Obama’s No-Brainer on Education

The long-term strength of the U.S. school system comes, in my view, from our early realization that we need to teach children to think independently and be creative as opposed the historic trend, in a large part of the world, where education meant learning rote answers to a set of standard questions. Does Jonathan Alter want to have some education Czar list the questions that every child must know without thought of individual differences and without sufficient resources?

Who better to assess a child's progress than well-paid teachers motivated by feeding individual children's interests, working in small well-supplied classes, and receiving great continuing education and thoughtful mentoring by their peers?

No Child pins everything on external assessment and punishment for failure. Instead we should be fostering individual creative learning and putting resources into teachers' success.

ALL OF MY CHILDREN WERE HOME SCHOOLED AND ALL WENT TO COLLEGE AND 4 ARE IN THE MILITARY JUST LIKE DAD WAS!! A PUBLIC SCHOOL IS A GOVERMENT SCHOOL AND DEPENDING ON WHO'S IN OFFICE THATS WHAT THEY WILL LEARN AND BOY HAVE WE HAD SOME REAL WINNERS! WINK WINK BUT MOST OF THEM WERE DEMOCRATS !!! P.S I DID NOT GO TO COLLEGE I WENT TO WAR HOOORAHHH!!!!!!!!! AND LOVED FIGHTING FOR MY COUNTRY AND NO I WAS NOT WILLING TO DIE FOR MY COUNTRY BUT WAS DAMN SURE WILLING TO KILL FOR IT !!!!

Alter overlooks the insidious campaign to lower salary expenses by pushing older, veteran (more expensive) teachers into retirement. Tactics such as bad scheduling, overloaded or lopsided class assignments of disciplinary, learning disabled, or special education students can quickly overwhelm even the best of them. Ridding the school of the higher salary but costing the school the expertise, enthusiasm, and mentoring capabilities of the veteran.

I think that Alter is a little out of touch, maybe he should go sit in a fifth grade inner city classroom, not just for a day or a week, he should sit in for a month and see how things really are.

Alter focuses on the insignificant number of teachers fired for incompetence. Mostly overlooked is the insidious campaign to push older teachers into retirement thereby reducing their high(er) salaries. Often it is precisely those veteran teachers who most strength teaching corps and standards in their respective schools.

I think that Alter is a little out of touch as to what really goes on in these schools. Maybe he should sit in a 5th grade inner city classroom for a year?

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I wonder if Alter is simply trying to get the number of posts to his article up by writing this piece if nonsense, which is clearly intended to piss teachers off enough for them to write a response here.

No response is worse than criticism in today's infotainment news environment.

If you want good teachers, then you need to help them with the discipline. Students are out-of-control and teachers don't get support from anyone. They just try to survive; the students run the schools and the administration lets them.

Alter is so worshiping at the alter of Obama that it is sickening. The federal government can't grant teachers pay raises, that is something left to each state. And each state has its own way of measuring qualifications, performance, and criteria for tenure.

Voters who want change in education, who want things to improve, should get involved with school board elections, and state funding legislation, and the school's PTA/PTO, and volunteer in their children's classrooms.

Education is a non-issue, except for Obama's pandering to the young who want to go to college without having to pay for it. Let the old folks pay for it with their taxes, twenty-somethings shouldn't have to work while they are in college, and they shouldn't be expected to make the grades that would qualify them for scholarships either. We should jsut give it to them in return for two weeks of volunteer work.

Right.

Mr. Alter's implication that standardized testing somehow is essential to measure teachers' performance in the classroom is nothing more than a strawman argument - at best. The only thing that standardized testing measures is any given student's willingness to regurgitate facts. It doesn't come close to gauging the teacher's performance in the classroom.

Christy:

I think that an IEP is an "individual education plan", if the term is used in the same way as here. Generally they are used for students who are encountering difficulty in school for various reasons.

One other thing - someone PLEASE tell me how I am supposed to make my students care what their scores are?
A child's standardized test score is not included in his or her grade (they come in over the summer after students have already been promoted) and there are no consequences for the child who chooses to "Christmas tree" a score sheet. How am I supposed to change the attitude of a child who looks me straight in the eye and tells me that he does not want to make a high score because then he will be placed into a harder class that will require more attention and homework than an "easy" class?
A local high school announced to its faculty that because of NCLB and its stance on graduation rates, no student will be given a score of below 70% in any class until the child has had the ENTIRE SEMESTER to make up everything missing homework to failed exams.
Can you please tell me how I am supposed to fight this? Oh, and please, tell me again the part about it's the union's fault my school system vacuums! I just *love* a good story!

Please, Mr/Ms Conservative. Would you please stop blaming the nasty "liberals" and start educating your self? The truth is, a high standard of living, including low unemployment, occurs when taxes are HIGHER, not lower. Learn some history.
Now, about education. Good teachers leave the profession year after year because of parents who demand but don't contribute, parents who refuse to hold their children accountable and the administrators who fear lawsuits. Let teachers do their job and support their efforts. Are they all great? Of course not. But many are, and the good ones are frequently giving up in the face of an impossible job. More money? Maybe. How about fewer students, more support, and parents who work WITH their children's teachers instead of against them. Oh yeah, and it will cost. Sorry. Give up your luxuries, your junk food your entertainment habit and your big cars, America and start investing your time and your money into your children's education.

Only in America can one hear so-called "liberal" columnists demand the (further) destruction of labor unions so that we can fire more people. If teachers are measured "incompetent" based on "failed" test scores (i.e., as determined by "annual yearly progress" according to No Child Left Behind), then around one-quarter of teachers are worthy of being fired. In a field that is poorly compensated relative to other professions -- and generally blamed for other people's failures, namely, oblivious parents and government policy makers, I am interested in how Mr. Alter envisions replacing 25% of all those who presently teach. If I was dictator for a day, journalists like Alter would be forced to teach a few months in a struggling school before writing about my profession.

Jonathan - Finally ! Someone with the courage to take on this liberal sacred cow and call it what it is - a roadblock to improving education in the United States. As a Business Manager for a public school in Ohio, I can tell you that each time negotiations begin for a new union contract, its like the district is being held hostage to the threat of strikes if the union doesn't get the money they think they deserve. Understanding that a 3% salary increase on the base is not really a 3% increase. In most districts, you have to couple that with an increment for just being in the classroom for another year. In our district that can change a 3% salary increase to a 7% increase - all with iron clad job security and benefits that are the envy of the private sector .. (180 day work years, fully paid medical insurance in many cases and generous sick and personal leave time). I'd be thrilled to see Obama or McCain really put the students first and tell the NEA and the AFT to get serious about education .. not about entitlement and protecting incompetent teachers!