Posted on 07/29/2012 2:05:32 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Looking to boost the quality of science education, Florida has just made it tougher for aspiring teachers to pass required certification exams.
But the move to ensure that would-be science teachers know their subjects well could worsen Florida's shortage of science teachers. That could leave middle and high schools scrambling even more to find instructors for biology, chemistry, Earth-space science, general science and physics classes.
.... The State Board of Education this month bumped up the scores needed to pass the teacher-certification exams in those five science fields. As a result, the passing rates for first-time exam takers are expected to drop sharply.
The passing rate for the biology-teacher certification exam, for example, is predicted to fall from 87 percent to 68 percent, the Florida Department of Education said. The rate for the middle-school general-science exam is projected to fall from 78 percent to 58 percent.
"Of course, we applaud anything that increases rigor," said Sherry Southerland, a science-education professor at Florida State University and co-director of FSU-Teach, a program that aims to train more math and science teachers.
But middle- and high-school science teachers are always on Florida's list of "critical teacher-shortage areas," meaning there aren't enough of them to fill all the open jobs.
Tougher certification exams "will only exacerbate the problem," Southerland said.....
....State test data make it clear Florida teacher-preparation programs train relatively few new science teachers. Last year, 611 people took the biology-certification exam, for example, compared with more than 1,600 who took the exam to teach middle- or high-school social-studies classes.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.orlandosentinel.com ...
Why the personal insults? Hm?
Of course, you would never do this in the classroom with a student. No! No! Professional teachers would *never* do that! ( no sarc)
Personally, I am not here on Free Republic to win a debate. I am here to spread ideas. Government school defenders are merely a backboard against which ideas can be bounced.
The **only **reason I am here is to get the message out to others that:
1) Government schools are godless and not religiously neutral. Any child attending government school **must** think and reason godlessly just to cooperate in the godless classroom.
2) Government schools trash First Amendment Rights and teach children to be comfortable with government workers doing that to them.
3) The common government school resembles a kiddie prison and teaches children to be comfortable with being a prisoner of the state.
4) Children who attend the government's socialist-entitlement K-12 schools risk learning to be comfortable with socialism. If the voting mob can give them tuition-free school, why not **lots** of free stuff?
5) Government schools are **not** religiously, politically, or culturally neutral because such a philosophic state is **impossible** in the mind of any sentient human being!
6) For all of the above reasons, government schools are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination!
7) No one knows if government schools teach anything because this has **never** be studied! We spend **billions** on socialist schools and no one knows if they are in the least bit effective! How much learning is entirely do to the hard work done by the parents, the child by doing home assignments, and paid and unpaid tutoring? No one knows!
Thanks, again, Verga for being the backboard that allows me to get these ideas out into the public.
As it is, you represent a HUGE NUMBER DWINDLING NUMBER of parents,
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Education is your profession. Your professional journals are letting you down if you do not know that homeschooling, charters, vouchers, and tax credits are growing.
it is very rare, that I do because the personal insult say so much more about the poster than the one being insulted. It is much better for these post to remain for all to see.
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That should be:
It is very rare that I do because the personal insults say .....
Bye! I am off to school.
And the polite thing to do when I told you I had earned my administrative certification would be to say; "Congratulations." You blatantly refused to do that.
When another FReeper advocated violence against public school employees the polite thing to do would be to speak out against them. You blatantly refused to repudiate that person even when others of your ilk begged you.
You really think you are in a position to tell another person about civility?
Idiot might be to strong a word, might.
Step 17 test her out http://www.instructables.com/id/Building-a-One-sheet-boat/step17/Test-her-out/
Wintertime a statement of fact is not an insult personal or otherwise. On the other hand your habit/ hobby of referring to "ALL" public school teachers, and using the term "useful idiots" are both insults.
BTW did you look into purchasing those books I suggested to you? You really do need to work on presenting fact instead of using the Alyinsky molde of emotional arguments.
Shall we contrast them with your thinly veiled insults of: A professional educator would never.... ?
You keep pointing things that you are guilty of first.
Everyday Math is an absolute atrocity as curriculum.
If anyone is out to destroy the ability of children in this country to learn math skills, that is the stuff to use.
And every single communist and socialist has believed in public, government schooling.
“Everyday Math is an absolute atrocity as curriculum. If anyone is out to destroy the ability of children in this country to learn math skills, that is the stuff to use.”
Not according to one lady on this site. She thinks that all that’s needed is for parents to “STOP BOYCOTTING the education of their kids” (my summary...but accurate), and DEPROGRAM them every day when they come home from school (I think she calls it “parental involvement”) - and then teach them what they thought the schools were supposed to teach that day.
I just have to wonder why parents are expected to do all that - considering that we spend something like $12,000 per student per year (if not more now). But, since that lady refuses to discuss the REAL issues in education, and instead dumps it all on the parents, we’ll never know.
“And every single communist and socialist has believed in public, government schooling.”
Hell, that’s been their ticket to “controlling the masses” which probably explains a lot regarding this thread.
And every single communist and socialist has believed in public, government schooling.
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Very good and very true! :-)
And apparently so did the founding fatehrs of our country.
Thomas Jefferson State of the Union Address December 2 1806 Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. . . . An amendment to our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all people.
Thomas Jefferson on Virginia public education I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson "I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it."
John Adams, 2nd U.S. President, 1785 “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”
John Adams "Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a human and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant." Noah Webster “In despotic governments, the people should have little or no education, except what tends to inspire them with a servile fear. Information is fatal to despotism . . . In our American republics, where [government] is in the hands of the people, knowledge should be universally diffused by means of public schools.” He believed that “the more generally knowledge is diffused among the substantial yeomanry, the more perfect will be the laws of a republican state.”
