Education secretary challenges NEA on teacher pay

Redsoxloverswb

05:36 AMJul 04 2009

"Douglyest:" You appear to be way overworked, and should be given some assistance. I hope that you don't teach English - Your sentence structure leaves a little to be desired, you misspelled at least one word (probably a typographical error), and you appear to have no grasp of punctuation rules.

Redsoxloverswb

05:27 AMJul 04 2009

(part 1.) "Scryer812:" First: I don't know anything about the South getting a bum rap - as far as I can see, these problems exist everywhere in this country. I don't know whether or not any one area or region has more problems or a worse record. - Second: "teaching the test" is a significant part of the problem. If schools had roughly-standardized curricula, and the students took random, but standardized tests, the teachers should be free to teach the things that need to be learned by the students. If a given school or school system has an unusually high failure rate, that school, along with its teachers, could then work on general improvement in the areas that need attention.

Redsoxloverswb

05:26 AMJul 04 2009

(part 2.) The example I gave is indicative of the problem at hand: if three seemingly-intelligent high-school seniors (out of three quizzed) have such a difficult time with such a simple question, I'd like to know exactly what "test was being taught!" But instead of teaching them that the answer is $3.00, teach them how to calculate the answer. Memorizing the "times tables," the use of flash cards instead of calculators, and, yes, learning by rote, are much more successful than saying "when the test asks you 'how much is three times twelve,' the answer is thirty-six." Teaching random facts is not teaching the subject. Teaching about the battle of Vicksburg, and ignoring the rest of the Civil War because it's not on the test, is not teaching.

Redsoxloverswb

05:24 AMJul 04 2009

(part 3.) If you teach your subject completely and adequately, your students will do well on a random test. They might get some of the questions wrong because they never learned a particular item, but they will still do well overall. - "Teaching the test" is the same as (a student) sneaking a look at a test you left on your desk, and telling all of his friends what questions to study for. In other words: it's cheating! Hide the test, and teach the students to learn the subject as a whole, so they will actually KNOW the answers without cribbing. -

Redsoxloverswb

05:23 AMJul 04 2009

(part 4.) This goes back to my main complaint: that many teachers don't know their subjects well enough to teach them, are not interested in learning their subjects, and are not held accountable for their students' failure to pass (standardized or other) tests. They often use "teaching the test" as a copout for poor teaching, and are backed up by powerful unions, who fight against any insistence on responsibility.

Scryer812

11:02 AMJul 03 2009

I must respond to the comments posted thus far. Douglyest-- I don't know where you teach, but you need to find another job. Redsoxloverswb-- I don't know where you are from--Boston perhaps since you love the Red sox? I am from Louisiana, and I teach 7th grade math. My students would have no problem solving that little 3rd grade problem. Obviously the south gets a bum rap in the education department. The reason pay DOES NOT need to be linked to student achievement is because it would HAVE to be based on test scores. As it is, teachers are forced to teach the damn test. That is NOT why I became a teacher, and it has really taken a lot of the fun out of teaching. The students are stressed out beginning on the first day of school because all they hear about are TEST SCORES!! No child left behind? No, my philosophy is that some of their parents ought to be KICKED in the behind for not making education a priority!!

Douglyest

07:33 AMJul 03 2009

I work in a public school where an administrator evaluates my performance on a weekly basis. I teach students who know they can not be held responsible, retained, and refuse to attempt to do any work. I pay $600 a month toward my insurance and my co-pays are $15 and $35 per visit. I arrive at school at 7:00 AM and seldom leave before 5:00 PM. On Sundays I spend the day writting out plans for a minimum of 25 lessons and on weekday evenings I correct and enter these grades into a computer program that administration monitors. My lessons must incorporate technology which is also monitored by administration. I must give 8 district mandated and produced tests to evaluate my students progress in 5 subjects and I must develop and implement improvement plans for those students not meeting benchmarks. I do this for students' whose IQs range from 80 to 180 and who have disabilities ranging from ADD to Autism and Bi-Polar disorder. I have a Masters Degree 12 additional Graduate credits, most of...

Redsoxloverswb

04:03 AMJul 03 2009

As long as teachers have huge pay and benefit packages; and as long as many (most, in a lot of schools) high-school graduates can't do simple math or construct simple sentences with proper grammar and spelling; and as long as teachers and their unions fight tooth and nail to prevent their employers from demanding knowledge of their subjects and proficiency in teaching them (i.e.: graduates who can read simple instructions, fill out employment applications, and subtract 23 from 100 without a calculator), our education system will continue to fall behind many others in the world.

Redsoxloverswb

04:01 AMJul 03 2009

The biggest problems with our education system today include undeserved tenure, unions who are more interested in collecting union dues than educating children, and teachers who have neither the drive nor the need to do their jobs adequately. They don't know their subjects, they don't know how to teach them, and they have no interest in improvement. This is a test: I work for a supermarket. We recently sold ears of corn for 25 cents an ear. I asked three high school seniors who work in the produce department how much it would cost to buy a dozen ears. NONE of them even came close to knowing the answer! They had absolutely no idea how to even calculate the total. Is this the fault of the parents, the teachers, the school system, the students, or the supermarket?