Good Teachers equal good education

That is a statement that truly should go without saying. But just this morning I read a piece that showed a poll blaming parents for childrens bad education. I have had many discussions with people who say teaching to the test is a bad thing. I think if they are teaching to the test they are at least teaching. This article looks at just that, teaching to the test, but what it is really showing is that teaching to the test or not we need more good teachers.

Foundation: Growth in test scores is sign of good teacher
By Nick Anderson

While debate rages in the education world about how to measure effective teaching - or whether it is even possible to do so - research funded by a prominent advocate of data-driven analysis has found that growth in annual student test scores is a reliable sign of a good teacher.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation reported that and other preliminary findings Friday from a $45 million study of teacher effectiveness in several cities.

"In every grade and subject we studied, a teacher's past success in raising student achievement on state tests was one of the strongest predictors of his or her ability to do it again," said Vicki Phillips, who oversees elementary and secondary education grants for the foundation.

In many cases, officials are moving toward "value-added" analysis - that is, the growth in achievement that occurs in a class from one school year to another, measured in large part through gains on state tests. There are many technical issues with how such analysis is conducted. Often teachers are not assigned to subjects that a state assesses. Students might rotate among teachers on a daily or weekly basis for certain lessons.

At certain ages and in certain circumstances - which can vary wildly depending on family background - students might be more or less ready to have an academic growth spurt.

Teachers unions and other skeptics have cited these and other arguments as reasons to move cautiously on value-added analysis. But in the D.C. public schools and many others, growth in test scores is now an ingrained part of teacher evaluation and pay. President Obama has encouraged this movement through the $4 billion Race to the Top education grants.
[....]
The preliminary Gates findings are based on test data and student surveys from public school systems in New York, Dallas, Denver, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., and Hillsborough County, Fla. Also participating in the study are Memphis and Pittsburgh schools. Researchers were drawn from the Educational Testing Service and several major schools, including Harvard and Stanford universities and the University of Virginia.

The central finding indicates that teachers with "value-added" ratings are able to replicate that feat in multiple classrooms and in multiple years.

There is more here. Go read it all. You owe it to our nation's future to understand all about how our children are being educated.

Teacher Education

The Washington Post has an editorial called "Teaching the Teachers."  In it they call for teachers to have more hands on  experience from the beginning of their training, to making sure we get teachers who are at the top of the class.

What they are trying to say is the old adage I heard for years "those who can, do; those who can't teach."  That is an insulting way of saying many teachers are in it because that is all they are capable of, want the many benefits and complain of the long hours.  I know we all have teachers we remember because they were so very good, impressed us with their knowledge, and to this day we use what they taught us.

Most of the teachers I have known personally were good teachers.  I think I could tell because of the way they spoke of their students. If they saw the students and their parents as the enemy it is a pretty good bet they were not good teachers. It they spoke enthusiasticaly about what was going on in their classes it was a good bet they were good teachers, those who would be remembered for a lifetime.

Here is a little of what the Washington Post has to say:

TEACHERS, LIKE DOCTORS, should receive their training through clinical practice. That conclusion of a national report calling for teacher education to be "turned upside down" makes sense. But if medicine is the model, this country also has to figure out how to attract its most accomplished graduates to teaching. Training is important in improving teacher quality, but so is making teaching a career that appeals to the best and the brightest.

Last week a panel of education experts convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education issued a report proposing an overhaul of how teachers are trained. It recommends a shift from the focus on classroom lectures and course work to practical hands-on experience. Those who aspire to teach would, from day one, be immersed in the actual work. Other suggestions include rigorous accountability measures for education schools and targeted research into which programs are most effective. It's an ambitious agenda, and it's unclear whether education schools, accrediting agents and individual school districts will have the will or the resources to sign on. But it's encouraging that a group generally not seen as on the cutting edge of reform is advancing these ideas and that eight states already have signaled their intent to add more clinical practice to their teaching training programs.

More attention also must be paid to the quality of those seeking to be trained as teachers. The report calls for raising admission, performance and graduation standards for aspiring teachers but leaves largely unanswered how to attract top talent.

Some of our Educators need to be Re-educated

Possibly some of the teachers need to have a re-indoctrination. Arnold Ahlert in Jewish World Review tells it this way:

Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time
Despite the ridiculous levels of cover the mainstream media have given the Obama administration and the Democrat party's assortment of progressivist hacks, more and more Americans are coming to realize the level of contempt so many of these people have for our country. Yet far fewer Americans make the ultimate connection: such contempt is an acquired skill. One must be taught to believe America is a fundamentally broken nation requiring a top-to-bottom make-over. And where are they taught such things? In thousands of public schools around the nation. Latest case in point: Denair Middle School in California.
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Americans have long understood that college campuses are hotbeds of progressive radicalism. What they might not realize is that those same campuses are nothing more than finishing schools for a process which, as Denair Middle School makes evident, begins far earlier. Day in day out, year after year, millions of children are being taught that America is a seething cauldron of racial unrest, an imperialist country with a "heartless" capitalist economic system, and an environmental "hog" consuming far too many resources. They are being given the message, both overtly and subliminally, that America is one big mess of a country.

Read it all here.

Reading, Writing and 'rithmetic

We all know something is seriously wrong with education and that has been the case for many, many years. "Why Johnny can't Read" came out in 1955. Schools of education sprung into action causing the last 50+ years of students to become guinea pigs to the latest fashions in education, subjects of countless Phd. theses, while many of these same students were lost in the jumble. Only those who happened to have dedicated and real teachers managed to succeed in this system. And thank God, there were those teachers.

For almost ten years I worked with adults who could not read. This was an all volunteer agency. We had many successes. We used the Laubach Way to Literacy which was strong on phonics. Phonics was left by the wayside by some of those experiments which touted the whole word way to reading. Some very bright children managed to learn to read with that method, many were left behind.

I am writing this because I found this article in the New York Times, and while the title of the piece is 4,100 Students Prove ‘Small Is Better’ Rule Wrong, the premise of the article is back to the basics. Let's see what they actually say:

The committee’s first big step was to go back to basics, and deem that reading, writing, speaking and reasoning were the most important skills to teach. They set out to recruit every educator in the building — not just English, but math, science, even guidance counselors — to teach those skills to students.

The committee put together a rubric to help teachers understand what good writing looks like, and began devoting faculty meetings to teaching department heads how to use it. The school’s 300 teachers were then trained in small groups.

Writing exercises took many forms, but encouraged students to think methodically. A science teacher, for example, had her students write out, step by step, how to make a sandwich, starting with opening the cupboard to fetch the peanut butter, through washing the knife once the sandwich was made. Other writing exercises, of course, were much more sophisticated.

Some teachers dragged their feet. Michael Thomas, now the district’s operations director but who led the school’s physical education department at the time, recalled that several of his teachers told him, “This is gym; we shouldn’t have to teach writing.” Mr. Thomas said he replied, “If you want to work at Brockton High, it’s your job.”

Fear held some teachers back — fear of wasting time on what could be just another faddish reform, fear of a heavier workload — and committee members tried to help them surmount it.

“Let me help you,” was a response committee members said they often offered to reluctant colleagues who argued that some requests were too difficult.

Read the article for the whole story, but keep in mind what they are saying; reading, writing and 'rithmetic. The three basics you need to learn to reason no matter the size of the school.