James Madison “its rapid growth and signal prosperity which is now providing for the State a Plan of Education embracing every class of Citizens, and every grade and department of Knowledge. No error is more certain than the one proceeding from a nasty and superficial view of the subject: that the people at large have no interest in the establishment of Academies, Colleges, and Universities, where only a few only, and those not of the poorer classes can obtain for their sons the advantages of superior education. It is thought to be unjust that all should be taxed for the benefit of a part, and that too the part least needing it. If provision were not made at the same time for every part, the objection would be a natural one. But, besides the consideration when the higher Seminaries belong to a plan of general education, that it is better for the poorer classes to have the aid of the richer by a general tax on property, than that every parent should provide at his own expence (sic) for the education of his children, it is certain that every Class is interested in establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to every Country its truest and most durable celebrity.”
The Public Land Ordinance of 1785 provided that "There shall be reserved the lot N 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools, within the said township."
The Northwest Ordinance (1787) said that "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
Jefferson in 1779 proposed a public education system for Virginia, though such a system was ultimately not adopted until considerably later. (The University of Virginia was founded in 1819.) In 1780, the Virginia legislature donated land seized from British loyalists for the purposes of establishing a "publick school."
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 said that "it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools and grammar schools in the towns."
Benjamin Franklin started an alternative to the Latin-based grammar schools by creating the American Academy in 1751 in his hometown, Philadelphia. This was the beginning of high school as we now know it, with instruction primarily in English. (The Academy later became the University of Pennsylvania, the first modern liberal arts college in the country.) He served as its president for the first five years; Franklin also started the first lending library of its kind in Philadelphia.
Benjamin Rush, another Pennsylvanian, was considered the father of public schools since he was the first to advance the idea of free public education – education for both boys and girls, a radical idea at the time. Although by profession a medical doctor, he wrote the first American chemistry textbook and took part in the public debate on many issues.
You nailed it right there.
What are parents there for? To be the cash cow for the educrats to indoctrinate your kids, all without your interference from you,mexcept to fork over your hard earned but extorted money.
And God help you if you don't pay up. It's jail time for you. You lose your house to back taxes if you don't "contribute".
“Public schools” in the days of the Founding Fathers were locally and parentally funded and CONTROLLED establishments.
They were not the massive, out of control, useless juggernaut that the Department of Education has become and turned schools into. In those days, they actually EDUCATED the children; they left school literate, not brainwashed.
Big difference compared to public schools today.
They were not the massive, out of control, useless juggernaut that the Department of Education has become and turned schools into. In those days, they actually EDUCATED the children; they left school literate, not brainwashed.
I have been more than reasonable and patient with all of you. I am your strongest supporter. I favor an "All of the above" approach. Vouchers, Home schooling, Private school, magnet schools, Core schools, vocational schools, religious based schools.
I am the one screaming that competition breeds quality. And what do i get for my trouble: Wintertime's thinly veiled insults of "A professional educator would never....", relentless attacks besmirching my character and my profession, a complete lack of even the most basics of courtesies.
BobL being convinced that I am a woman in spite of the fact that I sent him a link to an article I wrote with a picture of my self and wintertime telling him I was a male.
While your comments have not been nearly as nasty, they do get tiresome.
I have said on numerous occasions: There are two ways that change occurs, evolution and revolution, the difference is that with evolution there is less blood shed and fewer bodies in the street.
I am scheduled to have a meeting today with Central office for me to take over the operation of our after school GED program for our county. I am doing this with the understanding that we have a more stringent attendance and achievement policy. This will require a three sided partnership between the school system, the parents, and the students.
This is a no cost to the student, program for students that have already dropped out or have requested to be dropped from the rolls.
Is the best solution, I don't know, but I do know it beats the heck of of these kids having nothing to show or limited education.
Now I am telling you this in spite of the fact that ole wintertime will scream that it is not nearly enough and that the parents should be home schooling, and I am a useful idiot, or whatever her insult of choice is this week. I am not looking for commendations or anything except for you ALL to realize that some of us are actually trying to make a difference from the inside and that a little kindness goes a long way.
Make sure you understand something wintertime and the rest of the fringe kook are not just doing your cause no good, they are actually doing it harm.
So feel free to prove me right and make some snotty condescending comments about over paid under worked teachers and administrators. But just once I would like to be wrong, just once.
“There are two ways that change occurs, evolution and revolution, the difference is that with evolution there is less blood shed and fewer bodies in the street.”
Unfortunately, when evolution DOESN’T HAPPEN, then revolution is the only option. We, conservatives, would all love to see government schools wither on the vine and just be a bad memory for taking this country from educational excellence to the Ash Heap of Education, measured world-wide (you should be familiar with that terminology, from Ed School). But the entrenched interests will not let that happen. So they continue to pile on, and just make things worse and worse.
For example, as far as I know, there is NOT A SINGLE SCHOOL DISTRICT where PARENTS asked for their (somewhat) traditional math education to be jettisoned for Everyday Math, yet it has happened in probably thousands of districts. Just type-in “Everyday Math Sucks” into Google, and you’ll see that.
AGAIN, parents DID NOT ask for Everyday Math but they paid their taxes and then had that thrown at them.
So when you come yelling at parents for not being more proactive - perhaps you might consider that when you gals constantly beat down parents with crap like this, some of us get a bit upset - and it’s hard not to blame them for giving up.
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