Posted on 03/28/2011 2:30:24 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
In Houston, school district officials introduced a test score-based evaluation system to determine teacher bonuses, then — in the face of massive protests — jettisoned the formula after one year to devise a better one.
In New York, teachers union officials are fighting the public release of ratings for more than 12,000 teachers, arguing that the estimates can be drastically wrong.
Despite such controversies, Los Angeles school district leaders are poised to plunge ahead with their own confidential "value-added" ratings this spring, saying the approach is far more objective and accurate than any other evaluation tool available.
...All value-added methods aim to estimate a teacher's effectiveness in raising students' standardized test scores. But there is no universal agreement on which formula can most accurately isolate a teacher's influence from other factors that affect student learning — and different formulas produce different results.
...In essence, value-added analysis involves looking at each student's past test scores to predict future scores. The difference between the prediction and students' actual scores each year is the estimated "value" that the teacher added — or subtracted.
....William Sanders, value-added consultant for the Houston Independent School District, strongly opposes adjusting for race or socioeconomic status, however. He says that it is unnecessary and that adjustments would camouflage such institutional problems as the inequitable distribution of teaching talent. "I want administrators to deal with this and not sweep it under the rug," he said.
Deasy said that after long internal debate, L.A. Unified decided to control for race, ethnicity, mobility, English proficiency and special education status. He noted that they can affect achievement but "don't determine or predict it."
...Many teachers and union leaders say they are not necessarily opposed to value-added methods but want to understand them and have a say in how they're used....
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It’s amazing how requiring an investment improves outcomes.
This is true not only in education but everywhere. See housing...
“what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly...”
Free stuff is not valued by most human beings.
The conundrum is Thomas Jefferson [among others] argued for free education. Thomas Paine seems to have differed [his quote above.]
IMHO we can do both - provide education at taxpayer expense AND have it valued. If schools could just kick people out and/or refuse admission to undesirables it could work. But... who chooses the undesirables and makes admission decisions...
condundrum indeed
It really is Big Education when...
...50% of all states' budgets go to education (this isn't counting the "keep-Fed-nanny-state-in states'-business" dollars), the trickle down economy is huge. "Follow the money" applies when you have school construction contractors paying for yard signs promoting voting referendums on tax increases for school districts (one example of many)....
...when you need exit exams to "prove" the graduating class is competent on some level, it's telling.
...when universities, colleges and junior colleges give entrance exams so they know how many haven't mastered, reading, writing and math and need remedial work, it's alarming.
...when Schools of Education have more semester hours devoted to process than to subject content, it's a foregone conclusion of what their agenda is.
...when you can't boot a bad teacher because they're a protected political class, you should clearly understand that your child's potential is being lost under public education.
....when after five years, an alarming number of teachers flee the profession, you can't be surprised.
..when The National Education Association and other teacher's unions are the number one supplier of campaign donations, get out the vote muscle and an eager pool for political convention delegates the Democratic Party, you have no one to blame but yourself when your kid thinks your ideas and your country are screwed up.
Google "lesson plans" and find out how teachers source what to put in your kids' brains.
Google "arrested" and your school district/state, and see the names of teachers, school board members and other personnel pop up. Search (if you can) how criminals are helped by teacher union lawyers to move from district to district, or state to state, to remain employed by public schools.
Learn about the gold-plated package deals administrators get (adms who move from state to state through an endless revolving door of paid out contracts) and how many aides are needed and how many years it takes for students to become proficient in English....
And on and on and on....
Indeed.
Anytime you hand your money to a bureaucracy to administer your interests, you fund failure.
...We may be spending thousands of dollars per year per child on a totally ineffective prison-like schools!...
Most public schools are warehouses where our youth learn anti-social behavior and victimization "outs" to use in the future when they fail due to being uneducated.
Parents see abundant homework each night because students aren't taught enough to master the basis during school hours.
1) I don't recall Jefferson using the word “free” with regard to education. Perhaps you have links. But...If he did he was wrong and Paine was right.
2) When our Founding Fathers stressed education and having an educated citizenry, they likely had their **own** educations in mind. That would include:
homeschooling
private tutoring as needed
dame schools in the homes of neighbors
one room schools organized by parents
Sunday schools
apprenticeships
home-based academies that prepared the brightest for admission into college as **young** teens.
