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On December 01 2014 18:02 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2014 17:38 Simberto wrote:On December 01 2014 13:48 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 01 2014 13:38 IgnE wrote:
Performance is never "just that." It has a meaning that is peculiar to the speaker. GH is saying that teachers want assurances that bureaucrats don't decide what "performance" means without they and their peers having a say in what it means. Of course they'll have a say. You never don't have a say. That's not how rules are written. Laws get written by people you vote for, agencies put rules out to the public for comment and local administrators will try to adapt to local needs. The problem here is that everyone has to go through school, and thus everyone thinks they are experts in how a school should work. And teachers are a clear minority of people, so if the only "voice" teachers have in how teachers are evaluated is their voice at an election, there is a rather high chance of this ending in disaster. I am not opposed to teachers performance being evaluated in general. I think it needs to be done very carefully and correctly. Sadly, there is a high chance of very bad ideas coming in here. Like "Let everyone in the country take the same test, and the better a class scores, the better their teacher is". Sounds good on the surface, is a horribly bad idea. There are classes that are better, and classes that are worse. There are ways to improve test scores that do not actually teach any of what you should want to teach your students. The university-style student polling also has a lot of problems in schools due to the immaturity of the students there. From my experience, most school students, especially in the lower grades, will positively review the most entertaining and friendly teacher and those teachers that give the best marks. While those can be positive things, they should not be a teachers main focus. Thus, it is really hard to get actually good data on teacher performance without giving really bad incentives to teachers. To correctly monitor a teachers performance, you would have to compare a class that they have tought to the average of classes with similar baselines over a long period of time. Really effective teaching does not show on the next test, its results show in how much the students have actually understood and internalized the concepts, and how much they are capable of recognizing and using them in a variety of situations in the future, as opposed to how good they are at answering exactly the test questions. Also you need to be very careful when figuring out what "similar class" actually means. The testing issue is also attempted to get chipped away with the new pedagogy. So with the old school style you would be asked questions like 24/4=? so memorizing the times tables made sense and would net you high scores. This is part of the 'teaching to the test' problem. So the kids memorize the answers or tricks to get the answers that didn't actually teach them underlying principles at play. Here is an example of a math question from the new style. + Show Spoiler +You could see why this question would immediately frustrate many people and children if your understanding is that "we are trying to teach the kid 24/4=6" most teachers know that's not actually what you are trying to teach the kid, but most people who just learned the old school way think that's good teaching. But if you want the kid to learn why 24/4=6 or be able to apply to different situations it's important to teach the other reasoning skills associated with how and why our answer is 6. Again it's really hard to break down in a few sentences or a simple example but I thought this might help.
Not really relevant to the overall discussion:
+ Show Spoiler +At the same time, it seems like it would be important to actually know what the answer is, not just what the problem is. IDK, the way I was taught math at this level was similar- it wasn't just tables to memorize (I hate memorization). For instance, division was taught using examples ( say, apples per box) and word problems, in addition to the standard "24/4=". It applied all that memorization. The difference being that actually arriving at the right answer was important. I don't see how the above is any different except for some reason they don't want you to find that the answer is 6. Maybe I'm reading too much into one example. This seems like a more tame example of the "new math." And no, I don't need a different one. Just an observation.
Edit: multiple choice questions in general are bad, but math ones are the worst.
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Both are important, testing if the students know the meaning of a division seems like a smart seems to me (I'm a maths teacher btw). Multiple choice questions sucks though.
