Tape teacher interviews without their knowledge, creatively edit it, and put it on the school's website. What could go wrong?

The source link has video.

I guess his inspiration for the film is Michael Moore.

The only thing missing was the intro that starts out, "...hold mu'h beer and watch dis'" to know that it was going to be a stooooopid stunt.

Major DumbA$$ award.

Richard Mitchell

This is mild compared to the superintendent in our school district....they found porn on his school lap top which he blamed on his daughter and a few years later they finally fired him when he was found to be sharing sexually explicit emails with 15 different women on his school computer....He then was hired by the metro area public schools systems to oversee their charter schools...no wonder public education is such a mess.

It sounds like some of these superintendents have too much time on their hands....

I remember that story (or one very similar). It takes a real standup guy to blame his daughter for his porno habits. Sounds like the kind of guy that would let his wife take the fall when the cops find his dope in his car.

What an idiot - doesn't he know that this kind of video should be uploaded to YouTube?

The kicker is when they first hired him he was leaving his previous position because of sexual harassment charges.

I remember feeling bad for his wife but then she said that "He is wonderful husband and father." She is an idiot and she still teaches at our HS.

Our new superintendent is fantastic!!!!!

This is SOP at 60 Minutes, isn't it?

This guy is the type of hairpins the NEA produces to educate our kids.

Yep. SOP at 60 minutes, alphabet network evening news, CNN, you name it. In the world of the media, the only thing CNN did wrong with their Operation Tailwind story is get caught. Same for NBC's exploding Ford trucks story.

The group of students recruited into colleges of education to become teachers is at the low end of the distribution of preparation and intellectual capacity, lower than any other professional category except one: school ADMINISTRATORS. The following article is about teacher education, but the website it references also has a survey of programs that purport to prepare people to be principals and superintendents. Check out the reports and summaries on that website for more details. Perhaps a corollary to the old canard, "Those who can, do, those who can't teach" is: "Those who can't teach, administrate".

There is a lot of low-grade credential mongering that goes on in higher education, but apparently the schools of education are over-the-top in their handing out meaningless credentials to a system of education that hires, promotes, and awards pay increases almost exclusively according to the "earned credentials" that employees can add to their "curriculum vita".

No Teacher Left Behind
September 22, 2006; Page W13

Schools of education have gotten bad grades before. Yet there are some truly shocking statistics about teacher training in this week's report from the Education Schools Project. According to "Educating School Teachers," three-quarters of the country's 1,206 university-level schools of education don't have the capacity to produce excellent teachers. More than half of teachers are educated in programs with the lowest admission standards (often accepting 100% of applicants) and with "the least accomplished professors." When school principals were asked to rate the skills and preparedness of new teachers, only 40% on average thought education schools were doing even a moderately good job.

The Education Schools Project was begun in 2001, with foundation funding, to analyze how America trains its educators and to offer constructive criticism. Its report card this week is significant for two reasons. First, it is based on four years of broad and methodical research, including surveys of school principals and of the deans, faculty members and graduates of education schools. In addition, researchers studied programs and practices at 28 institutions. No matter how many establishment feathers get ruffled by the results of these inquiries, miffed educators can't easily brush off the basic findings: There are glaring flaws and gaps in our teacher-training system.

The study also comes at a uniquely challenging moment in American education. The final report was written by ESP director Arthur Levine, a former president of Columbia's Teacher's College. Mr. Levine notes that we're currently facing a national shortage of nearly 200,000 teachers -- at the same time that, "to compete in a global marketplace and sustain a democratic society, the United States requires the most educated population in history." Society now demands that teaching success be measured no longer by what children have studied but by what they have actually learned. (A copy of "Educating Teachers" is at http://www.edschools.org ).

The report's most stunning revelation -- to outsiders at least -- is that nobody knows what makes a good teacher today. Mr. Levine compares the training universe to "Dodge City." There is an "unruly" mix of approaches, chiefly because there is no consensus on how long teachers should study, for instance, or whether they should concentrate on teaching theory or mastering subject matter. Wide variations in curricula, and fads -- like the one that produced the now-discredited "fuzzy math" -- make things worse. Compare such chaos with the training for professions such as law or medicine, where, Mr. Levine reminds us, nobody is unleashed on the public without meeting a universally acknowledged requisite body of knowledge and set of skills.

