Highlights from the Fray:
A teacher signing bonus, along with the elimination of useless teacher accreditation, would compliment each other in luring competent teachers from other fields; in fact the two ideas seem ideally complimentary. Yes, it's true that education accreditation is useless, but no it's not true that teacher salaries do not prevent talented individuals from choosing the teaching profession. Do people really want to become lawyers? Hell no! But that's where the money is.
--D.M.
(To reply, click here.)
To start, Weisberg is right, these are dumb proposals. Anyone who would make a career decision on the basis of a one-time payment of $10,000 is either (1) too stupid to teach, or (2) unlikely to have gone to college in the first place. And, yes, McCain's plan looks a lot like paving material for the road to hell.
That said, I think his identification of the problem--in Gore's case, anyway--is a bit simplistic. As a former member (briefly) of a teachers' union (they never gave me a card to carry, that I can recall) I don't have many good things to say about them, but I never had the sense that the union had as a goal keeping good people out of the profession with barriers to entry. Frankly, I'm not sure most of the union folks I knew were smart enough to act in these terms, let alone think in them. A much greater problem was keeping bad teachers in the profession.
But even if I'm being naive about that, if anyone is truly preserving education course requirements, it's in most cases the universities teaching those courses. In many states (New York and Ohio, to name two) it's the teachers colleges that determine what classes teachers have to take. This would be like insurance companies determining how much insurance drivers need to--wait, bad example, it basically works that way. Well, it would be like medical schools determining what courses doctors--maybe I should just move on.
(I'm also not sure education courses--at least, I'm not sure all education courses--are "a colossal waste of time," and I think Weisberg is too happily trotting out a cliche there. I was a lousy teacher, but the only thing that kept me from being criminally incompetent were the education courses I took. But that's a topic for another day.)
In any event, I think the biggest issues in attracting and keeping good teachers are working conditions and supporting new teachers after they arrive. In practically every other profession it's expected that newcomers will grow into their job and gradually gain responsibility. As a first-year teacher I had responsibilities, and support mechanisms, virtually identical to those of colleagues who had been on the job for twenty years. One can't (and perhaps ought not) get around early struggles in any career, but it's the very rare district that devotes any attention to helping its new teachers establish themselves.
I've gone on too long. Believe me, after being on the inside I don't think teachers are saints. But their unions don't deserve all the blame, either.
--Chris Hammett
(To reply, click here.)
No doubt teachers' unions' requirements for course work in "education" can be misused in the interest of cartelization, but why is Jacob Weisberg so sure education courses are a "colossal waste of time"? Could Weisberg walk into a 1st-grade classroom and know how to teach 25 six-year-olds to read just because he knows how to read? Doubtful. There's more to "education" as a discipline separate from the topics taught than Weisberg lets on.
--Richard Riley
(To reply, click here.)
(12/21)
I've owned and operated a small ad/publishing agency for the past eight years; worked in that field for 13 years prior to that; remember my parents paying the cover charge for my college graduation party; and even took a few master's-level courses on my own wallet.
Before graduation I actually thought about teaching as a profession--took on substitute teaching one semester. I figured out that there is no money to be made and knew I'd better find a better way to take care of myself.
So, I think the promise of a signing bonus and a decent salary is a good one. Maybe I would have been more tempted back then. My guess is most people would be more tempted--seems to have worked in the nursing profession!
In fact, now that I've made a few accomplishments of my own, what better way to pay off some of that debt that's accumulated in one lump sum? I mean $10,000 would help a lot. Heck, where do I sign up?
--KEM
(To reply, click here.)
It is my opinion (and my wife, a retired first-grade public-school teacher, agrees) that there is essentially no hope for today's public school system. And the postings that I have been reading in The Fray help make this point.
Consider this: My son and daughter-in-law must decide where to send my grandchild to school. They look at the one public school that would be their child's school. This school is teaching primarily how to make good grades on the one test that determines the teacher's fate and the school's fate. They are handing out condoms. The teachers are afraid to hug the kids and are afraid to say anything that may sound religious or like they are promoting Judeo-Christian values. The students are out of control and the teachers are afraid of repercussions if they try to regain control
Then they investigate private schools. They find Catholic private schools, Lutheran Schools, Baptist Schools, New Age Schools, schools for children with learning problems, schools for the gifted, immersion foreign-language schools, schools that stress the performing arts, schools that stress science, etc., etc. And if a child is out of control, he is not invited back. They know that if one school doesn't work out, they can just change schools. Which schools would you send your child to ?
