Sunday, February 05, 2006

Only 98% left behind

From a charter school teacher

Last March, in Learning is easy - Education is complex, I wrote about charter schools in Minnesota, and expressed a general opinion that educational opportunities are improved by the presence of charter schools, but that it's a damned shame that the entrepreneurial people starting and running charter schools can't instead open PRIVATE schools on a level playing field with public schools.

Charter schools ARE public schools, of course, but with a bit more freedom in some ways. In other ways, they are even more constricted than the large traditional schools. Their regular oversight is perhaps less stringent, but their results are more harshly judged. We've come to expect poor results from traditional schools... to understand that those school systems are so well insulated and protected that hoping for real change is fantasy. Charter schools, because they don't enjoy the patronage of the teachers union or the maze-like insulation of the public school bureaucracy, are sort of hanging out there in the breeze, tolerated by the powers that be. There are those who enjoy the failure of a charter school.

I'm doing a bit of teaching in a Minnesota charter school... just started my 2nd quarter teaching art at a charter high school, as an unpaid volunteer. The school serves a special student need... it's for students who have had a substance-abuse problem and have been through treatment. That's what the students all have in common, and dealing with that issue is a significant part of the way the school helps their students. Because the people in the school understand the abuse problem, they can and do provide a helpful setting for the students. Students must remain clean to remain in that school, which gives them an incentive and reward for staying clean.

This "Sobriety High" is of real value... providing a good choice where none existed before. I will opine that the traditional public high schools are of almost no help for a student who has fallen into some sort of substance abuse. More likely that they make the problem worse and are even a contributing factor to the original occurance.

At a time in life... the teenage years... when young people are struggling to identify and develop their own individuality, that place where they spend all day, 5 days/week is a damned important context. Large schools cannot deal with students as individuals, and that is precisely what teens need. To condemn teens (or any children) to big slab-walled, prison-like institutions is contrary to the develoment of inquisitive, intelligent minds. Remember... our public school system was copied from the Prussian system, which had as its goal the creation of compliant, obedient workers for the government. Individuality was (and remains) a negative trait in such schools.

Charter schools are, to be blunt, a half-assed solution to the public school problem. They're a wonderful choice, but only when compared to the miserable standard of public schools. If they were free of the regulation and bureaucracy of the public school system... free to really innovate... free to please nobody except the parents and their children, there is no doubt in my mind that they would take a giant stride forward in effectiveness. Parents can move their child from a big traditional school to a charter school, at no extra cost to them, but if they could take that same money to any private school, unfettered by government control, we could at last see a return to the spectacular learning that our nation once had.

For those of you who believe that the poor would suffer from elimination of "public" education... do some study of the history of learning among blacks and other immigrant peoples in America BEFORE the idea of government-controlled schools was introduced. Back then, poor people didn't allow their children to suffer in violent, drug-ridden, depressing inner-city schools... they organized their own schools, and literacy, even among the poorest, was higher than it is now.

Some people working in charter schools are not likely to appreciate what I've said. I've listened to leaders of some of the prominent charter schools, and, unfortunately, they speak the same education double-speak one can hear from the entrenched bureaucracy... language designed to say little but give a glowing impression... spoken with that practiced constant smile intended to give the impression that all is swell here. I imagine that they too have designs on moving up the governmental administrative career ladder. They also have to worry about not rocking the boat and about pleasing those who can remove their charter.

Charter schools are another "program" that's supposed to demonstrate that the public school behemoth is innovating and serving special needs. Sure, it's an improvement for a few children... 17,000 in Minnesota, out of about 810,000. That's just 2%, and Minnesota is a "leader" in charter schools. That only leaves 98% "left behind".

