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To: stacytec
Tell me, did everything you learn in highschool get included in the SAT? ACT?

No, but if you read the article, their solution provides for that. Teachers of non-core subjects are judged by the school board for performance. I have no problem with that either. They are then accountable to people elected to run the school district.

I guess this makes teaching really easy, just follow the leasson plan that the testmakers will map out and you've put yourself into the fast track for teacher of the year.

Nope, it isn't easy. If it was, the ineffective tenured teachers currently pervading the system would do just fine. For my hard-earned tax dollars, I want teachers who can actually teach. I want the rest to have a fire lit under their lazy butts to start producing -- teaching their students effectively -- or find another line of work.

Dedicated, results-oriented teachers have nothing to fear from such a system, tenured or not. And that's the real point: changing the system from an incentive for simple longevity to an incentive for results. Without that incentive, the results will always suffer.

45 posted on 03/15/2006 2:07:19 PM PST by TChris ("Wake up, America. This is serious." - Ben Stein)
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To: TChris

Call me a skeptic, but I have difficulty envisioning good teaching (or anything good) as the outcome of this program. I see kids with personalities like mine skipping class and going to McDonalds when that teacher concerned about how well we master quadratics goes through it for the 700th time in order to get that pay raise. Some see it as measuring success, I see it as a guarantee for marginalized teaching methods and removing the motivation for good teachers to expand their lesson plan beyond the "standard". As the previous poster mentioned, every good teacher I had helped expand the material to practical, real word applications. Its one thing to spit back an answer to a cross multiplication question, but can you use that skill to find how many more hits you'll need to bat .350 in a game? I try to imagine what it would be like if those same teachers who helped me develop that type of thinking would have instead abandon their effort in order to make sure I could score 2 more questions correctly on the test. Abstract thinking and life skill thinking aren't in lesson plans, but good teachers help students develop those skills. I don't know if that is something you can easily measure, but you realize later on in life that it made the difference between true retention and use-for-the-test-and-forget learning.


47 posted on 03/15/2006 4:19:14 PM PST by stacytec (Nihilism, its whats for dinner)
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