Wisconsin Takes A Stand For Fiscal Sanity

[Kuciwalker]

I can verify that HC is a real human being.

[Kuciwalker]

(well, sort of)

[Aeson]

Are you saying that gribbler isn't a real human being, or just trying to throw us off the scent with a true but irrelevant statement?

[kittenOFchaos]

Really? Because we've been measuring student performance since forever.

If you're going to judge a teacher, it is going to be on how much improvement he/she can deliver. That relies on the grades achieved by pupils going into the class being valid. If the previous test is too easy, they go to the next teacher with inflated grades. Makes the next teacher look abit crap. The reverse is true, a tough test one year, followed by an easier one the next. Your faith in examiners and their ability to write decent tests in disturbing. If you leave it to the administrators, you're relying on their ability to judge a teacher - some of the best teachers aren't necessarily conventional.

If you think the testing process is up to the job then fine. In my 8 years experience as a science teacher in England, I'll tell you straight up that ours is only good for determining the best to worst in a year group. The tests aren't able to differentiate progress from primary school to secondary with any form of reliability. KS2 grades are largely inflated and in the first year of KS3 many don't appear to make much progress as a result.

Plus, you've not talked about the other major problem that it encourages simply teaching for the test rather than giving an education. The two can be very distinctly different. It is possible to teach pupils to answer questions about electromagnets without them having any true understanding about how they work. You'd be happy with that I suppose.

In this country, what gets rid of most 'bad' teachers or those that can't cope is the pupils. Second to that would be the pressure put on teachers to perform by senior management - if you're not doing well, expect scrutiny. With that sort of natural selection it is no wonder that teacher drop out rate in England is colossal.

Something else has to be said. If you want the best teachers, you need to attract the best people and you aren't going to do that with crappy wages. If you're saying that the teachers in the US system suck, just remember that if you pay peanuts, you'll only get monkeys. Be grateful that many people go into teaching for the love of the job and bust their gut because they want the children to do well.

[Jon Miller]

Maybe rate teachers like this:

Make tests in 5th, 9th, and 11th. I just gave some numbers.

Rate teachers in the first (second) 4 years by how their students do in year 5 (9). Yes, this means that the rating will be delayed, probably there would need to be a 5 year probationary period to get statistics.

Yes, it is multiple teachers. But the students should move around classes and so you should get a comparison between various teachers. And if improvement is shows as a whole to get the overall rating.

The high school teachers will be rated by how their students do in year 11 exams, how many graduate, and how many go on to college. The exams will be by subject. Obviously the senior year teachers will mostly be focused on college prep and making sure that the students graduate. All students who score below some score on the year 11 exams will have to take an exam to graduate highschool.

JM

[kittenOFchaos]

The high school teachers will be rated by how their students do in year 11 exams, how many graduate, and how many go on to college.

JM

Still, it requires a judgment about how many of those pupils should graduate and should go onto college and at which grades.

If you're in a neighborhood with a high percentage of upper-middle class families, then the % that graduate will be significantly higher than if it is from a working-class area (or non-working class area). Parental involvement is critical. Good parents will have their child able to read and write (at basic standard) by the time the kids get to school. Good parents will take their kids to museums and encourage their children to get involved in sport and music. Good parents will encourage their children and take an active role in ensuring homework is done and making sure their children behave well. It also has to be said, that on balance the more successful the parent, the more intelligent the child.

If your parents have abysmal literacy and never valued education, particularly their own, then the educational system is always going to struggle. Schools in deprived areas will struggle to achieve good results as a result, the teachers have so much more to overcome.

Determining what a school should be achieving with a certain intake is the challenge and it is very hard to get right.

[Kuciwalker]

stuff

Look, if you do not think we can properly measure teacher value, then you must not believe we can properly measure student achievement. And if so, why should we subject children to the incredibly unfair standard of grading, which ultimately has a huge effect on their future - what college they get into (if any), what jobs they can apply to, etc. Compared to that, the unfairness of "you might pay a teacher poorly because your measurement was inaccurate" is nothing.

