Ravitch is a misogynist pig.
Beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes right to the bone.
Prove it.
She may be âattractiveâ when she is standing alone, but the effect is somewhat diminished in the shadow of her geeky neo-con, Rumsfeld-fluffing husband, Dan Senor.
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What absolute garbage. Itâs clear you have never taught. I have, my dad did, my grandfather, my greatgrandfather, my grandmother. Itâs very difficult to satisfy 25-30 persons with different needs and levels at one time. Some teachers work well with some students and not others. While I agree that some teachers are better than others, what objective measures are there of this? Student test scores are not the answer, for 12 good reasons. And if we fire the âworst teachersâ, guess what? Weâll still have the same number of âworse teachersâ, since that is always the ones âbelow averageâ, and there are always 50% of teachers below average.
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How does our current system work? In a functioning system, almost every student would be getting Aâs and Bâs and thereâs no excuse for why that isnât happening. Sure, funding should be improved, but thatâs the least of the problems. Iâve been a student and a parent, and can think of countless ways that even âgoodâ schools are doing it wrong. And the existence of bad schools is intolerable.
And the biggest problem is that schools are designed to work best for those who work there and not the students. And thatâs why the older teachers are often the worst, since they get stuck in a rut and design their job around what works best for them and forget why they became teachers in the first place: The students. Yet under the current system, itâs the older teachers who get the most rewards, and if itâs time to fire, itâs the new teachers who are out the door; regardless of performance. Thatâs ridiculous and I fail to see how itâs a âliberalâ issue, besides that we support unions and the teacherâs union is full of older teachers who like the status quo. Because Iâm not anti-union whatsoever, but wish the teacherâs union would finally see what schools are doing wrong, rather than imaging that money is the only solution. Again, schools most definitely need more money, but thatâs only the beginning and a bad teacher is a bad teacher no matter how much staffing they have.
And beyond that, I am quite happy with No Child Left Behind, as it allowed me to move my kids from a failing school to a good school And the problem with the failing school wasnât just the students, but the teachers, administrators, and the building itself; which was in bad need of a paint job and proper lighting. They got just as much money as the good school my kids went to, but there wasnât a single person there who wanted to be there; most especially the faculty. The whole place was depressing and I could totally see how even the best of students would feel downtrodden being there.
And worst of all, I was required to send my son to the bad school for the first six weeks because the school district hated NCLB and made it intentionally difficult to transfer him, and by the time he was transferred, he was already several weeks behind the new school. How is that possible? He was only there for six weeks, yet had a huge pile of catchup work to do in every single class, because the bad school sucked so much. Yet these schools are only a few miles apart and again, receive the same funding.
So say what you want about NCLB, but it most definitely benefited me; if only to get my kids out of that rotten school, where even the adults had a bad attitude. And maybe you can fault me for not taking it on the chin and letting my kids go to a rotten school, but I most certainly have no regrets.
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Sheâs right - Campbell Brown married that absolute asshole Dan Senor. How smart can she possibly be?
BTW, itâs almost impossible for an unattractive woman to break into on-air reporting in America. Sorry, but itâs true.
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Itâs hard to take this article seriously when it is accompanied by an ad featuring Miley Cryus bent over wearing underpants.
Meow, that kitty scratches.
True, but itâs hard for anyone who isnât attractive to break into broadcast journalism.
If a man said that a sh*tsorm would break loose.
For what is is worth, having raised two kids who went through public schools, I think any parent involved in his or her kidsâ education has something to say about issues like teacher tenure. Moreoever, parents have less at stake personally than teachers who benefit from rules that prevent them from being fired for incompetence or malfeasance, or allows them to continue to teach and draw paychecks for months or years even though everyone knows they are awful. Any parent who has had a kid in one of these teacherâs classrooms knows the agony I am talking about.
No, I havenât taught. But Iâve been a student, Iâve been a parent, and Iâve got eyes and a brain. The current system is terrible and if you defend it, it just shows how blinded youâve been to it.
And part of what Iâd like to see done is to have more teaching move to computers, which is how I happen to learn better anyway. So kids can learn at their own pace, but if they need help understanding something, the teacher step in and do that. But part of the biggest problem is expecting everyone to learn at the same pace: So the smart kids get held back and the slow kids get left behind. For me, lecturing is almost always worthless, as I prefer learning at my own pace. But most schools go with the One Size Fits All model, and since some kids succeed with it, they assume the failing kids have themselves to blame. So I was always a lousy student until I got to college and learned to teach myself while skipping classes and only showing up for tests; and graduated with honors.
And hereâs part of the insanity: At my daughterâs elementary school, they intentionally put the GT kids in the same class as the special needs kids. One year the teacher complained to me about how she wasnât even allowed to teach the GT kids (which my daughter was) because she needed to focus on the special needs kids and the GT kids were on their own. Seriously, they had to do self-guided lessons without the help of the teacher at all.