Source





DUD TEACHERS PROTECTED AT THE EXPENSE OF STUDENTS

This article is about the situation in the Australian State of New South Wales but a similar problem can be found almost anywhere in the Western world

If you want to know who the bad teachers are in a school, ask the students. They are good judges. So when the year 5 students in an OC - opportunity class for the gifted and talented - complained about their teacher, detailing scenes of unusual classroom chaos, parents took notice. They contacted the school. At first their voices fell on deaf ears. So some parents protested with their feet; several students were taken out of the prized OC places they had won through competitive examination and went back to their local primary school. "There was no control in the classroom and no evidence of any work being done," a parent told me. Another said: "She was floundering, out of her depth." Parents felt sympathy for the teacher, who had one year's teaching experience and was trying. But the inadequacies could not be ignored.

The parents got lucky. They were middle-class and assertive, and angry at the broken promise of special "opportunity" for their children. As well, they had the option of putting the children back into local schools. The threat of mass defections with attendant bad publicity could have undermined the reputation of the OC program. Their concerns were heeded. It took only until mid-second term for the teacher to be shifted to a non-teaching job out of the school. It was done mainly for "health reasons", much easier grounds for removal than incompetence.

Most children in regular schools are not so lucky. It is notoriously difficult to remove poor-performing teachers. "Teachers have to have two heads to be kicked out," a former Department of Education bureaucrat told me. Principals have no real incentives to weed out the time-servers and non-performers. They have no motivation to rock the boat. There is no pressure of competition in the public sector; most parents are trapped, feeling they must wear the dud teacher. There is no performance-based remuneration for principals or teachers, so nothing is lost or gained by confronting the non-performers. And there is no stomach to fight the NSW Teachers Federation. Industrial relations concerns rather than professional ethics have dominated thinking about bad teachers.

Teachers' rights need to be protected from malicious students and interfering parents with absurd expectations. Not every teacher is a Mr Chips; mediocrities abound in any profession and are not the issue here. Terrible teachers are easy enough to identify. Just ask the children. But in any dispute over teacher competence, the customer - the student - is rarely right. The balance of rights and responsibilities is out of kilter.

With another school year under way, parents can only cross their fingers that the good teacher falls their way. It is no secret what constitutes a good teacher. When Tony Vinson conducted his inquiry into public education in NSW, he found students identified the qualities easily - expertise in the subject, ability to control the classroom without shouting, dedication, and being approachable and fair.

Most students can survive a year, or a subject, taught by an incompetent teacher. But sometimes the consequences are more serious. It can colour a year or shape a life. In the junior years, it can determine whether a child learns to read, and by the end of high school, a bad teacher can ruin a child's chance of getting into a desired university course. The OC students, for example, suffered further instability, after their teacher's removal, under two casual placements before a permanent teacher started at the beginning of term four. She had only a few weeks to turn things around before the children sat the in-school and, in March, the external exams for entry to selective high schools. Compared with previous years when virtually all the OC students made it to the local selective high schools, few of the crop for this year did so. And while there may be several explanations, including the possibility that the group overall was not so bright, and the instability was not the factor, parents have been left thinking the system let them down.

Wonderful teachers change lives, are remembered forever, though rarely thanked. But in today's workforce, teachers occupy an unusual place. They have virtual life tenure, yet are protected from the scrutiny most other professionals undergo. No one can follow them into the classroom, except the children, whose views are often discounted. Teachers spend years marking and assessing children's work, yet get no systematic feedback from the children on their own strengths and weaknesses.

If there is a beacon of hope it lies with the new NSW Institute of Teachers, an independent statutory body, which has put in place a mechanism for accrediting and licensing teachers, and even for differentiating between the competent, the accomplished, and the leaders. For the first time this year, teachers with about one year's experience will have to be accredited in order to continue to teach after meeting stipulated standards, providing evidence of classroom work, and assessment by the principal or a senior teacher. It will make it easier for principals to be freer in their comments, and ensure poor teachers are not accredited. With a high proportion of teachers due to retire over the next seven years, it was considered a waste of resources to try to cover the old hands. It is a start. But what a pity students will have no input into the teacher evaluations when they are the real experts.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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