Dems kill vouchers in D.C.

[jimmy olsen]

Here's a comment from the article I just posted.

smorrow writes:

I worked last year as a fill in for TLC's High School as a Social Studies teacher. I want to state that I realize I along with others am not perfect. I have worked as Police officer, Fire Fighter decided to go into teaching so I have Masters in Education with Gifted and Talented specialization from University of North Texas and I am currently working on PhD in Public Administration at Walden University. Coming in to TLC and the history of being a church school for 34 years I figure discipline, and love would be solid in their foundation. (snip)

Love those high standards for a masters degree in education and a PhD candidate:  in just three sentences, he has about a dozen errors in writing.  It never gets better, either.

I have a hard time believing he has a masters in anything with writing like that, he fucks up verb tenses and leaves out articles over and over.

[citizen k]

Love those high standards for a masters degree in education and a PhD candidate:  in just three sentences, he has about a dozen errors in writing.  It never gets better, either.

I know, I corrected the spelling of "planed" to "planned" in "Landers planned to have one certified kindergarten teacher and the rest aids under that teacher."
And then gave up on the aids. 

[grumbler]

I have a hard time believing he has a masters in anything with writing like that, he fucks up verb tenses and leaves out articles over and over.

This is Texas.  He's a fucking genius compared to most Texans.  He probably writes better than any of his professors at North Texas did.

Bill in Sinton sounds like the Shakespeare of Texas because he knows better than to use words of more than two syllables.

[DGuller]

It's easy to criticize this, but is it easy to come up with something better and implement it system-wide?

I am not sure what "easy" has to do with anything.  People have rejected reform after reform because they were not "easy," even when they were effective.

Time and again, reforms that offered students/parents choice between differentiated schools have been effective, and time and again they have been rescinded, despite their success, because powerful interests were weighed against them (primarily, the teachers' unions and primarily on behalf of teachers who cannot teach and shouldn't be in classrrooms - and aren't, when charter and private schools are used to give parents choices).

It would be far easier to demolish the state monopoly on factory-like education than on factory-like steelmaking or whatnot.  Fund the students via vouchers, allow anyone who is qualified to establish a school and seek students, and provide some measures by which parents can distinguish between schools based on the type of student the school is recruiting.  That isn't "easy" but it is easier than compensating for failures to educate.

I was actually asking about a  "testing a recollection of facts" part.  Obviously this is not a perfect way to structure the education, no breath needs to be wasted expounding on why.  However, is it realistically possible to change the educational and testing methods to significantly de-emphasize rote on a wide scale?

[DGuller]

I have a hard time believing he has a masters in anything with writing like that, he fucks up verb tenses and leaves out articles over and over.

What's wrong with leaving out article or two?

[citizen k]

I have a hard time believing he has a masters in anything with writing like that, he fucks up verb tenses and leaves out articles over and over.

What's wrong with leaving out article or two?

Just don't make habit it.

[DontSayBanana]

Even in administrative planning?

Especially in administrative planning.

[derspiess]

I have a hard time believing he has a masters in anything with writing like that, he fucks up verb tenses and leaves out articles over and over.

I can believe it.  From my high school, I can think of at least 3 teachers with Masters in Education, who would speak or write worse than this dude's example.

Most teachers at my high school had their Masters degrees, which tells me Marshall's Masters degree in Education program is nothing more than a degree mill.

[Sheilbh]

Are Masters standard for teachers in the US?  We've only just required that our new teachers be university educated.

[Eddie Teach]

I have a hard time believing he has a masters in anything with writing like that, he fucks up verb tenses and leaves out articles over and over.

What's wrong with leaving out article or two?

Makes you sound like Russian.

[grumbler]

Are Masters standard for teachers in the US?  We've only just required that our new teachers be university educated.

It isn't standard, but it is common and encouraged.  Many states require teachers to take the equivalent of a college course every year or so to stay qualified, so many teachers just go ahead and take the masters degree courses.

[Caliga]

In my mother's school district, the teachers are all organized as a chapter of the NEA, and this is how it works for them:

A master's degree is never a hiring requirement (an Ed.D. is for some administrative positions, I believe).  However, if you don't have an Ed.M., your salary cap is substantially lower than teachers with the Ed.M.  In addition, teachers get an automatic pay grade increase once they earn an Ed.M. and I believe their annual increase is slightly increased once they earn it.  Thus, since a monkey could obtain a master's in education and most teachers have all summer off to work on it, you'd have to be a complete retard to not plan on earning one.  Every teacher in her high school who is at least 30 years old has one, and a fair number come into the profession with one because they were in joint bachelor's/master's programs as an undergrad.  My mom earned her first master's degree the year after she got her bachelor's degree, in 1970.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting.  In the UK teachers over 30-40 generally speaking don't have degrees.  They went to teacher training schools. 

All teachers have to go on courses and training days fairly regularly to keep up (when I was at primary school in Scotland all the teachers had to learn French because the government decided to start teaching a second language at primary school - unfortunately this mean our teacher was only one lesson ahead of us). 

Nowadays most teachers have a BA/BSc and then do a vocational teaching course.  A number of my friends have done TeachFirst which is a government programme.  Basically they all went to a good university and they get a government grant and decent wage if they sign up to teach in an inner city (or a failing) school for a year or two before they go into whatever they go into (or during a gap year).  I believe many fall in love with teaching and stay.

[grumbler]

Interesting.  In the UK teachers over 30-40 generally speaking don't have degrees.  They went to teacher training schools. 

That is consistent with the generally higher level of education that used to be a hallmark of the British (and most European) systems.  In the US, college degrees are easy to get (as Cal noted, even any masters degree is easy to get if you pick the right school).

All teachers have to go on courses and training days fairly regularly to keep up (when I was at primary school in Scotland all the teachers had to learn French because the government decided to start teaching a second language at primary school - unfortunately this mean our teacher was only one lesson ahead of us).

Whether or not the training days are useful in the US is strictly dependent on local conditions.  In Fall Church schools, they were quite good; from what I hear from my public school counterparts out here in the boonies, they are widely regarded as useless except to check off the fact that they were held.

Nowadays most teachers have a BA/BSc and then do a vocational teaching course.  A number of my friends have done TeachFirst which is a government programme.  Basically they all went to a good university and they get a government grant and decent wage if they sign up to teach in an inner city (or a failing) school for a year or two before they go into whatever they go into (or during a gap year).  I believe many fall in love with teaching and stay.

The US has Teach for America, which is similar.  Whether or not the new teachers stay on is almost entirely dependent on who they have as a principal.  I saw a stat somewhere that said basically that TFA retention, when examined by school, was either 80% or 20%.