Also before the evaluation question, two questions should be answered, or at least asked : 1) what are the goals of our school system ? 2) How to get quality teaching defined by getting the closest to the goals of 1) ? (teachers and their evaluation being only a subset of that, bigger or smaller depending of your answers to 1) I guess)
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On December 01 2014 18:37 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2014 18:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 01 2014 17:38 Simberto wrote:On December 01 2014 13:48 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 01 2014 13:38 IgnE wrote:
Performance is never "just that." It has a meaning that is peculiar to the speaker. GH is saying that teachers want assurances that bureaucrats don't decide what "performance" means without they and their peers having a say in what it means. Of course they'll have a say. You never don't have a say. That's not how rules are written. Laws get written by people you vote for, agencies put rules out to the public for comment and local administrators will try to adapt to local needs. The problem here is that everyone has to go through school, and thus everyone thinks they are experts in how a school should work. And teachers are a clear minority of people, so if the only "voice" teachers have in how teachers are evaluated is their voice at an election, there is a rather high chance of this ending in disaster. I am not opposed to teachers performance being evaluated in general. I think it needs to be done very carefully and correctly. Sadly, there is a high chance of very bad ideas coming in here. Like "Let everyone in the country take the same test, and the better a class scores, the better their teacher is". Sounds good on the surface, is a horribly bad idea. There are classes that are better, and classes that are worse. There are ways to improve test scores that do not actually teach any of what you should want to teach your students. The university-style student polling also has a lot of problems in schools due to the immaturity of the students there. From my experience, most school students, especially in the lower grades, will positively review the most entertaining and friendly teacher and those teachers that give the best marks. While those can be positive things, they should not be a teachers main focus. Thus, it is really hard to get actually good data on teacher performance without giving really bad incentives to teachers. To correctly monitor a teachers performance, you would have to compare a class that they have tought to the average of classes with similar baselines over a long period of time. Really effective teaching does not show on the next test, its results show in how much the students have actually understood and internalized the concepts, and how much they are capable of recognizing and using them in a variety of situations in the future, as opposed to how good they are at answering exactly the test questions. Also you need to be very careful when figuring out what "similar class" actually means. The testing issue is also attempted to get chipped away with the new pedagogy. So with the old school style you would be asked questions like 24/4=? so memorizing the times tables made sense and would net you high scores. This is part of the 'teaching to the test' problem. So the kids memorize the answers or tricks to get the answers that didn't actually teach them underlying principles at play. Here is an example of a math question from the new style. + Show Spoiler +You could see why this question would immediately frustrate many people and children if your understanding is that "we are trying to teach the kid 24/4=6" most teachers know that's not actually what you are trying to teach the kid, but most people who just learned the old school way think that's good teaching. But if you want the kid to learn why 24/4=6 or be able to apply to different situations it's important to teach the other reasoning skills associated with how and why our answer is 6. Again it's really hard to break down in a few sentences or a simple example but I thought this might help. Not really relevant to the overall discussion: + Show Spoiler +At the same time, it seems like it would be important to actually know what the answer is, not just what the problem is. IDK, the way I was taught math at this level was similar- it wasn't just tables to memorize (I hate memorization). For instance, division was taught using examples ( say, apples per box) and word problems, in addition to the standard "24/4=". It applied all that memorization. The difference being that actually arriving at the right answer was important. I don't see how the above is any different except for some reason they don't want you to find that the answer is 6. Maybe I'm reading too much into one example. This seems like a more tame example of the "new math." And no, I don't need a different one. Just an observation. Edit: multiple choice questions in general are bad, but math ones are the worst.
You are right you are reading way to much into one question. I should of known better than to post a single question....Especially such a poor one. That's really more of an example of an old school teacher trying to make a new style question. Multiple choice is generally frowned upon, which is why standardized (scantron) testing (then basing employment off of such types of tests) is rightly questioned and discouraged by teachers.
@Intro
+ Show Spoiler +Why chime in on something you don't even think is relevant but not answer the question that obviously is, which I have asked several times now about what, if not the things I mentioned (and you called a crutch) are the specific "conservative objections to crappy, universal standards" and what specific part of the federal governments role in common core are you and/or other conservatives objecting to.
Because it certainly seems like you don't know what the standards you object to are or why they are 'crappy', and you don't know exactly what the federal government is doing in relation to common core that you object to? If I'm wrong it's not because I haven't been asking for an answer.
The suggestion is that many conservatives fit that description and many of the ones that don't, are generally objecting to the creationism part or abstinence only or something in those veins. You got upset at such a suggestion but you haven't done much to dispel it. I honestly thought there was more to it the way you started out, but now on the umpteenth time I've asked for you to come out with what the specific objections are, (since you are so sure of what they aren't) I don't think there really are other specific objections, and if there are they are not very widely held. Of course, I'm still open to being wrong but so far we haven't heard any specific objections to the standards or to what specifically about the federal government's role is objectionable.
To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if there were some problems somewhere (be pretty amazing to do it perfectly right out of the box), but conservatives just pointing and saying "there are problems in there somewhere so lets scrap the whole thing" (or some version) doesn't solve anything. So if they were spending time finding specific things they had problems with we could talk about those and where a compromise might lay if one is even necessary.
