Where's the love for teachers?

Parents Forum
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<p>DH was talking tonight about his frustration with some kids in his class who have not yet mastered the basics of arithmetic. He’s trying to teach the class the state content standards in math, and can only devote so much class time to review without losing the kids who are working at grade level. He fears that there’s no way some of these kids will ever catch up, even with afterschool tutoring</p>

<p>Sounds like the curriculum sucks- what are they using?
He isn’t the only teacher who has to work with bad textbooks.
<a href=“http://www.wheresthemath.com/[/url]”>http://www.wheresthemath.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>*Ever looked at some of the comments on Ratemyprofessors.com? Do you consider those to be fair and unbiased evaluations? *</p>

<p>I have looked at them for a small college which was only about 1200 students.
Because I knew many of the students and through them their profs, I thought it was very close to my own perceptions and perceptive.</p>

<p>I don’t think it is adaquate for evaluation of K-12 teachers, but for what it is, it is another effective tool.</p>

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<p>A teacher confided in me that he, too, was gay, and I suddenly didn’t feel so alone in a conservative, public school. I can’t express how thankful I am for him.</p>

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<p>So far no mention of merit increases from teachers at non-public schools- or did I miss it?</p>

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<p>Hm. My mention of an unbiased assessment that already exists has been ignored.</p>

<p>I see. It’s not the evaluations per se that many posters on this thread are looking for, but the control over the evaluations.</p>

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<p>It’s really far more difficult to evaluate a k-12 teacher than a college professor because the k-12 teacher has to do more than just convey content. The teacher has to deal with a variety of students, some of whom may be ELL, some may have LDs, some may be more advanced than others, some may be struggling just to keep up, some may have behavior problems. They also have little control over what they are supposed to teach and even how to teach it. They have more administrators breathing down their necks and parents ready to pounce on behalf of their children, or conversely, absent or utterly disengaged parents.
I used to listen in on teachers talking to one another. Toward the end of the school year, they would share their knowledge of incoming groups of students. I remember clearly one teacher telling another that next year’s crop would be rather challenging as there were some students who had behavior problems (one ended up murdered at the age of 19 over a drug deal gone bad).
The truly excellent or truly bad teachers are easy enough to identify. What about the vast number of teachers between these two poles? My Ss, who are as different in their academic interests and strengths as is possible to imagine, had the same teachers in several grades in k-8 where the humanities are emphasized. S1 absolutely thrived with these teachers who encouraged him to do his best work. Some parents might complain that they gave him more work to do than they did other students, but neither he nor we complained: we saw it as an opportunity for him to learn, and he enjoyed doing the work.
Those same teachers were not a good fit for S2. One teacher specifically refused to give him more advanced work or let him join a group of students a grade above (the class had combined grades so that would have been easy to do). She said that she did not believe in tracking. The other teacher clearly knew less math than S2 and did not know what to do about it.
They were both otherwise fabulous teachers. If I had been asked to evaluate them when S1 was in their class, I would have said so. If I had been asked to do the same when S2 was in their class, I would have said they were not great.
In the end, the best teacher S2 had was the one who did not teach him anything. Instead, he allowed S2 and a few other advanced students to work on their own while he carried on teaching the rest of the students in the class. The students who worked on their own were able to proceed at their own pace several grades above their peers. Although the teacher did not teach S2, I certainly would have given him very high marks!
And then there was the 9th grade social studies teacher. He was reportedly insensitive and downright rude and a harsh grader. Some students supposedly were reduced to tears, some parents yanked their child out of his class. Yet, when S graduated and we asked him which teacher had helped him grow the most, S said it was that particular teacher. Would we have evaluated him the same at the end of 9th grade and 12th grade?</p>

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<p>Tom, I served on the board of a private school for a number of years. Pay was scaled according to education, credentials, and number of years in the classroom – not by merit. But we could get rid of teachers who were ineffective. I remember a couple of instances where that happened. </p>

<p>I would point out one other difference between traditional public schools and charters. I’ve served on hiring committees in public schools (and private as well) and generally the process entails an interview and some attempt at contacting references. When my daughter interviewed at charters, the process was exhausting – she was observed teaching in a classroom, had to videotape herself teaching, had to go into the prospective school and teach a lesson, etc. It was much more grueling but also allowed the school to actually have a better idea of what they were getting in terms of an employee. It’s time-consuming as heck for the school, but I think actually observing someone in a classroom as part of the hiring process is probably a good way to ensure quality of teaching.</p>

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<p>I don’t know about merit pay, but at big D’s private K-8 school, excellent teachers were given very nice stipends to do research and training during the summer. </p>

<p>I have to agree with I think it was Slithey: In little D’s public elementary, there are 32 kids ranging from non-readers to 8th grade level. I don’t know how any teacher can be effective in that kind of environment.</p>

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<p>In little D’s public elementary, there are 32 kids ranging from non-readers to 8th grade level. I don’t know how any teacher can be effective in that kind of environment.</p>

<p>They cant but some districts squeeze the kids in because then they can afford to pay the teachers more.</p>

<p>My younger daughter did have some very good teachers in K-2nd. Very compassionate, gave her alot of extra attention. Instead of each class having one teacher, they had a science teacher , social studies and math teacher, reading teacher and art teacher all in their own rooms, and kids would go as a small group to each class.( there was about 22 students altogether)
Obviously private, but the cost was equal to what the city district recieved for students(actually a little less)</p>

