Attorney generals trying to shut down usenet?

[James Arthur]

It is also what the parents and the kids have said. As soon as the
testing came in, everything that wasn't going to be on the multiple
choice test went away.

The problems predate the testing, which merely exposed them.

But fine. If the teachers are so great, testing is the real
problem, and teachers are "teaching to the test," why can't
they even do that?

If the teachers are teaching the test specifically, why are
scores still so low ? (And only in certain schools.)

Best,
James Arthur

 

[James Arthur]

On Jun 18, 12:53 pm, James Arthur wrote:

You set up a system where peoples jobs and pay depend on the results
on the test and then you expect them not to respond to the market
forces you just created.

So students--whose careers depend on their grades--should be
forgiven for cheating as well ? The system forces them ?

The good teachers who don't game the system
get a lower rating and leave the classroom for other jobs. Those who
are best at gaming it stay and get promoted.


Teaching a low paying job

No it isn't.

First of all, money doesn't buy good teachers. Good
teachers, like good engineers, aren't in it for the money.
Just increasing pay willy-nilly does nothing.

Second, California teachers make 120% of the national
average.

Third, in support of the above, the areas where pay is
highest, D.C. and California, are among the worst of
performers (link below).

Fourth, the NEA puts the average California teacher's
2004 salary at $58K, and that's basically a lie:

http://www.nea.org/edstats/RankFull06b.htm

To skew the averages downward NEA counts substitute, temporary,
and other low-paid workers as teachers.

Pay varies a lot by district; where I am, with a few basic
tricks you can multiply above by 1.4.

That's for 8 month's work, iron-clad permanent employment,
and doesn't include extra benefits worth about 32%.
(California teachers have their own retirement system,
exempt from Social Security.)

http://www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/rankings.htm

that gets nearly no respect. We are getting
the teacher we deserve.

I have utmost respect for good teachers--there's scarcely a
more important job. That's not what we're talking about.

Cull the laggards and give the remainder their pay--that's
my inclination.

Michelle Rhee is trying to do just that in D.C., heaven
help her.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Jim Yanik]

Depends on the situation.

Punishment delayed and severe is way less effective than
one that's milder, but swift and sure.

I guess you never had the anticipation of waiting until Dad got home to
hear what you had done. It was very effective.

Any delay between
behavior and conditioning drastically reduces the
conditioning's effect.

debatable.

 

[MooseFET]

The problems predate the testing, which merely exposed them.

No I'm saying that the testing is yet another added problem.

But fine. If the teachers are so great, testing is the real
problem, and teachers are "teaching to the test," why can't
they even do that?

I didn't say that the teachers where great. I said that the tests are
yet another problem.

If the teachers are teaching the test specifically, why are
scores still so low ? (And only in certain schools.)

The kids aren't learning much at home and the bad teachers tend to end
up in in the low pay areas.

 

[MooseFET]

So students--whose careers depend on their grades--should be
forgiven for cheating as well ? The system forces them ?

No we should be fixing problems not adding new ones on top of the old
ones. The teachers watch the students to make sure they don't cheat
and punishes those who do. It also watches what the teachers do and
punishes those who don't teach to the test. This is what is
happening. If you want the teachers to stop teaching to the test, we
need to stop punishing those who don't and rewarding those who do.

No it isn't.

Yes it is. Compare your income to that of a teacher. Do you honestly
think that your skill level is higher than that of the ideal teacher?

First of all, money doesn't buy good teachers. Good
teachers, like good engineers, aren't in it for the money.
Just increasing pay willy-nilly does nothing.

I didn't suggest that pay was the only problem.

Second, California teachers make 120% of the national
average.

A California ditch digger makes more than 120% of the national
average. California is a high cost of living state.

Third, in support of the above, the areas where pay is
highest, D.C. and California, are among the worst of
performers (link below).

The highest pay is where the cost of living is the highest but it is
too low everywhere.

Fourth, the NEA puts the average California teacher's
2004 salary at $58K, and that's basically a lie:

http://www.nea.org/edstats/RankFull06b.htm

To skew the averages downward NEA counts substitute, temporary,
and other low-paid workers as teachers.

Pay varies a lot by district; where I am, with a few basic
tricks you can multiply above by 1.4.

That's for 8 month's work, iron-clad permanent employment,
and doesn't include extra benefits worth about 32%.
(California teachers have their own retirement system,
exempt from Social Security.)

http://www.osba.org/lrelatns/salary/rankings.htm


I have utmost respect for good teachers--there's scarcely a
more important job. That's not what we're talking about.

Actually yes it is what we are talking about. You have spent the
whole time dissing the teachers.

Cull the laggards and give the remainder their pay--that's
my inclination.

My brother is a teacher and he agrees 100%. That would push the
average class size up to about 100 students so you would have to hire
more teachers. You won't find many applying for the job.

 

[James Arthur]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:54:08 GMT, James Arthur wrote:

[snip]

Punishment delayed and severe is way less effective than
one that's milder, but swift and sure. Any delay between
behavior and conditioning drastically reduces the
conditioning's effect.