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Norway28675 Posts
On December 01 2014 02:18 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2014 01:43 Liquid`Drone wrote:
But sometimes, and this is not necessarily targeted at you, but just as much as a response to an ongoing debate in Norway (and which I feel is an international debate), I get the impression that teachers should have bonuses or penalties depending on student performance in standardized tests. To me, that's quite literally the dumbest idea proposed regarding education for the past 30 years. How is that stupid? You have their grades the year before. If the student improved compared to that you did a good job. If they got worse you did a bad job. The problem is how to measure it the first year when you have no base on that person.
To be fair, I have to admit to hyperbole. I try not to, but sometimes it's hard. I understand where the idea comes from, and I think many of the issues I have with it will only be apparent once you have tried teaching (and while I don't have data for USA, I know that in Norway, teachers are the ones who are most vocally opposed to this idea.) But to continue; it's stupid for a multitude of reason, assuming we're talking about a pre-high school / possibly including high school, and not college/university level. (At which point I've never seen it suggested anyway, but in that case, my foremost point disappears. )
Firstly, not everything a student learns in school is measurable, or even supposed to be measurable. This varies a bit depending on subject, but school is supposed to be an arena to help children become wholesome people, not just capable workers. I think this is a fundamental battle to be had, where I feel the current political climate is too obsessed with school as a way of creating more engineers rather than as an arena for personal growth in every arena. In Norway, this educational change started after the first PISA-tests a little more than a decade ago, where it was showcased that Norwegian students were much worse at math, reading and sciences than students from Finland and South Korea, and not any better than the OECD average (so among comparable countries. ) USA performed disappointingly as well, and I can see how you would be drawing some of the same conclusions.
Anyway, there's also a big difference in subjects. STEM-subjects (which I do not teach) are much easier to assess, because answers will generally be correct or incorrect
Sociology, History, whatever you want to put underneath the liberal arts umbrella (which I will insist are just as meaningful and important subjects as STEMs are) cannot be assessed in the same way. They are deliberative subjects, and for example historical consciousness, in my opinion one of the most important aspects of the history subject, cannot be assessed through a multiple choice test. At least in Norway, the curriculum reaches so wide that there is no possible way for the exam to cover the entire field in a meaningful way (multiple choice in history is a useless form of testing competence).
Essentially, the teacher grade is the most meaningful for these subjects. By far. These classes are also not subject to the PISA-tests (presumably because the idea of even national standardized tests doesn't work, international standardized tests even less so).
Secondly, if you do choose to go the route of giving teacher bonuses depending on student performance relative to the previous year, where in your schematics will you have the variable "parents got divorced", where will you have "student is struggling with his sexuality", where will you have "grandmother died a week before exams", or "broke up with girlfriend two days before exams", where will you have "struggled with anorexia", where will you have "struggled with drugs", or a hundred other possible challenges a teenager might be facing that hampers his or her academic performance regardless of how good of a job the teacher has been doing? What if the student was struggling with all of these the year before you got them, and then suddenly their grades jump by two points through no real effort from your behalf?
And it's not like one class is a big enough selection for the random factor not to be significant; these types of problems will by no means be equally present everywhere. I guess you could argue that on average over a teaching career it's mostly gonna even out, at least more so than not having bonuses, but I think the combination of this issue and the problem that the teachers' focus is changed for the worse (statistically measured progress rather than personal growth - both of which are important) means that the totality of adding monetary incentives for teachers with good students giving good standardized test answers is going to really hurt the educational system.
I'm also not professing that it's impossible to evaluate teacher performance. But I'm saying that evaluating it accurately, that cannot be done through any type of number-plotting which can then be estimated by a computer, in fact, to make up for lost time the teacher has to spend on non-education related activities but rather processes that relate to measurability as well as hiring people to do the evaluations, you could have just hired another teacher instead and had 15 pupil classes instead of 30 - which would do a hell of a lot more for student performance than bonuses could do.
Honestly, it's kinda depressing, because teachers know what has to be done to fix the educational system. They (we) have been saying it for 20 years. Smaller classes is the by far most important. The idea that a teacher is supposed to individually adjust the education (which is really important, because students are at different levels of competence and motivation and require different challenges in accordance with this) for 30 different students in one class, often teaching three different classes in the same subject and sometimes two different subjects so 180 different students, that is ludicrous. Raise the status of the teacher's education, give teachers autonomy, have some degree of common core yet open for different teaching styles depending on what the teacher is more comfortable and skilled with, help students who are lagging behind regarding basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic) at a very early age because lacking basic skills hurts performance in every class, and double the teacher to student ratio. There, I fixed education.