The answer to the public school problem is that public schools must, if they are going to survive, resemble these private schools.
It is a shame, but before public schools realize the truths stated here, they will have to be largely replaced by private schools. And the results will be a further separation of the classes. Those with enough money to afford private schools will get first-rate education and, along with foreign, brain-drain immigrants, will get all the best jobs. And in turn, the people with the good jobs can afford to send their children to private schools. And the classes become separated more and more with each generation.
--Carl
(To reply, click here.)
As a Science Education major, I have a major problem with your idea of parents having the "primary say in what learning goals need to be reached." If I'm lucky, there will only be 30 kids in each class that I teach. Traditionally, each child has 2 parents. That's 60 people setting learning goals in my hypothetical classroom, of which I will have several. (Many high schools have 7-8 class periods in a day.) Some of these parents will want their kids to learn about something they saw on the Discovery Channel last week, whether or not it fits in my curriculum.
No. As the teacher, I will choose the goals for Chemistry I. Be assured, I have been well-educated myself about science, educating, critical thought, and basic skills.
--Heather
(To reply, click here.)
Heather,
A very wise h.s. principal once told me two things I would never forget, things that today's educators forget in dealing with parents:
1. No matter how scuzzy some parents may be---and there are some really bad ones---almost without exception they want better for their children than they have had.
2. That child, no matter how incorrigable or dim he or she may seem to you, is the best possible product that home is capable of producing at the current time.
It seems to me that our schools are more often at odds with parents than working with them, and all too often forget the primacy of the dual mission I outlined above.
--Jerry
(To reply, click here.)
Unlike (I assume) Weisberg, I'm actually rather glad that my son's teacher is certified. And unlike (I would have to assume) Weisberg, I am glad that my doctor is board-certified and that whoever's flying my airplane tomorrow morning is also certified. Is there some problem with professionals needing to demonstrate basic competence in their chosen field? One ought not generalize from punditry to other professions...
--A. Rudnicky
(To reply, click here.)
A. Rudnicky,
If the many semester/quarter hours of "methods" courses required for certification had anything to do with producing competent teachers, then they would make sense. However, having been there (taught for eight years before going into industry) I can tell you they don't, and it doesn't. For the most part these courses are vacuous tedium, having much less to do with giving teachers the skills they need to properly serve their students, and much more to do with perpetuating the power of the teacher unions and all too many faux college professors (too dim to tackle a real academic discipline) in comfortable sinecures.
--Jerry
(To reply, click here.)
You, Mr. Weisberg, would not want your child's school to have put me in charge of a classroom when I first entered the public schools of Florida as a 23-year-old Vista volunteer with an MA in history but no teacher training. (I was allowed to do so primarily because it was an all-African-American school in the still-segregated mid-1960s--and the situation isn't much different today in poor urban and rural schools where Teach For America students are assigned.) I had idealism and a belief that these kids could and should learn, but I didn't have the skills to pull it off effectively.
I decided to go back to school, this time to get teacher training, and I got a National Defense scholarship for tuition, room, and board to allow me to attend school full time for a year to learn about teaching and to serve as an unpaid student teacher--followed by a second, paid year where I received extra coaching to help me refine my neophyte skills. I got government "largesse" and I taught for the next three years in urban schools--much more effectively than in my first effort.
Gore and others who want to put financial resources to enable bright college grads to get the same professional training as I did should be applauded. Most states today have universities who provide effective, alternative training programs that cater to the kind of bright, idealistic and experienced-in-other-fields individuals that Gore, McCain and Weisberg want to see in the classrooms. They need not sit through the admittedly intellectually thin ed courses that unfortunately still exist in many places. But to assume that the only good alternative is no special training whatever is ludicrous.
--Richard Barnes
(To reply, click here.)
A better education idea is California Gov. Davis' plan to start some kind of performance review of the teachers. It will not go down well, because of the expense. One way to beat the expense would be to establish a sampling procedure so that truly random sampling could choose the schools and/or students to be tested on each test run.
