Public Education, and why it sucks

[Dumpy]

2/3 the population of Mountain View CA is hispanic. The school district has 3 schools. 2 of the 3 should teach its courses in spanish so the kids learn something besides english.

oh? I thought this was a thread to describe everything one thinks is wrong with public education.

 

[Master Shake]

This whole time, I thought the thread title read: Physical Education, and why it sucks. Me = Mega Grammer Fail

 

[MikeDC]

Dumpy, I was just asking about the argument between Denny and cpaw. Threads, as always, go where they're taken.

After hearing it restated I see no reason to agree with Denny on the Spanish language front.

 

[cpawfan]

Dumpy, I was just asking about the argument between Denny and cpaw. Threads, as always, go where they're taken.

After hearing it restated I see no reason to agree with Denny on the Spanish language front.

Technically, I never argued against what Denny listed as the summary. I've only asked how in the hell something like that could be pulled of logistically across the US. How many years would it take to have a suitable pool of qualified teachers for HS subjects including advance math, science and history classes?

 

[Denny Crane]

Technically, I never argued against what Denny listed as the summary. I've only asked how in the hell something like that could be pulled of logistically across the US. How many years would it take to have a suitable pool of qualified teachers for HS subjects including advance math, science and history classes?

How many years? 3.

Uncertified Teachers Performing Well, Study Finds

By SARAH GARLAND, <nobr>Staff Reporter of the Sun</nobr> | November 20, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/uncertified-teachers-performing-well-study-finds/43827/

Uncertified teachers end up performing just as well in the classroom as certified teachers and alternatively trained teachers like Teaching Fellows, a study to be released today says.

The study's results appear to challenge requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act that every classroom have a "highly qualified" teacher, instead suggesting that schools should put more emphasis on weeding out bad apples after the teachers have been hired.

"These are people who have no prior experience in teaching and they go into the lowest performing schools, and they do just as well," a Columbia University Business School professor, Jonah Rockoff, who co-authored the study, said. "Where you went to college and what your GPA was doesn't seem to tell you how good you're going to be in the classroom."

In the study, researchers at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank affiliated with Stanford University, used standardized test scores to measure the performance of New York City students taught by traditionally certified teachers, uncertified teachers, and teachers who enter the profession through alternative programs such as Teach for America and Teaching Fellows. They found that while alternatively certified and uncertified teachers do worse at first, they appear to improve at faster rates than traditionally certified teachers in their first years on the job. By the teachers' third year on the job, students of alternatively certified and uncertified teachers are performing just as well as those of traditionally certified teachers.

That's good news for New York City public schools, since the majority of new hires during the past five years have come through alternative certification programs. Currently, a third of all teachers in city schools received certification from an alternative program.

Alternative certification programs have grown in popularity around the country since the No Child Left Behind law introduced a requirement that all school districts have a "highly qualified" teacher — meaning a teacher with a certificate — in every classroom by July 2006. New York City had already been under pressure to hire more certified teachers after the state education commissioner, Richard Mills, sued the city in 1999 for placing uncertified teachers in the lowest performing schools. To meet the requirements, the city invented the Teaching Fellow program in 2000 to recruit teachers from other professions and speed them through the certification process. The city has hired 9,000 Teaching Fellows since then.

The study shows that uncertified teachers, who are more likely to be minorities than the other groups, end up doing just as well as the alternatively and traditionally certified teachers. Since the Teaching Fellows program was introduced, hiring of minority teachers has dropped significantly, a trend that can be attributed to the effort to remove uncertified teachers, Mr. Rockoff said. Statistics first reported by the Amsterdam News showed that in 2001, 27% of new teachers were black, while this year only 14% were black. The percentage of new Hispanic teachers has also dropped.