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Really loving this education discussion.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i think a lot of the common core math conceptual things are better taught within the context of more advanced examples rather than verbalized and given names. nobody really need to know the name of soem of these things to understand and use the concepts, it adds a lot of conceptual clutter and frustration when you couple it with improperly designed testing that tests the memorization of these names rather than their use.
math olympiad classes for every kid basically, but at a slower pace. the mathematics curriculum is pretty slow compared to other countries.
some of what they are trying to do with the math common core seems like an attempt at filling some of the gaps that is better filled by hands on teaching, but do not have the teaching resource to do so.
memorization does have its uses in math. you won't get anywhere without hard memorizing some multiplication rules, and within every area of math be it arithmetics, logic or differential equations, memorizing a basic toolbox of operations is critical.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On December 01 2014 08:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2014 06:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 01 2014 06:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 01 2014 05:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 01 2014 04:40 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 01 2014 04:27 TheTenthDoc wrote:On December 01 2014 02:18 Yurie wrote:On December 01 2014 01:43 Liquid`Drone wrote:
But sometimes, and this is not necessarily targeted at you, but just as much as a response to an ongoing debate in Norway (and which I feel is an international debate), I get the impression that teachers should have bonuses or penalties depending on student performance in standardized tests. To me, that's quite literally the dumbest idea proposed regarding education for the past 30 years. How is that stupid? You have their grades the year before. If the student improved compared to that you did a good job. If they got worse you did a bad job. The problem is how to measure it the first year when you have no base on that person. You have their grades in another set of classes which may have little to no relevance to their performance the next year in a great many school systems. Performance in world history and national history may have nothing to do with each other and algebra and geometry are staggeringly different. You can implement some silly "global assessment of ability" tests but then you run into the problem of incentivizing teachers teaching to them instead of the areas they're supposed to be covering that are, you know, actually educational. And it sucks away class time too. If everyone is on common core, what goes on in one school district should be similar to another. Subject matter differences shouldn't be much of an issue either. Yes, algebra and geometry are different, but I find it hard to believe that you'll have classes of students consistently doing well in algebra and consistently bad in geometry just because the subject matter is different. And if that really is the case, it should hold true at a state or national level which would allow the evaluation to remain valid. Well at least we've moved past the silly objections to 'the standards'. It seems we also agree that currently we don't have an effective way to measure teacher performance (or wouldn't without common core). You can still measure teacher performance without common core. Having a common core (any common core) just makes the process easier, more effective, and more universal. How would you like to see teacher performance measured? (the 'can', as opposed to 'do', makes it sound like you still agree that we don't have an effective way currently) Either way sounds like having a common core makes it better. Sounds like at least one more good reason for a common core. Well, how teacher performance should be measured is too general of a question. All I can really say is that teacher performance should be measured fairly, and be based on relevant facts. I'm not sure how to respond to your point about using 'can' rather than 'do'. Anyways, you did not interpret the sentence correctly.
subjective, classroom quality, evaluation is often better than a forced through, square peg in round hole metric. both depend on the administration doing their job and being aware of particular and specific circumstances, but the latter is basically more legislative hubris than anything.
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Firstly, not everything a student learns in school is measurable, or even supposed to be measurable. This varies a bit depending on subject, but school is supposed to be an arena to help children become wholesome people, not just capable workers. I think this is a fundamental battle to be had, where I feel the current political climate is too obsessed with school as a way of creating more engineers rather than as an arena for personal growth in every arena. In Norway, this educational change started after the first PISA-tests a little more than a decade ago, where it was showcased that Norwegian students were much worse at math, reading and sciences than students from Finland and South Korea, and not any better than the OECD average (so among comparable countries. ) USA performed disappointingly as well, and I can see how you would be drawing some of the same conclusions. You don't have to strawman your opposition by suggesting that all of them think only of good workers and think nothing of wholesome people. It's just as much hyperbole by coloring the debate that way. Can your 8th graders read and write at an 8th grade level? Not so they can be merry little capable workers (eerily reminiscent of old Communist propaganda), but so they can continue to have academic success in English in high school and know that they're not slipping behind. This applies to purely informational standardized testing administrated periodically. Are the minimums being met? Are you graduating people with the basics of what used to be known in the US as the 3 R's? These are useful questions particularly in my interest area of the circa 1-4% of teachers that get the label "grossly ineffective," but are essentially unable to be fired.
