It's impossible to get rid of a bad teacher. And students were graduating without even basic skills in math, writing, and reading comprehension.
Rather than taking ownership of the problem and dealing with problem teachers, the teacher's unions used it as a vehicle to get more money -- for the same poor outcome.
Standardized testing is nothing but a last-ditch effort to hold teachers accountable. Until they become accountable on their own, they will have to deal with the tests.
Totally agree with your last point. Teachers don’t seem to want to propose an actual, verifiable, and repeatable method for assessing the quality of their work. Test scores aren’t perfect, but they are a way of measuring what someone knows/doesn’t know. They aren’t perfect, but they are what we have.
That being said, I learned more useful math in an 8th grade class totally geared to smoking the Catholic High School Entrance Test than I learned in the following high school and 2 college math classes I took afterwards.
The problem is trying to get apples from a persimmon tree. Public education is a failed concept. Education is a moral exercise. Once that’s understood you’re left with the question: Whose morals are taught? Public education must either be based on a cacophony of divergent moralities by which nothing can be learned, or based on one neglecting all others. That one moral code is Humanism, but in a republic, the government’s established religion will constantly be under siege. Common Core will end all of that once and for all, and public education will be 100% dedicated to propping up the regime. Once the regime acquires a taste for that, they’ll no longer tolerate any other form of education.
When that happens, borrowing from the sagacious Ted Nugent, I’ll be dead or in prison.
TRANSFER HER TO KONG ISLAND!
Post of the day.
I was lazy (or overeager perhaps) and posted my mostly redundant response before reading yours.
I get annoyed when people do that to me so apologies offered.
I recently retired from public school teaching. I don’t have a problem with holding bad teachers responsible. But I think that the real problem lies with trying to hold the students and their parents responsible. The thing that is killing public education is the fact that the public schools must accept every warm body that shows up. The more problems and ‘handicaps’ a child has the more rights he or she is given. The mainstreaming of problem children means that your normal child gets to learn in a circus atmosphere. Parents who know the score and have the means pull their kids out for parochial/private/home schooling—which makes the public school worse.
When I started teaching, each teacher had a paddle. If a kid crossed the line, three swats were given (with all the class doors open, to encourage the others). Twenty years ago the paddles were taken away—only the principal paddled. Five or six years ago the principal gave that up. Over the years minor punishments were taken away—sentences (like Bart Simpson), standing at the board, sending into the hall, etc, etc all taken away. All tha teachers can now do at my old school is send a child to a ‘safe seat’, if the behavior continues the kid is sent to a ‘buddy room’ where he or she fills out a form and returns. Sending a child to the principal is frowned on and requires the filling out of a long form. Suspensions do occur, but are rare because ‘that’s just what he wants’ and of course cost the school money. And God help a district if the percent of protected classes being suspended is to high.
Of course kids get passed on to the next grade regardless of what he or she has learned. Who wants a 15-year old in the fifth grade? Certainly not the parent of a normal fifth-grader. The best we can hope for is that he will be quiet in his eighth-grade class and let the others learn. If he can’t be quiet, then the others (including the teacher) will have to do their best in spite of him.
I don’t think teachers really asked for any of this. All of these things tend to get passed on from the top downward. In the last twenty years the top has been in Washington rather that the state capitals or local school boards. There are good public schools left—but that’s in spite of not because of the current trends.