Posted on 05/31/2010 6:39:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Exactly. They can hire two new teachers for the price of an experienced teacher. I think the schools do need to get rid of bad teachers, but experience is very important when it comes to teaching, especially in the inner city.
My brother, who has been teaching in Cleveland for 27 years, told me he teaches less content now than ever, primarily because of the stupid tests. The kids just learn how to answer the test questions and spend tons of time learning how to take a “test,” so quality goes way out the door.
Not every kid can test well. There is a lot of stuff that goes into doing well on a test. For example, supposed I take a course on Middle Eastern History (which I have done). Maybe I remember 500 good and relevant pieces of information. You, the teacher, taught me 600 pieces of information. There is a test of 100 questions and just coincidentally 75 of the questions are on the 100 pieces I do not recall. I may have learned a lot of good stuff but that doesn’t matter. That is so completely idiotic to me. I have always thought this, even way before the tests became sacrosanct to some. I can’t tell you how many times, I was asked a question and I knew every single thing on a topic but that one darn question. And for whatever it’s worth (so you don’t think I am a bad student), until two semesters ago, I was pulling a 4.0. Now it’s a 3.9. Got a B- in Biology, but I did get an A in my chemistry and physics classes. Woo Hoo.
Excellent points.
Actually, our experience is that it is the newer teachers, recently out of the teaching colleges, who are the least productive. They have this “let them teach themselves” philosophy that pretends kids learn when they teach. (In the meantime the teacher sits at the computer playing solitaire.)
The worst performing kids on the Ohio state grad test have the newest teachers.
The older teachers are more likely to use the old fashioned (tried and true) teaching methods. They expect the work to get done. They expect homework. And their kids pass the graduation tests.
Seniority, in this case, is not bad at all.
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