thegreekdog wrote:Woodruff wrote:I am simply saying that, as far as the problems with public schools go, teachers are a noticeable problem, certainly (yet not nearly on the level of parents or governmental requirements) while teachers' unions are really quite low on the scale of problems. I really don't understand the thinking behind the belief that teachers' unions affect that much within schools themselves, outside of making it somewhat more difficult to fire teachers when they're just not effective (as opposed to retraining them, as unions typically require, prior to firing them eventually).
Okay, I think you answered your own question for me. If it's difficult and in some cases impossible to fire a teacher for incompetence, isn't that a major problem?
I don't know any of the requirements of No Child Left Behind. My entire knowledge of the subject deals with the criticism of it by people who didn't like President Bush; namely that it taught students a test rather than useful knowledge.
Let me put it to you another way. If No Child Left Behind was created and effective in 2000 (let's say), were public schools doing fine before then? Or were they doing poorly? I would say they were doing poorly. Now, you're going to counter by saying there were other governmental programs and whatnot before No Child Left Behind, and that's fine. And I'm with you; those things are obviously a problem. But, apart from parents, what body of people or thing has the most effect on students? Teachers (and indirectly teachers' unions).
Fast -posted both you and Woodruff's responses, so some of my above comments are already answered above.
I can put a rough hierarchy in problems.
#1 Science. The problem here is not so much bad teachers, its that the field has expanded logarythmically, and the field of how to even train science teachers has just not kept up. Although there are workshops and such offered around the country by many groups, and sometimes districts require teachers to take them, in many cases the teachers have to pay for them themselves, are not required to take the course, may not even be able to take them (if they have to teach summer school, for example), etc. This really does begin not just with parents, but the community. Few people, yourself included (based on conversations we have had.. though you are WAY above many people!!!!!) really "get" how fundamental this is and how much is actually lacking. Teachers can only teach what they know. A MUCH better effort has to be made to bring teachers up to speed on this!
#2. WAY too much compartmentalism. This is complex, and has several aspects.
In elementary school, you need teachers who have a very broad knowledge in many, many areas. It is good that elementary teachers are now learning more about
how to teach, BUT, along the way sometimes the acual
what to teach has been lost. It can be OK to pull kids out for special classes like music, if you are fortunate enough to have a good music teacher. However, the BEST learning on all fronts for the younger kids happens ALWAYS when the subjects are combined. I worked with a curriculum earlier that used salmon & redwoods as their base, (for areas where salmon were prominant species -- in the south you might talk alligators and cypress, with little modification) They spent an entire month where every aspect of their curriculum was somehow focused on the local environs... they drew not just "real" animals, but also imaginary ones based on what they had learned about adaptations. One second grader, for example, had a fish with its mouth up top, because it ate from the surface, and color-changing scales so that it would not be seem by predators from below or above. (there are actually real analogs to that, but I thought the imagination AND learning showed by these second graders was fantastic!). For math, they worked out volumes of fish nets, counted redds (fish nests), etc, etc, etc, The end result was that while the kids were focused on the "fun" of fish and redwoods, they learned a LOT about math, english, etc, etc, etc... and they learned how science really works. That was just one month out of a comprehensive program.
Now, contrast that, my son's science class in second grade gave him actually false information. In fifth grade, he gets one hour a week of science. One of the "highlights" was to do a couple of tootsie roll experiments. What they did was OK, but it was just way, way too little. What bothered me is that this was something the teachers were actually bragging about at parent night!
In Jr High and High school, many of the state and federal standards are very specific. A local school got a low mark because an English teacher was offering a computer-based creative writing course. The problem? Anything with computers in PA has to be taught by a business teacher or it is considered a class taught by an untrained teacher.
I can go on, but I think this is enough to just give a jiist of the type of stuff I am talking about.