--Bob Shimer
(To reply, click here.)
Bob Shimer,
I think your idea has some merit. I work for a large manufacturing company as a health and safety representative. Injuries on the job cost companies millions of dollars every year in employee benefits, workers compensation, and lost production. And in quality, because the person trained to do the job isn't there to do it.
So about nine years ago the union and the company got together and set up an audit procedure that covered all of the facilities. A self-audit document was developed and sent out to each of the facilities. They review it and answer all of the questions on the document. Then we randomly select and notify the facility when we are coming in for an audit. We tour the plant floor, we interview workers and supervisors, and we review the health and safety documents the facility sent to us with them.
The results have been nothing short of amazing. Not just because of the reaction to the audits but because of the sharing of best practices with the facilities that may have been struggling with a certain item. We stopped re-inventing the wheel. Are they perfect? No. But this year we had two facilities that scored perfect on their random audit. And one of them was a foundry.
Was it because of the audit? No. The audit gave them a goal. The peer pressure accomplished the goal. They worked together to make sure all the audited items were reviewed and that all safe practices were implemented.
So your idea has merit. Let's get a group of teachers, administrators, students and parents together. Let them develop an audit document and start randomly auditing the schools. And it can't be the schools where they teach, work, or live. It has to be a different set of eyes looking at what is going on.
--Ron, Sr.
(To reply, click here.)
Weisberg writes: "He needs to appeal to the idealism of those he wants to recruit by telling them that they can make more money elsewhere but that they can do more for society by becoming teachers." Thank you, Mr. Weisberg. Why not punctuate this tired bit of avoidiance with, "Have a nice day"?
Strange how the market economy works like a well-oiled machine in all sorts of professions--with the one exception of teaching. Pay a doctor six figures and she'll cleanly remove your gall bladder; pay a lawyer $200-to-$500 per hour and he'll save your--well, you fill in the blank. But step forward with the idea of paying teachers--who, after all, only educate the children of doctors and lawyers and Slate journalists and the rest--a salary that puts him or her somewhere in the foothills of the mountain range that is the salary, stock options, and perks of stock brokers, web developers, and dot.com garage bandidos, and what do you hear: Let them eat good deeds.
--gary daily
(To reply, click here.)
I have an idea. Pay the teachers a babysitter's salary. Say $3 per hour per child. You have 25 children in your room. That is $75 dollars per hour, 6.5 hours a day is $487.50, 185 days per year is $90,187.00. This seems reasonable. Not only is someone taking care of your children, but you are getting the added bonus of their being educated!
--R.M. Long
(To reply, click here.)
I'm a freelance education writer who spends an average 30 days each year observing in teachers' classrooms across the U.S. Let me assure you that there is a body of professional knowledge associated with effective teaching that is equally important--but no more important--than the subject-matter knowledge that's so often touted by commentators who sneer at "education courses." I invite them to take on an 8th-grade history class for a year and show their stuff. It's true that unions are protectionist and that many teacher-ed programs are of low quality. But there are also high-quality teacher training programs at universities in every state that are turning out well-prepared teachers who know their stuff and know how to teach it to children. When we put down the need for pedagogical training, we are in effect saying that teaching is not a profession and never can be. That's wrong.
--John Norton
(To reply, click here.)
If teachers' unions are so powerful, why aren't teachers' salaries at least competitive with other professions? Unions are for the most part ineffectual. They are just a convenient scapegoat for all of the special interests who would like to take over or do away with public education. And they're in a hurry, because the public will soon not be mostly white.
Since only about 25% of the American people have kids in school, the rest of us have no direct contact with teachers or the school. Our only view of them is our old memories or what we get from the media. We all know what a bashing goes on there. Please consider reviewing your opinion of teaching.
I will admit my prejudice. I am an elementary public school teacher with 33 years of experience. I have a CAGS in education (and am learning every day how to be a better teacher). I am 75 years old, and choose not to retire, because I love teaching and kids; and I believe passionately in public schools.
--Barbara Finn
(To reply, click here.)