The study's authors say they are not "proposing to open the floodgates into teaching" by saying certification doesn't matter. But researchers said the study results showed that school systems, instead of focusing on whether and how teachers are certified before hiring, should worry more about getting rid of teachers who perform badly during probationary periods. Currently, Mr. Rockoff said, large urban school systems like New York with dismal teacher retention rates tend to approve tenure for all teachers who decide to stay on, rarely giving out unsatisfactory ratings to teachers who perform badly. In New York City, half of all teachers — traditionally certified or not — leave after five years.

To become certified, teachers must take a series of tests, have a bachelor's degree that includes education coursework, or complete graduate level education coursework. Alternative certificate programs often allow teachers to do the coursework during their first year of teaching.

A professor at Stanford University, Susanna Loeb, who has conducted a study of teacher qualifications very similar to the Hoover study, said that certification status matters little in determining how a teacher will do in the classroom. She added that recommendations, interviews and grades that give information about a teacher's past experiences and educational achievement should remain important factors in hiring decisions, though.

"I'm not ready to give up on resumes," she said.

The Department of Education said the findings supported their argument that teachers who perform better should be paid more. The department said it would be allocating funds "to pay more to teachers who contribute more, including pay differentials that help make sure our high-needs schools get lead teachers as well as math, science, and special education teachers."

The president of the city teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten pointed to another finding that supports one of the union's longstanding arguments: that experience is a defining factor in good teaching.

"The most successful teachers are the ones who have experience and have been mentored or given other supports to help them learn how to teach in their earliest days in the profession," Ms. Weingarten said, adding that the study "also reaffirms that regardless of whether someone has been certified in the traditional way or in a new way, you can't just plop them into the school system and see if they sink or swim."

The other authors of the Hoover study are Thomas Kane of Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Douglas Staiger, a professor of economics at Dartmouth.

 

[cpawfan]

A study based upon standardized test that are given in English...

And of course, that article / study doesn't answer my question. It is talking about the performance of students, not about how long it takes to fill all of the open positions with the non-traditionally certified teachers.

I'll wait for the next straw man instead of answering the questions.

 

[cpawfan]

Since my first set of logistics questions won't get answered, I'll move on to my next set of questions

What percentage of the student body population has to be made of a single non-native english speaking language in order for a district to spend their money wisely and have an entire HS for these children?

Where are these children going to go to college?

At what point in their adult lives are these children expected to an english as the primary language professional job market?

 

[Denny Crane]

A study based upon standardized test that are given in English...

And of course, that article / study doesn't answer my question. It is talking about the performance of students, not about how long it takes to fill all of the open positions with the non-traditionally certified teachers.

I'll wait for the next straw man instead of answering the questions.

I can see you've come to the conclusion you want to, no matter what evidence is present to you.

The article clearly states that in NYC, they hired 9,000 teachers this way, recruiting them from other professions, over an 8 year period. About 1/3 were minorities. These teachers were as effective as the accredited ones after 3 years of experience and got better faster than the accredited teachers.

The only reason there's a drop in minority teachers there is one of the top educators sued the city. Didn't like the job security implications, or maybe minority teachers. You decide.

You can deny, deny, deny when the facts are presented to you, but it doesn't change the facts. The "strawman" comment is cheap and utter bullshit.

 

[Denny Crane]

Since my first set of logistics questions won't get answered, I'll move on to my next set of questions

Asked, answered, ignored for your convenience. You're wrong, move on.

What percentage of the student body population has to be made of a single non-native english speaking language in order for a district to spend their money wisely and have an entire HS for these children?

The local school district should make the decision based upon their own criteria, studies, and findings.

Where are these children going to go to college?

At what point in their adult lives are these children expected to an english as the primary language professional job market?

The students do learn english, even if you teach them in spanish. What I've been talking about all along is teaching the courses in spanish and teaching them english in a "learning to speak english" class.

 

[MikeDC]

A study based upon standardized test that are given in English...

And of course, that article / study doesn't answer my question. It is talking about the performance of students, not about how long it takes to fill all of the open positions with the non-traditionally certified teachers.

