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Shannon George

Teachers agree: Bad teachers with tenure too tough to fire - USATODAY.com - 6 views

www.usatoday.com/...08-05-06-teachers-tenure_n.htm

shared by Shannon George on 02 Nov 10 - No Cached
    • Anthony Logan
      Anthony Logan on 02 Nov 10
       
      Are the lack of evaluations to blame for ineffective teachers getting tenured status?  If so, what can we do to fix it? 
    • Benjamin Caulder
      Benjamin Caulder on 02 Nov 10
       
      I don't have evidence to back this up as it was from the mouth of one of my credential program profs. but what he said was that for the first couple of years teachers have to play a political game to make sure they get tenure then once they have it, its a different game they play with the school and the union. Not all "bad" teachers are really "bad" teachers, but for those that really are my prof. argued that the system works if the admin is actually willing to follow through to the end, which can be as long as 2 years. Most admins aren't willing. Sorry I can't provide evidence to back that up.
    • ameia sarkisian
      ameia sarkisian on 03 Nov 10
       
      Yeah, that's really sad that administrators aren't willing to go through the process, however long and arduous it may be, to make the learning environment a better place.
    • Michael Horder
      Michael Horder on 08 Nov 10
       
      I have heard that as well, Ben. Admins rarely put in the effort to reprimand teachers. The teacher's union protects all teachers, good or bad. Admins are afraid to go up against the union because they have so much power. I think teacher's union might be the problem with the whole tenure thing. Another interesting note. If you look at the leadership of teacher's unions i.e. the reps. They are some of the "bad" teachers. I know this is true in Madera, and I have been told the same thing occurs in other districts. I find that fascinating. Bad teachers protecting bad teachers. Hhhmmm. Bad system maybe?
  • Tenure provides teachers with job security and generally is awarded a few years after educators enter the profession
    • Shannon George
      Shannon George on 15 Nov 10
       
      Sadly, tenure is being mis-used. The original intention of tenure was for teachers to have due-process if they were being fired; it was an effort to help. Now it has turned into a "job for life," and many districts have to treat it like that or they will have to pay big money to the Unions.
    • Ryan Williams
      Ryan Williams on 19 Nov 10
       
      yeah I have read this statement time and time again. I guess it would make a huge difference to students and the administrations if the tenure teachers were ineffective, but I just don't see a negative trend among teachers that have earned their tenure. I have had quite a few tenure teachers at Fresno State and they are not all old burned out senile geezers that need to be fired.
  • Anthony Logan on 02 Nov 10
     
    Tenured teachers are hard to get rid of, even other teachers acknowledge this.
  • ameia sarkisian on 03 Nov 10
     
    There is a section towards the middle of this article where they talk about principals not wanting to "deal with" the ensuing process after they discover a less-than-effective tenure teacher... I find that to be kind of a scary thought... The PRINCIPALS, the administration in charge of ensuring the best for our students, don't want to deal with the problems that they were hired to face if necessary?! I think that evaluating the teachers and giving them feedback is important for the teachers (especially the "bad" ones) but what happens when the people in charge of evaluating them feel like it''s "pointless?"
Justin Norris

Teachers Gone Wild! Teachers Unions Secretly Video Taped - 4 views

www.cnn.com/video

Teachers Video Taped Gone Wild Union Privacy Education

shared by Justin Norris on 18 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Justin Norris on 18 Nov 10
     
    TEACHERS GONE WILD!! VERY interesting/shocking video. Check it out. Thoughts??? Feelings???
  • Kyle Dodson on 18 Nov 10
     
    Teachers be actin'.... Wild. Seriously though, I have seen other documentaries/ newsreels of New York teacher unions... lets just say the speaker eerily reminded me of the public speaking tactics of a man whose name rhymes with Madolf Thitler. I wonder how the teachers have felt after their thoughts were exposed in this piece.
Linda Garcia