[snip]

Only with animals...

So said Mr. Pavlov. Same with people...I'm sure I
could dig up some boring support if you insist.

children know and remember what they did.

...Jim Thompson

True, but that just changes the time-constants.

In the typical grocery-store melt-down scenario,
where some moms threaten, bribe, plead, and negotiate,
my dad would just rap us on the forehead with
his finger--in public, private, wherever--as
needed, before a big scene developed.

Instant feedback.

That quickly got us in line and everyone--small
and big--was happier.

A finger tap on the forehead. Minimum force,
maximum effect.

(My dad was a pediatrician--he *knew* how to
manage unruly tykes.)

Punish a 3 year-old a day after running into the street?
You'll have no effect.

Consistency is important, per Mr. Pavlov. If the conditioning
is inconsistent, the conditioning is relatively ineffective.

(We've all seen those parents.)

Another element is uncertainty...if you KNOW you'll get it,
you're a lot less likely to try. If murderers 100% knew
they'd be caught and executed that same day, murder would
be a lot less popular.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Richard Henry]

My  father actually beat-up a neighbor father whose teenage daughter
beat the crap out of me when I was 6.

A girl beat me up when I was in 6th grade, at recess, with many of my
classmates watching.

Within a few years, she had grown into a real beuty.

I still have fantasies...

 

[James Arthur]

[snip]

Depends on the situation.

Punishment delayed and severe is way less effective than
one that's milder, but swift and sure.

I guess you never had the anticipation of waiting until Dad got home to
hear what you had done. It was very effective.

That's a hybrid case--if you get caught and 100% know you're dead
when Dad gets home, then you've gotten at least some real-time
feedback, along with a significant feed-forward term (the dread
of things to come) !

Cheers!
James Arthur

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

But fine. If the teachers are so great, testing is the real problem,
and teachers are "teaching to the test," why can't they even do that?

If the teachers are teaching the test specifically, why are scores still
so low ? (And only in certain schools.)

Unions in cahoots with big government.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

MooseFET wrote: ....

I have utmost respect for good teachers--there's scarcely a more important
job. That's not what we're talking about.

Cull the laggards and give the remainder their pay--that's my inclination.

Michelle Rhee is trying to do just that in D.C., heaven help her.

I say, anyone who gets paid with taxpayers' (stolen)[1] money should be
forbidden to unionize.

Thanks,
Rich

[1] Taxation, after all, is nothing more than thinly disguised theft.

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

When I was much younger, the teacher might threaten your knuckles with a
ruler. That got our attention--she never had to use it.

If a person has to resort to violence to get kids to behave, then they
don't have any business being anywhere near children.

"Oh, what about the intractable ones?" I hear you cry.

Kick them out. School is a privilege. (Gawd knows they're not learning
anything anyway.)

Hope This Helps!
Rich

 

[Joerg]

On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:23:30 GMT, James Arthur

Jim Thompson wrote:

I will celebrate my 50th high school reunion this summer. I believe
the educational system was far better back then. Kids around here now
in AZ can't do fractions nor make change :-(

...Jim Thompson
Besides the scoop from a family-member who IS a public school
teacher, I've had many recent dealings myself with the public
high schools.

I cannot begin to adequately convey my contempt, or disappointment
in what was once a fine system and a noble calling. They now
exist simply to perpetuate themselves, political-correctness,
and idiocracy.

There remain some brilliant, shining stars amongst them, but they
fight such hopeless odds, such a heavy burden of bureaucratic
self-important no-nothings...[1]

[1] bureaucrat-to-teacher ratio = 1:1, I kid you not.

And worse, nobody is doing anything to change that. They only whine for
ever higher taxes which will do nothing to improve our educational system.

Two brilliant kids, graduated with top marks, and they can't read.

James Arthur
You might appreciate my pain... I have 8 grandchildren ;-)

Fortunately they're all sharp as tacks (except for one who is
autistic, and he's beginning to spell); and can beat the system at its
own game.

Fortunately in the US people have the right to home-school. Which is
what a lot of people in our church do.

I would suspect that many college graduates could successfully home
school, but not all of them.

That's why they pool their talents. Sort of a "micro school". Not
everybody has an engineering degree and then engineers aren't so great
at literature, usually.

Many who choose to do so, are rejecting typical public education
environments as corrupting. That is their choice, and they must bear
the consequences of that choice. And that includes corrupt
"standards" testing.

For some reason nearly all of the kids I know that are home schooled are
educated, friendly (even towards adults which is unusual these days),
motivated and know what it means to take on responsibilities. When I ask
one of them to take care of the audio stuff at church I can assume it
will be taken care of. They don't just not show up etc.

 

[James Arthur]

Actually yes it is what we are talking about. You have spent the
whole time dissing the teachers.

You just don't get the magnitude of the problem or you
wouldn't be defending it.

10% of students reading at grade level isn't excusable,
it's not a fluke, it's not from lack of money, it's
not from low pay, and it's not because of a multiple-
choice test.

It's because the whole in-bred system is a disaster.

