Obama applauds union-busting school board that fires every teacher at a Rhode Island high school

It's probably worthwhile to note that both Canada and the US are lacking when it comes to country-wide educational efforts. Other OECD countries have federal level direction, policies, and so on.  The US has a slightly larger federal role, due to control of some federal funding grants, etc., but the lion's share of decision-making, funding, etc., is at the state (US) or provincial (Canada) level.

Yea, well, it goes both ways. I would agree with you about the current regime in Ottawa. They seem "unfriendly" to education, judging by their cuts to research on women's equality, the NRC, etc., etc.. If we can make this into a general education sort of thread, the following may be of interest to babblers ...

Teachers in BC have decided to look into an increase of investigations by their employers.

Quote:

a motion at the annual general meeting of the B.C. Teachers' Federation calling on the federation to conduct a provincewide survey to find out how many and what type of investigations are being conducted, who is making the allegations and what are the eventual outcomes.

... which is interesting. The current BCTF President, Irene Lanzinger is stepping down and Susan Lambert looks to be unopposed in her run for President. The following is also of interest ...

Quote:

Also during the meeting, vice-president Susan Lambert declared that the BCTF has won the war over standardized tests -- known as the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) -- that are delivered annually in Grades 4 and 7. The union's campaign to convince parents to withdraw their students from the tests has been so successful that the FSA results are meaningless, she said.

As far as I see it, this is a good thing. Let the Fraser Institute rave. They do anyway.

500_Apples wrote:

As a selfish quebecois, I am against any substantial federal involvement in education.

OK, for Quebec, I see your point. The RoC may be different.

George Victor wrote:

Thanks to j.m., we find the position on March 4 was this:

Oh shit, my poor research skills! I totally overlooked that date. Thanks for clarifying!

It's part of the movement that confuses assessment with learning. Alfir Kohn points out quite correctly that student performance on standardized assessments correlate most with things outside of the control of teachers ie. type of community, parental income, level of parental education etc.

I think you are assuming that all the teachers were ready to go along with the extra hours, M.  And perhaps assuming that all the teachers's skill levels were up to it.  I suppose the ideal would have been that all teachers were offered situations elsewhere.  But that seems to be up to the county officials, not the pres. It's all unfair? I can't imagine living anywhere in that benighted country without staring unfairness in the face, daily.  It's climbing toward Mumbai on the list of places I couldn't visit.

Act to correct what? The fact that what we assess doesn't measure what we teach but rather students socio-economic status?

Are you speaking to VGE?

How do you equate correlation with "can't learn."?

No, I said test scores are correlated with the items I listed above. Who said anything about being unable to "pass" a test?

Please tell me what the purpose of testing is VGE?

ETA: This article by Alfie Kohn is interesting. There are many others on his website.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/staiv.htm

Indeed, how else would you know that they have learned...

Tests don't always measure what you have learned. It could be measuring prior knowledge.

For example, in our house, we have 7 clocks. On 6 of them, this is what 2:45 looks like.

2:45.

Other houses may vary. 

George Victor wrote:

Caissa wrote:

It's part of the movement that confuses assessment with learning. Alfir Kohn points out quite correctly that student performance on standardized assessments correlate most with things outside of the control of teachers ie. type of community, parental income, level of parental education etc.

That's patently obvious, Caissa. But how would YOU as a trained educator act to correct that? ...given the givens, of course.

I'll try once more.  How would you teach in an attempt to overcome barriers to learning such as parent income and education, of course.   Like, I suggested much smaller student/teacher ratios and more individualized teaching.   PLease don't keep repeating the barriers, they're no-brainers.  What would you DO as superintendent of schools and/or teacher?  Lay it on the line for me, please ....I can see you know all about assessment, but after assessment comes teaching, right? 

I'll try again George. The solution is to work to eliminate the barriers. Take active steps to eradicate poverty.

I'm not sure what you are asking me re. what I would do as a superintendant/teacher, George and I'm not trying to duck it. Are you talking about approaches to structuring an educational system or how to effectively teach in the 5-6 contact hours teachers have with students per day?