The Answer Sheet - What 'Superman' got wrong, point by point - 6 views

voices.washingtonpost.com/...-superman-got-wrong-point.html

shared by Linda Garcia on 03 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Promise Academy is in many ways an excellent school, but it is dishonest for the filmmakers to say nothing about the funds it took to create it and the extensive social supports including free medical care and counseling provided by the zone
  • Two-thirds of Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone funding comes from private sources
  • In New Jersey, where court decisions mandated similar programs, such as high quality pre-kindergarten classes and extended school days and social services in the poorest urban districts, achievement and graduation rates increased while gaps started to close. But public funding for those programs is now being cut and progress is being eroded.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Most test score differences stubbornly continue to reflect parental income and neighborhood/zip codes, not what schools do. As opportunity, health and family wealth increase, so do test scores.
  • they reduce teachers to test-prep clerks, ignore important subject areas and critical thinking skills
  • But schools and teachers take the blame for huge social inequities in housing, health care, and income.
  • Unions have historically played leading roles in improving public education, and most nations with strong public educational systems have strong teacher unions.
  • The movie touts the benefits of fast track and direct entry to teaching programs such as Teach for America, but the country with the highest achieving students, Finland, also has highly educated teachers.
  • Charters were first proposed by the teachers’ unions to allow committed parents and teachers to create schools that were free of administrative bureaucracy and open to experimentation and innovation, and some excellent charters have set examples. But thousands of hustlers and snake oil salesmen have also jumped in.
  • And the Education Report, "The Evaluation of Charter School Impacts, concludes, “On average, charter middle schools that hold lotteries are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement, behavior, and school progress.”
  • The Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, concludes that only 17% of charter schools have better test scores than traditional public schools, 46% had gains that were no different than their public counterparts, and 37% were significantly worse. While a better measure of school success is needed
  • While a better measure of school success is needed
  • While a better measure of school success is needed
  • It is not a sustainable public policy to allow more and more public school funding to be diverted to privately subsidized charters while public schools become the schools of last resort for children with the greatest educational needs.
  • In spite of the many millions of dollars poured into expounding the theory of paying teachers for higher student test scores (sometimes mislabeled as ‘merit pay’), a new study by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives found that the use of merit pay for teachers in the Nashville school district produced no difference even according to their measure, test outcomes for students.
  • approximately a third of America’s new teachers leave teaching sometime during their first three years of teaching; almost half leave during the first five years.
  • many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting.” It’s the market, and the disproportionately high salaries paid to finance specialists, that is misdirecting human resources, not schools.
  • They ignore the social construction of knowledge, the difference between deep learning and rote memorization.
  • This is a common theme of the so-called reformers: We are at war with India and China and we have to out-math them and crush them so that we can remain rich and they can stay in the sweatshops. But really, who declared this war? When did I as a teacher sign up as an officer in this war? And when did that 4th grade girl become a soldier in it? Instead of this new educational Cold War, perhaps we should be helping kids imagine a world of global cooperation, sustainable economies, and equity.
  • So the outcome of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top has been more funding for schools that are doing well and more discipline and narrow test-preparation for the poorest schools.
  • Waiting for Superman has ignored deep historical and systemic problems in education such as segregation, property-tax based funding formulas, centralized textbook production, lack of local autonomy and shared governance, de-professionalization, inadequate special education supports, differential discipline patterns, and the list goes on and on.
  • anonymous on 03 Oct 10
     
    This post corrects the misinformation in Waiting for Superman.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Benjamin Caulder on 22 Oct 10
     
    This is a good read. I don't know if its only me but "documentary" somehow implicitly means "true story". There really ought to be some sort of rating system, like G-NC17, for the accuracy of a documentary so the public doesn't buy the misinformation.
  • Evonne Villagomez on 18 Nov 10
     
    This is article is particularly helpful for me since my essay is on charter schools. I found this read interesting because it hihglights the areas in education which charter schools seem to be disregarding.
  • Kyle Dodson on 18 Nov 10
     
    I love the criticism if offers on the poster/ text alone. Many professors in the credential program are irate over the film and it's nice to see point-by-point what is wrong with the "documentary." I just love this article in general. It helps to be able to combat certain statistics in conversation too :)
Eric Wheeler

EUSD iRead - 1 views

sites.google.com/...home

ipod ipodtouch iread audio reading itunes itouch

shared by Eric Wheeler on 11 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Eric Wheeler on 11 Jan 11
     
    From their page: iRead is a group of teachers in Escondido Union School District dedicated to the idea that digital audio can be a powerful learning tool for all students. iRead will give you a chance to create meaningful, curriculum-centered audio projects with your students. Teachers are using digital audio tools (iPods, mics, Garageband, iTunes, Keynote, etc. and various accessories) to improve reading processes. Teachers meet on a monthly basis to exchange ideas and strategies. We started in 2006-07 by collecting data about fluency rates - this has been very promising.
Elvira Ledezma

AFT - A Union of Professionals - Weingarten Column Challenges School Reform 'Manifesto' - 0 views

www.aft.org/...101610manifesto.cfm

shared by Elvira Ledezma on 08 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • But such standards are meaningless without training and assessments aligned to them and, crucially, without time for teachers to prepare for them and for students to achieve them.
  • Jonathan P. Raymond, the superintendent of the Sacramento public schools, wrote recently: "We have to stop blaming teachers for problems that have multiple causes, ranging from poor administrative oversight and accountability to a lack of parent engagement. I know how hard teachers work to educate every child and challenge students at their ability level. We need to work equally hard to give our teachers the tools and supports they need to be successful. Let's stop scapegoating and come together to find solutions that work."
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