I'll wait for the next straw man instead of answering the questions.

One thing I learned and try to pass on to my students is that the only distinction between the "short-run" and the "long-run" in economics is the amount of money you're willing to spend.

I think Denny is right that the resources are there if you're willing to pay for them and you're willing to throw out the systemic requirements that act as artificial restraints on the labor market (e.g. the various rules that say who's qualified and who's not qualified) and simply pay for performance.

I just think he's wrong on what he proposes to do.

And, of course, your retort is a strawman, since, if you can't have a study indicating the success or failure of the new policy you want to implement until after you try it.

Just as a small example, I teach college level economics, which has competency in algebra as an explicit requirement. I'm quite confident I could teach algrebra, teachers for which are tremendously scarce, but according to the state licensing requirements, I'm not competent to teach it even at the high school level. I think you're just bastardizing Denny's argument by attacking to weakest part and the wording rather than getting at the underlying point.

 

[Denny Crane]

One thing I learned and try to pass on to my students is that the only distinction between the "short-run" and the "long-run" in economics is the amount of money you're willing to spend.

I think Denny is right that the resources are there if you're willing to pay for them and you're willing to throw out the systemic requirements that act as artificial restraints on the labor market (e.g. the various rules that say who's qualified and who's not qualified) and simply pay for performance.

I just think he's wrong on what he proposes to do.

And, of course, your retort is a strawman, since, if you can't have a study indicating the success or failure of the new policy you want to implement until after you try it.

Just as a small example, I teach college level economics, which has competency in algebra as an explicit requirement. I'm quite confident I could teach algrebra, teachers for which are tremendously scarce, but according to the state licensing requirements, I'm not competent to teach it even at the high school level. I think you're just bastardizing Denny's argument by attacking to weakest part and the wording rather than getting at the underlying point.

I am quite convinced if you put an ad in the SJ Mercury News looking for unaccredited teachers fluent in english and spanish, you'd get thousands of responses. For a town the size of Mountain View, you need 100 to 150 total teachers. The "logistics" is a non-issue.

But you have me interested in the WHY of what I propose is wrong to you.

In this thread, I've posted links to studies of the very kinds of program I propose and the results are outstanding.

I will present something that is anecdotal in support of my proposal. In my HS French class, within a couple of years we were reading Sartre in French and discussing it in French. A significant portion of the class was quite fluent in the language, in terms of speaking and reading/writing in it. All this was without the benefit of being able to go out on the street and speak the language with native speakers. And, of course, we learned to read, write, and do algebra and biology and physics and computers in our native language.

 

[Dumpy]

I think you'd have a problem in that every immigrant community would demand the creation of a public school to teach in their native language. And it is quite possible that it would be unlawful for the government to deny such demands.

 

[Denny Crane]

I think you'd have a problem in that every immigrant community would demand the creation of a public school to teach in their native language. And it is quite possible that it would be unlawful for the government to deny such demands.

If the local school board is in charge, then those immigrants could demand from them whatever they want that's lawful (e.g. can't demand teaching creationism).

By your logic, wouldn't it be unlawful for govt. to teach in English? Consider:

* There is no official language of the USA.
* They print just about every legal document in California in at least 22 languages.

 

[cpawfan]

I can see you've come to the conclusion you want to, no matter what evidence is present to you.

The article clearly states that in NYC, they hired 9,000 teachers this way, recruiting them from other professions, over an 8 year period. About 1/3 were minorities. These teachers were as effective as the accredited ones after 3 years of experience and got better faster than the accredited teachers.

The only reason there's a drop in minority teachers there is one of the top educators sued the city. Didn't like the job security implications, or maybe minority teachers. You decide.

You can deny, deny, deny when the facts are presented to you, but it doesn't change the facts. The "strawman" comment is cheap and utter bullshit.

Please tell me what conclusion you think I've come up with?

9000 teachers over an 8 year period plus the time it took develop the program before a single teacher is recruited.