Having listened to a blank-faced high school principal
drone out an hour's worth of gawdawful thoughtless
platitudes, and knowing she's the school's leader, the
one in charge with the vision, who sets the course,
tells me the leaders are clueless.

And that was a good school.

Having received endless 5-minute auto-dialed pre-recorded
phone updates about sports victories and campus trivia,
bi-lingual, with mentions of school closings and PSAT
test dates as afterthoughts, at the end, says they
don't know their priorities.

Maybe you haven't argued with yet another teacher--
making an engineer's salary for 1/2 the hours--
who insisted that Russia's entire population was >90%
female, who refused to be corrected--even by a handy
textbook, not swayed even by photos of crowds--because
_she'd been there herself_, and still swore it, and
taught this to her class...


They run the schools, are themselves their own
administrators, set the standards for students and
teachers and teaching alike; award credentials, set
pay, promote, drive out newcomers.

They control the state's politics, endorse candidates,
run vicious political attack ads, consume more than
half the state's budget.

Yeah, you just don't see it.

It's not teachers exactly--there are great ones, and
they're treasures--it's what, overall, they've become.

Best regards,
James Arthur

 

[Richard Henry]

If a person has to resort to violence to get kids to behave, then they
don't have any business being anywhere near children.

"Oh, what about the intractable ones?" I hear you cry.

Kick them out. School is a privilege. (Gawd knows they're not learning
anything anyway.)

How does a parent kick an intractable child out of a family?

 

[James Arthur]

On Jun 19, 1:34 am, James Arthur wrote:

The kids aren't learning much at home and the bad teachers tend to end
up in in the low pay areas.

Off with their heads !

Best,
James Arthur

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

.

It's not teachers exactly--there are great ones, and they're
treasures--it's what, overall, they've become.

Unionized.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

Same as when I asked here why does the midwest not know how to build a
proper levee ;-)

They learned from Nawlins?

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

How does a parent kick an intractable child out of a family?

You don't. You lock him in his room (without TV, ipod, etc, but with
books) and leave him there, sliding his meals under the door, until
he learns to behave himself.

But if, at that age, a kid is already intractable, then the parents
must quit breeding immediately, because they're clearly not fit
parents. There's not much you can do with a kid that's that fucked
up, except maybe heavy therapy. (or maybe thorazine... >:-> )

Or, turn him loose and let the gendarmes deal with him.

Good Luck!
Rich

 

[JosephKK]

That's a corruption, of and by, and from the teachers.

The idea of testing is to make sure kids have learned, as
gaged by a representative sampling of the kids' knowledge.

"Teaching to the test" is gaming the system, trying to outwit,
to bias the outcome, to subvert its purpose. It's cheating.
The manipulators are to blame, not the tests.

I can agree to that

People of integrity--like teachers once were and should
be--don't do that.

They drove out the ones with that property.

I think it is a little deeper, the kids parents were afraid that their
kids would find out how bad they are at math and demonized it before
the kids could learn any better. Then all the kids who would learn
math anyway went into accounting, math, science and engineering and
the innumerate went into all other fields, including teaching.

This needs clarification. Traditionally young kids first learn the
alphabet, learn letters' sounds, then parse words letter- by-letter,
then learn pronunciation.

In many languages there are such as diphthongs, accented characters,
compound words, and different pronunciation by use. Good teaching
always starts with the clearest and easiest examples. And progresses
to higher levels of difficulty.

They learn this at an early age, when languages and certain skills
come easily, for whatever brain-developmental reason.

Later, with experience, we recognize whole words.

Speak for yourself, but if you study it you may find you are wrong.
Personally, i recognize allophone chains Markov-stochastically, with
rewind and retry.

I only seem to do that when i meet a word i do not recognize. And
that has not been happening much for quite some time.

The young gent I know was taught whole-word recognition right off.
Consequently, he couldn't process new words he hadn't seen before.
Even words he knew verbally mystified him in print: strange and new,
undecipherable, like hieroglyphics.

Yes, it was the asinine imposition of an oriental phd who could not be
taught any better about the difference between ideographic written
languages and phonetic written languages.

It's taken him years of hard work to learn, later in life, how
to painstakingly decode words by sounding them out. In college.

He covers the letters with his fingers, exposing one at
a time, as if he never developed the fine motor skills
needed to scan them visually.

Actually that is normally done with visual skills and there are better
methods to learn the techniques.

 

[JosephKK]

It is also what the parents and the kids have said. As soon as the
testing came in, everything that wasn't going to be on the multiple
choice test went away.



Multiple choice testing only tests those things that can be done with
multiple choice. It favors rote learning over understanding the
method of the overall ideas.



You set up a system where peoples jobs and pay depend on the results
on the test and then you expect them not to respond to the market
forces you just created. The good teachers who don't game the system
get a lower rating and leave the classroom for other jobs. Those who
are best at gaming it stay and get promoted.



Teaching a low paying job that gets nearly no respect. We are getting
the teacher we deserve.

You got that right. Engineering, math and science are almost as bad.