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Norway28714 Posts
On August 14 2015 02:54 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2015 15:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:On August 13 2015 08:10 farvacola wrote:On August 13 2015 04:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:On August 12 2015 22:53 farvacola wrote:On August 12 2015 22:46 ticklishmusic wrote:
The polls coming out of Ohio say that a lot of people like him, and he won re-election by a lot though. That has more to do with the extreme impotence of the Ohio Democratic Party than Kasich's merits as a leader. Ohio has a lot of political problems, to put it plainly. I'm not at all familiar with what Kasich has done for education in Ohio, but I'll certainly take your word for it being terrible. But do you actually have any republican candidate you are more positive towards? Because to me, when I watched their first debate, from the other candidates I had a hard time finding even individual statements that weren't either meaningless or absurd. But with him, nothing really rubbed me the wrong way, and at least twice he made me think that hey, this was a really good answer. Well, just for a little taste on what Kasich has done... With two-term Ohio Gov. John Kasich joining the crowd of candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, it’s a good time to look at the public education mess that has developed in his state under his leadership.
Kasich has pushed key tenets of corporate school reform:
*expanding charter schools — even though the state’s charter sector is the most troubled in the country
*increasing the number of school vouchers that use public money to pay for tuition at private schools, the vast majority of them religious — even though state officials say that fewer than one-third of those available were used by families this past school year
*performance pay for teachers — even though such schemes have been shown over many years not to be useful in education
*evaluating educators by student standardized test scores in math and reading — even though assessment experts have warned that using test scores in this way is not reliable or valid.
Meanwhile, the Ohio Education Department in Kasich’s administration is in turmoil. David Hansen, his administration’s chief for school choice and charter schools resigned over this past weekend after admitting that he had unilaterally withheld failing scores of charter schools in state evaluations of the schools’ sponsor organizations so they wouldn’t look so bad. (Hansen’s wife, incidentally, is Kasich’s chief of staff, who is taking a leave from that post to work on his campaign.) There are growing calls now for the resignation of the Kasich-backed state superintendent of education, Richard Ross. What Ohio Gov. John Kasich is doing to public education in his stateAs for which Republican candidate I like better, I'll just go ahead and stump for Trump. Realistically, I guess George Patacki isn't so bad though  haha, that list is almost like a what's what over educational policies I've specifically argued against in this very thread.  I'm confused why you think these charges are so bad to try. We know that more money doesn't solve the problems because per pupil spending is only loosely correlated with achievement and totally disappears if you adjust for household income of the students ( why many big cities are big outliers with huge spending and bad results). What we do know is there is a small set of teachers that actually influence kids long term, so why not experiment to try and retain them? More importantly we know there is a large subset 10% or so, that negatively affect long term outcomes, and they need to be fired. But because unions, you need objective proof to be rid of them, so you have to do standardized testing. Lastly, on private and charters, I think it's a temporary fix because some schools are quite bad, and the option to escape is more plausible than the option of successful reform, short term. There may also be a psychology at play where a parent who makes an active choice actually becomes more invested because of the choice.
Well, although my line was kinda tongue in cheek and I haven't actually argued against all of these policies in the past, I think this is interesting, and I'll go through every asterisk of farvecola. 
*expanding charter schools — even though the state’s charter sector is the most troubled in the country
Charter schools really isn't something I necessarily have a big issue with. Not everyone fits into the same mold, and realistically, it might be easier to have a couple pedagogical options that work nicely for some of the more common brands of 'misfits'. In Norway we also have charter schools, either fitting the Montessori or Steiner brand of pedagogics, and my personal anecdotal evidence indicates that children who attend these schools usually turn out just fine, and probably oftentimes better than they would have in regular school. Still, I feel very very strongly about 'regular public education' having to be the priority, because typically, the students who attend 'regular public education' are the ones who, on average, get the least amount of help from home, and thus these are the students most in need of functional schools. Basically, I don't necessarily have a problem with charter schools, but expanding charter schools when it's a particularly troubled sector (which I am taking farvecola's word for as I've never seen a reason to doubt it) is not wise. I also don't fully know how they operate in the US- me not being negative towards them by default hinges on the criteria that they can't be profit based.