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On December 01 2014 19:38 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2014 18:37 Introvert wrote:On December 01 2014 18:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On December 01 2014 17:38 Simberto wrote:On December 01 2014 13:48 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On December 01 2014 13:38 IgnE wrote:
Performance is never "just that." It has a meaning that is peculiar to the speaker. GH is saying that teachers want assurances that bureaucrats don't decide what "performance" means without they and their peers having a say in what it means. Of course they'll have a say. You never don't have a say. That's not how rules are written. Laws get written by people you vote for, agencies put rules out to the public for comment and local administrators will try to adapt to local needs. The problem here is that everyone has to go through school, and thus everyone thinks they are experts in how a school should work. And teachers are a clear minority of people, so if the only "voice" teachers have in how teachers are evaluated is their voice at an election, there is a rather high chance of this ending in disaster. I am not opposed to teachers performance being evaluated in general. I think it needs to be done very carefully and correctly. Sadly, there is a high chance of very bad ideas coming in here. Like "Let everyone in the country take the same test, and the better a class scores, the better their teacher is". Sounds good on the surface, is a horribly bad idea. There are classes that are better, and classes that are worse. There are ways to improve test scores that do not actually teach any of what you should want to teach your students. The university-style student polling also has a lot of problems in schools due to the immaturity of the students there. From my experience, most school students, especially in the lower grades, will positively review the most entertaining and friendly teacher and those teachers that give the best marks. While those can be positive things, they should not be a teachers main focus. Thus, it is really hard to get actually good data on teacher performance without giving really bad incentives to teachers. To correctly monitor a teachers performance, you would have to compare a class that they have tought to the average of classes with similar baselines over a long period of time. Really effective teaching does not show on the next test, its results show in how much the students have actually understood and internalized the concepts, and how much they are capable of recognizing and using them in a variety of situations in the future, as opposed to how good they are at answering exactly the test questions. Also you need to be very careful when figuring out what "similar class" actually means. The testing issue is also attempted to get chipped away with the new pedagogy. So with the old school style you would be asked questions like 24/4=? so memorizing the times tables made sense and would net you high scores. This is part of the 'teaching to the test' problem. So the kids memorize the answers or tricks to get the answers that didn't actually teach them underlying principles at play. Here is an example of a math question from the new style. + Show Spoiler +You could see why this question would immediately frustrate many people and children if your understanding is that "we are trying to teach the kid 24/4=6" most teachers know that's not actually what you are trying to teach the kid, but most people who just learned the old school way think that's good teaching. But if you want the kid to learn why 24/4=6 or be able to apply to different situations it's important to teach the other reasoning skills associated with how and why our answer is 6. Again it's really hard to break down in a few sentences or a simple example but I thought this might help. Not really relevant to the overall discussion: + Show Spoiler +At the same time, it seems like it would be important to actually know what the answer is, not just what the problem is. IDK, the way I was taught math at this level was similar- it wasn't just tables to memorize (I hate memorization). For instance, division was taught using examples ( say, apples per box) and word problems, in addition to the standard "24/4=". It applied all that memorization. The difference being that actually arriving at the right answer was important. I don't see how the above is any different except for some reason they don't want you to find that the answer is 6. Maybe I'm reading too much into one example. This seems like a more tame example of the "new math." And no, I don't need a different one. Just an observation. Edit: multiple choice questions in general are bad, but math ones are the worst. You are right you are reading way to much into one question. I should of known better than to post a single question....Especially such a poor one. That's really more of an example of an old school teacher trying to make a new style question. Multiple choice is generally frowned upon, which is why standardized (scantron) testing (then basing employment off of such types of tests) is rightly questioned and discouraged by teachers. @Intro + Show Spoiler +Why chime in on something you don't even think is relevant but not answer the question that obviously is, which I have asked several times now about what, if not the things I mentioned (and you called a crutch) are the specific "conservative objections to crappy, universal standards" and what specific part of the federal governments role in common core are you and/or other conservatives objecting to.
Because it certainly seems like you don't know what the standards you object to are or why they are 'crappy', and you don't know exactly what the federal government is doing in relation to common core that you object to? If I'm wrong it's not because I haven't been asking for an answer.