You continue to only answer parts of what I'm asking which is why you keep presenting such straw men.

 

[cpawfan]

One thing I learned and try to pass on to my students is that the only distinction between the "short-run" and the "long-run" in economics is the amount of money you're willing to spend.

I think Denny is right that the resources are there if you're willing to pay for them and you're willing to throw out the systemic requirements that act as artificial restraints on the labor market (e.g. the various rules that say who's qualified and who's not qualified) and simply pay for performance.

Obviously money could solve a lot of things, but there is still the logistics of being able to support this model in more than one location across the country. How do you make this a sustainable and portable model?

And, of course, your retort is a strawman, since, if you can't have a study indicating the success or failure of the new policy you want to implement until after you try it.

My retort isn't a straw man because I'm not asking for a study. I'm pointing out that he hasn't addressed my questions, only parts of them.

Just as a small example, I teach college level economics, which has competency in algebra as an explicit requirement. I'm quite confident I could teach algrebra, teachers for which are tremendously scarce, but according to the state licensing requirements, I'm not competent to teach it even at the high school level. I think you're just bastardizing Denny's argument by attacking to weakest part and the wording rather than getting at the underlying point.

Mike, I haven't attacked that point of it at all. I said long ago in this thread that qualified has nothing to do with accreditation. When I talk of qualified teachers, I am only talking about teachers that are competent in the subjects they will be teaching.

 

[cpawfan]

I am quite convinced if you put an ad in the SJ Mercury News looking for unaccredited teachers fluent in english and spanish, you'd get thousands of responses. For a town the size of Mountain View, you need 100 to 150 total teachers. The "logistics" is a non-issue.

Thousands of qualified applicants? The economy isn't that bad.

Again, you are focusing on only 1 school district. Of course out of the metro area of SF-Oakland-SJ you could eventually staff 2 HS. That isn't a portable model though.

The Phoenix metro area is huge and would need lots and lots of said high schools. An add in the paper isn't going to be enough to fill all of that.

 

[Dumpy]

If the local school board is in charge, then those immigrants could demand from them whatever they want that's lawful (e.g. can't demand teaching creationism).

By your logic, wouldn't it be unlawful for govt. to teach in English? Consider:

* There is no official language of the USA.
* They print just about every legal document in California in at least 22 languages.

By my logic? I am not making an argument. I am merely speculating. You can do your own legal research if you want the answer.

 

[MikeDC]

Obviously money could solve a lot of things, but there is still the logistics of being able to support this model in more than one location across the country. How do you make this a sustainable and portable model?

My retort isn't a straw man because I'm not asking for a study. I'm pointing out that he hasn't addressed my questions, only parts of them.

Mike, I haven't attacked that point of it at all. I said long ago in this thread that qualified has nothing to do with accreditation. When I talk of qualified teachers, I am only talking about teachers that are competent in the subjects they will be teaching.

Admittedly I'm never really sure what Denny's point is but I gathered it was that students were to be segregated by and taught most subjects in their native language. I don't think he's intending some literal segregation into separate schools in every situation as you're implying.

At least from the perspective of having "enough" native language teachers to do it, I don't see a problem. You can always play with class sizes, teacher duties, and so forth, especially if you're in a public school system.

For that matter, there are all sorts of methods for teaching without having a teacher there in a traditional class setting. You could hire a guy to do video who lives in Spain if you wanted to, do correspondence courses, whatever. Most teachers can cover several subjects. There's all sorts of possibilities once you break out of the basic one classroom / one teacher idea. As it turns out, there's plenty of precedent for stuff like this. My high school offered a Chinese class taught by video. And if you look around the world, a lot of these notions of language don't make much sense in the first place, of course. My wife managed to get a very good education despite having textbooks in all sorts of languages she didn't speak. For lots of stuff, it just doesn't matter that much.