*increasing the number of school vouchers that use public money to pay for tuition at private schools, the vast majority of them religious — even though state officials say that fewer than one-third of those available were used by families this past school year
I don't really have much to say about this one other than it seems kinda incompetent? ;p Also skeptical towards too many religious charter schools..
*performance pay for teachers — even though such schemes have been shown over many years not to be useful in education
*evaluating educators by student standardized test scores in math and reading — even though assessment experts have warned that using test scores in this way is not reliable or valid.
I'll look at these two together.. While I don't know how this fully works in the US, I know that there are some parallels between the American and the Norwegian situation. For one, we were both shocked by the revelations by the PISA tests during late 90s-early 2000s. These tests showcased that contrary to what we would like to think about our countries, our students performed worse than average among comparable countries, especially in reading and math. And, in both countries, there was a response through increased measurement of students, and in both countries, this has not yielded particularly good results. Essentially, focusing too much on what you can measure comes with a series of drawbacks in school. For one, it's very time consuming. I saw a calculation of how much time a Norwegian teacher (teaching the subject Norwegian) has to spend on student evaluation due to the new measurement regime, and it was shocking- totaling something like 2 hours every single work day. Now, that's an extreme example and it's not like that for most subjects, but from talking to teachers who have been teachers for more than a decade, it's a nearly ubiquitous complaint; we have to spend so much time evaluating, measuring and mapping out performance that it hurts our ability to properly teach. Secondly, by focusing on what is measurable on a standardized test (which by default is a limited test as it has to be designed in a way that can be evaluated by someone who has no knowledge of the student and with the goal of finding average rather than specific competence) you lose out on many of the oh so important skills you are supposed to learn in schools, and it completely neglects the socialization aspect. By connecting student performance with standardized test results, you are incentivizing teachers to focus on short term rather than long term gains - because what ends up important is that the student performs better at the standardized test than he or she did last year, not that the student is a wholesome human being ten years from now. This is part of the STEM vs Bildung debate- and while I don't want to be disparaging towards STEM as they are absolutely important subjects/skills, I really want school to be much more than work preparation.
In addition, there's the aspect where student performance just sometimes is completely out of the teacher's control. I know that I myself have performed terribly at exams where my teachers did a great job due to factors they had absolutely no say in, and if you are teaching students going through puberty with all that entails, this is actually going to be a trend rather than something that just occasionally happens. Like, how does 'parents got a divorce' or 'I am realizing that I'm gay and school just doesn't seem important in relation to that' or 'I'm having a terrible fucking crush and nothing else matters whatsoever' or 'I'm doing drugs' or 'I'm staying up until 3 am every night cuz I'm trying to become the best brood war player in my country' relate to teacher performance? These are just some examples of things that might greatly influence student performance, but that the teacher has no control over.. I also know of many teachers that have been great teachers for some groups of students, but hopeless teachers with other groups. That's not ideal - but I know that I am myself extremely confident in my abilities as a teacher, yet I also know of classes that were so horribly assembled that I can't imagine myself getting great results with them..
Note, while I am in general skeptical towards standardized tests because I think their limitations by design render them kinda meaningless for the individual student measured, I don't mind it as a generic mapping tool, for example for reading and basic math abilities. These are also skills that are fairly easy to measure, somewhat objectively, and measuring performance is important to evaluate educational policies and pedagogical methods. The problem is when you attempt to make a connection between student performance at standardized tests and teacher performance, because that connection is dubious at best, and I firmly believe that oftentimes, a good teacher will in reality be hindered by this measurement-regime. I can accept that yeah, there are some obviously bad teachers that should not be teachers. Unless you've lived a very privileged life, it is likely that you have encountered at least one of these. But you yourself mentioned a 10% figure. I don't think it is wise to harm the performance of the other 90% in an attempt to weed out these last 10%.
