posted 03-14-2001 04:18 PM               

(1) How do we determine the objectives that must be met by each student upon completing a grade? Is the NY DOE set of "basic survival" standards a good one? How do we determine what tools are necessary to achieve these objectives? When we find these answers, are we assuming an unlimited budget - as in, "What would schools have if they could have whatever they wanted?" - then working from there? And most importantly, what about this do we emphasize from a public relations perspective?

(2) Speaking of PR, that's certainly one of the tougher problems facing teachers, partially because, as you say, there are a number of teachers who aren't ready for the job, but also because there are a heck of a lot of parents out there who have an almost innate distrust for teachers. I know this is true in the rural areas where I've covered education, at least. In such a sensitive issue, it seems like there must come a point where teachers have to say to parents, "Look, I'm doing the absolute best I can here with your kids." Do you agree? Can you (or anybody reading this, for that matter) come up with any good, grassroots community ideas to bring teachers and parents closer together?

posted 03-14-2001 04:19 PM               

Finally, it really amazes me how teaching has moved from one of the most respected professions in this country to one of the most maligned. During the recent contract negotiations for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, there were some pretty ugly things said about what is truly one of the toughest jobs in this city. Nearly every time I try to have a semi-intelligent conversation about teachers in this city, I am told that teachers can't possibly ask for more money when you consider they work a seven-hour day, are paid for their breaks, have their summers off, etc. OK, I hear that and I certainly know my share of teachers who got into the profession for three reasons: June, July and August.

However, I don't think it's fair to malign an entire profession for what a few individuals may do. No one has proposed paying IT personnel less just because a percentage may spend the bulk of their working hours trading mp3's. There may be five bad teachers for every hundred but in the court of public opinion, there are a hundred bad teachers. Our goal should be setting standards to weed those individuals out. As it stands the teacher shortage requires that we take keep every warm body so that every classroom has a leader.

posted 03-15-2001 05:36 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kevin Ott:

(1) How do we determine the objectives that must be met by each student upon completing a grade? Is the NY DOE set of "basic survival" standards a good one? How do we determine what tools are necessary to achieve these objectives? When we find these answers, are we assuming an unlimited budget - as in, "What would schools have if they could have whatever they wanted?" - then working from there? And most importantly, what about this do we emphasize from a public relations perspective?

---

Well, from what I've gathered from the reading I've been doing, the NY standards were put together by a panel of educators and people involved with the education system. They asked questions like "What does a person need to do to function in modern society?", which broke down into, "What skills would someone need to understand a referendum issue on a ballot? What would they need to serve as a juror?" etc., etc. So this isn't dream-world stuff, where you can say, "Well, that would be nice, but it's not essential." (Although that's what the state of New York tried to say in the trial, but that's another story.) This is stuff were you say, if the schools aren't doing it, they're not doing their job. By extension, if the schools don't have the resources to pull it off, they don't have the resources hey need.

How do you sell that? I'm not sure. A major part of the issue is, I think, just explaining the standards, and then explaining how you've come to the conclusions you have about what's neeeded to attain them. Given some of our distrust of experts, that may be a tough sell.

quote:

---

(2) Speaking of PR, that's certainly one of the tougher problems facing teachers, partially because, as you say, there are a number of teachers who aren't ready for the job, but also because there are a heck of a lot of parents out there who have an almost innate distrust for teachers. I know this is true in the rural areas where I've covered education, at least. In such a sensitive issue, it seems like there must come a point where teachers have to say to parents, "Look, I'm doing the absolute best I can here with your kids." Do you agree? Can you (or anybody reading this, for that matter) come up with any good, grassroots community ideas to bring teachers and parents closer together?

---

This is a tough one, at least in part because I think that if a teacher is doing his or her job, they're a) teaching a kid to think critically -- we all know how much parents love that; b) teaching a kid things that probably go against the worldview of the parents and illustrate that some of what the parent thinks he or she knows is wrong; c) serving as a rival authority figure, and one who may seem more qualified to fill that role. So it's gonna be a tough call, and in some senses, it may just take results. If we can create an educational system that gets kids engaged and enthused, then maybe the parents will be excited for their kids. And communication between school and family is crucial -- parent-teacher meetings, home and school, all that kind of stuff. I think that will win the good parents over.

quote:

---

I especially like here the way you address state taxes versus local - in many cases, I think, anything that reduces local taxes will be met with cheers, even if state taxes rise as a result. For some reason, people seem to respond more readily to factors that affect their local taxes than any increase or decrease in state taxes. The notion of a system that is safe from local referendums and taxpayer monkeying is very attractive to me.