[Kuciwalker]

Determining what a school should be achieving with a certain intake is the challenge and it is very hard to get right.

We have the same sort of challenge with grading students. We don't need to get it right. We just need to get it vaguely correlated with "right".

[molly bloom]

[QUOTE=Wezil;5946506]

The problem of elected reps being literally in the pocket of the unions. That's fine if you are a union member but doesn't assist you if you aren't.

I think you mean 'figuratively' or 'metaphorically' in the pocket of the unions. If it were 'literally' they'd either be very big pockets or very small politicians.
I'm not sure who you think Wisconsin's public sector unions were created to represent- I suspect it's Wisconsin's public sector workers.

Who else should they be assisting ?

In any case, how is that any different from the special interest groups which lobby politicians to influence or change legislation and the elected representatives who benefit from 'fact-finding' missions to exotic locations, from kickbacks and shares and all the other financial inducements on offer from big business ?

You acknowledge the distinction but ignore it? Taxpayers not unionists.

I do nothing of the sort. You keep making a false dichotomy- union members pay taxes too. You're talking/writing like a particular kind of low populist politican- the kind that distinguishes (for electoral/political purposes) between 'immigrants' say, or 'gays' and those 'ordinary' taxpayers, when in fact being gay and the son of immigrants has never entitled me to any tax breaks, more's the pity....

Union members are ordinary taxpayers and voters. We're talking about the WI Dem party.

So, the Wisconsin Democratic party members don't pay taxes ? Or are extraordinary, and/or not union members ? I'm not following the logic here.

Again we are talking about the party not the citizens. You have the argument backward Molly.

I don't believe I have. I think you may have a certain bias against unions, why, I'm not sure...
In any case, the Wisconsin Democratic party is presumably composed of citizens from Wisconsin, surely- not dedicated party cadres from North Korea or Hezbollah infiltrators.

[MikeH]

[molly bloom]

Well, quite

The first instance I can remember of this was in one of Joyce's short stories in 'Dubliners' where he has a character think to her self that she was 'literally run off her feet'.

LILY, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet.
Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind
the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat
than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to
scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest.

The Dead, James Joyce


and one of the best endings of any short story:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It
had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver
and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had
come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the
newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was
falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills,
falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly
falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too,
upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael
Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and
headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns.
His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly
through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their
last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Made into a cracking film by John Huston as I recall, but available on only a cheap as chips dvd so far.

[Aeson]

Look, if you do not think we can properly measure teacher value, then you must not believe we can properly measure student achievement.

Doesn't necessarily follow. Students' abilities can be tested directly. Teachers' evaluation via the students' testing is dependent on an additional layer of abstraction and all the additional potential for inaccurate assessment that that entails.

[kittenOFchaos]

Doesn't necessarily follow. Students' abilities can be tested directly. Teachers' evaluation via the students' testing is dependent on an additional layer of abstraction and all the additional potential for inaccurate assessment that that entails.

Don't take his strawman away, he'll get lonely.

[Wezil]

Molly - The union reps aren't running for office. Elected politicians are supposed to represent all their constituents, not just the ones that vote for them. So ask again, In view of the fact the Democratic party will simply doing the bidding of the unions, who is looking out for the taxpayers?

edit - While most if not all union members are taxpayers, only a small minority of taxpayers work for public sector unions.

[Wezil]

I do nothing of the sort. You keep making a false dichotomy- union members pay taxes too. You're talking/writing like a particular kind of low populist politican- the kind that distinguishes (for electoral/political purposes) between 'immigrants' say, or 'gays' and those 'ordinary' taxpayers, when in fact being gay and the son of immigrants has never entitled me to any tax breaks, more's the pity....

Excellent example. Only gay politicians can look after gay interests, otherwise they shouldn't bother (not their constituency). Good plan? I think you might have a problem with that.