The suggestion is that many conservatives fit that description and many of the ones that don't, are generally objecting to the creationism part or abstinence only or something in those veins. You got upset at such a suggestion but you haven't done much to dispel it. I honestly thought there was more to it the way you started out, but now on the umpteenth time I've asked for you to come out with what the specific objections are, (since you are so sure of what they aren't) I don't think there really are other specific objections, and if there are they are not very widely held. Of course, I'm still open to being wrong but so far we haven't heard any specific objections to the standards or to what specifically about the federal government's role is objectionable.
To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if there were some problems somewhere (be pretty amazing to do it perfectly right out of the box), but conservatives just pointing and saying "there are problems in there somewhere so lets scrap the whole thing" (or some version) doesn't solve anything. So if they were spending time finding specific things they had problems with we could talk about those and where a compromise might lay if one is even necessary.
I've seen a number of the other math problems, and tbh they look pretty bad. Is that specific enough for you? Nobody answers your question because it is unnecessarily detailed and not really important. It's like the time you asked me to rank all the presidents on immigration. If you really think that Creationism is the primary reason so many people (many prominent conservatives included) oppose CC, go ahead.
You are always free to look around on your own, you will find what you seek. If you had done that then you wouldn't be going on about Creationism in the first place.
I'm not going to say anymore.
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Norway28675 Posts
On December 02 2014 00:42 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +Firstly, not everything a student learns in school is measurable, or even supposed to be measurable. This varies a bit depending on subject, but school is supposed to be an arena to help children become wholesome people, not just capable workers. I think this is a fundamental battle to be had, where I feel the current political climate is too obsessed with school as a way of creating more engineers rather than as an arena for personal growth in every arena. In Norway, this educational change started after the first PISA-tests a little more than a decade ago, where it was showcased that Norwegian students were much worse at math, reading and sciences than students from Finland and South Korea, and not any better than the OECD average (so among comparable countries. ) USA performed disappointingly as well, and I can see how you would be drawing some of the same conclusions. You don't have to strawman your opposition by suggesting that all of them think only of good workers and think nothing of wholesome people. It's just as much hyperbole by coloring the debate that way. Can your 8th graders read and write at an 8th grade level? Not so they can be merry little capable workers (eerily reminiscent of old Communist propaganda), but so they can continue to have academic success in English in high school and know that they're not slipping behind. This applies to purely informational standardized testing administrated periodically. Are the minimums being met? Are you graduating people with the basics of what used to be known in the US as the 3 R's? These are useful questions particularly in my interest area of the circa 1-4% of teachers that get the label "grossly ineffective," but are essentially unable to be fired.
Fair enough with the strawman, it's not my intention to portray my opposition as completely one-dimensional and I don't actually think they are. Still, we do have to prioritize - and it is a fact that favoring STEM over liberal arts/bildung goes hand in hand with wanting more accountability (which goes hand in hand with more measurability, which goes hand in hand with favoring STEM, not necessarily because it is more measurable, but there's some relation there). I actually highlight the importance of basic skills at the end of my post though, because yes, basic skills are the foundation of more advanced skills in every subject.
And if 1-4% of teachers are the problem, then it's somewhere between insignificant and not all that significant of a problem. I agree that it should be possible to fire completely incompetent teachers, but wanting to introduce policies that I think would hurt the other 96-99% just to get it done makes no sense from my perspective.
Edit: Funny tidbit, I actually oppose mandatory camera for police for the same reason. Seems like a kneejerk reaction to a few bad apples, one that steals autonomy and creates suspicion in a way that to me would be bound to make any workplace environment, and thus workplace performance, worse.
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Well, but so far, apparently noone has been able to actually point out what the fundamental flaw with the common core stuff is. It can't be that hard if it is such a flaw that it should be opposed completely and utterly instead of trying to fix what is wrong with it.
If you don't provide your own arguments, even if asked multiple times, and just say something is horrible, the people who do not think it is horrible are forced to extrapolate your argument as to why that thing is bad just to be able to argue against it. Which then allows you to say that they are strawmanning you while STILL not providing your own argument. I just don't get that. I am really open to the idea because i hadn't really formed an opinion before. I personally don't see how the whole concept of having a common standard for education is intrinsically wrong and bad, i am someone who lives in a country that has just such a system in place, and i don't think we have people who complain about it, so it must be something about the specifics of this implementation. Which might very well be bad. In which case someone should be able to point out what the problem with them is. So far noone has really put that into a concise argument critizising specifics, just "it's really bad and should be opposed"
So im am going to ask very clearly:
Is someone here opposed to the common core and can explain why it is bad, and what specifically is bad about it?
