<p>One thing I learned my first semester in front of a (college) classroom is that in a group of 30 students some are going to think you are good and others are going to think you are terrible (particularly if you teach a course people don’t want to be taking). The viewpoint depends a lot on the student, their level of preparation coming in, their motivation to work, their expectation of what the professor can do. It’s not as simple as abstractly stating “the teacher is great” or “the teacher is terrible”.</p>
<p>I think it depends on many factors. If you have students that 75% of the class gets an A in an AP course, and none of those same students score greater than a 2 or 3 on the AP exam, there is a problem. Does it mean that the teacher is “bad”. Not necessarily, but it does mean that the teacher needs support and guidance to help form a program that allows students to obtain the material and do well on AP exams. Same for the other standardized tests. Do I like that classes are focused on teaching to the test. No, but it is the only real way to determine in a short period of time a trend and be able to fix it for an individual student.</p>
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<p>Someone has to set the curriculum and guide the kids towards the study materials. Not everyone can home school. It is not scalable.</p>
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<p>Exactly. To the intellectually curious and the independent, no teacher is a bad teacher, as she takes the responsibility for learning on her own shoulders, rather than blaming the teacher.</p>
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This is anecdotal, but in my kid’s school there is one AP course that is taught by two teachers, and the kids are randomly assigned. The kids who get one of the teachers often get 5s on the AP test, while those who get the other teacher rarely get 5s. The kids also have the perception that one of these teachers is “better” than the other, although the less good one isn’t considered a bad teacher. I think some people are just more effective than others at performing certain tasks, and it may not be an issue of “fault” at all.</p>
<p>To those who blame teachers at ALL, look to the kids who self-study 2-3 AP tests a year. Its all about a student’s initiative, like bart said… I’m tired of people who blame teachers for what is mostly a student’s poor performance.</p>
<p>Is it OK if I get tired of teachers who don’t want to take responsibility for teaching well?</p>
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<p>Absolutely, once the students and the parents have proven that they gave 100% first.</p>
<p>vlines, I agree absolutely. I taught college for more than 15 years, won many teaching awards, had good student evaluations, had numerous students who went on to accomplish great things (from a so so institution), and have several I am still in contact with almost 30 years later. </p>
<p>One semester I taught the same beginning course on two different schedules: MTThF at 11:30 and MWFSaturday at 7:30 a.m. The curriculum was identical; I daresay my teaching methods and expectations were the same. However, in the 11:30 class, the lowest grade was a C (the two people who would have gotten D/F dropped). In the 7:30 class the highest grade was a C. I would have given a B to one grad student but he was taking the course pass/no pass. </p>
<p>Teaching is all about communication. Some teachers are able to communicate to many different kinds of learners in many different ways and adapt their teaching to the needs of the students. Others are less adept at doing so. It is the very rare teacher who can teach equally well to a classroom full of diverse students. This is even truer as the students are younger.</p>
<p>I guess what I really get tired of in these discussions is the overly black and white views people seem to have–everything is the responsibility of the teachers, or the students, or the parents. Really, everybody shares responsibility for educational outcomes. It simply isn’t true that there are no bad teachers, even for a motivated student. Nor is it true that it’s all the teacher’s fault if a student fails.</p>
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<p>This is not much different than blaming the thermometer for the rising temperature of sick patients. Inasmuch as an undue attention to the results of the tests is unwarranted, we need to be able to measure the success and progress of the students taking the tests. Once we establish that the tests are of the appropriate difficulty and correspond to the assigned curriculum, teachers should NOT have to teach to the test per se. Their instruction should suffice to provide an acceptable distribution of passes and fails. Having to teach to the test is simply another copout in a long list of excuses that have successfully buried the problem of the competence of many teachers for several decades.</p>
<p>With all the supposed obsession with tests, perhaps it would be wiser to refocus the “mania” to the core of the issue, and reevaluate the performance of the teachers through competence tests, and bring corrections through better training and education. For all the billions spent on education, this is an area that has received an extremely low attention, especially since the “education” colleges have been known to produce hordes of poorly educated and poorly prepare candidate-teachers who can nonetheless pass the usual dumbed-down certification processes with reasonable ease. </p>
