4 ms·

While completely true, it also glosses over the bigger problem. Not All Kids Can Learn The Same. Every single child is completely different, and has a differen

by count 16y ago

While completely true, it also glosses over the bigger problem. Not All Kids Can Learn The Same. Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. A child who can barely read in 3rd grade may be left behind his peers for ever, OR, he may suddenly 'get it' in 4th grade, and rapidly catch up. K-3, however, he's going to fail those standardized tests, and there isn't a damn thing his teacher can do about it. Holding every child to the same standard at the same age arbitrarily is ridiculous, and ignores the way kids actually grow and develop. It also has completely eliminated 'teaching' for all of those teachers who WERE awesome teachers, and who cared and poured their heart and soul into their lessons and kids. EVERYBODY is now essentially forced to teach to an arbitrary test, developed by academics (and lawmakers) who don't actually deal with children (anymore). Poor black kids are going to stay lower than everyone else, because poor black kids, statistically, have much less family involvement, and a (again, statistically), substantially less 'structured' home life. THIS is the number one problem with the low end of the socio-economic academic performance ladder. Rich white kids and poor black kids attending the same class, at the same school, will not perform the same, unless the parents are both involved to the same amount. Making everybody take tests to prove this out doesn't accomplish anything. Firing teachers because parents won't do anything to help their children also does not accomplish anything. This issue is near and dear to me - I worked in one of the school districts cited in the NYT article for 7 years, and my wife is currently teaching there. It's a farce.

Dove 16y ago
> Not All Kids Can Learn The Same Supporting reference: Your Child's Growing Mind http://books.google.com/books?id=V1wfk_l2Ch4C http://books.google.com/books?id=V1wfk_l2Ch4C This is the classic practical book on brain development in children and adolescents. One of its main themes is that children mature in different areas at different rates, and that teaching them something before they're ready is fruitless, emotionally risky, and actually damages their later ability to reason naturally.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. True, but most groups of 30-40 children are roughly the same. There will be a few smarties, a few morons, and a multitude of people in the middle. It's called the law of large numbers.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  This presupposes that classrooms can be thought of as random samples of the child population. We know that they are actually geographically localized samples, so that presupposition is somewhat strained and needs a bit of defending, preferably by empirical means.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Obviously a given class is only a random sample from the population of a given school. So if you want to evaluate a teacher, all you need to do is compare his/her class to other classes from the same geographic region. Or even better, you can compute a statistical predictor of his student's expected performance, and measure the deviation between predicted and actual performance. The point is that individual variation in students is irrelevant. It is extremely unlikely that a teacher will get a class full of dumb kids.
potatolicious 16y ago
The bigger problem is that Not All Teachers Are Competent, or ever will be. We've really shot ourselves in the foot here - being a teacher is an absolutely thankless job, both financially and otherwise. This greatly limits your talent pool to the following: - people who can't do any better in life - people who love teaching so much that they are willing to forgo much more lucrative careers Not only is this pool rather small, it also selects poorly for talent. This places the poor black kids (as you put it) at an even greater disadvantage, since their teachers lack either the talent or the inclination to pull them forward.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Teaching is not remotely "thankless", they just trade wages for non-wage compensation (tenure, defined-benefit retirement at age 55), and work significantly less than most other professionals (for the 9 months/year when they actually work). http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_benefits.pdf http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be... http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
  - count 16y ago
    I know anecdote isn't the singular of data, but of the MANY teachers I know (I'm married to one, so I sort of meet a bunch of them), none of them work less than 50 hours per week. Not a single individual. Sure, they may be AT work for less than 50 hours, but everybody has to grade test/homework, write lesson plans, etc. outside of their normal classroom time. My wife works approx. 55-60 hours per week from late august to late june, for less than 45k/yr. While the long time off in the summer is great, it's not paid either (many people don't realize that). Teachers also have to provide virtually everything in their classroom - educational posters/implements, paper, pens, pencils, etc.; the local schools provide books and desks, and that's it. Each teacher gets $200/yr stipend, which isn't even enough for paper and glue for an elementary school classroom for the year. Only $500 of that stuff is tax deductible for a year (we routinely spend close to $2k/yr). tl;dr: it's not thankless, but it's not exactly an awesomely compensated profession either - there's lots of hidden shit teachers have to do/provide that should count against their compensation.

by count 16y ago

Dove 16y ago

> Not All Kids Can Learn The Same Supporting reference: Your Child's Growing Mind http://books.google.com/books?id=V1wfk_l2Ch4C http://books.google.com/books?id=V1wfk_l2Ch4C This is the classic practical book on brain development in children and adolescents. One of its main themes is that children mature in different areas at different rates, and that teaching them something before they're ready is fruitless, emotionally risky, and actually damages their later ability to reason naturally.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. True, but most groups of 30-40 children are roughly the same. There will be a few smarties, a few morons, and a multitude of people in the middle. It's called the law of large numbers.

nooneelse 16y ago
This presupposes that classrooms can be thought of as random samples of the child population. We know that they are actually geographically localized samples, so that presupposition is somewhat strained and needs a bit of defending, preferably by empirical means.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Obviously a given class is only a random sample from the population of a given school. So if you want to evaluate a teacher, all you need to do is compare his/her class to other classes from the same geographic region. Or even better, you can compute a statistical predictor of his student's expected performance, and measure the deviation between predicted and actual performance. The point is that individual variation in students is irrelevant. It is extremely unlikely that a teacher will get a class full of dumb kids.

potatolicious 16y ago

The bigger problem is that Not All Teachers Are Competent, or ever will be. We've really shot ourselves in the foot here - being a teacher is an absolutely thankless job, both financially and otherwise. This greatly limits your talent pool to the following: - people who can't do any better in life - people who love teaching so much that they are willing to forgo much more lucrative careers Not only is this pool rather small, it also selects poorly for talent. This places the poor black kids (as you put it) at an even greater disadvantage, since their teachers lack either the talent or the inclination to pull them forward.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Teaching is not remotely "thankless", they just trade wages for non-wage compensation (tenure, defined-benefit retirement at age 55), and work significantly less than most other professionals (for the 9 months/year when they actually work). http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_benefits.pdf http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be... http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
- count 16y ago
  I know anecdote isn't the singular of data, but of the MANY teachers I know (I'm married to one, so I sort of meet a bunch of them), none of them work less than 50 hours per week. Not a single individual. Sure, they may be AT work for less than 50 hours, but everybody has to grade test/homework, write lesson plans, etc. outside of their normal classroom time. My wife works approx. 55-60 hours per week from late august to late june, for less than 45k/yr. While the long time off in the summer is great, it's not paid either (many people don't realize that). Teachers also have to provide virtually everything in their classroom - educational posters/implements, paper, pens, pencils, etc.; the local schools provide books and desks, and that's it. Each teacher gets $200/yr stipend, which isn't even enough for paper and glue for an elementary school classroom for the year. Only $500 of that stuff is tax deductible for a year (we routinely spend close to $2k/yr). tl;dr: it's not thankless, but it's not exactly an awesomely compensated profession either - there's lots of hidden shit teachers have to do/provide that should count against their compensation.