tearose Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Has anyone seen this article from the American Association of University Professors publication? It's depressing. Really, really depressing. http://www.aaup.org/...es#.UP9fI_KGvFy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twigs Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Scary. Thanks for posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristinannie Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Wow. That was uplifting. I read the other blog that was cited. The part about everyone learning from home on computers scared me a little. I sort of feel like states are offering free online programs to homeschoolers in order to control what we teach. That might make me sound paranoid, but I have been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction so I am open to conspiracies right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrsBasil Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Wow. That was uplifting. I read the other blog that was cited. The part about everyone learning from home on computers scared me a little. I sort of feel like states are offering free online programs to homeschoolers in order to control what we teach. That might make me sound paranoid, but I have been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction so I am open to conspiracies right now. I think it's less about control and more about money. A student doing a free online program is considered a public school student and they get money for that student as they are counted as enrolled in the district. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrsBasil Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Goodness, both articles were very, very sad. To read about the money being made by testing companies, know about the money being made for online schools, and read about politicians pushing for full scale online schools as the norm....it's scary to think that education is just a means for making money for many people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
North Coast School Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Thank you for sharing the article. My stomach is still churning when I think of my DD who is in public school this year. We put her in school after discovering that she has some mild learning disabilities, but have been considering bringing her back home again next year to homeschool with her brother. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PachiSusan Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 I think it's less about control and more about money. A student doing a free online program is considered a public school student and they get money for that student as they are counted as enrolled in the district. Exactly!! A friend is in supervisory level where we used to live and she told me flat out that if a butt isn't in the seat, they aren't getting federal dollars. It behooves them to offer public online schooling because then they are counting them as butt in seat and they get the money for that student.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedmom4 Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Thank you for sharing that article. I have also been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction and since our government knows that No Child Left Behind isn't working and hasn't worked in 10 years who is benefitting from the policy? Why isn't President Obama talking about this? This is our future! This is a topic that infuriates me. I can't believe that the American public educational system wasn't one of the top issues during the recent campaign. Elise in NC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Runningmom80 Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Wow, thats depressing and validating at the same time. I too am angry that education wasn't discussed at all during the campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mommymilkies Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 D is a college professor (chemistry). He tenses to get the highest ranking kids going into the sciences because of his field. This has pretty much been his experience. Almost none of his students are prepared for anything except guessable multiple choice questions. This past year, in particular, has been pretty validating for him as homeschoolers because many of these kids just aren't being taught. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Nothing about public education has made sense to me since I did my student teaching decades ago. I never taught in ps bc I was so disillusioned. I was not allowed to do projects or step outside the prescribed lessons. I was reprimanded bc I wasn't strictly using ditto sheets. Everything that I wanted to do I was told would cause disruption bc they wanted similarities between classrooms bc students compare and then there would be complaining. Blech. I disagree with everything from preschool academics to having young students write reams of gibberish and applaud it as "writing." I also disagree with having kids memorize vast amts of trivia across a large number of subjects. I am a multum non multa educator that believes developing cognitive thinking skills is superior to aquiring knowledge. It is why I have dedicated myself to educating my children at home and have kids that are way beyond most ps graduates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 As the few comments on the article show, it's very hard to get to the root of these things. NCLB has helped some kids, especially at poorer schools, not be written off. And education has been rotten for a long time. It's just so messed up on so many different ways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SarahW Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 My son is currently in a public charter school in Florida, and here they even give kindergartners an end of year test (the FCAT). This test determines the school ratings, the job of the teacher, and the grade of the student. It's crazy. My son is in the advanced kindergarten class, so he's already done some of the practice tests. It's multiple choice and very didactic. DS got all the questions right, except for the one's where he started drawing triangles, or trees, or whatever. When I ask him why he does that he just shrugs, "I thought that was what I was supposed to do." Granted, he has issues paying attention (especially to busywork), but, hey, what's wrong with a test that asks a 6-year-old to draw a triangle? That's far more interesting (and useful) than fill-in-the-bubble of how many dots are in a ten frame. And about teacher's continuing education - I knew a HS science physics teacher who had to meet these requirements every summer. She was limited by course offerings and her own personal schedule, so she ended up taking classes in art and stuff like that. Things that she would rarely use in her class, even if she could. "Continuing education" sounds really nice, until you realize that it's mostly useless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowbeltmom Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Thank you for sharing that article. I have also been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction and since our government knows that No Child Left Behind isn't working and hasn't worked in 10 years who is benefitting from the policy? The testing companies and textbook publishers are laughing all the way to the bank. My understanding is that the Common Core will be replacing No Child Left Behind in the states that have adopted the CC. From what I have read of the Common Core, the testing requirements are even more ridiculous than those of NCLB. My public high school has actually had to push back the starting time at our high school by 30 minutes this year. According to a teacher I know in the district, the time change was implemented in order to give the teachers more administrative time to figure out how they are going to evaluate not only the students, but also the teaching staff per the Common Core standards. Of course the school board put a great spin on the new starting time: They told the parents that studies show that teenagers need more sleep, so the school board decided to let the high school students sleep an additional 30 minutes. (The school ending time was not changed.) The politicians are destroying public education. The gap between the private schooled students and public schooled students is only going to widen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Everything that I wanted to do I was told would cause