"Waiting for “Superman” A must see movie - All discussions

Parents Forum
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<p>I am a proponent of teacher evaluations and more teacher accountability. However, it is simply not fair to blame a teacher for the poor performance of students caused by factors that are beyond the teacher’s ability to control: excessive absences, inadequate home support or other poverty-related conditions. </p>

<p>Example: Student A lives in 2 parent home in working class neighborhood of city. She has her own room, has computer & internet access at home, and college-educated parents who work outside the home. (Like many CC parents) They spend time with her and make sure her HW is done and she goes to bed at a reasonable time. They help her w/ projects and support her school. </p>

<p>Compare that to Student B who is from single parent home, parent is HS graduate, employed, but at minimum wage job and electricity gets cut off from time to time b/c of late payment. This child shares a room with 2 siblings including an infant. Parent is doing his/her best to keep everything balanced, but when the electricity is off - Student B can’t do HW. If the baby is up all night crying, Student B gets no sleep and is exhausted in school the next day and performance suffers. Parent can’t help student with spelling or reading or math b/c language barrier, lack of interest or - it’s just too darn dark to see the book in a house w/ no power. (Sadly, this is not uncommon in certain areas)</p>

<p>For teacher with a class full of Student Bs (and there are many of these schools/classrooms in my city and across the country) with varying combination of these issues (or others) at different times of school year, should the teacher of those kids be responsible to see that they learn at the same pace as a class full of Student As? How can we heap upon teachers all of the woes of the socio-economic tiers of their students? </p>

<p>IMO, the evaluations have to take into account what kinds of students/problems the teachers are dealing with. Otherwise, the majority of teachers of poor students will consistently receive poor evaluations. (And yes, I understand that there are some exceptions to this scenario)</p>

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<p>By the way, thanks again, bullettandpima. I knew it was too good to be true.</p>

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<p>One idea that has surfaced in the last year in my State, which is severely impacted by social/economic issues which affect education, is an idea that on its face sounds very “un-American,” because it --well-- does not introduce inequality, but recognizes inequality.</p>

<p>That would be some kind of a tiered system which would look very different for the kind of family JHS’s daughter encounters (and often I encounter) vs. children of CC parents. But in an age of a shrinking dollar and expanding costs (let’s please put aside teacher’s unions for the moment; temporarily pretend they don’t exist), there will be a lot of creative accounting and/or creative assessing to achieve this. It would mean targeting funds for low-literacy families in a different manner than those of high-literacy. The former’s funds would be divided into basic, trimmed-down services for students, combined with literacy (and more) classes for parents, to make it more realistic for these children to become fully functional – not high achievers, just fully functional. </p>

<p>When I say “trimmed-down,” I am not talking about a short day, but in fact a longer one, but one very bare bones in terms of its content: very teacher delivered, non-administration-supplemented, and one without extra curriculars at school. This is actually one of the models I have taught at. There was no P.E., for example. Also no recess. The only recess was a lunch break, at which a very yummy, nutritional hot lunch was provided on the blacktop, by an independent caterer who was contracted by the school. It was well worth it. No junk food; great brain & body food. We teachers got our meals for free. (Our only “perk” for teaching in this school. :))</p>

<p>This is not a model that cheats the families. It is in fact what these families need, for the dollar available. It is realistic. Being a charter, we didn’t have to deal with unions, which naturally I loved. It was “pure” teaching, while naturally quite challenging. This model didn’t happen to be supplemented by parental classes, but it could be. There’s nothing to forbid that.</p>

<p>The other model, juxtaposed to that, would recognize the lack of need for literacy among very different families. They would have the same level of funding as the less-literate families, but those funds would be distributed differently.</p>

<p>And now, thankfully, I have to go somewhere, which is a convenient duck-and-cover opportunity. ;)</p>

