65 %
The big education news here in NYC is the principal who wrote a memo to his staff telling them that if they were not passing 65% of their students that they needed to take into account how difficult the students lives were and to redesign their classes to allow more students to pass.
Everyone seems shocked by this. The interpretation is that he is suggesting that his teachers dumb down the classes. If you are a teacher, than I would hope that you are adjusting your classes to the students in front of you. Good teachers do this all of the time. Bad teachers hide behind a concept that there is an objective level that all classes should be taught at. Certainly if you are a chemistry teacher there is a state curriculum with a certain scope of learning. But the amount of room within this scope is huge.
As a supervisor you often see two different types of teachers. One has "standards" and even if no one in the class understands what they are talking about they plow ahead. This makes them efficient deliverers of information and bad teachers. These are the equivalent of the adult who talks to you about music in such technical terms that you can't follow what they are saying and then sneers at you for being ignorant. If it wasn't that equal amounts of men and women teachers teach this way I would make a comment about the size of their genitals.
The second one adjusts her teaching to reflect the class. The problem this teacher often has is that she keeps adjusting down and the kids get lazier. What supervisors should be doing is walking into the classes and pushing the teachers to demand more. This state of lowered expectations seems to be inevitable. It is hard to get the level right without an impartial observer watching what you are doing.
I've talked a lot about whether we should care about kids home lives, but I will talk some more about this next time.
I was reading a review of the new Coppola movie. It said this move is rated R for language, sexual congress, and metaphysics.
3 comments:
You wrote:
> The big education news here in NYC is the
> principal who wrote a memo to
> his staff telling them that if they were not
> passing 65% of their students
> that they needed to take into account how
> difficult the students lives
> were and to redesign their classes to allow
> more students to pass.
> Everyone seems shocked by this.
The shock comes from how the popular media depict the memo. As usual there is no gray areas --it is all portrayed as an either/or situation.
> The interpretation is that he is
> suggesting that his teachers dumb down the
> classes.
It was depicted that that was the intent.
> If you are a teacher,
> than I would hope that you are adjusting
> your classes to the students in
> front of you. Good teachers do this all of
> the time. Bad teachers hide
> behind a concept that there is an objective
> level that all classes should
> be taught at.
Where does this "objective level" come from? Educational levels, or standards, are subjective.
When teachers "adjust' they should be changing the activities but not the material. All students should have access to the same curriculum.
> Certainly if you are a
> chemistry teacher there is a state
> curriculum with a certain scope of learning.
> But the amount of room within
> this scope is huge.
The state curriculum should be made available to every student. How you, the teacher, have students master the content is what separates the great teacher from the less-than-great teacher.
Any implication that these kids can't do what is expected of any other kid is the worst kind of racism. It is patronizing and ugly. We should be teaching that they can do, not saying oh they can't do this because they are fill-in-the-blank. That is enabling and it stinks. Shame on you Mr. Chancellor. Can't wait to see the commercials that they put on the air to put a positive spin on this one.
It should be clear that promotional standards are not being implemented properly otherwise the problem you are attempting to address would not be as wide spread as it is.
Essentially, if a school system going to separate students into grades, and assigned them a set of subjects for each grade, then every subject teacher's first reasonable expectation is that students are ready to learn what the teacher is _supposed_ to be teaching. Further, there should be well understood "passing standards" for each subject and for each grade.
Be it a 5th grade subject or a 12th grade subject, if the student has been placed in that class the presumption _must_ be that the student is ready to learn that subject at that level.
As to what grade this should begin with should solely be a function of "normal" child development determined empirically based either on on the actual children of city or this state, or, resources permitting, a given child's development.
Of course this has never been true in the NYC public school system, but as usual, yet another person, in this case you, wants to criticize teachers (In this case for not teaching at the "right level.")
The fact that administrators have failed, (or, kindly, the local administrators have not been permitted) to assure that given standards have been reached is NOT the teacher's responsibility; it is the _administration's_.
Further, to state that the teacher needs an "objective" third party, i.e. an administrator, to come in and tell the teacher whether or not s/he is teaching the class in front of him/her "at the right level" is presumptuous at best, and usually is absurdly ridiculous for most of the people who are placed in so-called administrative positions.
What's with your demeaningly broad stereotyping of teachers into either rigid individuals who assume that the student are ready vs. bleeding heart teachers who keep dumbing down their classes until they are teaching the majority at the right level?
Indeed, the extremes of the responses that you disparage are in both fact highly reasonable given the way students are placed into our classroom.
The fact is that higher level administration (both current and past) has been unwilling or unable to formulate a well understood policy that a teacher and local administrators can apply is not the fault of teachers or local administrators. Until this is done then all the partisan pundits will have have their field days.
In the meantime, "Ed," lose the negative attitude towards the people you were hired to supervise.
Mike, Joel, and Jack are all wrong about human nature, 'specially with respect to the people who become teachers.
In fact, "Ed," consider make becoming a "compassionate administrator" a high priority New Year's Resolution, if for no other reasons than survival and getting ready for the the next mayor, and the next set of DOE officials.
This city is fed up with the way Bloomberg and Klein are running the DOE: know this well!
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