective, motivated teachers are in every classroom, every day, and to boost not only the district’s high school graduation rate but the percentage of district graduates who complete post-secondary education.</p>
<p>“This grant has huge symbolic and real value for Pittsburgh,” said Grant Oliphant, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation.</p>
<p>The support of the influential Gates Foundation sends the message that the Pittsburgh school district is “in the midst of serious reform, and this is a place where big things are happening,” he said.</p>
<p>The district had asked the Gates Foundation for $50 million, but the amount the foundation decided to give – $40 million – was not publicly known until now. The district will have to seek additional funds from public and other private sources to implement all components of the $85 million-plus plan.</p>
<p>Besides Pittsburgh, the Gates Foundation tomorrow is expected to announce teacher-effectiveness grants and partnerships involving a group of Los Angeles charter schools and school districts in Hillsborough County, Fla., and Memphis, Tenn.</p>
<p>The Hillsborough County school board yesterday voted to accept a $100 million Gates Foundation grant, which will help fund a $200 million teacher-improvement plan, said David Steele, the district’s chief information officer.</p>
<p>The Gates Foundation also had signaled a willingness to support a teacher-effectiveness plan in Omaha, Neb., schools. But the district backed out about a week ago, telling the Omaha World-Herald that it couldn’t raise enough money on its own to supplement the amount Gates was offering.</p>
<p>The four grants will come from a $500 million pool the Gates Foundation established for a variety of teacher-effectiveness efforts, a new area of focus for the Seattle-based philanthropy, operated by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda.</p>
<p>Lessons learned in the three cities and in Hillsborough County, Fla., will be disseminated nationwide as the Gates Foundation seeks clues to an elusive question: What makes a good teacher?</p>
<p>The foundation yesterday declined to discuss the amounts to be awarded to the four recipients. Spokesman Chris Williams said Omaha’s withdrawal would not mean more money for the others.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President John Tarka has described the teacher-effectiveness program as an opportunity to upend stereotypes about urban schools and build on the dedication of the district’s teachers.</p>
<p>“The PFT is very proud of the efforts made by our members every day, and this recognition by Gates underscores the reasons why we have that pride,” he said.</p>
<p>Mr. Tarka said the grant puts “important, positive pressure” on the union and district to negotiate agreements on performance pay and related issues.</p>
<p>Last spring, the Gates Foundation invited the charter schools and nine school districts to compete for teacher-effectiveness grants. It announced the five finalists in August, then began to negotiate grant agreements. It appears that the foundation reached agreements with all but Omaha.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh officials said previous academic initiatives set the stage for the Gates Foundation’s support.</p>
<p>In the past four years, the district has closed low-performing schools, implemented standardized curricula, launched a principal-training program and put principals and other administrators on performance pay. Mr. Roosevelt and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl launched the Pittsburgh Promise, offering scholarships to graduates of city high schools who meet certain academic and enrollment criteria.</p>
<p>To get the Promise off the ground, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center donated $10 million outright and offered a $90 million matching grant. Because that money goes to the Promise, not the school district, the Gates Foundation gift would be the largest ever to the district, officials said.</p>
<p>Because officials recognized that scholarships will be of little use if students can’t handle college-level work, some of the school district’s improvement efforts – new curricula and mentoring programs, for example – have been designed to improve students’ college-readiness. Saleem Ghubril, the Promise’s executive director, yesterday said the Gates Foundation grant gives a “huge boost, huge shot in the arm,” to college-readiness efforts.</p>
<p>In its proposal to the Gates Foundation, the district said it wanted to increase its percentage of highly effective teachers – those who “produce student gains that are significantly above the state average” – from the current 28 percent to 41 percent in five years. It said it wanted to increase the high school-graduation rate from 65 percent to 76 percent in five years.</p>
<p>Read more: [Gates</a> Foundation awards $40 million to city schools](<a href=“http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09322/1014314-298.stm#ixzz0XDfpBEEg]Gates”>http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09322/1014314-298.stm#ixzz0XDfpBEEg)</p>
<p>THis would be funny if it wasn’t taxpayer money.</p>
<p>I asked berryberry the question because I am not an opponent of merit pay for any job, in fact if I was an employer I would only want to pay an employee a commission or by piece work. It seems to me however that merit pay in the education field may be difficult to implement not only because of the teachers union but because there does not seem to be a consensus on what it should be based on. From the limited discussions I have had on this issue most private schools do not use merit pay either. I am interested in hearing about how merit pay is working when it is part of the compensation package.</p>
<p>THis would be funny if it wasn’t taxpayer money.</p>
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<p>berryberry- thank you for the link. I would love to see merit pay in schools I hope the various initiatives are successful.</p>
<p>emeraldkitty- I am sorry but I do not understand what you meant in your post.</p>
<p>Oh I was just ranting about how we say public education doesn’t have enough money and we need more in order to be able to even start to address the issues but we take what little money we have and waste it.</p>
<p>It came to mind, because of the connection to the Gates foundation - I had worked a few years ago trying to implement the grant for the district, but the schools and the district did not use the money as it was directed, so funding was slashed.