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<p>

Thank you. The problem in measuring teacher performance is that the relationship between performance and objectively measured results is never perfectly straightforward, and the more challenging the student population, the less straightforward it is. Even if you grant for the sake of argument that objective assessments are 100% reliable, using them to assess a teacher’s effectiveness raises all sorts of issues–for one thing, that the impact of a good teacher is not always immediate. Let’s say a teacher is working with a 4th-grade class with lots of impediments to academic success–second-language English speakers with little or no academic reinforcement in the home. Maybe she’s gifted at engaging these students, who enter her class far behind grade level, and getting them to feel good about themselves as learners. Maybe she has a permanent, positive impact on their attitude and their achievements. But that impact isn’t necessarily going to be felt all at once. You might well see it as much, or more, in these kids’ 5th-grade or even 9th-grade scores as in their 4th-grade scores. How in the world do you incorporate this into performance assessment?</p>

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<p>^ yes. Normally what happens is that a combination of even a small gain in skills, along with major teacher support/enthusiasm, results in a signficantly stronger self-image for the student, which in turn provides the motivation for either an incremental or a quantum leap in skills at the next level. That objectifiable difference may or may not surface during the same academic year, atlhough usually gains will be definitely measurable in non-standardized metrics, such as classroom tests, classroom assignments, documentable study habits, outside reading (which is a HUGE factor in every area of achievement and much under-recognized by the general public) etc.</p>

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<p>How does one explain that public schools in the United States do comparatively well in elementary school, so-so in middle school, but abysmally in high school? </p>

<p>Do our schools only remain competitive as long as parents, siblings, or friends are ABLE to supplement or replace the education that is supposed to be given in school?</p>

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<p>^ Some of these perceptions are based on public illusion, and/or in other cases a failure to understand what the real gaps are. (And, one of your favorite topics: grade inflation)</p>

<p>Students are also being socially promoted at an alarming rate. The three criteria for promotion are (1) chronological age; (2) physical size (don’t laugh) – and the concomitant focus on “self-esteem” as related to that; (3) the student “making progress” (could be from a K level to Grade 1 level, as a real 2nd grader; or a 6th grader “making progress” because he can now actually write a whole paragraph, whereas he did not at the beginning of the year, even though that’s a Grade 2/Grade 3 skill.</p>

<p>What I have seen in the last 3 years especially is the phenomenon of students “passing” or even “excelling” (on paper) but having insufficient comprehension of what they are doing, what they are reading, etc. There’s a Reading Comprehension crisis afoot in the nation. Students are getting and using tools in terms of Word Attack Skills, but very often, by Grade 4 anyway, not advancing in complexity of reading skill, so that they can differentiate fact from opinion, read and think critically – with judgment, discernment, refinement. The vocabulary levels are also abysmal. Some of this is a by-product of reliance on electronics and the “shorthand language” of electronics; much of it is an extremely low (by previous standards, by Industrial World standards) reading volume – i.e., outside reading. My students are not reading; often their parents are not reading. Importantly, this deficit cuts across class, income, race, national origin lines.</p>

<p>What this means is that in fact, xiggi, we as a country are not doing “well” at all in terms of upper-elementary level kids. Schools continue to pass them; parents often just assume that things will get better with time. (Almost always, they don’t.) Alternately, parents don’t really notice things are out of control until 8th/9th/10th grade, when the student starts seriously failing serious subjects, because the skills are not there to synthesize, analyze, and express.</p>

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<p>I find the above comment interesting. Way back when…the Hilary Clinton, Meg Whitmans of the world would have become teachers.</p>

<p>On another note, I am a firm believer that the best foundation for education begins with discipline, learning to follow the rules and showing respect to others. Without these, you cannot effectively manage a classroom. I was at an inner city library a couple weeks ago and I stopped and listened to a heated discussion between the librarian and an adult patron. There were young kids running around and being quite noisy. The adult patron wanted the kids to sit still and be quiet (like we were all taught). The librarian informed her that enforcing this rule might discourage these kids from reading books and if this became a negative experience for them they might not return…which one was right?</p>

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<p>Evaluation: Screw socioeconomic typing of classroom populations. Teacher evaluation should be based on what the actual students in the actual classroom actually learn, as measured by appropriate testing. There’s no reason (except for money and trouble) that can’t be done.</p>

<p>No matter how bad the home is, how bad the student’s other problems are, etc., a teacher should be able to help that student learn if the student is in his classroom on a regular basis. He may not learn how to differentiate complex formulas, or how to interpret the 10th Amendment, but he ought to be making progress.</p>

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<p>Further elaborating on my last post:</p>

