One also has to wonder whether the teachers and their unions will accept this. Asking, teachers to sacrifice their careers and abilities on the vain hope of achieving a classless society may not be to their liking even though it is a bedrock value in contemporary pedagogy and government union belief.
Finally, we have come through a multi-decade effort based on the premise that Black students could not learn without a certain percentage of White students. This effort has failed. Seemingly, this "closing the gap" effort is a similar effort but this time it is Black students need White teachers if they are to learn.
The music varies, but the dance remains the same.
The other underlying premise of these utopian visions is that good teachers can survive the organizational hell that constitutes today's school systems. Just as good nurses are abandoning health care, so are good teachers abandoning our daytime child detention centers.
Union vs Liberal Aristocracy...this could be good. I’ve got some good beer and popcorn ready.
Well the main quandary here is that the Teacher’s Unions, however lockstep liberal will never allow their power—in this case, their work rules—to be impinged upon in any way shape or form whatsoever.
These education theorist types forget that good cops re assigned to bad high crime areas are authorized to protect themselves when attacked. The main reason no teacher wants to go to bad school district is crime and personal safety. So the articles logic of using the police personnel assignment model is not valid.
White children take books not guns to school and their parents work.
The California moral is "Do not do the best you can, make sure everyone is at the same low level as the least among us." It is a pitiful world view.
Quite the recipe for losing their “best” teachers, throwing them into what is often tantamount to a war zone. Get the discipline under control, isolate and even remove the disruptive presence, and then learning can commence once again, but not until then.
This is bull. I worked for years to earn a transfer to my neighborhood school. I would resent being sent to another school with its requisite daily commute just to satisfy yet another social experiment.
The first and most important prerequisite to educational success for a student is his desire to learn. With that lacking, no teacher can create miracles, no matter how talented and qualified.
Nice pair o' docs!
How naive of the LAT. I know enough teachers to realize that the best teachers will quit if reassigned. Teachers get treated like crap in minority schools. Outrageous behavior, namecalling, blaming race for everything.
The best teachers will merely seek employment elsewhere. And the suburbs will gladly take them in.
And as pointed out in other posts, you can’t teach someone who doesn’t want to learn, whose culture isn’t about education and achievement.
The stupidity of the Times continues to amaze.
With Nancy Pelosi decrying the English only rule that would help all new Americans, you can expect failure for those who do not see the neccessity of one language - the teacher's are against the wall on this one. Here is the Pelosi stance: (Pelosi)
We have a certain percentage of students in schools who will never be properly educated, regardless of the amount of money spent, quality of teachers or facilities.
The students I speak of and their parent(s?) just don’t value a education.
Give the teacher a widget, and you can justly use exact criteria to judge the abilities of the teacher.
Give the teacher a room full of unique individuals, and you cannot.
By extension, students in the same classroom receiving the same instruction must be achieving equally. Why bother to even grade them?
And short of Soviet-style government work assignments, that's when good teachers will reassign themselves to the 8-5 shift at Target. ;)
the other premise, not said, is that they need the White teachers in the black districts....now, who woulda thunk....
The Democrats don't care about education or any other issue peripheral to their agenda of turning America into a French-style, secular-socialist welfare state, except insofar as that issue can be spun for political advantage. Their ultimate (and ultimately unreachable) goal is to finally create what old-time Austrian economists called "the socialist man", and a society in which all men will always put the good of the community (or "village") ahead of their own welfare.
And, of course, the reason the Democrats have relentlessly pursued this agenda (since at least FDR) is because it is their means to the selfish end of attaining and keeping political office. (High elective office sure has lots of perks, power, and priviledge, you betcha!) The Democrats are pushers of the drug known as "government" and they naturally want to create as many addicts ("base voters") as possible.
There are no true issues for Democrats - - only campaign tactics.
This is like taxing the rich; it destroys incentive. Why would a skilled teacher want to achieve assignment to a battleground maned by indifference?
ensuring mediocrity for all.
How long does the LA Times expect middle and upper-middle class students -- the ones whose parents have a choice -- to stay in schools that are systematically stripped of their best teachers? How long do they expect top teachers -- the ones who would be snapped up anywhere -- to stay in a system that involuntarily assigns them to the hellholes? People can vote with their feet.
Yes, urban school systems have to make special efforts to remediate the disadvantages of the underclass. (Starting with strict discipline and rigorous academics, IMHO, but that's another story.) But at the same time, they have to be very careful to remain attractive to the middle class or they will end up like the schools here in Washington, D.C., where the middle class has essentially given up and is either in the suburbs or private school.