For reference, the by far best performing countries in these PISA tests are Finland and South Korea. I believe there have been some great results from regions of China as well, but those results come with a series of footnotes and don't seem very reliable. And then, being a brood war site, we are all too familiar with South Korean dedication and work rate. Essentially, there are cultural differences at play here. That being said, my personal solution would be more towards copying the successful aspects of Finnish education, because there are significant differences between the Finnish and the Norwegian approach, and the Finnish approach is much easier to replicate. For one, the status of teachers has to improve, and especially the status of elementary school teachers. Most Finnish elementary school teachers actually have a Master's degree. In Norway, master's degrees are common among high school teachers, something like 15% have it in junior high, but you hardly see them among elementary school teachers. Finland seems to really have understood that everything you learn later on hinges on what you have already learned. Additionally, pupils who struggle with reading or math get extra attention from a very early age- and it's so frequently applied that it doesn't come with the extra baggage of being branded a special needs pupil (which I know happens here - but it's also more natural that this branding takes place when only one in 30 students get this type of extra help rather than one in five. )
So basically, rather than attempting to use standardized tests to weed out useless teachers while making all other teachers slightly less useful, I propose increasing the status of teachers (through having a more prestigious teacher's education and somewhat higher pay, these are interconnected I guess), having higher teacher density in general (it's virtually impossible to not fall in the lowest common denominator trap if you are trying to teach 30 kids at the same time) and focusing more on the kids who fail to keep up with the regular pace of learning at a very young age, because if you don't get extra help early enough, those kids will never have a chance to catch up.
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The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is visiting Farmington, New Mexico, to see how officials are dealing with the fallout from the Colorado mine waste spill that traveled downstream on the Animas and San Juan Rivers. The 3 million gallons of toxic waste, including arsenic, lead and iron, that the EPA accidentally released Aug. 5 has disrupted the lives of thousands who live along the river.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is scheduled to meet with state, local and tribal officials Thursday and address reporters on a trail along the Animas River. She says her agency takes full responsibility for the spill.
The federal government has vowed to pay for the clean up, but the full consequences of the leak remain unknown. The heavy metals that passed down the river in a plume left residue on the riverbed. In the long term, the next time the river swells it could pull those toxic remnants back up again.
"There will be a source of these contaminants in the rivers for a long time," said hydrologist Tom Myers, who runs a Nevada-based consulting business. "Every time there's a high flow, it will stir it up and it will be moving those contaminants downstream."
McCarthy’s visit to Farmington follows her stop upstream in Durango, Colorado, on Wednesday. There, she said she was heartbroken by the spill and announced that investigation field work would stop at mines nationwide as the agency looks into what led to last week's disaster. Colorado says it's now safe for Durango to process river water into drinking water.
The plume of heavy metals flowed into southwest Colorado's Animas River and into the San Juan River in New Mexico, causing untold millions in economic disruptions and damages in three states — to rafting companies, Native American farmers unable to irrigate, municipal water systems and possibly water well owners.
Just as the extent of the damage remains unclear, so does the cost of clean up.
"We have to be vigilant as attorneys general, as the lawyers for the state, as protectors of the environment, to be sure that the assurances that we received today from the Environmental Protection Agency are the same in two years, in five years, even 10 years when we discover what the damage to the environment actually is," said Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman after she and her counterparts from neighboring states gathered Wednesday in Durango.
Coffman and attorneys general from New Mexico and Utah vowed to ensure citizens and towns are compensated for immediate and long-term damages from the spill. The abandoned mine is just one of thousands across the west.
Source
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On August 14 2015 04:43 Liquid`Drone wrote:
So basically, rather than attempting to use standardized tests to weed out useless teachers while making all other teachers slightly less useful, I propose increasing the status of teachers (through having a more prestigious teacher's education and somewhat higher pay, these are interconnected I guess), having higher teacher density in general (it's virtually impossible to not fall in the lowest common denominator trap if you are trying to teach 30 kids at the same time) and focusing more on the kids who fail to keep up with the regular pace of learning at a very young age, because if you don't get extra help early enough, those kids will never have a chance to catch up.
IMO these prescriptions would only work in a system that is already functioning at a high level with basically none of the problems that are typically diagnosed in our modern system. Those are win-more prescriptions that would work for individual districts looking to go from top 10% in the nation to top 5%, plus they are expensive.
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Standardized testing is terrible for education and does nothing for evaluating the quality of teachers. It is just another way to remove personal judgment and accountability in hiring and firing of teachers. ANd it sounds good when you say "We are going to make sure our teachers live up to standards" out loud over and over.
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I'm curious to see how you think teacher's should be evaluated Plansix. Not being snarky, I honestly can't think of any way that is "good"
As an instructor here are my experiences with teacher evaluation.