<p>Fwiw, a good start would be to administer the same tests we give our students to their … teachers without much notice, and post the results on the doors of the schools. Rather than teaching to the test, we may hear about the drama of having to “study for the test.” We should not measure the performance of teachers via the scores obtained by their students, but through different yardsticks.</p>
<p>This last step should be something that the millions of good teachers would welcome. They are not the problem. The problem is and has been that we have not developed a system that allows to differentiate between the poor performers and the stellar teachers. The entire system of public education is based on protecting the status quo and that often means protecting the mediocre and corrupt. Most teachers are victims of the system we abdicated to corrupting forces, just as students and their parents are.</p>
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<p>Sorry, but from what I observed in my K-12 experience and from what I’ve heard from friends who teach at all levels…including university, if a student him/herself lacks the motivation to learn barring disabilities or illness, there’s little parents and teachers could do. </p>
<p>One of the things I’ve gotten quite sick of is hearing K-12 students, undergrads, and/or their parents placing most/all of the blame for their students’ poor performances on their teachers/Profs when from my observation, it was clearly due to their own lack of diligence and motivation to attend class, do the work, and to take the initiative to seek out the available resources. IMHO, what they’re doing is a huge cop-out. </p>
<p>What’s more sad is that I’ve seen this not only in public schools, but also colleges/universities at all levels…including some Ivy/top LACs/peer institutions…</p>
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This is the kind of thing I mean. Are there only two kinds of students, those who lack the motivation to learn, and those who are entirely self-starters? If there are really only those two kinds of kids, what do we need teachers for in the first place?</p>
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<p>This is very true. It is precisely because of this reason that many countries try to segment students into more homogeneous groups. That aids learning and eases teaching enormously.</p>
<p>One of the problem public K-12 schools have is their inability to keep a student back a class, or segment the class by aptitude level. Or, if needed, kick a kid out of school altogether.</p>
<p>I have a former college classmate who is a Facebook friend and now teaches HS science, including AP Chem. I’m amused that she posts how great her students are that get 2s & 3s on the AP test and she is beside herself that one got a 4 this year. Umm, our HS AP Chem teacher is annoyed when anyone gets below a 4 in a class of 20. Clearly there is a disconnect on what she’s teaching and the teacher who taught D1 who got a 5, as did 4 of her classmates.</p>
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There might be a big difference between the populations of those two schools. The teacher might be doing a great job with kids who aren’t that well prepared–and your D’s teacher might be doing a poor job if 20 kids in the class have the capacity to get 5s. You have to know the context, too.</p>
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<p>Teachers are supposed to serve as guides to point students towards sources of knowledge and to facilitate the learning process. The student him/herself and depending on age…his/her parents have the lion share of the duty to actually do most of the hard work to gain the optimal educational benefits. </p>
<p>By the same token, one cannot blame a musical instrument teacher or gym coach for poor student performance caused by the lack of “doing homework/studying” in the form of adequate instrument practice or exercises outside of the coaching sessions.</p>
<p>My son’s senior year at a prep boarding school the AP Stat teacher was a 1st year teacher (she may have had a previous year somewhere else) and young. She was TERRIBLE. The boys liked her as a friend, but my son claimed to “not be learning anything”. I didn’t believe him and chalked it up to senioritis. Turned out all the top students (5s and 4s on other APs) got 2s (there was a 1) on the AP Stat exam. She wasn’t invited back for another year.</p>
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<p>Do we really expect K-8 kids to take the initiative to seek out the available resources? </p>
<p>Inasmuch as it unfair to lay the entire blame of our failing K-12 at the feet of the teachers, it is also unfair to blame parents for failing to substitute or complement our system of education, and blame students for their lack of motivation. We should remember that some CLAIMED the right to provide the education to EVERYONE in exchange of an almost total monopoly of our public educational dollars. This monopoly comes with the obligation of educating all children, and not only the ones who benefit from a stable environment or parents educated enough to keep their children at a competitive level. </p>
<p>The facts speak for themselves. We rarely hear about a lack of motivation in the K-4, and the international comparisons indicate that we actually perform well. The problems start in middle school and culminate in an abysmal performance in high school. This seems to track the abilities of parents to complement what is taught in schools by teachers, and unforunately highlight the EXACT nature one of the major deficiencies of our teaching efficiency and efficacy.</p>
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<p>I am having hard time squaring this with the fact that 80% of Americans have a high school degree or higher. They can’t teach their middle schoolers? Sorry, but only if it is not a priority for them.</p>