I'm on the parent School Support Committees of an inner city elementary and an inner city middle school. I have had the privilege of knowing many excellent, dedicated teachers.

Yep, we "should not have to" do lots and lots of things, M.  But you would have to sell the voters of Rhode Island and the other 49 on that, not me.  Looks to me like that's just one more area of desperation south of the 49th, and Gaia knows how it will all pan out.   I hope the $3.5 billion demonstrates that there is hope for the down and out and for the country.  We could pay a helluva price up here, someday, if such experiments do not work out.

What to elaborate on "fucking game playing" George?

I thought this thread was about Obama's behaviour in this issue and that of the superintendant which I consider regressive and anti-union and not addressing the real issue.

Then I realize you want to discuss how to "fix' this school. Okay, I realize that sincerely apologize for being obtuse and offer to address your question.

And then I get accused of "fucking game playing."

Was that really neccesary?

Absolutely. Particularly in light of your demonstration of sensitivity in another thread.  I could not give a fiddler's fart as to your thoughts on education at this point.  You write off the impoverished as beyond the pale and that is where I place you in any kind of reasonable correspondence.

Fugget  it.

The guy admits to playing a game and "wow" you don't get the anger.   Try assuming the role of playee for a moment.  Look at that other thread he belched into just prior to that.  You and I had a couple of conversations about that a year ago, M.  Surely anyone posting here over that time must by now show more than a bag of hammers sensitivity there.

The biggest determinate of outcome for children is if they have food in their stomachs when they are trying to learn.  That is why the VDLC provides a breakfast meal program at a school in one of Canada's poorest neighbourhoods.

The type of tests that the Fraser Institute favours and I suspect they get it from the American system prove every year that the schools that are the most tightly controlled have the best test outcomes i.e. the private schools .  Those schools have a few things in common including being very indoctrinating in their teaching methods. They also tend to have higher income and better educated families particualrily compared to schools in poor neighbourhoods..  I think the first two make it easier for children to learn compared to others without the poverty disadvantage.  

The rigid rules for students make it easier for their schools to out perform other schools where the indoctrination by the church or state is not so all encompassing. Not to mention that the weakest students in schools that really care about their rankings tend to be absent on test day.

I think the BCTF has some excellent thoughts on the subject.  They have been fighting the neo-con Liberals mandatory testing for all students for years now and they are winning the debate.

Quote:

What’s a Better Way?

“…tests by themselves do not improve learning, any more than a thermometer reduces fever” (Jay P. Heubert, 2003)

The teachers of BC believe:

• Each child counts and all can learn. Our joy in teaching and our students’ love of learning comes from meeting the needs of every student.
• We are all accountable for maximizing students’ opportunities to learn. Teachers must teach well and governments must provide the conditions such as appropriate class sizes, class compositions, and learning resources that allow each student to learn.
• Teachers must be allowed to make professional judgments about how students are taught and assessed.
• Large-scale testing can provide important information that can be used to inform the development of provincial curriculum and policy. This information can be obtained by administering the assessment on a sample basis rather than on a census (every student) basis, and producing only provincial results. Testing less often and using only a sample of students allows for broader and deeper assessment, is more cost effective, reduces the negative impact on students, and still fulfills the purposes.
• Effective assessment for learning can improve student achievement substantially, and that improved classroom assessment helps low achievers the most (Black and William, 1998). The type of assessment that helps students learn is formative assessment in which students are given descriptive feedback about where they are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there.

We invite parents and other concerned members of the community to join teachers in working to provide students with the best possible opportunities to create, to think, to learn, and to grow.

Are you still apologizing for President Palin, er, Bush, er, Reagan, er, Obama, George?

Oh, George, what is US politics other than slogans? Heck, I can give you two: "yes, we can" and "change you can believe in". Still makes me chuckle. As for schools, I know that union busting and calling it reform is still union busting. But, I tell you what, George, I'll keep my eyes open for Obama's progressive agenda. Have you seen any sign of it yourself, or is the Big O still trying to outflank Palin on the right hoping to win over all them Tea Baggers by jettisonning all those lefty elites slaving away at Wal-Mart as elites so often do? What is Obama's base now? Fourteen democrat-right-or-wrong pundits, thirty-five insiders, and an outdated email list of people too pissed off to bother voting? Obama is yesterday's man. The Corpocracy is already interviewing potential successors.