1) Peer observation of teaching/materials: Obviously completely subjective. Depends on the observer and potential for personal grudges/favoritism can skew results. Differences and preferences in teaching styles may also influence outcomes.
2) Evalution by students: Most students don't really care one way or the other about these so the data can be awful. The students who write a lot usually have personal gripes with the instructor which may or may not be founded. Can also lead to bribery by the instructor. One quarter I got absurdly high evaluations from one class which I didn't give a shit about (entry level community college course explaining how to be a student/not fail). The students just rated me highly because I didn't make them work at all.
3) Standardized testing: More objective but leads to teaching to the test. Not necessarily a bad thing, medical school and dental school are both filled with standardized testing for a reason. However, does not allow for evaluation of instructors who teach things like PE, art, or other subjects not easily amenable to standardized testing.
Also, implementation has a great effectiveness on usefulness. Level of standards being the chief one but also how teachers are evaluated based on test scores. Evaluation based on the absolute value of the test scores is very different from evaluation based on the relative change of students from year to year. Evaluations based on % passing may negatively impact high performers as teachers no longer focus on them. Just some examples, there's tons of nitty gritty that can change the usefulness of standardized testing.
I dunno. None of these sounds very good and all are prone to errors. Obviously, having some method for determining teacher quality would be great and could lead to performance based pay, which in turn could lead to better student performance. However, I can't think of any foolproof way to measure teacher "effectiveness".
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The same way that teachers are assessed in college and by countries without standardized testing. Peer review and review of the teaching materials. There is no objective way to review anyone. Even tests can be bias if they are not crafted correctly. Of course scores are useful and student's results should be tested in any number of ways. There is no perfect system, but currently the education system just tries to test its way to improvement because if the number goes up, it must be better.
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I think the charge of teaching to the test is vastly overblown. Or, if it is true, it is true in those schools that are already struggling so much and its happening among the teachers that need to be weeded out of the system for it to work no matter your evaluation system.
The primary purpose of standardized testing is because unions have so much power over terminations that you need to accumulate vast amounts of "objective"evidence to terminate it. Basically teachers who teach to the test are attempting to exploit a loophole in the system, a system which was only created because that same category of teachers was operating the school system for their benefit instead of for the students and taxpayers.
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On August 14 2015 06:53 cLutZ wrote:
I think the charge of teaching to the test is vastly overblown. Or, if it is true, it is true in those schools that are already struggling so much and its happening among the teachers that need to be weeded out of the system for it to work no matter your evaluation system.
The primary purpose of standardized testing is because unions have so much power over terminations that you need to accumulate vast amounts of "objective"evidence to terminate it. Basically teachers who teach to the test are attempting to exploit a loophole in the system, a system which was only created because that same category of teachers was operating the school system for their benefit instead of for the students and taxpayers.
What? No teaching to the test is not a failing of the weak. its logic. If you know x/y/z subjects are going to be tested it is the job of a teacher to teach those subjects.
Standardized tests are not a tool against the unions (not primarily anyway) they are a way to ensure that successful students have a baseline of knowledge. A base that their future education can build upon because they know x/y/z has been covered.
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Norway28714 Posts
I think peer review is the by far 'least flawed' method, perhaps with recurring negative student feedback as a trigger? I mean, standardized testing can also showcase something about teacher performance, it's just that it's too random and comes with too great of an extra cost to have teacher's salary / bonuses be determined by those results.
I really think the main thing is just being stringent during teacher's education and requiring teachers to actually have a degree if they want to teach.. During my year of pedagogics studies, several students were weeded out, mostly during the internship periods, because they displayed behavior that clearly made them unfit for the job. (And, in every single case- no exceptions- had these students given me the impression that they would be unfit for the job prior to them being weeded out. Likewise, none of the people I thought looked like they would become great teachers had any problem getting approved. ) To be approved as a teacher, we all needed to complete 15 weeks of mostly supervised teaching - that's quite a lot of time to determine whether you have the necessary qualities. Then I guess there can be issues with tenure and stuff like that, which I'm honestly not too familiar with, that allow teachers to relax too much once they are established, but this is not solved by firing the 5-10% with worst year to year results on standardized tests.
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Norway28714 Posts
On August 14 2015 06:53 cLutZ wrote:
I think the charge of teaching to the test is vastly overblown. Or, if it is true, it is true in those schools that are already struggling so much and its happening among the teachers that need to be weeded out of the system for it to work no matter your evaluation system.