---

The more I look at this issue, the more this seems like the key to me. It cuts right to the heart of the city/suburb/rural conflict -- the current system just promotes too much "Mine! Mine! Mine!" thinking.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pattie Gillett:

What do opponents say are the drawbacks to the cost-based indexes?

---

Well, I'm sure that your usual distrust of bureaucrats is in there somewhere. I've yet to see a credible argument that current funding systems are fair and equitable, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

quote:

---

it really amazes me how teaching has moved from one of the most respected professions in this country to one of the most maligned.

---

Tell me about it. Seriously -- I think there's still a lot of respect for what educators can do. There are just too few that are doing the job well. Because while it may be easy to be a bad teacher, being a good teacher requires hours of prep work, reading, grading, extra help, advising, etc., etc. that doesn't show up in the hourly count. I had many teachers back at Holy Ghost who showed up between 7:30 and 8 and were still on campus at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, before they took home papers to grade.

Plus, it's emotionally and intellectually draining to stand at the front of a room and talk intelligently and project enthusiasm and think on your feet for hours. I mean, parents have a hard time dealing with two or three kids from, say, three in the afternoon to ten at night. Imagine dealing with thirty or forty for seven hours, with almost all of them at least somewhat hostile to what you're trying to do. I'm not trying to say teaching is harder than being, say, a corporate vice president, but it's no walk in the park, either. If it's done right, which is the core of the problem. We don't make teaching a well-enough-paid-and-respected position to attract the best and the brightest and the most enthused. We don't train teachers in the skills they need to really get students engaged. We heap blame on them for everything. And then we wonder why many of them get burnt out, or why many talented people never consider teaching as a career. In short: we're not thinking this through.

As Sean Connery would say, here endeth the lesson.

[Edited because it's 5:40 AM and I can't type.]

posted 03-16-2001 10:50 AM               

quote:

---

* The empirical approach seeks to identify those school districts that have actually achieved a specified level of student performance, such as meeting state standards. The average actual level of expenditures in these districts is then used to estimate the level of expenditure that would be required to achieve a similar level of student performance in other districts throughout the state. Typically, differences in cost of living and in the numbers of students with extraordinary needs are also taken into account in these calculations.

---

Ohio and New Hampshire have used this system. Despite New York's dragging out of the appeals process, a NY DOE subcommittee has started a preliminary empirical costing-out process as well.

quote:

---

* The professional judgment method. The judgmental approach accepts as its premise that the determination of an adequate cost basis will involve a large number of judgments; it seeks to establish a process that will comprehensively review the range of judgmental factors involved and ensure that those judgments are made openly, fairly, and independently. Typically this is done by assembling panels of educators to identify the specific instructional components deemed necessary to meet state standards and then having economists determine the price of each of the identified components.

---

Illinois, Alaska, Wyoming and Oregon have used this method.

The part of me that appreciates the complexity of these issues likes the professional approach, although I can see how the empirical method might be easier to use and easier for citizens to get behind.

posted 03-18-2001 11:13 AM               

quote:

---

I am told that teachers can't possibly ask for more money when you consider they work a seven-hour day, are paid for their breaks, have their summers off, etc.

---

...and as you say, surely there are a number of teachers who take the job to get their summers off (though I'd like to meet them). But instead telling naysayers that there are ten good teachers for every teacher theat looks forward to June, why not defend the practice of having summers off? As Dave said, being a teacher is hard. You've got to stand in front of a classroom for how many hours a day, repeating yourself, dealing with a group of people that likely has an automatic distrust of you, blah bling blah. Why not give these people a few months off to recharge their batteries? And what's the alternative? Year-round school just to make teachers earn their pay according to the standards of someone who probably doesn't know what's going on?

As for pay, I've heard a lot of comments that teachers are the only group of people (in PA, at least) guaranteed a yearly(?) pay increase. That doesn't bother me either -- lots of professions include cost-of-living increases. I wish mine did. It should.

posted 03-18-2001 12:50 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kevin Ott:

As far as the professional judgment method, Dave -- that seems like it's got some real opportunities for error, since it seems to be based on making judgments and then confirming them with more mechanical methods, whereas costing-out is the other way around. Getting yourself a list of goals and expenditured based on a tried-and-true equasion, then tweaking it here and there if need be, makes a lot more sense to me than having people make a series of judgments, then another group of people review those judgments and so on ad nauseum.

---