tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post156856736212608772..comments2024-03-17T09:38:01.251-05:00Comments on Adventus: No more pencils, no more books....Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-40502939288414996432012-09-14T20:33:53.192-05:002012-09-14T20:33:53.192-05:00My daughter attended private school until 9th grad...My daughter attended private school until 9th grade. I respect all teachers, but especially those in public schools.<br /><br />Thanks for the story, Mimi.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-78391290967991806522012-09-14T18:46:48.482-05:002012-09-14T18:46:48.482-05:00What a fine post, Rmj. My sympathy lies with the ...What a fine post, Rmj. My sympathy lies with the teachers. Yes, there is the occasional poor teacher with tenure (if there is still such a thing as tenure), but teachers do much more than teach. The public schools must take all comers and teach and care for and about children with widely varied abilities and backgrounds, including a number from severely stressed families. <br /><br />I'm learning a bit more about the local schools since I am now a part-time mom to the children of my son, who is a single dad, with full custody on his son and half-time custody of his daughter. I'm with my 12 year old grandson in the afternoons until his dad gets home from work.<br /><br />My grandson, who has been diagnosed with ADHD attended one of the local Roman Catholic elementary schools through the 5th grade. The school did not cope well with children who were challenges. Last year was a kind of nightmare, and I don't know if I could have helped my grandson through another year at the school. Some of his "infractions" were so minor that I wondered why the teachers and principal made so much of them and contacted parents about them. Since he was going into the 6th grade, which is the first year of middle school in the public schools, my son decided to transfer him.<br /><br />Last night, my son and I went to the open house at the new school, sort of cringing to hear how the first few weeks had gone, even though we had not yet had a call from the principal's office. All the teachers said he was smart and doing well. My son and I looked at each other, wondering if they were talking about another child. My grandson is a challenge to my son and to me and his grandfather, so we know. It's early days yet in school, but we hope and pray that the better times continue.<br /><br />Sorry to give you my life story as a preface, but I have a point. All of the teachers we met were energetic, enthusiastic, and seemed to love what they were doing. We were most impressed with what we saw and heard, and I would stand up for them in a heartbeat.<br /><br />My granddaughter breezed through the RC elementary school and is now in honors classes at the RC high school. What can I say? The private school is not for every child. My granddaughter knew what she had to do to play the game. She's a bit of a rebel, but she mostly stays within the boundaries. My grandson is not good at playing the game. If you win him over, he will cooperate most of the time. The teachers last year did not win him over, and he had the reputation as "a difficult child". I'm not saying the fault lay with the teachers, but we hope the fresh start will lead to better times. <br /><br />Alas, Robert, you seemed to be not very good at playing the church game, but I would be proud to have you as my pastor. June Butlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01723016934182800437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-3790159720616469922012-09-14T15:03:52.033-05:002012-09-14T15:03:52.033-05:00At Microsoft, employees are given performance rank...<i>At Microsoft, employees are given performance rankings from 1 to 5, with 1 the highest (I think, they flip it every so often.) Ten percent of the company has to be given 5's, every year. </i><br /><br />Somebody, in other words, has to fail, in order to make the rest of us think we have "succeeded." After all, without losers, how will we know who the winners are?<br /><br />I knew an RC priest at seminary who wondered why our seminary used that model. His RC seminary kept everyone in the seminary until that individual was ready to leave, not until they'd completed an arbitrary set of tasks based on an equally arbitrary timeline.<br /><br />There are alternatives. But most of what passes for education reform is "Same song, second verse! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!"Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-53908575409186135082012-09-14T14:58:45.673-05:002012-09-14T14:58:45.673-05:00Sherri--
Charles Pierce made an excellent point a...Sherri--<br /><br />Charles Pierce made an excellent point about "reform" in quoting a striking teacher in Chicago:<br /><br /><i>"It's funny," said Patrice Thomas. "The world 'reform' seems like it means a different thing to some people. To us, it means air-conditioning when it's hot, and class sizes that are somewhat manageable."<br /><br />Thomas is a special-needs case manager at the Barbara Vick Center, an early-childhood education center on the city's South Side that serves 300-odd children between the ages of three and six, a significant number of them with special needs.</i><br /><br />Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/chicago-teacher-strike-2012-12701572#ixzz26TZTuj72<br /><br />I leave the link should anyone wish to follow it. I include the second paragraph because those are the kids who will NEVER go to a charter or private school (unless Daddy is Romney). Those are the kids no one mentions and, really, no "reformer" cares about.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-45386641728950355412012-09-14T14:04:03.176-05:002012-09-14T14:04:03.176-05:00If you want to learn a whole lot more about school...If you want to learn a whole lot more about school reform, read Diane Ravitch's book, The Life and Death of the Great American School System. <br /><br />The question I always want to ask the "reformers" is then what? Okay, let's give you the magical power to identify and fire the poor performing teachers. Then what? What happens next? Do you find Super Teachers to replace them? Do you just keep firing teachers until morale improves? <br /><br />Bill Gates is one of the prime movers and funders behind school reform, and this method of evaluating teachers sounds like a cheaper and quicker method of bringing Microsoft performance reviews to education. At Microsoft, employees are given performance rankings from 1 to 5, with 1 the highest (I think, they flip it every so often.) Ten percent of the company has to be given 5's, every year. At Microsoft, since there aren't anything like test scores to use, that means that there are "calibration meetings" that happen starting among managers that have a few reports and moving up the chain, until all the politicking and horse-trading is down and all the buckets have been filled with the right numbers. This is the system that our philanthrocapitalists think will make society better, but it's obviously too expensive and time-consuming to do with teachers, so let's use these handy-dandy test scores. Never mind that they're noisy and probably don't tell us much about the students, much less the teachers. They're here, and that's good enough.<br /><br />Sherrinoreply@blogger.com