The primary purpose of standardized testing is because unions have so much power over terminations that you need to accumulate vast amounts of "objective"evidence to terminate it. Basically teachers who teach to the test are attempting to exploit a loophole in the system, a system which was only created because that same category of teachers was operating the school system for their benefit instead of for the students and taxpayers.
I don't necessarily think that teaching to the test is a huge problem (as in, sometimes it makes sense, and it doesn't necessarily happen all that often when it doesn't.) . But I think stuff like 'bad' teaching to the test, or encouraging weak students to be absent during testing, (many examples of this) is bound to happen much more frequently if either teacher or school funding is related to student performance during tests. If a teacher is paid the same regardless of standardized test results, then the teacher however will teach what he or she considers most important for the long term development of the student.
I mean obviously reading ability is hugely important for the long term development of the student, as are basic math skills, but say, as a sociology/history/english teacher in junior high school/high school, they're hardly my main responsibilities.
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"Teaching to the test" usually does not mean "teaching the broad subjects that will be tested", to most people it means "teaching in a way that will maximise test results as opposed to actual skills and knowledge". For example, you can spend the last month before the test by going through the tests from previous years. Teaching tricks based on the specific format of the tests. Focus very much on the exact things that will be tested and drilling in algorithms to solve those, as opposed to a much more useful broader knowledge which can be used in multiple cases. Things like that.
Generally those are not a good idea.
Also, i kind of wonder why you need to fire teachers all the time. In Germany, teachers are basically unfireable after ~3 years at work. cLutZ seems to very much focus on this "evil unions make teachers hard to fire, thus standardized tests are needed" Aspect of the situation. I don't think that should be the main focus.
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On August 14 2015 07:26 Simberto wrote:
"Teaching to the test" usually does not mean "teaching the broad subjects that will be tested", to most people it means "teaching in a way that will maximise test results as opposed to actual skills and knowledge". For example, you can spend the last month before the test by going through the tests from previous years. Teaching tricks based on the specific format of the tests. Focus very much on the exact things that will be tested and drilling in algorithms to solve those, as opposed to a much more useful broader knowledge which can be used in multiple cases. Things like that.
Generally those are not a good idea.
Also, i kind of wonder why you need to fire teachers all the time. In Germany, teachers are basically unfireable after ~3 years at work. cLutZ seems to very much focus on this "evil unions make teachers hard to fire, thus standardized tests are needed" Aspect of the situation. I don't think that should be the main focus.
if you can teach algorithms to solve your standardized test is to specific.
Going over old tests to practice feels normal to me, it lets you prepare for the way questions are formulated. Its very possible to know the right thing but give a wrong answer because of how the question and/or answer is formulated.
My point assumes a somewhat general test. If a test is standardized to a to specific level then it is indeed a bad test and should not be used in such a fashion.
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On August 14 2015 07:26 Simberto wrote:
"Teaching to the test" usually does not mean "teaching the broad subjects that will be tested", to most people it means "teaching in a way that will maximise test results as opposed to actual skills and knowledge". For example, you can spend the last month before the test by going through the tests from previous years. Teaching tricks based on the specific format of the tests. Focus very much on the exact things that will be tested and drilling in algorithms to solve those, as opposed to a much more useful broader knowledge which can be used in multiple cases. Things like that.
Generally those are not a good idea.
Also, i kind of wonder why you need to fire teachers all the time. In Germany, teachers are basically unfireable after ~3 years at work. cLutZ seems to very much focus on this "evil unions make teachers hard to fire, thus standardized tests are needed" Aspect of the situation. I don't think that should be the main focus.
We dont need to be able to fire teachers all the time, we need to purge they system of its current sclerosis caused by people who were hired more than 3 years ago and let their performance drop, or were not properly evaluated in the first place.
Its not like there needs to be a purge every year. Its that there has been such a lack of pruning that there needs to be a purge upfront supported by consistent trimming. The point is that the standardized tests are an attempt to solve this problem. Maybe it is bloodletting and not penicillin, but we dont know what actually would because reform efforts (that don't just funnel more money into the system without accountability) are opposed at every turn.