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As we have been discussing, the math area is of particular concern. That's just one example, but specific details is too far for this thread. Others write on this in more detail.
Edit: sorry, on phone. Can't be more specific/sourced. But math is one the areas people are worried about (it's the one I see mentioned most often) but we've already touched on that.
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Can you be any vaguer ? oO
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On December 01 2014 18:51 corumjhaelen wrote:
Both are important, testing if the students know the meaning of a division seems like a smart seems to me (I'm a maths teacher btw). Multiple choice questions sucks though.
Also before the evaluation question, two questions should be answered, or at least asked : 1) what are the goals of our school system ? 2) How to get quality teaching defined by getting the closest to the goals of 1) ? (teachers and their evaluation being only a subset of that, bigger or smaller depending of your answers to 1) I guess)
Hey where are you teaching at ? Maybe we're colleagues.
On December 02 2014 00:55 Simberto wrote:
Well, but so far, apparently noone has been able to actually point out what the fundamental flaw with the common core stuff is. It can't be that hard if it is such a flaw that it should be opposed completely and utterly instead of trying to fix what is wrong with it.
If you don't provide your own arguments, even if asked multiple times, and just say something is horrible, the people who do not think it is horrible are forced to extrapolate your argument as to why that thing is bad just to be able to argue against it. Which then allows you to say that they are strawmanning you while STILL not providing your own argument. I just don't get that. I am really open to the idea because i hadn't really formed an opinion before. I personally don't see how the whole concept of having a common standard for education is intrinsically wrong and bad, i am someone who lives in a country that has just such a system in place, and i don't think we have people who complain about it, so it must be something about the specifics of this implementation. Which might very well be bad. In which case someone should be able to point out what the problem with them is. So far noone has really put that into a concise argument critizising specifics, just "it's really bad and should be opposed"
So im am going to ask very clearly:
Is someone here opposed to the common core and can explain why it is bad, and what specifically is bad about it?
The obvious flaw to common core is that it is political, and thus that it is really influenced by ideologies (but it's the same if the states had the liberty to decide for programs). Because of that, it usually change from one government to another (in my discipline, in france, every government built their own programs).
Programs (or common core) are a necessity, but when defined too tight, they usually stress teachers who sacrifice analysis and deep comprehension to respect the objectives, usually defined by "notions" or "concept", stripped of any greater perspectives (history of events, economy and sociology with no historical contexts, etc.). Good education policy needs to let some kind of freedom to teachers imo.
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On December 02 2014 01:00 Introvert wrote:
As we have been discussing, the math area is of particular concern. That's just one example, but specific details is too far for this thread. Others write on this in more detail.
Edit: sorry, on phone. Can't be more specific/sourced. But math is one the areas people are worried about (it's the one I see mentioned most often) but we've already touched on that.
That seriously sounds like a parody of a conservative against Common Core lol... "Uhh Uhhh the math area that's the problem"... "Whats wrong with it?"... "It looks bad"... "What looks bad about it?".... "Look it up yourself"...
You really don't know... The questions are generated by teachers on a local level. Unless they can't come up with ones on their own, in which case they have an option to source suggested ones based on newer pedagogies.
The Common Core State Standards are a clear set of shared goals and expectations for the knowledge and skills students need in English language arts and mathematics at each grade level so they can be prepared to succeed in college, career, and life. The standards establish what students need to learn, but they do not dictate how teachers should teach. Teachers will devise their own lesson plans and curriculum, and tailor their instruction to the individual needs of the students in their classrooms.
No one is saying common core is perfect, note the teachers have tried to illustrate their concerns in decent detail so that the inadequacy of testing and metrics, and then basing employment off of such a metric is shown to be troublesome.
The conservatives have come up with nothing. Except exceptionally vague complaints about 'crappy standards' yet can't point to 1, and that "it's the fed's man!" without any fact based complaint about how the federal involvement is troublesome. I have told you several times that I wanted to replace creationism in the original comment but you haven't shown what it is you think it is instead.