 

[Denny Crane]

Admittedly I'm never really sure what Denny's point is but I gathered it was that students were to be segregated by and taught most subjects in their native language. I don't think he's intending some literal segregation into separate schools in every situation as you're implying.

At least from the perspective of having "enough" native language teachers to do it, I don't see a problem. You can always play with class sizes, teacher duties, and so forth, especially if you're in a public school system.

For that matter, there are all sorts of methods for teaching without having a teacher there in a traditional class setting. You could hire a guy to do video who lives in Spain if you wanted to, do correspondence courses, whatever. Most teachers can cover several subjects. There's all sorts of possibilities once you break out of the basic one classroom / one teacher idea. As it turns out, there's plenty of precedent for stuff like this. My high school offered a Chinese class taught by video. And if you look around the world, a lot of these notions of language don't make much sense in the first place, of course. My wife managed to get a very good education despite having textbooks in all sorts of languages she didn't speak. For lots of stuff, it just doesn't matter that much.

My argument is to put the kids first and do what makes sense within the school district. 2/3 of the kids are hispanic. Teaching them as we are is a miserable failure by just about any measure except for teachers and administrators being satisfied to have a job.

So why not have 2 of the 3 schools be labeled as education in spanish and the other as a traditional english speaking school? When hispanic kids are taught by hispanics, even in english, they fare much better. When they're then taught in spanish, they excel. People can choose what school to send their kids to, and the district is small enough that it's no more than a 15 minute bus ride for the students furthest away from their school of choice.

The financial cost of running 3 schools english only are things like art departments and music departments and computer labs and libraries can't be afforded; the money is spent on ESL/ELL. The educational cost is that all the kids, including the english speakers, fare worse on tests, and the whole school district suffers.

The 3 schools in question aren't high schools. After 8 or 9 years of english classes at one of these spanish speaking schools, they'd be ready for english speaking HS and later on, college.

The bottom line is a choice between having these kids count to 10 badly in english, or be as well educated in math in spanish and then translate that to the english speaking world.

 

[Denny Crane]

By my logic? I am not making an argument. I am merely speculating. You can do your own legal research if you want the answer.

The 14th amendment would be the law in question. If there's a violation of it in offering courses in the spanish language, then there's a violation of it in offering courses in the english language. For the very same reasons.

I wonder if the education system has been challenged at the supreme court level.

 

[cpawfan]

Admittedly I'm never really sure what Denny's point is but I gathered it was that students were to be segregated by and taught most subjects in their native language. I don't think he's intending some literal segregation into separate schools in every situation as you're implying.

I'm using the concept of entire high schools because it makes the "math" simpler. In the first post, Denny talked about the school district being 67% and needing 2 of the 3 HS's to teach in the native language.

By talking about full HS's, I'm making sure that the courses include AP classes, multiple science options (my HS had botany, human anatomy, zoology, 3 advanced chemistry classes etc)

At least from the perspective of having "enough" native language teachers to do it, I don't see a problem. You can always play with class sizes, teacher duties, and so forth, especially if you're in a public school system.

For that matter, there are all sorts of methods for teaching without having a teacher there in a traditional class setting. You could hire a guy to do video who lives in Spain if you wanted to, do correspondence courses, whatever. Most teachers can cover several subjects. There's all sorts of possibilities once you break out of the basic one classroom / one teacher idea. As it turns out, there's plenty of precedent for stuff like this. My high school offered a Chinese class taught by video. And if you look around the world, a lot of these notions of language don't make much sense in the first place, of course. My wife managed to get a very good education despite having textbooks in all sorts of languages she didn't speak. For lots of stuff, it just doesn't matter that much.

I'm glad you brought that up as I was waiting for it. Alternative teaching means is really the elephant in the corner.

As an example, some for profit universities are opening up for profit HS's that offer the majority of the course work online.

 

[pegs]

Skimming over this thread, I feel the need to comment: The majority of "minority" teachers suck, and are difficult to understand. It hinders my learning experience, and makes subjects twice as difficult to learn as with American teachers that I can actually understand.