She told me to complain to the principal about it because the principal refused to listen to the teacher, but I wanted no part of that. I know how this works. The experts working for the school know sooooo much better than us stupid parents, and Iâd have been treated like a complainer and ignored. And thatâs the biggest problem: People who insist that any solution is worse than the status quo, because they automatically know better than anyone else.
As for your final point about there always being below average teachers, thatâs absurd. Iâd NEVER support a policy that automatically dismissed teachers merely for being below average. Microsoft used such a system for years and it was a laughable joke that damaged the company. Nor do I think test scores are a great way to do compensation. ButâŚweâve got to do something. Even at our best schools, itâs considered rare for the majority of students to be A/B students, and thatâs absurd since Bâs should be the minimum. The entire teaching industry needs to be overhauled and anyone who doesnât see that is blind to the issue.
And if teachers unions wanted to do the right thing, theyâd be leading the charge, rather than defending the status quo. I mean, anyone who supports a seniority-based merit system doesnât know what theyâre talking about. Even the military doesnât go with that system, and theyâre about as bureaucratic as they come. There are no perfect solutions, but the status quo is obviously not working.
Yeah, going there just makes Diane Ravitch look catty. It would be quite enough â and more effective â to simply attack her arguments. And to do that, she needs to say more than just, âthey are not logical.â She needs to explain why she doesnât think they are logical, or why she thinks that is the wrong solution.
Granted, you would need more than 140 characters to do that, but that is why Twitter is just wrong for substantive discourseâŚ
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Really? SoâŚshould I have been so clueless as to send my kids to a rotten school where even the faculty didnât want to be there? Why? To prove a point that Bush sucks?
Seriously, NCLB was the only reason I could get my kids into a decent school without moving to a different part of town, even though both schools had the same funding and the decent school was actually closer to my house than the rotten school. But please, go ahead and insult me more for putting my childrenâs needs over the needs of the teachers. I have no regrets. Because it wasnât just the students who were bad at the bad school, but every single employee I met.
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She is on the Board of a Charter School Academy, most all of which are against and often outright ban teacher unionization and tenure from the outset as a condition of their hiring contract. Charter Schools use public education money through revenues collected from taxpayers to buy tax-free properties for their buildings in order to support what they like to call âschool choiceâ. They are a complete drain on resources for the overall public school system. âSchool Choiceâ is often a euphemism for upper-class white folks finding a way to re-segregate the public school system, only by another name. Many of these schools have dubious lotteries to choose the students they want and are able to kick out students far more easily for all manner of things whenever test scores are in jeopardy. Their overall record of better outcomes has also been hotly debated and in many cases, debunked.
The Detroit Free Press has done an outstanding and thorough investigation of the Charter School Industry. Since the School Choice movement is largely being coordinated and funded out of Richard DeVosâ megabillions here in Michigan for implementation and political manipulation around the country, the information the Press provides is worth looking at if you have concerns about the Charter School Movement. His ultimate often unstated goal is to get public money for private education, which for DeVos includes parochial school settings.
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Disagree Ms Ravitch.
Schools should give priority to the BEST teachersâŚregardless of age/experience. Why penalize an excellent teacher who just happens to be young?
Hey, most of the worst teachers I have had have been young ones, and most of the best one the ones with more experience. But you are right that LIFO is not likely to improve the quality of the teacher pool, because there certainly are excellent young teachers and some mediocre older ones. But are they talking of dismissals based on merit, or simply across-the-board layoffs? Absolute merit is such a hard thing to measure in teachers that LIFO doesnât seem like such a bad thing to me for the latter, especially since it is probably easier for younger teachers to find other employment.
When I was in NYC, I knew of a really strong teacher who was let go during a round of layoffs, meanwhile some lousy older teachers got to stay. Makes no sense. Sure, seniority could be a consideration, but it is total nonsense to keep a poor teacher at the expense of a strong one just because of an arbitrary hire date.
OK, but this is orthogonal to what Ravitch was saying. Her point was not that Brown is a blithering idiot BECAUSE of her looks. Rather, her idiocy is clear from her words. Ravitch is only trying to explain why anyone would pay attention to someone who is so obviously uninformed.
Granted, it was probably not a strategically wise move to bring in Brownâs looks (since it sounds sexist even if it isnât). But I donât think her statement is worthy of âshame.â
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Sheâs âuninformedâ because she supports merit-based hiring and layoffs?
Fine to disagreeâŚbut that doesnât make your opponent âuninformedâ.
As a teacher Iâve witnessed plenty of times when a young, but strong teacher was let go during a round of layoffs simply because they lacked seniority.