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On August 14 2015 06:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think peer review is the by far 'least flawed' method, perhaps with recurring negative student feedback as a trigger? I mean, standardized testing can also showcase something about teacher performance, it's just that it's too random and comes with too great of an extra cost to have teacher's salary / bonuses be determined by those results.
I really think the main thing is just being stringent during teacher's education and requiring teachers to actually have a degree if they want to teach.. During my year of pedagogics studies, several students were weeded out, mostly during the internship periods, because they displayed behavior that clearly made them unfit for the job. (And, in every single case- no exceptions- had these students given me the impression that they would be unfit for the job prior to them being weeded out. Likewise, none of the people I thought looked like they would become great teachers had any problem getting approved. ) To be approved as a teacher, we all needed to complete 15 weeks of mostly supervised teaching - that's quite a lot of time to determine whether you have the necessary qualities. Then I guess there can be issues with tenure and stuff like that, which I'm honestly not too familiar with, that allow teachers to relax too much once they are established, but this is not solved by firing the 5-10% with worst year to year results on standardized tests.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is the optimal answer. Rather than wasting time trying to fix the problem on the back end with metrics, testing, salary etc., just make sure teachers can teach before they get into it. Keep doing evaluations to keep people honest.
Problem with that in the USA is no one would go into teaching anymore because of the low pay plus added requirements. Starting pay for a teacher in NC is just under 31k/yr. Few people would undergo a rigorous amount of training for such a pittance. Not sure if raising standards for teachers while raising teacher pay is feasible in the current political climate.
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I'd say we need to focus more on critical thinking and ability to communicate (write) effectively as minimal standards and then add incentives for schools/ teachers who have student populations that perform well on a objective-type deal for the usual math, science, english, etc. segments. The latter part could be an online thing where students get completely random questions from a testbank (like the MCAT) whereas the former could be a more standard format.
Also peer review in uni doesn't seem like a good way to do it--- it's mostly around research production/quality rather than teaching ability.
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On August 14 2015 07:36 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2015 07:26 Simberto wrote:
"Teaching to the test" usually does not mean "teaching the broad subjects that will be tested", to most people it means "teaching in a way that will maximise test results as opposed to actual skills and knowledge". For example, you can spend the last month before the test by going through the tests from previous years. Teaching tricks based on the specific format of the tests. Focus very much on the exact things that will be tested and drilling in algorithms to solve those, as opposed to a much more useful broader knowledge which can be used in multiple cases. Things like that.
Generally those are not a good idea.
Also, i kind of wonder why you need to fire teachers all the time. In Germany, teachers are basically unfireable after ~3 years at work. cLutZ seems to very much focus on this "evil unions make teachers hard to fire, thus standardized tests are needed" Aspect of the situation. I don't think that should be the main focus.
if you can teach algorithms to solve your standardized test is to specific. Going over old tests to practice feels normal to me, it lets you prepare for the way questions are formulated. Its very possible to know the right thing but give a wrong answer because of how the question and/or answer is formulated.
Going over old tests is of course a smart thing for a student to do who wishes to maximize his test score. It is also utterly wasted time regarding learning anything that is not passing that test. The test should not be the goal, knowledge should be the goal, at least for the teacher.
And i am going at this from a maths perspective, as i am currently studying to become a maths teachers. There are a lot of things that you can teach in two ways. Either in a way that involves teaching them an algorithm that they need to memorize, which will be very effective at solving exactly that problem, and which the students will instantly forget after the test and never be able to use in any future problems that might involve similar concepts. Or you can teach them in a way that prioritizes understanding the underpinnings of the situation, which is usually less effective in the immediate future, but which they will remember lateron, be available for different situations, and upon which you can build future similar concepts.
Obviously the second one is superior, but the first one will get them better immediate test scores.
My point assumes a somewhat general test. If a test is standardized to a to specific level then it is indeed a bad test and should not be used in such a fashion.
Standardized tests also require some sort of standardized evaluation, so that the result is not dependent on the person who interprets the results, which usually means that they are pretty formulaic.
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My education senses were tingling.
Before you try to set up a good method to evaluate primary and secondary school teachers, you (as an administrator) have to ask yourself:
What makes a *good* teacher?