 

[Dumpy]

The 14th amendment would be the law in question. If there's a violation of it in offering courses in the spanish language, then there's a violation of it in offering courses in the english language. For the very same reasons.

I wonder if the education system has been challenged at the supreme court level.

There's probably a good argument to be made that your proposal would violate the 14th amendment. You'd probably eliminate the risk if you adjusted your proposal to teach students in multiple languages in the same school, instead of segregating them into separate schools. It's not the end of the research, though. You could also try the Equal Education Opportunities Act, the Bilingual Education Act, etc.

 

[Denny Crane]

There's probably a good argument to be made that your proposal would violate the 14th amendment. You'd probably eliminate the risk if you adjusted your proposal to teach students in multiple languages in the same school, instead of segregating them into separate schools. It's not the end of the research, though. You could also try the Equal Education Opportunities Act, the Bilingual Education Act, etc.

The constitution trumps these laws.

And if I'm proposing changes, the laws would change accordingly.

 

[Dumpy]

The constitution trumps these laws.

And if I'm proposing changes, the laws would change accordingly.

um, okay. As I said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if segregating non-English speakers into separate schools was unconstitutional. I think you're getting way off track here.

teaching immigrants and children of immigrants only in their native language would doom them to a life of low-paying jobs. It is unassailable that every student should learn english if you want to elevate immigrants to a position where they can compete for high-paying, skilled positions. Many school districts have been struggling with these issues. I believe that many school districts have established programs where students initially learn the subjects in their native languages, and, over time, the english language becomes more predominant. After a few years, the children are only taught in english. Unlike CPaw, I believe that you can find qualified teachers to do this, especially in areas where there is a large community that speaks a particular language. Perhaps they couldn't find teachers to teach all classes, but I suspect that in most cases the students first learning english are probably in elementary and middle school, where they'd be able to learn a new language quicker and wouldn't have to be introduced to very complex subjects. Of course, I'm not an expert in any of this.

How anyone can argue in favor of segregating immigrants and not teaching them english is beyond me.

 

[Denny Crane]

um, okay. As I said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if segregating non-English speakers into separate schools was unconstitutional. I think you're getting way off track here.

teaching immigrants and children of immigrants only in their native language would doom them to a life of low-paying jobs. It is unassailable that every student should learn english if you want to elevate immigrants to a position where they can compete for high-paying, skilled positions. Many school districts have been struggling with these issues. I believe that many school districts have established programs where students initially learn the subjects in their native languages, and, over time, the english language becomes more predominant. After a few years, the children are only taught in english. Unlike CPaw, I believe that you can find qualified teachers to do this, especially in areas where there is a large community that speaks a particular language. Perhaps they couldn't find teachers to teach all classes, but I suspect that in most cases the students first learning english are probably in elementary and middle school, where they'd be able to learn a new language quicker and wouldn't have to be introduced to very complex subjects. Of course, I'm not an expert in any of this.

How anyone can argue in favor of segregating immigrants and not teaching them english is beyond me.

I've consistently argued throughout this thread that the students should be taught english. Just not taught core subjects in english.

When I was in school, we had to take a foreign language AS A SECOND LANGUAGE. My choice was between spanish, french, and latin, and I ended up taking 4 years of french in HS and another 2 in college. What was good for me is good for these hispanic kids - they can learn math and science and history and every other subject (even sex education - bleh) in spanish, and learn english AS A SECOND LANGUAGE, as advertised.

 

[gambitnut]

um, okay. As I said, I wouldn't be at all surprised if segregating non-English speakers into separate schools was unconstitutional. I think you're getting way off track here.

This is my biggest problem with this as well. Even if it is constitutional, it doesn't seem right to me to segregate the students, and I don't know why you feel that would be needed or a good idea. Put the new teachers in all three schools and I find the idea interesting, and the students would have more of a chance to practice their English outside of the English class.