I have a B.A. with honors in English and Speech, and took all the education courses for secondary certification--except student teaching. I also have a Ph.D in English, I have taught English and writing in college for more than 20 years, I am a published writer, and was a Fulbright scholar--but I can't teach in the public schools because I'm not certified.
The most that the board of ed will offer me is a "permanent temporary" position. I have looked into getting certified but was always told I would have to take all my education classes over again, and once was told I would have to take all my English and speech classes again. I support unions, and particularly the teachers' unions, but in this case the unions are preventing qualified and dedicated people from teaching. Education classes are not a waste of time, but at some point these requirements become impossible to meet. What mid-career person can take off two or three years to "qualify" for a teaching job? There are a few programs that help people bridge the gap (Chicago's "Teach for Chicago" program for example), but there should be more. The teacher's union has nothing to fear--we new teachers would be happy to join the union!
--Pat Stoll
(To reply, click here.)
As a teacher and a union vice president, I have to correct Weisberg on his attack upon teacher's unions. Credential requirements are set by state departments of education, not teachers' unions. One could argue that these "powerful unions" influence state decision-making, but the fact is they don't. For two years now, I have been a member of my local, the California Teachers Association, as well as the National Education Association, and never in the literature has even one of these groups suggested that we work together for more stringent credentialing. We have more important issues to deal with, such as how do we educate so many children--who need so much--with so few resources. Believe it or not, most teachers really are more interested in educating their students than they are in protecting their turf.
I'd like to add that getting a teaching credential isn't the nightmare that Weisberg makes it out to be, at least not in California. If you are able to attend classes full time, you can get your certificate in about a year, which includes a semester of student-teaching. Otherwise you can get an emergency credential, allowing you to teach while you complete your course work. Most education organizations (unions, districts, and credentialing institutions) will bend over backwards to help you get your credential, because teachers are in such demand.
And if Mr. Weisberg thinks these classes are useless, he ought to try teaching someday.
--Colleen Kennedy
(To reply, click here or here.)
(1/8)
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
The Scariest Thing Gen. McChrystal Told Congress About Afghanistan
Is It Irresponsible To Give Your Kids Cell Phones in the Age of Sexting?
The Obama Administration Finally Gets Serious About Transparency
So Are We Done Cleaning Up the Exxon Valdez Spill Yet?
What, Exactly, Do You Do at a Climate-Change Conference?
The World's Greatest Boxer Is Running for Office. Don't Vote for Him.
Highlights from the Fray:
A teacher signing bonus, along with the elimination of useless teacher accreditation, would compliment each other in luring competent teachers from other fields; in fact the two ideas seem ideally complimentary. Yes, it's true that education accreditation is useless, but no it's not true that teacher salaries do not prevent talented individuals from choosing the teaching profession. Do people really want to become lawyers? Hell no! But that's where the money is.
--D.M.
(To reply, click here.)
To start, Weisberg is right, these are dumb proposals. Anyone who would make a career decision on the basis of a one-time payment of $10,000 is either (1) too stupid to teach, or (2) unlikely to have gone to college in the first place. And, yes, McCain's plan looks a lot like paving material for the road to hell.
That said, I think his identification of the problem--in Gore's case, anyway--is a bit simplistic. As a former member (briefly) of a teachers' union (they never gave me a card to carry, that I can recall) I don't have many good things to say about them, but I never had the sense that the union had as a goal keeping good people out of the profession with barriers to entry. Frankly, I'm not sure most of the union folks I knew were smart enough to act in these terms, let alone think in them. A much greater problem was keeping bad teachers in the profession.
But even if I'm being naive about that, if anyone is truly preserving education course requirements, it's in most cases the universities teaching those courses. In many states (New York and Ohio, to name two) it's the teachers colleges that determine what classes teachers have to take. This would be like insurance companies determining how much insurance drivers need to--wait, bad example, it basically works that way. Well, it would be like medical schools determining what courses doctors--maybe I should just move on.
(I'm also not sure education courses--at least, I'm not sure all education courses--are "a colossal waste of time," and I think Weisberg is too happily trotting out a cliche there. I was a lousy teacher, but the only thing that kept me from being criminally incompetent were the education courses I took. But that's a topic for another day.)
