The State of Florida, Inc. ??

[Bob Wells]

Is their direct superior isn't qualified to make that decision, who is? How would you structure a review system?

Someone who sits in an office without regular oversight isn't qualified to review someone who is on the front lines doing the job day in and day out. Undercover Boss, the tv show is already proving that. They go into the workforce and find out what they have started and find that it may have been made more difficult to accomplish all the task in the name of profits. I am sure the company you work/ worked for the President would not be able to evaluate you for daily task performed unless he was your direct supervisor.

 

[30ashopper]

read what I wrote again...Opinion is not a review...

I would structure a review system that takes into account many factors...have a team teacher/lead teacher structure and have guidelines that cover accomplishments of the students not just test scores.

Many students do not test well; but, they might know the material...all students start from a different place --their accomplishments should count even if they all don't score "x" on some test.

This is not rocket science--it does exist in school systems in this country and around the world. In fact, the teachers themselves can probably design the review.

I think most of the problem with this is that the legislature has been trying to dictate to teachers for years. And, I know from first hand experience from both sides of the equation: legislators know very little about educating students--not even those who were teachers once upon a time.

I wasn't criticizing, it was an honest question. This seems like such a major issue lately, I wish the teachers would put forth a proposal. All I hear is "no no no no" every time someone puts forth a possible solution.

 

[30ashopper]

How about every teacher has a 1 year contract and negotiates his/her salary on a yearly basis?

That seems rather tedious. I think it should be just like any other job - you get hired, you work, you have a management layer that assesses performance, and when a teacher doesn't perform based on some criteria he/she is let go. The unions could assist in wrongful terminations with legal support. We should also enact tort reform that gives judges the right to dump court costs on the plaintiff if the suit is frivolous.

 

[scooterbug44]

How do you figure out if students know the material or have gained knowledge without tests?

My teachers said they were called tests because they "test your knowledge."

Yes, I know different people test differently, but in general, it's hard to ace a test if you don't know the material and hard to flunk one if you know the material backwards and forwards.

Millions of people work at jobs where their performance and pay increases are judged by a superior who rarely sees them in action.

No need to keep reinventing the wheel and create more bureaucracy just to figure out if someone is doing a good job.

And with the current way teacher's unions work, renegotiating individual teacher's contracts each year would be incredibly detrimental to education.

 

[GoodWitch58]

A Businessman Learns a Lesson by Jamie Robert Vollmer

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!" I stood before an auditorium filled with
outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service. Their
initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.



I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public
schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous
in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."


I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change;
they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging
"knowledge society." Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they
resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by
tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly.

They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero
defects! TQM! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was
perfectly balanced -- equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite,
pleasant -- she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school
English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream." I smugly replied , "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?" "Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired. "Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised
to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an
inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our
blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused,
frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant.

We take them all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD, EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid
arthritis, English as their second language, no English at all;

We take them all! Everyone!

And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides,
custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah!

Blueberries! Blueberries!"


And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited
hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are
unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon
the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are
constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that

would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when,
and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a
postindustrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these
changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.

For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and

therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it
means changing America. "

a friend passed this along this afternoon; it says in a clever way what I was trying to say. SB, I did not mean there should be no test;

I believe that a standardized test is not the best or the only way to judge how well some students are doing. Of course, there must be testing of some sort, but the teacher in the classroom will know which testing method is best for a particular student in a particular subject;

and I believe there is no teacher in the world whose teaching ability can be accurately determined by how the students in that classroom are doing...it is a factor, but not the only one by a long shot.















"

 

[Miss Critter]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U"]YouTube - RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms[/ame]

 

[GoodWitch58]

I wasn't criticizing, it was an honest question. This seems like such a major issue lately, I wish the teachers would put forth a proposal. All I hear is "no no no no" every time someone puts forth a possible solution.

okay. I think if we could get most of the politics out of the school system it would be easier for the teachers to do something like that; I am sure groups of them have tried at very times--the legislature needs to listen to teachers; the elected ones do not often make it easy for anyone w/out big $$ for campaign contributions to have an audience; the unions have their agendas too; I think for the most part, they do have the teacher's careers as their priority, but they are also part of the political system in a way the individual teachers are not. IMO school administrators (with few exceptions) are more of a problem than they are part of the solution...but, that's another story.

I am also a proponent of eliminating the Colleges of Education. I work with a veteran teacher--she has retired twice; once, from a job in the business world; then from the public school system, and now is teaching at the college level because she loves teaching and is good at it--she told me just the other day, she only had one course in the education track of her college program that she found helpful: the course on how to recognize creativity!

She is a Math teacher and she is fantastic--not because of any education classes she had or any continuing education, but because she thoroughly understands all kinds of Math and she loves it! And, her students love her--and for the most part they are successful.

I think we should have teachers who are skilled, talented, and trained in what it is they do teach in our schools--in places where you find engineers teaching engineering; writers teaching creative writing, business people teaching business, etc. etc., you find the students and the teachers excel--and the issue of the testing/measuring methodology becomes moot.

 

[scooterbug44]

Re: blueberries

Every industry deals with getting variety in raw materials and products.

What do you think happens to the blueberries that get sent back as unacceptable for premium ice cream? They get used for something else.

I look at it a different way - no matter what food gets delivered, a great cook can make something tasty from it.

A bad cook will have trouble even with premium ingredients.

 

[30ashopper]

How do you figure out if students know the material or have gained knowledge without tests?

My teachers said they were called tests because they "test your knowledge."

Yes, I know different people test differently, but in general, it's hard to ace a test if you don't know the material and hard to flunk one if you know the material backwards and forwards.

Millions of people work at jobs where their performance and pay increases are judged by a superior who rarely sees them in action.

No need to keep reinventing the wheel and create more bureaucracy just to figure out if someone is doing a good job.

And with the current way teacher's unions work, renegotiating individual teacher's contracts each year would be incredibly detrimental to education.

I think it's a simple problem of putting together the right statistics. Teachers have pupils that pass through their classes. Multiple teachers teach the same subject. Given access to grade data, standardized test results, and a correlation between students and the teachers who teach them, it should be rather simple assess teaching performance. The problem is teacher unions fight to insulate teachers from this type of data analysis. This needs to end.

 

[beachmouse]

So how do you account for students who go to 3 or more different schools in a year? Which teacher gets credit (or blame) for their standardized test results?