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Underwhelmed
United States207 Posts
If a school will not change, the students should be able to change schools. John McCain believes parents should be empowered with school choice to send their children to the school that can best educate them just as many members of Congress do with their own children. Translation: LET RICH PEOPLE PICK BETTER SCHOOLS AND THE POOR CAN FUCK THEMSELVES | ||
micronesia
United States24745 Posts
On August 10 2008 13:31 Underwhelmed wrote: Translation: LET RICH PEOPLE PICK BETTER SCHOOLS AND THE POOR CAN FUCK THEMSELVES Well the current system in the USA is: Richer school = smarter students Poorer school = poorer students Sounds like it's already favoring the rich... But the first thing that came to mind when reading about the school choosing suggestion (which is not an unprecedented suggestion of course) was a thought experiment similar to this: There are 100 students, and five schools that each can house 20 students. School 1 produced A students. School 2 produces B students, etc. It's unfair to the people zoned for School 5, so give them a choice. How do we choose which of the 100 people can go to school 1? This silly example has glossed over an issue: School 1 doesn't produce A students simply because it's a better school. School 1 produces better students because the circumstances surrounding its students are superior (and because the school is probably good in addition). I wouldn't be surprised if a study showed that most of the parents in School 1 give a crap about their kids' education, and the parents of school 5 either couldn't care less, or were too poor/busy to take an active role. | ||
thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Well we can start by making teaching actually monetarily rewarding... idk -_- always had an issue with how little teachers make in general. | ||
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micronesia
United States24745 Posts
On August 10 2008 13:47 thedeadhaji wrote: Btw the page states something along the lines of "our kids deserve the best education adn the best teachers yadayada" Well we can start by making teaching actually monetarily rewarding... idk -_- always had an issue with how little teachers make in general. Haji why the hell did you rate this blog a 1? + Show Spoiler + To be fair, teachers get paid better in places where kids do well. However, as much as we'd like it to be that good teaching leads to best educational results... it seems to work backwards. | ||
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ahrara_
Afghanistan1715 Posts
I'm not very well informed on this topic, but I agree with what's been written before. It isn't just the system that's the problem, it's the socioeconomic circumstances of the students. I live close to one of the top public high schools in the nation (Mission San Jose). Let me tell you, it is no coincidence that this school has the highest percentage of asian students in California. | ||
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
The really smart. This is like the top 10% or so of each class. They get all the AP and IB and special fancy language/money classes, and they get off pretty well from our school with routinely 20+ kids to Ivies. The special needs kids: These kids get like 5x the money of the top 10%, and we actually have one of the best special needs educations in the state, let alone the overrall region. The average: They get screwed up the butthole. Seriously, I went from my AP Statistics class after having a great time doing stats stuff, and I went to pick up books from the regular Statistics class. Do you know what the teacher was making them do? She was making them READ NUMBERS FROM THE RANDOM DIGIT TABLE. I kid you not. It's clearly not fair for kids that are just under that 10% threshold, for instance, because it just might be that all of the kids this year are super geniuses. They should have the right to go to other public schools if they want to to get the "top 10%" also. I mean, all they do right now is busy work, why should they care about education? At the same time, Mccain's policies are bs. He says nothing but stuff that's already there. If anything, hard working teachers should get merit pay, and rubber room teachers should be fired instead of maintained to chill at the taxpayer's expense. | ||
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micronesia
United States24745 Posts
On August 10 2008 14:50 Caller wrote: How do you determine which teachers deserve this?At the same time, Mccain's policies are bs. He says nothing but stuff that's already there. If anything, hard working teachers should get merit pay, and rubber room teachers should be fired instead of maintained to chill at the taxpayer's expense. If you mean teachers are overprotected even if they do a horrible job, then you are probably right but I don't think this is currently a major issue, as compared to other ones. | ||
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Jathin
United States3505 Posts
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micronesia
United States24745 Posts
On August 10 2008 16:25 Jathin wrote: We can pay teachers according to performance results on standardized test scores!!! Yay then our entire curriculum can be surrounded by teaching towards a test. I wish all idealists would watch The Wire You make it sound like this isn't almost exactly what's happening XD | ||
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Mastermind
Canada7096 Posts
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Ecael
United States6703 Posts
As for teachers getting paid better...say aren't both sides trying to say that as a method of appealing to voters? I am not sure what is refered to exactly with rubber room teacher, but if that's Special Ed, then anything suggesting a policy remotely close to that will probably lead to public outrage. | ||
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Underwhelmed
United States207 Posts
On August 10 2008 13:43 micronesia wrote: Well the current system in the USA is: Richer school = smarter students Poorer school = poorer students Sounds like it's already favoring the rich... But the first thing that came to mind when reading about the school choosing suggestion (which is not an unprecedented suggestion of course) was a thought experiment similar to this: There are 100 students, and five schools that each can house 20 students. School 1 produced A students. School 2 produces B students, etc. It's unfair to the people zoned for School 5, so give them a choice. How do we choose which of the 100 people can go to school 1? This silly example has glossed over an issue: School 1 doesn't produce A students simply because it's a better school. School 1 produces better students because the circumstances surrounding its students are superior (and because the school is probably good in addition). I wouldn't be surprised if a study showed that most of the parents in School 1 give a crap about their kids' education, and the parents of school 5 either