In any event, I think the biggest issues in attracting and keeping good teachers are working conditions and supporting new teachers after they arrive. In practically every other profession it's expected that newcomers will grow into their job and gradually gain responsibility. As a first-year teacher I had responsibilities, and support mechanisms, virtually identical to those of colleagues who had been on the job for twenty years. One can't (and perhaps ought not) get around early struggles in any career, but it's the very rare district that devotes any attention to helping its new teachers establish themselves.
I've gone on too long. Believe me, after being on the inside I don't think teachers are saints. But their unions don't deserve all the blame, either.
--Chris Hammett
(To reply, click here.)
No doubt teachers' unions' requirements for course work in "education" can be misused in the interest of cartelization, but why is Jacob Weisberg so sure education courses are a "colossal waste of time"? Could Weisberg walk into a 1st-grade classroom and know how to teach 25 six-year-olds to read just because he knows how to read? Doubtful. There's more to "education" as a discipline separate from the topics taught than Weisberg lets on.
--Richard Riley
(To reply, click here.)
(12/21)
I've owned and operated a small ad/publishing agency for the past eight years; worked in that field for 13 years prior to that; remember my parents paying the cover charge for my college graduation party; and even took a few master's-level courses on my own wallet.
Before graduation I actually thought about teaching as a profession--took on substitute teaching one semester. I figured out that there is no money to be made and knew I'd better find a better way to take care of myself.
So, I think the promise of a signing bonus and a decent salary is a good one. Maybe I would have been more tempted back then. My guess is most people would be more tempted--seems to have worked in the nursing profession!
In fact, now that I've made a few accomplishments of my own, what better way to pay off some of that debt that's accumulated in one lump sum? I mean $10,000 would help a lot. Heck, where do I sign up?
--KEM
(To reply, click here.)
It is my opinion (and my wife, a retired first-grade public-school teacher, agrees) that there is essentially no hope for today's public school system. And the postings that I have been reading in The Fray help make this point.
Consider this: My son and daughter-in-law must decide where to send my grandchild to school. They look at the one public school that would be their child's school. This school is teaching primarily how to make good grades on the one test that determines the teacher's fate and the school's fate. They are handing out condoms. The teachers are afraid to hug the kids and are afraid to say anything that may sound religious or like they are promoting Judeo-Christian values. The students are out of control and the teachers are afraid of repercussions if they try to regain control
Then they investigate private schools. They find Catholic private schools, Lutheran Schools, Baptist Schools, New Age Schools, schools for children with learning problems, schools for the gifted, immersion foreign-language schools, schools that stress the performing arts, schools that stress science, etc., etc. And if a child is out of control, he is not invited back. They know that if one school doesn't work out, they can just change schools. Which schools would you send your child to ?
The answer to the public school problem is that public schools must, if they are going to survive, resemble these private schools.
It is a shame, but before public schools realize the truths stated here, they will have to be largely replaced by private schools. And the results will be a further separation of the classes. Those with enough money to afford private schools will get first-rate education and, along with foreign, brain-drain immigrants, will get all the best jobs. And in turn, the people with the good jobs can afford to send their children to private schools. And the classes become separated more and more with each generation.
--Carl
(To reply, click here.)
As a Science Education major, I have a major problem with your idea of parents having the "primary say in what learning goals need to be reached." If I'm lucky, there will only be 30 kids in each class that I teach. Traditionally, each child has 2 parents. That's 60 people setting learning goals in my hypothetical classroom, of which I will have several. (Many high schools have 7-8 class periods in a day.) Some of these parents will want their kids to learn about something they saw on the Discovery Channel last week, whether or not it fits in my curriculum.
No. As the teacher, I will choose the goals for Chemistry I. Be assured, I have been well-educated myself about science, educating, critical thought, and basic skills.
--Heather
(To reply, click here.)
Heather,
A very wise h.s. principal once told me two things I would never forget, things that today's educators forget in dealing with parents:
1. No matter how scuzzy some parents may be---and there are some really bad ones---almost without exception they want better for their children than they have had.
2. That child, no matter how incorrigable or dim he or she may seem to you, is the best possible product that home is capable of producing at the current time.
It seems to me that our schools are more often at odds with parents than working with them, and all too often forget the primacy of the dual mission I outlined above.
--Jerry
(To reply, click here.)