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<p>@Marite</p>

<p>From where are you drawing the conclusion that a student who is behind would automatically think everyone is an ineffective teacher just because said teacher wasn’t able to catch them up? That is simply wrong.</p>

<p>Like I said previously all students in Junior high or above are really good at spotting who good teachers are and who the bad ones are. They learn this based on a teachers preparedness, based on a teachers effort, a teachers passion, and the relative effectiveness of the teacher. It doesn’t matter if the student does poorly or well in the class overall, the student will still appreciate who is and isn’t a good teacher.</p>

<p>You can ask any Junior high kid who his good teachers are and it doesn’t matter if he’s reading at the third grade level or the twelfth grade level, he will have good and accurate answers.</p>

<p>Oh and Emerald- you described my public elementary school to a T. They did the three different teachers a day system too as well as an art of pe teacher on alternating days. Again, all in their own rooms. So not quite so obviously private ;p.</p>

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<p>Will-s I meant the class size of 6 kids per teacher not the divided by subjects.
sorry for not being clearer :)</p>

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<p>My interpretation as well.</p>

<p>As for marite’s recent post, I thank you for the accurate observations, but that actually only partly describes the difficulty of the situation, and may reflect your area but not some others.:slight_smile: When the typical public school classroom has the following conditions, one has to wonder on what is one evaluating performance:</p>

<p>(1) The entire class = ELL or ESL, and not one or even two languages, but the following: Pashto, Urdu, Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, and more.</p>

<p>(2) Almost no parental support in the home, often because the parents come from different homogeneous cultures where education is handled entirely differently, where teachers have enormously more influence on classroom discipline and many more options for enforcement of academics, and/or because the parents are not educated themselves, and certainly not in the language of our instruction, English.</p>

<p>(3) Heavily mainstreamed moderate-to-severe Special Ed students – as I mentioned in a previous post, as many as half of a single class.</p>

<p>(4) Unenforced or unenforceable disciplinary regulations.</p>

<p>(5) Wasted time in the classroom on non-academics – such as “social learning,” quasi-political learning, etc. – certainly non-core subjects and not even art/music. </p>

<p>(6) Much shorter school days than would be necessary to bring any single child in such a classroom at least up to current grade level.</p>

<p>The U.S. classroom was never built on the assumption that the school day was sufficient time or opportunity to teach a child, particulary the young child, K-8. The U.S. education system has always been built on the assumption of immersion at home to supplement, enrich, reinforce – with at the very least discussions about various subject matters, even before parents got involved with homework at all. The expectation of success was always built on the expectation of parental reinforcement and support.</p>

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<p>

Can you quote where I said this?</p>

<p>This is what I said:</p>

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</p>

<p>Now you tell me, to paraphrase, from where you are drawing the conclusion that I said anything about students evaluating teachers, let alone struggling student evaluating teachers. Thanks in advance.</p>

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<p>Epiphany:</p>

<p>I completely agree with your depiction of real life class situations. I was trying to be brief!
Our high school has something like 27 different languages spoken at home. It sends out flyers in Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Spanish, Krewol, and Korean.
All the other issues you mention are present, too.</p>

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<p>mimk6- public schools have ample opportunity to review a teachers performance prior to tenure. I also think that most hiring comes as a result of student teaching so the public school is able to see the teacher for the length of a college semester. A second path to be hired in public schools is to be a substitute teacher, especially a long term sub.</p>

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<p>So back to merit increases- it appears that it is not the norm in this profession even in non-public schools.</p>

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<p>Re post 134:</p>

<p>One of my S’s teachers had been assistant teacher for a while in our school. But she could not handle being head teacher. She was a lovely woman, in her 30s, extremely hard-working and completely unable to manage her class of 17 3rd and 4th graders.</p>

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<p>At this point I’m lost. Where did the topic go?</p>

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<p>marite- I could see that happening. I would hope that her problem managing the class was not ignored.</p>

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<p>Tom:
No, she was let go at the end of that year. She was devastated as she truly loved working with children.
My aim in telling that story is that even with a lot of observation, it’s not always easy when hiring, to know whether someone will work out or not. The only time I felt it would not work out was when, in August, we hired someone just out of MIT. I felt that the learning curve (unfamiliar curriculum across the board, no experience working with children from all day long rather than a few hours a week) outweighed her strengths. But I was outvoted. She lasted two years and completely burnt out.</p>

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<p>Teachers at any school, like employees at any company, vary widely in quality and no label fits them all. In addition, those who deal with poor kids face vastly greater challenges than those in affluent suburbs. My personal experience has been that most teachers are dedicated and concerned. I wish, however, that:

  1. Unionized public school teachers in affluent towns who complain about salaries realized that their health benefits; pensions; job security; and days worked per year are vastly superior to the vast majority of equally educated people in other professions, especially if they have tenure. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>More teachers did not focus more on the troubled kids and brightest kids than the kids in the middle, who often do not reach their potential.</p></li>
<li><p>Parents took more responsibility and blamed teachers less, as well as having more realistic views of their kids’ abilities and effort.</p></li>
<li><p>More administrators tried harder to improve or fire poor teachers and were not so bureaucratic and supportive of their people when they are in the wrong.</p></li>
<li><p>More administrators cared as much about the experience of kids who are being bullied or struggling to keep up as they do about football scores and image.</p></li>
<li><p>School boards in affluent towns would stop claiming so much credit for high average SAT scores when so much of it is due to the kids being the children of parents who push kids to excel; were very successful academically; and who have the resources and motivation to arrange tutors for even excellent students.</p></li>
</ol>