disruption bc they wanted similarities between classrooms bc students compare and then there would be complaining. Blech. The sad thing is parents and students do compare teachers from kindergarten up around here. People would be asking around which teacher is "the best" for each grade and try to get that teacher for their kids. Parents even compare the kind and quantity of homework that comes back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowbeltmom Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 The sad thing is parents and students do compare teachers from kindergarten up around here. People would be asking around which teacher is "the best" for each grade and try to get that teacher for their kids. Parents even compare the kind and quantity of homework that comes back. This happens around here as well. When my dd was in p.s. first grade, I had another mom call me because she was concerned my dd's 1st grade class was doing more advanced work than her son's first grade class. Apparently, while my dd was at another's friends house for an after school play date, this mom went through my dd's backpack and then called the mom who called me concerned that my dd was getting more advanced material. I am not quite sure which mom I found more pathetic - the one who felt the need to invade my 6 year old's privacy and go through her backpack, or the one who saw absolutely nothing wrong with the actions of the other mom and calling me to get more details. We began homeschooling after that year. Getting away from these ultra-competitive moms has been a big homeschooling perk for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flux Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Has anyone seen this article from the American Association of University Professors publication? It's depressing. Really, really depressing. http://www.aaup.org/...es#.UP9fI_KGvFy Here is a link (from the above AAUP page) to an article from the first issue, back in 1915. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i40007593 It's the article at the bottom... I'm only a third of the way through it, but it looks like the freedom for a teacher to teach is no new problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scootiepie Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 There is an article today in National Review Online about the Common Core, authored by Michelle Malkin. Evidently it will be the first in a series. She commented about "Everyday Math" and to that end, I have to say it was one of the factors in my decision to homeschool since our district uses it. When I looked at the sample pages of Everyday Math online, I thought to myself "No way". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FairProspects Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Oh my goodness, someone got inside my head!! These are the exact issues I was concerned about when I was teaching high school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowbeltmom Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 "Everyday Math" and to that end, I have to say it was one of the factors in my decision to homeschool since our district uses it. When I looked at the sample pages of Everyday Math online, I thought to myself "No way". Everyday Math gave me the confidence to homeschool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NASDAQ Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 What's wrong with having a preference on a teacher in K-2? I think that those years are very, very important. The quality of teaching in most schools varies widely. If my child were in school, I would want her with the best possible teacher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G5052 Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Yes, I definitely see it. I have been teaching at local community colleges for 14 years now, and the quality of student has gone down every year even though we are getting more and more students who are declaring majors that will transfer to 4-year schools. I once told DH that I would stock groceries at night if it meant being able to homeschool through high school. I am just so very disappointed with the recent graduates. Despite all of my rants though, the majority of my friends in my immediate area send their kids to the local schools in high school. I think that the moms get tired at that point (I'm tired), and it looks so good. Several years ago a student actually apologized to me for getting a "C." He told me a very sad story about thinking that he was ready for college because of A's and a few B's and good scores on the state exams. Instead he barely survived his first semester of college, and he told me that he was struggling on every front -- reading textbooks, following directions, writing essays, etc. etc. He blamed the high school for not pushing him harder and expecting more. That kid did eventually pull up his grades and graduate, but the hard reality of college is tough for many of them. The statistics are really bad. I don't have the exact figures for this last fall, but several years ago over 2/3 of the recent grads from the public schools had to have remedial English and/or math at the community college. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 What's wrong with having a preference on a teacher in K-2? I think that those years are very, very important. The quality of teaching in most schools varies widely. If my child were in school, I would want her with the best possible teacher. I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting the best teacher available. I do think that judging a teacher's ability based on the test scores of their students is a bad way to evaluate a teacher's skill. A teacher with low test scores may have focused on bolstering her students abilities in basics, rather than cramming them for tests. He or she may have decided that time was better spent doing learning games than having kids repeatedly perform practice tests to make sure they could fill out Scantrons. If a parent did something like request to sit in for a couple of hours of class with a few of the local teachers, THAT would be a useful evaluation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AimeeM Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting the best teacher available. I do think that judging a teacher's ability based on the test scores of their students is a bad way to evaluate a teacher's skill. A teacher with low test scores may have focused on bolstering her students abilities in basics, rather than cramming them for tests. He or she may have decided that time was better spent doing learning games than having kids repeatedly perform practice tests to make sure they could fill out Scantrons. If a parent did something like request to sit in for a couple of hours of class with a few of the local teachers, THAT would be a useful evaluation. Agreeing that test scores shouldn't be a factor. My dd's first (and last) year in a public school (grade 4), I was thrilled with her teacher assignment and test scores didn't even cross my mind. At open house, when I saw his last year students run up and jump into his arms, thrilled to see him again, I had a gut feeling that he was a wonderful teacher - this was confirmed by the obvious envy other parents were showing when they found out dd had Mr. R - he was known for drawing children in, his infectious joy for learning, his no nonsense approach to discipline (semi retired police officer) tempered with a sympathetic ear. Those are the things I admired about him - not his test scores which, admittedly, weren't the best. Because he was a semi retired officer, he often got the "rough crowd"; many of the children came from homes where education was put on the back burner, parents were incarcerated, living in poverty, or kids with just an overall rough attitude. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delaney Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Thank you for sharing that article. I have also been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction and since our government knows that No Child Left Behind isn't working and hasn't worked in 10 years who is benefitting from the policy? Why isn't President Obama talking about this? This is our future! This is a topic that infuriates me. I can't believe that the American public educational system wasn't one of the top issues during the recent campaign. Elise in NC Because there is no big money backing education. Money runs the country. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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