A. Is it experience?
B. Is it energy and enthusiasm?
C. Is it the ability to engage students in their subject, to make kids want to learn?
D. Is it the teacher who teaches the highest classes? The lowest classes? The worst-behaved classes?
E. Is it the teacher who teaches to the curriculum? Who teaches to the test?
F. Is it the teacher who builds relationships with students?
G. Is it the teacher who can adapt his pedagogy to fit in new information?
H. Is it the teacher who spends extra hours a week perfecting his lessons?
I. Is it the teacher who teaches his students respect and responsibility?
J. Is it the teacher who has the most students learn the most curriculum material? The most standardized test material?
K. Is it the teacher who teaches kids to be creative thinkers and problem solvers?
Where is choice L: All of the above? Possibly any combination of the above?
Then it's a matter of trying to discover how you can best recognize these talents in your faculty. It's too bad that many of these choices are subjective and will never show up on a report card or standardized test score, or even any observer's evaluations. Student evaluations can be biased (especially if they receive "easy As") but can also be particularly telling, especially regarding the times that teachers have gone that extra mile to help a student.
Teaching isn't really the same as selling a product, where it's easy to compare students' final grades, in the same way salespeople could compare how much of a product they've each sold. Teaching is far more nuanced than that. One can't just compare Teacher A, whose students get better grades, to Teacher B, whose students tend to get lower grades, and say that Teacher A is a better teacher than B. There are way too many variables (the ability level of the students, personal student issues that teachers can't control, the difficulty and depth of the curricula, etc.) that make every class and every student unique. Even standardized testing- an attempt at having a uniform metric that all students (and, by proxy, all teachers) can be graded on- just shows how good teachers are at preparing their students for the tests ("teaching to the test"), and very few teachers say that standardized test grades are the be-all and end-all of what makes them successful at their jobs.
If you want teachers to be successful at their jobs, then let them fucking teach. Instead of making them jump through ridiculous hoops (like spending a month on standardized test preparation) and waste class time preparing for a bullshit lesson plan that fills an irrelevant checklist and fools an "observer" who has no teaching experience, let them teach their classes. Let them do their job. And let them work with other teachers, who understand the course material and understand instruction in general, so that peer evaluation can actually be accurate and constructive.
The biggest issue is that American culture generally distrusts teachers. Parents think they know how to do a teacher's job because they've been students before, which is akin to people thinking they're as knowledgeable as doctors because they've gotten sick in the past. We need to have administrations, teachers, and parents all on the same page and working together to make sure the children are growing up to be successful and mature students and adults. What we frequently see are administrations who are afraid to defend their teachers over some angry parents whose kids aren't taking the class seriously, because god forbid someone's feelings get hurt.
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On August 14 2015 07:58 ticklishmusic wrote:
I'd say we need to focus more on critical thinking and ability to communicate (write) effectively as minimal standards and then add incentives for schools/ teachers who have student populations that perform well on a objective-type deal for the usual math, science, english, etc. segments. The latter part could be an online thing where students get completely random questions from a testbank (like the MCAT) whereas the former could be a more standard format.
Also peer review in uni doesn't seem like a good way to do it--- it's mostly around research production/quality rather than teaching ability.
I teach college part-time (I don't do research), and over the past 3 years of teaching, I was informally observed exactly once (the first semester), haven't been evaluated since, and the administration is happy as long as my students learn the material* and like me**. It's very simple at the college level, especially since the students are adults.
*By "learn the material", I mean "appear prepared for later classes if my course is a prerequisite, or otherwise just make sure they don't all fail". And I don't think I could hypothetically make my course insanely easy or trivial, because someone, somewhere, would probably complain that they're not learning anything in the class... so I'm still responsible for holding my own course up to a high standard.
**NJIT gives pretty in depth course/ teacher evaluations, and the fact that students will actually take the time to write out paragraphs of positive feedback about me is more than good enough to get that message across.
But as far as research goes... that's where all the money is (and that's how you get paid well as a professor... in the long run, anyway), since the grants and proposals and publications are what helps fund projects at the university. I'd much rather tie my success to the teaching aspect than the research aspect, but that's only because I love teaching far more than researching.