couldn't care less, or were too poor/busy to take an active role. Pretty much. What McCain is suggesting is applying free market concepts to schools (Replace schools with businesses and children with money). So lets say you allow parents to choose what school their kids go to by giving them vouchers (Which is almost certainly McCain's plan, even if he doesn't explicitly say it. Republicans want to privatize everything). Those parents take their children out of that school - if this happened in a business, they'd run out of money and have to close, leaving only the more profitable - and presumably efficient - businesses behind. But replacing the school with another is simply not a solution because your school has to remain in the same area. Schools are not fast food chains. You can hire people capable of flipping burgers pretty much anywhere, but training good teachers is much harder. Food at every location tastes pretty much the same, but a school's effectiveness is largely dependent upon how many good teachers are in the area. And a school in a poor, inner city area is inherently going to have a harder time attracting competent teachers than a high-class suburb. Even the best administrator can only do so much with a certain pool of resources. You can't move the school, because that goes against the fucking point of the school, which is to educate students in the local area. A school doing poorly needs MORE resources to improve, not less. But thanks to No Child Left Behind, the schools that need the help most actually get less, since funding is based upon "performance" (But that's for another thread) | ||
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Ecael
United States6703 Posts
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Superiorwolf
United States5509 Posts
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
On August 10 2008 16:02 micronesia wrote: How do you determine which teachers deserve this?If you mean teachers are overprotected even if they do a horrible job, then you are probably right but I don't think this is currently a major issue, as compared to other ones. I am not really an expert in any field of education, so I have no idea how they would do this.. If anything, one thing that needs to be done is to weaken the teacher's union. They can ostracize certain teachers that may oppose their policies, and oppose merit pay and want to lower class sizes to increase teaching jobs to increase their own power. It's basically a closed shop employment, you can't really work without being part of the union. Firing an incompetent New York teacher, for instance, is nearly impossible without their having committed major felonies. As for merit pay, perhaps some district-wide pre-test to post-test could be used, and the top 10% average in difference of scores, maybe mix up the questions or something, I have no idea. If I had any idea, I would be in education administration. | ||
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
On August 10 2008 23:15 Ecael wrote: Caller, how are you going to target such a group? What if the school just increases funding so that they can increase it to 15%? 20%? How are you going to able to determine where it cuts off? There aren't really any good solution to this outside of the US being able to just improve its education system across the board. As for teachers getting paid better...say aren't both sides trying to say that as a method of appealing to voters? I am not sure what is refered to exactly with rubber room teacher, but if that's Special Ed, then anything suggesting a policy remotely close to that will probably lead to public outrage. There is no statsistical correlation between money and improvement of kids. And funding is not as easy to get as one would think. If you pay teachers for being very good, I do not understand why they would not try to improve your kids, aside from maybe discouraging cheating. A rubber room teacher is basically a teacher that gets put into a reassignment center, where they drink, chill, and get paid for not teaching. This is a practice mostly in New York City, and sometimes teachers that are not used by the union are placed in there as well. | ||
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micronesia
United States24745 Posts
On August 11 2008 01:38 Caller wrote: I am not really an expert in any field of education, so I have no idea how they would do this.. If anything, one thing that needs to be done is to weaken the teacher's union. They can ostracize certain teachers that may oppose their policies, and oppose merit pay and want to lower class sizes to increase teaching jobs to increase their own power. It's basically a closed shop employment, you can't really work without being part of the union. Firing an incompetent New York teacher, for instance, is nearly impossible without their having committed major felonies. As for merit pay, perhaps some district-wide pre-test to post-test could be used, and the top 10% average in difference of scores, maybe mix up the questions or something, I have no idea. If I had any idea, I would be in education administration. District-wide pre-test to post-test? What do you mean? If I'm understanding this idea, it's basically making the same mistake that NCLB makes. | ||
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Frits
11782 Posts
Sounds retarded, give more funding to poor schools instead. | ||
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Ecael
United States6703 Posts
Ooh, those teachers, I've heard of them back in my HS days. Yeah, that's a pretty screwed up practice, I have absolutely no idea how the heck that is still happening when NYC always looks so desperate in looking for working teachers. A balance between Union and Management has always been a problem in the balance of power. Though in the example of a NY teacher, it is closer to like we have absolutely no teachers, it becomes nearly impossible to fire one that's actually teaching, crappy or not :p That said, there aren't really any ways to analyze how well the teachers are doing their job outside of a standarized test, at best we can compliment the results with other factors, even if they are biased and should be corrected for location. | ||
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micronesia
United States24745 Posts
On August 11 2008 03:21 Ecael wrote: That said, there aren't really any ways to analyze how well the teachers are doing their job outside of a standarized test, at best we can compliment the results with other factors, even if they are biased and should be corrected for location. The problem is how brutally misused standardized tests are when evaluating teachers. Hell, my class's performance is compared the performance of the physics classes at another school.... and of course if I have a lower passing percentage then I'm a worse teacher, right? It has nothing to do with the fact that half of my students are being forced to take physics against their will, and almost none of his students are. | ||
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