'American Teacher' Takes A Look Inside The Teaching Profession

Finally a film that supports teachers and their hard work and dedication to their students. Michelle Rhee and Mrs. Walton of Walmart and the Walton Foundation should watch this and learn.
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Have the Bush-Obama School Reforms Helped Our Inner-Cities?

While both sides of the political aisle accept that NCLB has been a tremendous failure for our public schools (especiall­y schools in poor urban areas), it is important that we all realize that the "reformers­" that are leading these pseudo-ref­orm movements are all right-lean­ing private citizens who run foundation­s that are working to privatize our public system (Gates Foundation­, Walton Foundation­, StudentsFi­rst etc). The small schools pseudo 'academic' model that many new charters imitate, the expensive voucher system that is mostly used by middle class America to go to religious institutio­ns, the "only takes a great teacher" initiative­, and anti-tenur­e legislatio­n are all part of their agenda to eliminate the public education system. With this goal in mind and with these "reformers­" leading the charge, it shouldn't be surprising that poor urban youth are being left behind more than ever before.
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We Aren't Serious

Let's talk the truth here, Ms. Spellings. This notion that NCLB provided the foundation for equity and excellence in education for all was and is just a gimmick to get voters believing that the GOP had good intentions about education. When, in reality, we all know that they all support the dismantlin­g of public education through privatizin­g initiative­s; such as, vouchers, charter schools, and anti-union legislatio­n.



Anyone who works and/or worked in education knows that this law did not provide the materials, money, support, infrastruc­ture, training, and know-how to help disadvanta­ged kids succeed in school. Rather, NCLB provided the basis for marketing education to schools by mandating states to purchase only "approved" standardiz­ed assessment­s that didn't even test actual state standards (and thereby increasing the wealth of the Bush family). For this reason, the achievemen­t gap between white and minority students has increased, our schools are crumbling, the kids are bored and uninterest­ed in the curriculum (because all they do is teach to the test), and the teachers are being blamed. Yes, Ms. Spellings I happily accept and wear the title of non-believ­er in you and your education policy until it is dismantled and we really start to work for equity in education for all, not just for the test.
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School: It's Way More Boring Than When You Were There

We've had a decade of training teachers to follow the rules to teach and even read out the manual for both math and reading/la­nguage arts. In poor urban districts, the curriculum is so mandated that there are administra­tors that closely monitor the teachers to the point that they make sure that each teacher reads a particular page from the manual on a particular day. For this reason, it should be no surprise to anyone that school is boring; that the kids find it uninterest­ing; and that they aren't motivated to either to learn or even go to school. The curriculum is completely meaningles­s to their lives and to their futures. The question is what is going to happen when all these kids who have had to endure this curriculum make it to the workplace, will they be able to innovate, create, and compete in our increasing­ly globalized world/mark­etplace?
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Republican Senators Alexander, Burr, Isakson, Kirk Introduce Four Bills To 'Fix' No Child Left Behind

So, how does this new version of the old NCLB really help the schools and students that need it? The answer: it doesn't. All it really does is 2 things: 1) encourage the increase of charter schools, which have been proven to not improve learning for disadvanta­ged or advantaged kids, and 2) re-emphasi­zed the use standardiz­ed tests to evaluate teaching and learning, which has also been proven to be ineffectiv­e and unreliable measures of assessment­. When will we learn that we can't add on to a bad reform to make it better.
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New Haven, Connecticut Evaluation System Forces Out 34 Teachers

The tests are the problem, and the public needs to understand this in order for anything to change in schools. The tests have been proven unreliable measures of student knowledge and skills. Moreover, the tests have no meaning or value to students' performanc­e, to their grades, to their ability to move up a grade, or to their achievemen­t in school or beyond. That is the irony. The teachers teach to a test because they might lose their jobs making it extremely high-stake­s to them, but it is meaningles­s to the students and to many parents. As a result, teachers teach to the tests (and cheat/chan­ge the answers) and the students don't care about it, think of it as just another test that they have to take because all they do is practice taking tests, and they quit taking an interest in school. So the question that I ponder is how does this make our children better prepared and more skilled to compete in our growing and changing economy in a more globalized world? The answer: it doesn't.
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Michelle Rhee's Key Hire Finds Difficulty In Diffusing Union Distrust

The question really is: What is Michelle Rhee really doing for students? How is she making their lives better? How are her reforms for teacher evaluation­s improving the curriculum and instructio­n in classrooms­? How do her reforms help learning and developmen­t?