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On August 14 2015 07:36 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2015 07:26 Simberto wrote:
"Teaching to the test" usually does not mean "teaching the broad subjects that will be tested", to most people it means "teaching in a way that will maximise test results as opposed to actual skills and knowledge". For example, you can spend the last month before the test by going through the tests from previous years. Teaching tricks based on the specific format of the tests. Focus very much on the exact things that will be tested and drilling in algorithms to solve those, as opposed to a much more useful broader knowledge which can be used in multiple cases. Things like that.
Generally those are not a good idea.
Also, i kind of wonder why you need to fire teachers all the time. In Germany, teachers are basically unfireable after ~3 years at work. cLutZ seems to very much focus on this "evil unions make teachers hard to fire, thus standardized tests are needed" Aspect of the situation. I don't think that should be the main focus.
if you can teach algorithms to solve your standardized test is to specific. Going over old tests to practice feels normal to me, it lets you prepare for the way questions are formulated. Its very possible to know the right thing but give a wrong answer because of how the question and/or answer is formulated. My point assumes a somewhat general test. If a test is standardized to a to specific level then it is indeed a bad test and should not be used in such a fashion.
In theory, standardized tests could be made into "good tests" as long as the following occur:
1. They are not "high-stakes tests". In other words, schools don't have to worry about funding, students don't have to worry about their future/ college decisions, and teachers don't have to worry about their jobs just because students may do poorly.
2. They are used as professional development and feedback, to inform the strengths and weaknesses of current instruction and help teachers become even better educators.
3. The formats need to be changed to allow for partial credit/ showing work. A good example of this is the fact that many standardized math tests (SAT, ACT, etc.) are multiple choice. So if you get the wrong answer because you made a small sign error, but I got the same wrong answer because I had no clue and randomly guessed, you and I both got the answer wrong, but for very different reasons. You may have had 9 out of the 10 steps right, and I may have had 0, yet we both score the same for that question. Unfortunately, this tells us nothing about how well we each knew the problem on a spectrum; only that you didn't know it absolutely perfectly. This type of feedback isn't helpful for teachers; they need to know where the students went wrong.
Multiple choice/ Scantron tests are easy and cheap to mass produce and grade though, which is why it's done that way (certainly not for academic reasons). Most advanced placement (AP) tests have larger writing sections with grading rubrics and partial credit (even Calculus and Statistics), so at least on a smaller scale, some standardized tests are being fixed.
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On August 14 2015 08:21 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2015 07:36 Gorsameth wrote:On August 14 2015 07:26 Simberto wrote:
"Teaching to the test" usually does not mean "teaching the broad subjects that will be tested", to most people it means "teaching in a way that will maximise test results as opposed to actual skills and knowledge". For example, you can spend the last month before the test by going through the tests from previous years. Teaching tricks based on the specific format of the tests. Focus very much on the exact things that will be tested and drilling in algorithms to solve those, as opposed to a much more useful broader knowledge which can be used in multiple cases. Things like that.
Generally those are not a good idea.
Also, i kind of wonder why you need to fire teachers all the time. In Germany, teachers are basically unfireable after ~3 years at work. cLutZ seems to very much focus on this "evil unions make teachers hard to fire, thus standardized tests are needed" Aspect of the situation. I don't think that should be the main focus.
if you can teach algorithms to solve your standardized test is to specific. Going over old tests to practice feels normal to me, it lets you prepare for the way questions are formulated. Its very possible to know the right thing but give a wrong answer because of how the question and/or answer is formulated. Going over old tests is of course a smart thing for a student to do who wishes to maximize his test score. It is also utterly wasted time regarding learning anything that is not passing that test. The test should not be the goal, knowledge should be the goal, at least for the teacher. And i am going at this from a maths perspective, as i am currently studying to become a maths teachers. There are a lot of things that you can teach in two ways. Either in a way that involves teaching them an algorithm that they need to memorize, which will be very effective at solving exactly that problem, and which the students will instantly forget after the test and never be able to use in any future problems that might involve similar concepts. Or you can teach them in a way that prioritizes understanding the underpinnings of the situation, which is usually less effective in the immediate future, but which they will remember lateron, be available for different situations, and upon which you can build future similar concepts. Obviously the second one is superior, but the first one will get them better immediate test scores.
Agreed; I try my best to teach them all the different strategies and then allow them to use whatever works for them (as long as it's mathematically valid). What grades/ levels of math are you looking forward to teaching? I'm teaching high school and university
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EPT