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This whole pursuit is useless. I know that teachers write the questions. Lordy. You used a math problem as an example then got unhappy when I displayed a little concern over the exact same problem. You then gave a long rant trying to continue our previous series of posts that I had stopped. Is it any wonder I stopped? I don't have to satisfy the strange demand for lots of specifics when you fail to provide them yourself. I have seen no reason to think anything new is actually superior. And I don't need a list of examples because such a demand is unreasonable considering the topic and forum. You introduced a new criteria, as is normal. Even when provided a slightly more detailed answer (the math) it didn't matter, because it wasn't to GreenHorizon's detail requirement that must be met before any other discussion takes place.
Edit to below: "no reason." rofl. And you haven't identified specifically any good standards ( I require section and subsection number from the state program of your choice). Guess there are no good reasons!
Edit: You entirely missed the point, didn't you? Including the bit about odd criteria that no one expects anyone here to meet. "Still waiting" says it all. We are all to operate under GH rules, reply until he says we may stop. No thanks, I'm busy ( I can't reply instantly!). Besides your example was odd anyway, as the other guy pointed out. This conversation, kill it with fire. Or starve it.
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On December 02 2014 03:53 Introvert wrote:
This whole pursuit is useless. I know that teachers write the questions. Lordy. You used a math problem as an example then got unhappy when I displayed a little concern over the exact same problem. I don't have to satisfy the strange demand for lots of specifics when you fail to provide them yourself. I have seen no reason to think anything new is actually superior. And I don't need a list of examples because such a demand is unreasonable considering the topic and forum. You introduced a new criteria, as is normal.
Is it useless because you don't know what standards, if any, are 'crappy' and you just said it without thinking?
It's not strange to ask for at least 1 specific problem you have with the 'crappy standards' or 1 example of what the federal governments involvement influenced or changed to your dismay. Or to ask Danglers who's main concern is defeating common core to prevent school from getting worse, what specifically about it (like an example or 2) is troublesome.
You called the standards 'crappy' and have no identifiable reason as to why you believe they are 'crappy', your position here is quite telling.
@Edit:
Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n × a)/(n × b) by using visual fraction models, with attention to how the number and size of the parts differ even though the two fractions themselves are the same size. Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.
Source
Your turn 0.0........... Still waiting...
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Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n × a)/(n × b) by using visual fraction models, with attention to how the number and size of the parts differ even though the two fractions themselves are the same size. Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.
I am a Mathematician and I find this example quite strange. One of the first things we learned after multiplication, was prime number factorization, that made working with fractions really easy, without having to use strange visualization models.
Anyway, the above example should be seen for what it is, children are capable of abstract thinking, so why not teach them the algebraic rules to work with multiplication and division, then they will see that such expressions are easy to work with and they don't need to use "cheap" tricks.
I work at an University and for the last 5 years I was responsible to teach first semester students (future high school teachers) and there is a remarkable downwards spiral with regard to what people are taught at (high) school. In my opinion we do not encourage or stimulate our children enough, that might be a major disadvantage of "common core" - politicians will want to see their new project as a success, and a higher number of people with a high school diploma is a success in their eyes, thus they will set a very low skill level to achieve.
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On December 02 2014 04:35 Symplectos wrote:Show nested quote +
Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n × a)/(n × b) by using visual fraction models, with attention to how the number and size of the parts differ even though the two fractions themselves are the same size. Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.
I am a Mathematician and I find this example quite strange. One of the first things we learned after multiplication, was prime number factorization, that made working with fractions really easy, without having to use strange visualization models. Anyway, the above example should be seen for what it is, children are capable of abstract thinking, so why not teach them the algebraic rules to work with multiplication and division, then they will see that such expressions are easy to work with and they don't need to use "cheap" tricks. I work at an University and for the last 5 years I was responsible to teach first semester students (future high school teachers) and there is a remarkable downwards spiral with regard to what people are taught at (high) school. In my opinion we do not encourage or stimulate our children enough, that might be a major disadvantage of "common core" - politicians will want to see their new project as a success, and a higher number of people with a high school diploma is a success in their eyes, thus they will set a very low skill level to achieve.
That's a peculiar first post on TL. It's just one standard, and it is not to the exclusion of teaching what you speak about.
I guess that's largely why it's not politicians making any of the major decisions on standards or how to meet them. Are you really from/teaching in Luxembourg?
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
while visual intuitions are important, at this basic level like fractions or integer additions and whatnot they use it for, it is waste of time.
we have abstract intuitions without representing them outright. it is kind of like a logocentric fallacy but with the visual representation of intuitions.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SY6kVXi.png)