<p>What was required of many of us in 7th and 8th grades is not being asked of many junior high kids now in suburban (not just urban) schools of today. Shockingly, little writing is being asked in many public schools, in my region (anyway). They enter high school without even knowing how to start an essay, and often with no experience in writing a research report. All they know how to do is to do some minimal ‘free-response’ kind of journaling about selected literature: none of that is structured, and usually not corrected for formal content or grammar.</p>

<p>Formal writing has taken a deep, deep hit. Often this cannot be entirely addressed in the high school years – depending on the quality of the high school teachers in question. I know of one local mid-level suburban high school with fabulous English teachers, who teach efficiently and effectively, preparing their students for college, but in my area, that is the exception. I am seeing increasing numbers of middle-class students of mid-level suburban high schools unprepared for college, by their own admission or by evidence. (They enter a 4year or a comm. college and need essential tutoring for writing and for upper-level critical reading, because there is no way they can understand hard science & social science on the college level.) Very often a student will come to me as a late 10th grader, and there is no way that about 4-5 years of schooling can be suddenly squeezed into his remaining 2 years.</p>

<p>So when we observe and say that there is an educational crisis, there are two levels of this: one is the more extreme level addressed by the movie that is the subject of the thread; another level is the middle-class level.</p>

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<p>To the educators on this thread:
What are your thoughts on RTI (response to intervention)?</p>

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<p>

I think the question is not whether the students should be making progress, so much as “progress compared to what”? Where they started the year? Where they theoretically ought to be, as defined by grade-level standards? Where other kids in other districts (perhaps with very different socioeconomic profiles) are?</p>

<p>Pardon me if you’ve heard me use this analogy before, but it’s a useful one: If you set up a horse-race where half the horses start 100 yards behind the starting gate, and at the end of the race, those horses are still 100 yards behind the leaders, do you blame the jockey for the fact that the horses haven’t caught up? What if those trailing horses were carrying more weight as well? Are the jockeys still to blame?</p>

<p>Sure, good teaching should be able to help anybody make “progress”…but that’s the point. While the kids from academically challenged backgrounds are progressing, the kids from hyperliterate middle-class families are progressing too, hopefully–and their home environments mean that they not only start the race with an advantage, *but that advantage continually increases as the race goes on<a href=“hence%20the%20bit%20about%20carrying%20more%20weight”>/i</a>. How much headway against these forces can we realistically ask teachers to make?</p>

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<p>IOW, the teaching and curriculum at many of our most successful schools are not all that great? Yes, I believe that and Richard Elmore, William Sanders and others have written about “nominally high performing schools”.</p>

<p>A nominally high performing school looks good on paper thanks to high-SES students. Elmore found that in these schools, . . . teachers and administrators tended to define student learning difficulties as a problem to be solved by students and their families, rather than one to be solved by schools. A common response to student learning problems in these districts is to suggest the parents seek private tutoring. At a recent gathering of about 300 educators from high income schools and districts, I asked how many could tell me the proportion of students in their schools who were enrolled in private tutoring. Only four or five hands went up. But among those respondents, the answers ranged from 20% to 40%.</p>

<p>40% tutoring rate is probably low for many schools in my area.</p>

<p>Sanders used the term “slide and glide” to describe what happens in some affluent schools.</p>

<p>* “I’ve caught the most political heat from some of the schools in affluent areas, where we’ve exposed what I call ‘slide and glide.’ One of the top-dollar districts in the state had always bragged about its test scores, but our measurements showed that their average second-grader was in the 72nd percentile. By the time those children were sixth-graders, they were in the 44th percentile. Under our value-added scheme, the district was profiled in the bottom 10 percent of districts in state.” *
[Helping</a> Teachers Raise Student Achievement: an interview with William L. Sanders - by George A. Clowes - School Reform News](<a href=“http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/11119/Helping_Teachers_Raise_Student_Achievement_an_interview_with_William_L_Sanders.html]Helping”>http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/11119/Helping_Teachers_Raise_Student_Achievement_an_interview_with_William_L_Sanders.html)</p>

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<p>This is not an issue of perception; it is one of measurement as it is done in international tests such as PISA. </p>