Unlike (I assume) Weisberg, I'm actually rather glad that my son's teacher is certified. And unlike (I would have to assume) Weisberg, I am glad that my doctor is board-certified and that whoever's flying my airplane tomorrow morning is also certified. Is there some problem with professionals needing to demonstrate basic competence in their chosen field? One ought not generalize from punditry to other professions...
--A. Rudnicky
(To reply, click here.)
A. Rudnicky,
If the many semester/quarter hours of "methods" courses required for certification had anything to do with producing competent teachers, then they would make sense. However, having been there (taught for eight years before going into industry) I can tell you they don't, and it doesn't. For the most part these courses are vacuous tedium, having much less to do with giving teachers the skills they need to properly serve their students, and much more to do with perpetuating the power of the teacher unions and all too many faux college professors (too dim to tackle a real academic discipline) in comfortable sinecures.
--Jerry
(To reply, click here.)
You, Mr. Weisberg, would not want your child's school to have put me in charge of a classroom when I first entered the public schools of Florida as a 23-year-old Vista volunteer with an MA in history but no teacher training. (I was allowed to do so primarily because it was an all-African-American school in the still-segregated mid-1960s--and the situation isn't much different today in poor urban and rural schools where Teach For America students are assigned.) I had idealism and a belief that these kids could and should learn, but I didn't have the skills to pull it off effectively.
I decided to go back to school, this time to get teacher training, and I got a National Defense scholarship for tuition, room, and board to allow me to attend school full time for a year to learn about teaching and to serve as an unpaid student teacher--followed by a second, paid year where I received extra coaching to help me refine my neophyte skills. I got government "largesse" and I taught for the next three years in urban schools--much more effectively than in my first effort.
Gore and others who want to put financial resources to enable bright college grads to get the same professional training as I did should be applauded. Most states today have universities who provide effective, alternative training programs that cater to the kind of bright, idealistic and experienced-in-other-fields individuals that Gore, McCain and Weisberg want to see in the classrooms. They need not sit through the admittedly intellectually thin ed courses that unfortunately still exist in many places. But to assume that the only good alternative is no special training whatever is ludicrous.
--Richard Barnes
(To reply, click here.)
A better education idea is California Gov. Davis' plan to start some kind of performance review of the teachers. It will not go down well, because of the expense. One way to beat the expense would be to establish a sampling procedure so that truly random sampling could choose the schools and/or students to be tested on each test run.
--Bob Shimer
(To reply, click here.)
Bob Shimer,
I think your idea has some merit. I work for a large manufacturing company as a health and safety representative. Injuries on the job cost companies millions of dollars every year in employee benefits, workers compensation, and lost production. And in quality, because the person trained to do the job isn't there to do it.
So about nine years ago the union and the company got together and set up an audit procedure that covered all of the facilities. A self-audit document was developed and sent out to each of the facilities. They review it and answer all of the questions on the document. Then we randomly select and notify the facility when we are coming in for an audit. We tour the plant floor, we interview workers and supervisors, and we review the health and safety documents the facility sent to us with them.
The results have been nothing short of amazing. Not just because of the reaction to the audits but because of the sharing of best practices with the facilities that may have been struggling with a certain item. We stopped re-inventing the wheel. Are they perfect? No. But this year we had two facilities that scored perfect on their random audit. And one of them was a foundry.
Was it because of the audit? No. The audit gave them a goal. The peer pressure accomplished the goal. They worked together to make sure all the audited items were reviewed and that all safe practices were implemented.
So your idea has merit. Let's get a group of teachers, administrators, students and parents together. Let them develop an audit document and start randomly auditing the schools. And it can't be the schools where they teach, work, or live. It has to be a different set of eyes looking at what is going on.
--Ron, Sr.
(To reply, click here.)
Weisberg writes: "He needs to appeal to the idealism of those he wants to recruit by telling them that they can make more money elsewhere but that they can do more for society by becoming teachers." Thank you, Mr. Weisberg. Why not punctuate this tired bit of avoidiance with, "Have a nice day"?
