Waiting for Superman / Public Education - Page 2

On July 18 2011 07:11 micronesia wrote:
I don't see evidence that the way in which charter schools protect 'bad' teachers less makes for a better school system when everything is taken into account. Changing how 'bad' teachers are dealt with also results in many other changes in the system (think about what I wrote about my personal experience, above).

They didn't overcome the social/economic environment. They overcame the hurdle that "we have to educate everyone" by educating some (in some cases they did a really good job of this though, although a lot of similar things could be implemented in public schools also). If public schools could only educate some of the kids in a city then they could seem to perform better also... not to mention the dropout thing I mentioned earlier.

I recommend you read the blueberry ice cream story if you haven't.

If you are not coming at this from an angle of "look how charters schools can do good that public schools can't or won't" then we can start to discuss what the actual causes of these "problems" are and how we can try to fix them. Be warned there is a ton of propaganda about charter schools because of all the special interest groups who want education privatized regardless of the capabilities of public schools because they stand to make a lot of money. Remember that next time someone is commenting how the teacher's unions blow everyone else away with campaign contributions and political activism. It seems like educators, usually painted as the bad guys now adays, are the only significant group that stands in the way of corporate interests taking over education. For every rich guy who wants to use his money to help education in America rather than make more money for himself, there are at least ten who think the opposite way.

Even Roger Ebert was completely fooled into thinking the movie proved that charter schools demosntrated to be good for every child in a poor neighborhood. In addition to the dropout rates I mentioned earlier, let me point out a fair piece of criticism about this:

As you agreed, fair comparisons are necessary. When you are secretly pouring tons of <uncharacteristic> extra money into the alternative school, and it supposedly outperforms the local public school, it is unexpectedly easy to convince everyone that you have a winning model for success.

Whenever my girlfriend is over I play starcraft 2 2v2 paired up with a member of TLAF-Liquid`. Of course we always crush the opposition and I have her totally convinced I'm a top foreigner. I'm being incredibly honest with her, aren't I? :p

We can discuss those specific points you made justifying your claim that teachers shouldn't be celebrated as heroes, or at least not right now, but I just don't see why you are using a teacher's rally as evidence of this. There's nothing wrong with a union leader telling teachers motivational things. Let's discuss the actual details of what you said though:

You are saying "lack of accountability" still even though I've addressed this a few times. I'd rather you didn't have lots of things I explain that you say you "don't want to disagree with right now" and then bring them up to justify your other claims.

Regarding 'disincentivizing' bad teachers, the unions are not against this. They are against some of the proposed methods of doing it. For example, eliminating tenure would not be a fair solution to this problem since it would have so many other effects, which I've discussed already somewhat.

On July 18 2011 09:19 enzym wrote:

What do you attribute the bad results of the public school system to then, the fact that bad teachers (a good study on their actual number is much needed...) were caught doing nothing, the anecdote of one of the participants of the video claiming that her economics teacher said that he's got no need to teach his pupils as he gets paid anyways, and the fact that even problem teachers in the rubber room remain on the payroll?
Is that not evidence enough that bad teachers exist in too great a number and are being protected too strongly, despite how hard it is to acquire tenure, in addition to being a huge money sink?

This sounds to be much influenced by you being a pro union teacher tbh, almost spiteful of charter schools because they threaten public schools and your position by being competition.

I don't mean to imply that this is your mindset, but it looks dangerously close.

I would counter that charter schools don't pick their students by performance, at least not according to the video. They're using lottery, because that's how badly people want to flee from the troubles of public education.

You make it sound like it's their fault and they're only successful because they're cherry picking the best students.

But if the students go there on their own accord because that is where competition leads them, to the better service provider, then I can't understand your criticism.

Should that not be more incentive for public schools to improve their teaching and their image, rather than to go against charter schools & reform?

I just read the blueberry story and all I can say is that the woman's analogy is completely irrelevant, if students go to charter schools on their own accord and are not cherry picked by these schools in order to boost their results.

Furthermore, taking in all students shouldn't be an excuse for poor performance. Ever.

Regarding problem kids, teachers are pedagogues and not simply lecturers for a reason.

Regarding language problems, the video outlined the importance of a complete, flawless system starting at an early age. Language is of course a problem that is not unique to the US and it is not the teachers' fault, especially when some minorities lack the aspiration to integrate and learn the national language…
But the comparison to ice cream seems like a cheap shot to me, almost personal and I'm not buying it yet.

I'm against the privatization of education, because instead of solving the problem, it makes it worse in several ways, including leaving it unaddressed, leaving less fortunate pupils behind, "stealing" good teachers from public schools etc.

