Friday, February 5, 2010

THE ERA OF MAGICAL THINKING CONTINUES



IT’S ALIVE!!!


I kinda feel sorry for all of the teachers out there who voted for the Big O, thinking that he would trash Bush’s War on Teacherism. But no, that doesn’t seem to be the case. With Field Marshall Duncan at his side, the POTUS is just going to push through the same garbage in a bright and shiny new package. Some of the words may be different, but it’s gonna be the SOS boys and girls.

A recent article concerning the proposed changes to No Child Left Behind pretty much spells it out for us. In the article, it is stated that Field Marshall Duncan foreshadowed the elimination of the 2014 100% proficiency deadline in a September speech, referring to it as a “utopian goal,” and administration officials have since made clear that they want the deadline eliminated. (OK, so far, so good)

The Dunc’s new goal, which would replace the 2014 universal proficiency deadline, would be for ALL students to leave high school “college or career ready.” (Huh? Doesn’t 100% mean ALL? Or am I just a home-schooled moron? And what exactly does college or career ready mean?)

One of the main components of the Dunc’s overhaul of education, known as The Race off the Road into the Ditch, is tying teacher pay with student performance on the lovely tests they take in the spring. This assumes that the kids actually care about their performance on the tests. They don’t. They have absolutely no buy-in on these tests. It doesn’t affect their GPA, graduation or college admissions. Good system to evaluate teachers by, no?

Once again, we have ‘experts’ outside of the field of education who have never taught and have no idea what it’s like to work with the youngins on a daily basis. But they know how it should be done. It all requires magical thinking.

And then there’s this delusional thinking from the great state of Wyoming. At least one of the comment letters to this piece got it right!

" I agree with accountability and competitiveness, but as it is right now students' test scores are not tied to graduation nor promotion. Students are fully aware of this and blow off the tests opting to 'just get it done with 'cause its a waste of their time and it doesn't matter anyway.' Is it fair to tie teacher pay to student performance when students aren't even held accountable to it? I would love to see the editors of this paper actually go into a classroom and teach for a year. When students do not want to learn is it all the teachers' fault? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. How about student accountability for a change? "

1 comment:

dave said...

You Wrote:
"They have absolutely no buy-in on these tests. It doesn’t affect their GPA, graduation or college admissions. Good system to evaluate teachers by, no?"

Agreed - testing students is NOT a good system by which to evaluate teachers.

So that I don't fall into some other form of magical thinking, could you please, PLEASE, suggest what YOU believe would be a good system by which to evaluate teachers?

If you can't think of one simply say so. Or, is it your position that teachers should not be evaluated?

I need to know!