Whatever in your slogan-filled existence ever gave you the idea that I'm defending an ideal?  It's just that there must be some islands of rationality in a hate-filled world where people can discuss paths to a reasonable world.  Unless you get down to an understanding of the takeover of the American mind, you're only dealing in hate-filled cliches, FM.  There's gotta be something more than that.    But  perhaps you've already worked out an explanation, a Gestalt psychology encompassing all the little wierdnesses. 

It's just that that depth is not obvious in your reliance on google.

Trouble is, FM, you've lost sight of the enemy that's gonna rise up and kick us all in the teeth. As H.G.Wells put it, history is a race between education and the collapse of civilization (fitting on the eve of World War 2).

Here's how Bageant described the American situation is his latest missive from Mexico, Moon Over Gringo Gulch:

"Every American, every man woman and child lives by the fruit of the empire's sword, fully expecting the lights to come on each evening, fresh coffee to gurgle in the morning and the car to start right up. The Internet connection to work and for Australian wine to be on the supermarket shelves. Those who do understand where it all comes from -- which is to say from an unsustainable commodity economy propped up by phony money at gunpoint -- seldom object publicly, if there is the slightest risk. The relative few who grasp the inevitable cruelties of empire, especially of empires in decline, are inwardly resigned to their own insignificance in the larger scheme of things. A slim minority of youth still have the energy and idealistic anger to protest, as in Seattle's WTO fracas a decade ago. But for every one of them there are hundreds of thousands of citizens who say, "Well there's not much I can do about it." Both sides are right of course. But one swamps the other, reducing it to entertainment value on the evening news.

We find ourselves trapped on a dark and nasty merry-go-round. One that keeps going faster and faster to the point where everyone is too terrified to jump off. So we hang in there. And the state's one voice to the many says, "Don't pay attention to the wreckage on either side of the tracks. Because this train is bound for glory, this train. Ask any televangelist or Pentagon general. Ask any of the economist eunuchs inside the president's high sanctum, engineering "the recovery" in the name of God, cheap oil and the new jobless populist republic. Yessiree, there's light at the end of the tunnel, just around a few more bends. Don't let the fact that the track keeps descending downward bother you. And besides, if there is a buck to be made in hell, we will triumph. Because after all, we are The Americans."

Somehow, those folks have to be made to face up to what they have helped shape by their becoming completely dependent on sword and the market. Everything else is kind of a shallow rant.

ommmmmmmmmmm bama.

And yes, aQ, Joe is not taken in by Obama, but he is also critical of the commodity fetishism that calls the tune in America, not just the ruling elite.  For instance his observations from "burning tortillas at midnight":

"It can now be honestly stated that mere goods and services express the citizenry and the American culture in its entirety. Citizenship in a consumer society is consumership. Consumer culture consumes all rival cultures, replacing them with "pop culture," which is simply deeming the marketplace as culture. Hip Hop is a good example. So is the modern cinema, and all of the music and book publishing industry. Corporate industry and its products are not culture, despite all the new definitions of culture bourgeois academia and the marketplace come up with on behalf of the corporations that fund both of them.

Your iPod shall set you free!

Freedom and personal identity exists as freedom to choose identity from among the commodities, and particularly the entertainments, offered. The Mac person as opposed to the Windows person. The Mariah Carey or Rihanna Fenty fan as opposed to the Eric Clapton fan. Each is convinced he or she is different because of their chosen commodity. Yet at the root of this, they all purchased a computer or a CD from a faceless corporation grounded in the toxic wastelands and sweatshops of Asia and elsewhere."

Obama didn't bring about that pathetic and pathological condition, and one suspects that if he demonstrated the slightest revulsion for it, he would be judged unfit for the presidency of the United States of Commodified America. Haven't the foggiest idea what kind of Ghandian ascetic that you would put in the oval office yourself, in the meantime....and just how you'd go about it.