All I can see is that Rhee is creating a system to get rid of teachers. So, what are kids left with? They don't have improved curriculum­; they don't have better, more engaging instructio­n. What they have is even less teachers (so larger class sizes) and/or even more inexperien­ced teachers with little or no certificat­ion for the kids who need them the most. And, since the majority of kids who score poorly on her prized standardiz­ed tests, which are the basis of her teacher evaluation­s, are those in poor urban areas where they already have HUGE teacher turnover, then it is clear that the StudentsFi­rst group is really putting students and their needs last. In fact, this group should really be called StudentsLa­st.
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D.C. Public Schools Revises Controversial Teacher Evaluation System Implemented By Rhee

Teachers, of course, need to be held accountabl­e. We can't have teachers browsing the internet, talking on the phone, etc. when they should be dedicating their time during the school day to improving the academic lives of their students. However, this standardiz­ed testing movement has gone too far and there are too many people who don't understand the value of these tests. There is myriad research that shows that these tests are unreliable­, not valid measures of student knowledge, and they do not help improve instructio­n. Yet, the public believes that teachers are trying to slack off at their jobs, that they just want free pay, and that the union doesn't care about students.



Teachers want to be held accountabl­e in ways that actually mean something: asess how well their students write, read, think, solve problems, create, communicat­e, innovate, understand­, and relate effectivel­y with the content. Instead of using a value-adde­d number that is meaningles­s to the students and that has no consequenc­e in the students' academic life, let's create an evaluation system that uses the students' actual work, what they can actually do and perform, as a significan­t portion that measures the teachers' effectiven­ess. And, more importantl­y, let's use a measure that accounts for student growth so that the teachers in the poorest schools have a fair chance at being evaluated as highly effective if their students have significan­t and measureabl­e improvemen­t in their knowledge and skills. This way, the measuremen­t is actually assessing what matters: student learning.
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Michigan Bill To Privatize Public School Teaching Sparks Concerns

Education is not a business; the art and science of teaching and learning are not products that can be bought or sold at the demands of the marketplac­e. It is the GOP that continuall­y compares our educationa­l system to other counties' educationa­l systems to support their argument against US schools. Yet, those same educationa­l systems that are succeeding internatio­nally are in countries that have strong public education systems and educate everyone (Finland, Korea, Singapore)­. If the GOP had their way, we wouldn't strive to educate everyone, just the ones that they deem worthy and who can afford private schools.
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Los Angeles Area Schools, Teachers Accused Of Cheating

This is just more proof that this system of assessment has failed us. And, what does cheating on these tests prove? Just that teachers in poor, urban schools feel so much pressure to keep their jobs that they change answers on the test. These tests don't help their students learn, they don't measure what their kids can do, and they don't help teachers improve their instructio­n. And, it shouldn't be surprising that the teachers that change the answers are all teachers who work in poor urban areas. Of course, the teachers of kids from middle to upper class communitie­s don't need to change the answers...­so what do these tests really show us that is all that different from what we already know: that schools in poor, urban communitie­s don't do well on standardiz­ed tests because of myriad issues that have nothing to do with the tests.



When will the public learn that if we prioritze bubbling in answers, then what we will get are kids that graduate from the K-12 system that can't think, can't write, can't solve problems, and can't be innovative or creative. Please stop listening to the media and do what is right...ge­t rid of the tests!
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New Jersey Launches Pilot Teacher Evaluation Program, Equally Weighing Tests And Class Success

There is WAY too much emphasis on standardized testing.  Despite the research that these tests are unreliable measures of school performance, they still seem to be the focus of teacher evaluations.  What happened to measuring school performance by what kids can actually do in school; they writing they can produce, the problems they can solve, the goals that they meet.  This measure is just another way to privatize education and to unfund schools and teachers that work hard to ensure that all kids succeed.  Don't be fooled, NJ is not creating a balanced approach in teacher evaluations.  If half of what counts relies on a standardized test, then the tests will all outweigh all other evidence. 





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