Likely our Founding Fathers would be **appalled** that we warehouse our nation's youth in prison-like settings that are socialist funded, establish the godless religion of Secular Humanism, and are collectivist managed by voting mob controlled school boards.
It is amazing to me how few conservatives understand how government schools trash the First Amendment.
In the example you give above we see how government schools trash the child and parent's right to free assembly and free association.
Unless a parent can afford to ransom a child from the government schools by paying extra to home or privately school, the government **compels** attendance at its prison-like facilities. Once there it is the government who determines with whom the child will or will not assemble and associate.
By the way,... some counties like mine have no private schools. Since the government is running a price-fixed cartel that is giving its education service away for free, the business environment is hostile to the creation of private schools. So...in my county, the only option to escape the government's heavy hand in assigning with whom a child will assemble and associate is to homeschool.
Rots of ruck with that! A problem is that administrators, teachers, and parents are at cross purposes although they claim to have the same goal, the interest of the students. Only the parents have that interest.
That is not fair to some but it is accurate overall.
Can't wait until the FAA applies that standard to airline pilots.
I have seen a number of threads about the Memphis ISD wanting to merge with the Shelby County ISD. I haven't read any of them so I don't know what is going on but my suspicion is that the Memphis inner city schools want to be merged with the suburban schools in order to raise the average for the Memphis schools. Of course, that would lower the average for the Shelby County schools but isn't that what "fairness" is all about?
links are easy to find. You may do that if you like.
his idea was not what we have today entirely of course. eg he thought attendance s/b voluntary.
but you are free to use google on your own - if the information is too easy it will not be valued ;)
I did not find any link that even remotely suggested that Thomas Jefferson felt education should be tuition-free.
But..You seem to think they would be easy to find. Perhaps you could suggest a different grouping of search words.
sure i can.
maybe try another search? I do find them easy to find - but I wanted to find them.
From the first result returned from a search:
http://jschell.myweb.uga.edu/history/legis/jeffersonuniversal.htm
Jefferson, T. (1776). The Declaration of Independence. In M. P. Nichols & D. K. Nichols (Eds.), Readings in American Government (pp. 7-9). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt.
Jefferson, T. (1776). The Natural Aristocracy. In M. P. Nichols & D. K. Nichols (Eds.), Readings in American Government (pp. 548-551). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt
Jewett, T. O. (1997). Thomas Jefferson and the purposes of education. The Educational Forum, 61, 110-113. Retrieved October 10, 2001 from WilsonWeb Database.
Peterson, M. D. (1994). Thomas Jefferson: the architect of democracy. Social Education, 58, 359-362.
How about looking for a needle in a hay stack? I am not about to do that.
I am not saying that Jefferson didn't make direct statements about “free” education but these quotes couldn't be common. A Google search on the words “ Thomas Jefferson, education, and free” did not turn up any quotes about tuition-free schooling that I could find.
Anyway...As I stated in my first post, if Jefferson did say these things, he was wrong. Paine was right.
ok
I had a feeling it wouldn’t matter what was posted. I was not surprised.
I think I’ll take a number of published opinions over wintertime’s.
lol
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. . . . An amendment to our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all people. (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 87)
I (**personally**) do not recall ever seeing a quote of Jefferson's where he states that education should be **free** or tuition-free. My Google search did not show any such quotes.
If these quotes were easy to find you would have posted them by now.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2695683/posts?page=36#21
My comment was that Jefferson argued for free education. He did - as referenced in the link and sources above. Given that he argued for free education it seems that finding quotes to that effect would be trivial.
Or are you saying that Jefferson did not argue for free education at all?
This is a strawman in the form of a question.
I have been PLAIN in stating that I have never seen a quote of Jefferson where he stated that education should be “free” or tuition-free”.
I also stated that I was not able to find any quotes ( using Google) of Jefferson's regarding education being “free” or tuition-free.
If these quotes were easy to find ( you stated that they were) then you would have posted them by now.
I would think that if Jefferson argued for “free” education then I would expect that there would be one or two quotations of his stating exactly that.
Personally, using Google, I was not able to find any statements ( quotes) of Jefferson stating this. They might exist. I haven't found them. You haven't either or they would have been posted by now.
Regardless.....Jefferson and the rest would be horrified to see our modern, socialist, collectivist managed, GODLESS, prison-like, and compulsory government schools.
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