Dramatically.</p>
<p>As long as everyone is discussing teaching, I have a quick question: does getting your master’s degree right away impede you from getting a job at a low-income school? I will need this to fulfill my grant requirements, and I am concerned that they won’t take a teacher that they are supposed to pay more due to education level.</p>
<p>bump for muzicgirl89</p>
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<p>Muzicgirl89 - Its hard to answer that questions because every school is different. I can tell you at the independent school I am at, having your masters as a new grad would be beneficial - not harmful. Our goal is to encourage all new faculty to earn their masters. But we also pay fairly well and no longer have any automatic differentiation in pay for teachers with bachelors vs masters - however having a masters will help you potentailly earn more in the long run since you would qualify for a higher band, and therefore better merit pay</p>
<p>Could it be that education majors are having a hard time finding a job because the degree itself is basically useless? I know there are maybe 15 good education schools in the U.S. but the rest of them are basically places where the under-achieving students park themselves in order to come out with the college degree.</p>
<p>Isn’t this implicitly recognized with the onslought of “second career certification programs”?</p>
<p>Whiteagle, I’m curious, what schools are on your list of 15 and why???</p>
<p>I’ll admit it sometimes seems like everyone and their brother has education for a major and I can see myself that all are not equal.</p>
<p>But I’d like to hear more about your opinion.</p>
<p>abasket, I know that Vanderbilt and Columbia are science-based and offer real teacher training. I am sure that there must be at least 12 others out there. But in the majority of the “heartland” (i.e. Northeast Missouri State University, East Texas State, etc) those educations are mostly for kids with low SATs and little hope of really passing on knowledge. JMO.</p>
<p>But maybe teacher quality is not so important now that internet classes are a possibility. Even this consideration however, makes one wonder why the 4 year degree in “education”?</p>
<p>I think in NJ you are required to major in a subject- math, english etc and also take courses to get certified in education but you do not major in education. In other States can you major in education without majoring in a certain subject?</p>
<p>Yes, I think you are correct. But let’s face it, the person getting an education degree from “Smallwood” really has a remedial H.S. degree.</p>
<p>In many states, including NY, students wanting to teach at the adolescent level must have a specific major and then obtain certification. My D is a history major and only has to take three education classes in addition to her student teaching. Less education classes than her psych minor. The class she’s taking now is all about the nuts-and-bolts of being a secondary history teacher.</p>
<p>whiteagle, why the negative view of teachers? You certainly had some good ones over the years. You must remember that being a good educator is much more than knowing the subject. Teaching is really a performance skill - you either are good at it or you’re not. Sure, you can practice much like those learning a musical instrument, but some people are inherently better at it regardless of their schooling. Call it talent.</p>
<p>Whiteagle; I find your post insulting, but perhaps you intend it that way. I’m almost 50 and have been teaching in the public school system for 18 years; the majority of teachers I have worked with have been intelligent, motivated, hard-working, persistent and organized. In my experience, the ones who don’t have those skills usually burn out after a few years and go do something else. This year, I have two interns who have been placed in my classroom to work and learn. Neither could be considered to be “under-achieving” and neither have low SATs.</p>