Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers?


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Posted by GC on September 11, 2002 at 11:55:03:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why should we have to defend teachers? posted by D on September 11, 2002 at 10:10:09:

I think that the increase in criticism of the educational system over the past three decades has had mixed effects. Teacher morale is at an all-time low. Teacher shortages are becoming critical in many areas because too many college students are seeing teaching as a thankless profession. However, this problem seems to be cyclical; interest in education as a profession comes and goes, and it will upturn after a while.

However, there are some good signs, at least in my area. Teacher education programs, after years of criticism, are trying very hard to improve themselves. There is a much stronger emphasis on practicality and applicability than there has been in the past. Students are spending more time in the classroom and in control of classes during their observation and student teaching phases. Observation and evaluation of student teaching has become more rigorous, and the standards for graduation have gone up. Recent graduates coming into the classroom are better prepared and more ready to deal realistically with the demands of teaching. The quality of instruction and supervision are going up. There is definitely hope for the future.

Still, the system itself if badly flawed. I agree that a career path system would serve our students better, but like Rick D. said, students are too often pigeonholed too early in the European system. We should be able to build a more flexible system gives stronger career paths, but that does not treat everyone who isn't college prep material like a second-class citizen.

The biggest obstacle to long-term improvement is lack of a central vision for changes in the system, compounded by the fact that there is no consesnsus on what that central vision should be. The posts in this thread have shown that even a marvelous and enlightened group like tubanians and euphonites can't even agree on what the goals of education should be. Different groups have proposed national educational standards for decades, but the states don't want to give up their educational autonomy. For that matter, who would we trust to make the decisions? The Federal government? Yeah, right. But who else has the power to effect change?

The states have the power to make the needed changes, but power in the states is in the hand of the state government. We all know that the meddling of politicians has caused problems time and time again for the educational communities. Sometimes, their legislation produces real improvement, sub sometimes it leads to educational disaster. To me, the saddest current trend is over-reliance on standardized tests. So many politicians seem to think that test scores are the only measurement of school performance needed, but they don't know how to apply them. Currently, schools in my state that don't improve their test scores are labeled as failing schools, and parents are given the right to transfer their students at public expense to better schools (this legislation predated the Federal law). The problem is that schools that were already maxing out the tests have been labeled as failing because there test scores had little or no room to improve. Another particular school has terrible scores, but over 3/4 of the students come to the school as non-English speaking immigrants. The school does a marvelous job of getting students adapted to life in the U.S. and has a great record of success in getting students to speak serviceable English quickly. However, students with little or no English proficiency are still required to take the same tests, and the tests can only be administered in English, so they're destined to bomb. It's no wonder that their scores are terrible; even though they're doing a superior job of teaching their students, their students simply are not starting in the same place as native English speakers. Boneheaded oversights in legislation like this, coupled with legislators who won't listen to warnings about the problems that their bills are likely to cause, are not at all uncommon.

As long as our ideas and objectives are so fragmented, and as long as the hand at the helm keeps unpredicatbly changing destinations and courses, we'll just keep coasting along, changing direction only to avoid the worst bumps in the road.



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