Strange how the market economy works like a well-oiled machine in all sorts of professions--with the one exception of teaching. Pay a doctor six figures and she'll cleanly remove your gall bladder; pay a lawyer $200-to-$500 per hour and he'll save your--well, you fill in the blank. But step forward with the idea of paying teachers--who, after all, only educate the children of doctors and lawyers and Slate journalists and the rest--a salary that puts him or her somewhere in the foothills of the mountain range that is the salary, stock options, and perks of stock brokers, web developers, and dot.com garage bandidos, and what do you hear: Let them eat good deeds.
--gary daily
(To reply, click here.)
I have an idea. Pay the teachers a babysitter's salary. Say $3 per hour per child. You have 25 children in your room. That is $75 dollars per hour, 6.5 hours a day is $487.50, 185 days per year is $90,187.00. This seems reasonable. Not only is someone taking care of your children, but you are getting the added bonus of their being educated!
--R.M. Long
(To reply, click here.)
I'm a freelance education writer who spends an average 30 days each year observing in teachers' classrooms across the U.S. Let me assure you that there is a body of professional knowledge associated with effective teaching that is equally important--but no more important--than the subject-matter knowledge that's so often touted by commentators who sneer at "education courses." I invite them to take on an 8th-grade history class for a year and show their stuff. It's true that unions are protectionist and that many teacher-ed programs are of low quality. But there are also high-quality teacher training programs at universities in every state that are turning out well-prepared teachers who know their stuff and know how to teach it to children. When we put down the need for pedagogical training, we are in effect saying that teaching is not a profession and never can be. That's wrong.
--John Norton
(To reply, click here.)
If teachers' unions are so powerful, why aren't teachers' salaries at least competitive with other professions? Unions are for the most part ineffectual. They are just a convenient scapegoat for all of the special interests who would like to take over or do away with public education. And they're in a hurry, because the public will soon not be mostly white.
Since only about 25% of the American people have kids in school, the rest of us have no direct contact with teachers or the school. Our only view of them is our old memories or what we get from the media. We all know what a bashing goes on there. Please consider reviewing your opinion of teaching.
I will admit my prejudice. I am an elementary public school teacher with 33 years of experience. I have a CAGS in education (and am learning every day how to be a better teacher). I am 75 years old, and choose not to retire, because I love teaching and kids; and I believe passionately in public schools.
--Barbara Finn
(To reply, click here.)
I have a B.A. with honors in English and Speech, and took all the education courses for secondary certification--except student teaching. I also have a Ph.D in English, I have taught English and writing in college for more than 20 years, I am a published writer, and was a Fulbright scholar--but I can't teach in the public schools because I'm not certified.
The most that the board of ed will offer me is a "permanent temporary" position. I have looked into getting certified but was always told I would have to take all my education classes over again, and once was told I would have to take all my English and speech classes again. I support unions, and particularly the teachers' unions, but in this case the unions are preventing qualified and dedicated people from teaching. Education classes are not a waste of time, but at some point these requirements become impossible to meet. What mid-career person can take off two or three years to "qualify" for a teaching job? There are a few programs that help people bridge the gap (Chicago's "Teach for Chicago" program for example), but there should be more. The teacher's union has nothing to fear--we new teachers would be happy to join the union!
--Pat Stoll
(To reply, click here.)
As a teacher and a union vice president, I have to correct Weisberg on his attack upon teacher's unions. Credential requirements are set by state departments of education, not teachers' unions. One could argue that these "powerful unions" influence state decision-making, but the fact is they don't. For two years now, I have been a member of my local, the California Teachers Association, as well as the National Education Association, and never in the literature has even one of these groups suggested that we work together for more stringent credentialing. We have more important issues to deal with, such as how do we educate so many children--who need so much--with so few resources. Believe it or not, most teachers really are more interested in educating their students than they are in protecting their turf.
I'd like to add that getting a teaching credential isn't the nightmare that Weisberg makes it out to be, at least not in California. If you are able to attend classes full time, you can get your certificate in about a year, which includes a semester of student-teaching. Otherwise you can get an emergency credential, allowing you to teach while you complete your course work. Most education organizations (unions, districts, and credentialing institutions) will bend over backwards to help you get your credential, because teachers are in such demand.
And if Mr. Weisberg thinks these classes are useless, he ought to try teaching someday.
--Colleen Kennedy
(To reply, click here or here.)
(1/8)