Well, not entirely though, because while unions might not have as much financial influence, they do have an easier time to get people on their side because of course everyone wants to protect education. So any kind of lay-off of teachers can easily cause a lot of people to form a rather emotional mob, applying political pressure.

I know these herds. I've seen them plenty of times, in Germany rallying against nuclear power, GM food, in favour of keeping coal jobs, and in this video.
Mob rule works differently from corruption by financial spending, but can be just as destructive.

I don't understand this criticism, unless all this money is spent on nothing but propaganda or advertising.
You can't possibly be criticizing people for spending lots of money on education.
Of course money will buy advantages, such as smaller classes/number of pupils per teacher.
But instead of saying "they just threw money at it and didn't actually solve the problem" we should be begging to have the administration spend that same kind of money on public schools.

Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?
— Robert G. Ingersoll, "Some Mistakes of Moses" (1879) Section II, "Free Schools"

Of course there's something wrong with it! There's everything wrong with it. It's not only denying the problem of bad teachers, but praising them for their (non existent) efforts and ruining the future prospects of their pupils, by failing to differentiate. It encourages a "a teacher can never be bad" attitude that runs counter to reform.

Yes, and I'm sorry to say this, but you've thus far failed to convince me.

The examples provided in the video, unless they were fabricated, were too compelling.

The fact of the matter is, imo, that the tenure system that is currently in place cannot be allowed to go on.

You mentioned fresh teachers not being protected by it and being rather vulnerable, and I don't disagree with that. Especially new teachers should be protected more, if anything, because they have an easier time to still learn the job than teachers who're doing it wrong for decades already.

You also mentioned political pressure on teachers, and again I agree completely. Mechanisms must be introduced to better protect them and get strong ideology like that out of schools.

But tenure as it is currently is not the way to achieve that. It's not high resolution enough.

I don't know how a fool proof, better system has to look like. I believe Bill Gates has ventured into investigating this to an extent.
Establishing national standards by which to measure and compare the performance of students seems like a good thing, but already teachers are so corrupt

that cheating is rampant

because they have to fear for their job and the institutions likewise for financial support.

I don't see how you can claim that bad teachers are the exception when things like that exist.

Maybe it would be possible to incorporate feedback from the parents or the students somehow. I really don't know. But tenure has to change, despite of you claiming that teachers with tenure can be fired easily enough, because if that were true, then how do you explain the poor performance of public schools

and the numerous examples of bad teachers provided by the video?

It would seem that we disagree on the usefulness of tenure.

I think I have group dynamics on my side

and that is exactly what I see when I look at those unions. I think teacher unions are too lenient.

You think that teachers can't be protected well enough, consistent with your employment as a teacher.

The only thing I know is that the system can't be allowed to go on like it is, even if that means going back to trial and error and if it turns out that tenure as it is today is inevitable. But for progress to be made things have to change.

On July 18 2011 16:29 stormtemplar wrote:
With regard to finland, part of the reason that finland is better than here in the USA (I've heard this from a native) is that because it's both harder to become a teacher and teaching is a more prestigious occupation, more people who actually have skill in the field they teach and love teaching it to others go into teaching.

On July 18 2011 10:30 micronesia wrote:

You are using an anecdote of what one teacher said as evidence of the problem with american education? I don't see that as reasonable. Regarding rubber rooms, that's one of the things that needs to be fixed (as I've said we can rework tenure regulations to streamline the process for firing teachers are are obviously in need of being fired, while still protecting people from being wrongfully fired. It's not easy but it needs to be done). How many rubber rooms are there in the USA? How much time do teachers spend in them? Do you think the movie had a motivation to exaggerate it at all?

On July 18 2011 17:02 micronesia wrote:

http://www.oaj.fi/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/OAJ_INTERNET/01FI/05TIEDOTTEET/03JULKAISUT/OPEKOULUTUSENG.PDF

I was just reading that to try to learn a bit about this topic. In some states the requirements to become a teacher are almost comparable to the ones in Finland. In NY State for example (my state), you need to get a masters degree in your subject area or in teaching within your first 5 years (you can get it before you start teaching but you don't have to). In some states they aren't as strict.

I'm sure teachers are more highly regarded overall in Finland though. Keep in mind that more advanced knowledge in the field doesn't necessary translate to good teaching of high school students...

On July 18 2011 07:11 micronesia wrote:


I still don't agree with this. I want to see evidence that the teachers who perform well during the first part of their career (which has extreme accountability) perform much worse after they receive tenure (it happens very rarely). Again, I'm not saying there shouldn't be accountability for teachers after they receive tenure... I'm saying an extreme an uneducated shift in how accountability is managed and increased (keep in mind accountability isn't a just a number you can read off a scale of 100, there are many different dimensions to it) for tenured teachers is going to be far more harmful than any system we have in place right now.