<p>While it is undeniable that students might be passed along, it also remains that the type of instruction from the EDUCATORS is not working, and this at ALL levels. </p>

<p>This is particularly interesting to juxtapose to another comment:</p>

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<p>In addition to the higher standards placed onto educators in countries such as Finland, we ought to focus on the restrictions imposed to NON SUBJECT teachers who do not possess a Master’s degree. Generalists who only covered the basic issues of pedagogy through a Bachelor’s degree are not allowed to teach at a level higher than elementary school. </p>

<p>In addition, teachers cannot obtain a Master’s degree in a general education field; they have to obtain it in a course subject. </p>

<p>Obviously, this is NOT something we can expect to see implemented in a short timeframe, but it represents a critical issue as the competence, training, and availability of teachers in core areas continue to deteriorate.</p>

<p>A good start would be to stress that the Schools of Education as they are known and used in the United States will need to be redefined as their graduates face a VERY limited access to higher grades.</p>

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<p>A couple of years ago it was published that 43% of our state tax dollars in Minnesota go for public education. Wow - that is a lot of money and if it takes this movie to shake things up then I am all for stepping on a few egos.</p>

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<p>nightchef:</p>

<p>I thought I was pretty unambiguous in what I thought “progress” was: Progress compared to where a kid started, in the direction of where we wish he was already. The kid in the classroom has learned something (one hopes a lot of things) over the course of the year. That’s all you can really ask of a teacher, and it’s not that hard to measure.</p>

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<p>Yes, the ed schools are at the root of many of our education problems.</p>

<p>Education professors, for example, are far likelier to believe that the proper role of a teacher is to be a “facilitator of learning” (84 percent) not a “conveyor of knowledge” (11 percent). When asked to choose between two competing philosophies of teacher education, 68 percent believe they should be preparing tomorrow’s class instructors to be “change agents” versus 26 percent who believe they should prepare teachers to “work effectively within the realities of today’s public schools.” And while 83 percent of professors believe it’s “absolutely essential” to teach 21st Century skills, just 36 percent say that about teaching math facts and 44 percent about teaching phonics in the younger grades.</p>

<p>What the heck are "21st Century skills, anyway? And how do you assess them?</p>

<p>[Education</a> profs don’t teach tradecraft ? Joanne Jacobs](<a href=“http://www.joannejacobs.com/2010/09/education-profs-dont-teach-tradecraft/]Education”>http://www.joannejacobs.com/2010/09/education-profs-dont-teach-tradecraft/)</p>

<p>As a side note, we all probably know that Bill Ayers is vice president for curriculum of American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation’s largest organization of education-school professors and researchers.</p>

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<p>Blaming teachers for poor results with most poor kids is like blaming the prison guards for the crime rate.</p>

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<p>

So true! And, might I add, the younger the child, the less straightforward it is! Very hard to test 5 year olds, as they often get the answer correct for the wrong reason, or wrong for the some arbitrary reason… (“Can you tell me why you picked that answer?” Well, I like doggies and that one looks like a doggy…") Add in lots of student mobility (the most successful students generally come from the most functional and successful families and move to “better” neighborhoods and schools as soon as they can, leaving cheap apartments for other less functional and successful families to rent) and “stacking” of some classes with the children with the most challenging behaviors - and it’s nigh impossible. Now, if you could give each teacher the same children, have them stay the whole year, arrive at school each day on time having had breakfast, and then test at the end of the year, you might be able to see somewhat which teachers are most effective.</p>

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<p>

I’m not sure the measuring is quite as straightforward as you make it sound (for one thing, I’m not sure successful teaching and learning–especially at the more challenged end of the spectrum–is as simple as “learning a lot of things”). But one thing I’m pretty sure of is this: the devil is not in the measuring, but in the process of turning measurements into evaluations. You can measure how much a kid has learned, and you can compare that to what you expect a kid to learn at that stage–but how do you determine how close a teacher of average skill would have gotten that particular kid to meeting that expectation? And if you can’t determine that, where do you get your denominator for evaluating the teacher?</p>

<p>Yeah, I know I’m making it sound complicated, but that’s because it <em>is</em> complicated. It’s easy to evaluate outcomes; not so easy to evaluate the work that was done to produce those outcomes.</p>