Mr. Levine also outlines many recommendations. Some seem obvious: more in-classroom training, for instance. Some are perennial: The report notes that one way to attract the best and the brightest to teaching would be to pay them the same salaries as other professionals -- although it more realistically mentions special scholarships and merit pay as alternative incentives. The report also reveals that many failing teacher programs operate as "cash cows" for universities, which encourage their education departments to admit (and graduate) almost anybody for the sake of tuition dollars. It suggests closing some of these schools and directing students toward more rigorous academic institutions. Some critics in the education establishment already have labeled that idea "elitist," saying that it would deprive many people of a chance to become teachers.

Yet there's one idea that seems more important and urgent than the others. That is the recommendation that all states begin collecting information about how much their schoolchildren have learned from kindergarten through high school so it can be correlated with information about how their teachers were trained. Until this fundamental question is explored and answered -- what kind of training produces teachers who get the best results from their children -- we'll be holding classes in the dark.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115889266309870973.html

http://www.edschools.org/news/USA_Today-05-0315-Toppo.htm

Training programs for principals inadequate
March 15, 2005
By Greg Toppo

Most of the college-level programs that train public school principals award "the equivalent of Green Stamps," allowing them to trade in primarily useless credits for raises and promotions without giving them the practical training they need, says the president of Columbia University's Teachers College.

In a study released Monday, Arthur Levine says the graduate schools he studied range from "inadequate to appalling" and need a radical face lift.

"There's no such thing as a good school with a bad principal, and the way we 're preparing them now isn't very good," says Levine, who wrote the report as an independent researcher. He suggests that colleges create "the equivalent of an MBA" for principals, using courses both from colleges of education and business.

He says business schools are good at training managers to change organizations and deal with personnel issues -- a key to improving schools in a new era of accountability.

But in the past 15 years, he says, most schools that train principals have begun offering quick, easy degrees, watering down curricula, easing degree requirements and lowering admissions standards.

"Everybody benefits from the current system," he says, "except our children."

The report, funded by the Annenberg Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation, is the first in a series resulting from a four-year study of U.S. education schools. The next report, on teacher preparation, is due in September.

Educators have long complained that education schools take in vast amounts of cash, but that colleges and universities often use it to fund unrelated programs such as scientific research. Education schools are mainstays on most campuses, according to the U.S. Education Department. With 1,206 such programs, education accounts for one in 12 bachelor's degrees and one in four master's degrees.

In a written statement, three organizations of school principals and administrators said Levine's report confirms much of what they've been saying for years.

Arthur Wise, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, agrees with Levine's analysis and most of his recommendations but says principal candidates are usually teachers with families and full-time classroom jobs. They're trying to earn advanced degrees at night or on weekends, but school districts "have made no investment through help with tuition, time off from work or offers of internships."

Susan Masterson, principal of Monroe Elementary School in Janesville, Wis., says mentoring programs are essential.

"Principals have to know so much more than they ever had to," she says. One big barrier to getting good principals: low pay. For many experienced teachers, the difference between their salary and that of a principal is "really minimal."

Top problems in education graduate programs

* Irrelevant curriculum. Eighty-nine percent of alumni surveyed said they were not prepared to cope with classroom realities.

* Low standards. Standardized test scores of students in leadership programs are among the lowest in academia.

* Weak faculty. Just 6% of education faculty have been principals; just 2% superintendents.

* Inadequate clinical instruction. Few programs set up mentoring relationships.

* Inappropriate degrees. Too many degrees are in educational administration, often with no job relevance.

* Poor research. Research is disconnected from practice.

Another graduate of the Michael Moore film school.

Now if the principal had used the original and the doctored interviews as a way to show kids how interviews can be manipulated, then I would say good job.

Another person who thinks too highly of themself.

Yep, and this stuff is real funny when it's happening to somebody else. Goofs like this superintendant who pull this kind of stuff usually go nuts when somebody else has a laugh at their expense in front of a bunch of people.

Tape teacher interviews without their knowledge, creatively edit it, and put it on the school's website. What could go wrong?

I am not sure, let me check with Dan Rather.