Just to give you another personal example to try to show why this is (one of the few things I can bring to a discussion about this that most people on this website really can't), most of my students get a reasonably good grade in my class. Not all of them do well on the state final (many do which I'm proud of of course) but pretty much all of them pass the class. Why? Mostly it's because of things like successfully motivating students, delivering good lessons, designing good curricula, them being interested, them and their parents having high expectations, etc. However, an element of it is that I don't want my students to get low grades because then their parents will complain (even if it's not my fault at all) and, as an untenured teacher, if I get enough complaints directed at me, even if they are all unfounded, I very well might get fired (it's not a remote chance, it's a strong one). You might think "yea but most people are reasonable and you are just illustrating an extreme example" but I'm really not. Most untenured teachers are easier graders than most tenured teachers (usually this is a bad thing from an educational perspective, even though some tenured teachers are also too strict of graders and I don't agree with their pedagogy either) because they will very likely get fired if their students don't do well in a class. Again, there are always things you can do to try to help all your students to perform at a high level, but when that isn't enough (it rarely is, for getting every student to do well) an untenured teacher will grade more easily whereas a tenured teacher will grade appropriate for the performance of the student. You have a board of education member's daughter in your class (I had two at the same time once lol)? Oh god those children better do well, even if all they do in class is call your mother a whore and throw desks out the window (mine didn't quite do that at least, but many of them do have horrible attitudes because of the preferential treatment they get in school). Basically, the day you get tenure is the day you can grade fairly and appropriately. I am really looking forward to being able to plan lessons, assessments, activities, etc, and not have to second guess myself at every turn about how I shouldn't do something, not because it won't be a good learning experience for my students, but because as an untenured teacher I might get fired for political reasons. Being able to grade fairly and appropriately, without tons of outside interests strongly influencing grades (or other things, but I'm just using grades as the obvious example) is an important tool in creating a sound educational system (at least in a transitional stage... I'm not talking about the ultimate scholarly environment). If you were to propose just eliminating tenure and keeping everything else the same, those bottom 1% or 5% would in many or most cases be dealt with (not all actually), but you would be greatly reducing the capability of the other 99% or 95% to do what is actually written in their job description. When I started teaching and found out how political it all is (way more than I originally expected) I almost left the field. If it weren't for the current mechanics for tenure I would have been gone... and that would have been a big loss for my future students in my opinion (Just to be clear I don't consider myself an expert/veteran teacher; so I'm not trying to make myself out to be some kind of teacher of the year).

I'd be glad to discuss ways to improve how accountability should work for tenured teachers, if you wanted. Let me also point out that districts can usually make your life hell if you go too far off the deep end with not doing your job, and that actually deters a lot of teachers from making poor decisions.

I don't see evidence that the way in which charter schools protect 'bad' teachers less makes for a better school system when everything is taken into account. Changing how 'bad' teachers are dealt with also results in many other changes in the system (think about what I wrote about my personal experience, above).



They didn't overcome the social/economic environment. They overcame the hurdle that "we have to educate everyone" by educating some (in some cases they did a really good job of this though, although a lot of similar things could be implemented in public schools also). If public schools could only educate some of the kids in a city then they could seem to perform better also... not to mention the dropout thing I mentioned earlier.

I recommend you read the blueberry ice cream story if you haven't.


If you are not coming at this from an angle of "look how charters schools can do good that public schools can't or won't" then we can start to discuss what the actual causes of these "problems" are and how we can try to fix them. Be warned there is a ton of propaganda about charter schools because of all the special interest groups who want education privatized regardless of the capabilities of public schools because they stand to make a lot of money. Remember that next time someone is commenting how the teacher's unions blow everyone else away with campaign contributions and political activism. It seems like educators, usually painted as the bad guys now adays, are the only significant group that stands in the way of corporate interests taking over education. For every rich guy who wants to use his money to help education in America rather than make more money for himself, there are at least ten who think the opposite way.



If the point was not to paint charter schools as the hero then they did a very terrible job of not convincing the general public... I just don't buy it.


Even Roger Ebert was completely fooled into thinking the movie proved that charter schools demosntrated to be good for every child in a poor neighborhood. In addition to the dropout rates I mentioned earlier, let me point out a fair piece of criticism about this:



As you agreed, fair comparisons are necessary. When you are secretly pouring tons of <uncharacteristic> extra money into the alternative school, and it supposedly outperforms the local public school, it is unexpectedly easy to convince everyone that you have a winning model for success.

Whenever my girlfriend is over I play starcraft 2 2v2 paired up with a member of TLAF-Liquid`. Of course we always crush the opposition and I have her totally convinced I'm a top foreigner. I'm being incredibly honest with her, aren't I? :p


We can discuss those specific points you made justifying your claim that teachers shouldn't be celebrated as heroes, or at least not right now, but I just don't see why you are using a teacher's rally as evidence of this. There's nothing wrong with a union leader telling teachers motivational things. Let's discuss the actual details of what you said though:

You are saying "lack of accountability" still even though I've addressed this a few times. I'd rather you didn't have lots of things I explain that you say you "don't want to disagree with right now" and then bring them up to justify your other claims.

Regarding 'disincentivizing' bad teachers, the unions are not against this. They are against some of the proposed methods of doing it. For example, eliminating tenure would not be a fair solution to this problem since it would have so many other effects, which I've discussed already somewhat.

When you say 'resistance to reform' you should specify exactly which reform they were resistant to and I'll explain exactly why they were resistant to it (they actually have a justification most of the time, albiet not always necessarily). Just generalizing teachers to hate reform is a great way to demonize them but doesn't solve any problems. Most of the reform that teachers try to resist are specifically found to be ineffective by virtually all educational researchers. It really is that extreme.

The goal of the union is usually to protect teachers who are "labeled" bad but aren't necessarily bad. Or, alternately to ensure that there is a level of due process in investigating and confirming that teachers are bad. I would be glad to discuss ways that we could try to change things to make it less likely a union will defend a teacher who is demonstrably deserving of being fired, but it's just not as simple as most people think. People always tell me "What about when a teacher does something sexual to a student? It's ridiculous that they aren't immediately fired." I agree, if there is conclusive proof that it happened then the teacher should be fired. But what often happens? Students lie about what a teacher did to them (of course there have been many people who HAVE done highly inappropriate things also) sometimes and it later gets discovered that the teacher didn't do anything wrong. Without tenure, those teachers would have just been fired. We need to streamline the process of dealing with BAD teachers, and this is not easy, nor did the movie actually justify the need to do this at all (recall my analysis about how to fire a tenured teacher according to Waiting for Superman).


As I said there is not an immovable object for reform. There isn't even a roadblock for reform that is contrary to all current and recent educational research, as much as teachers would like there to be one. There definitely is a lot of resistance for this backwards reform though.

As my parting words, let me ask you a very difficult question that most people can't answer, even if they think they can: How do you fairly and accurately determine which teachers are good and which are bad?

On July 20 2011 23:15 Hawk wrote:
You had said elsewhere in this thread that because of tenure and how hard it is to remove a teacher who has that, schools will fire any non-tenured teacher at the slightest hint of something they don't like. The lack of job security for non-tenured people is directly tied to the existence of tenure. Administrators are unreasonably harsh to non tenured teachers because they can't move them once they hit that mark.

If tenure was replaced with annual reviews and a non-convoluted, yet fair method of removing teachers without union interference, everyone wins because there's incentive for teachers to still try to do a good job after getting tenure instead of just padding their pensions, and teachers will still have a clear process for determining if they are retained. Most people don't have the drive you have for education after 10 or 15 years on the job with no chance of getting fired.

and let's be real here: politically motivated firings are simply rare

certainly not common enough to merit a system that protects bad teachers, invites complacency and stifles education. Most people will not have the son or daughter of a BOE member in their class, and even if they did, the kid's parent is not actually involved in the review process for teachers or determining if they are retained or not.

While political interference is obviously still possible, it's certainly not the grave threat it is made out to be by unions.

I also don't understand how you could defend tenure when it's most often the teachers who have had it for 15-20 years that are bad ones.

Shitty teachers don't get tenure because the district doesn't want to have to replace the teacher. It's teachers who are smart enough to just blend in for those first few years until they get it and then they can do whatever they want—not everyone genuinely cares about their students and education like you, but the system not only protects those who don't give a shit, it encourages them to by virtue of having no means of accountability for being a shitty teacher, having kids watch movies every day instead of doing real work, etc etc.

But while I believe tenure is definitely a big issue plaguing the schools, the real reason why public education in America is going down the shitters is that most parents are god fucking awful at staying involved in their children's lives. Tenure is an issue, as are pension and benefit plans that are ultimately going to bankrupt cites across the country, but education is failing because there is very much a culture in this country that believes being stupid is cool at a young age, and most parents don't care or aren't around to beat that out of their kids.

On July 21 2011 02:31 KaBoom300 wrote:
Having spent my whole life in the public education system (and having finished up this past June) I feel I am qualified to comment on this topic