Re: [Phys-l] Kozol fasts to protest NCLB

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

> Excellent point! Here in the Northeast, the education programs in many
> colleges are pathetic. Grade inflation, a problem in all disciplines, is
> totally out of control in the education departments. There is no
> incentive to excel because everyone receives the same grade, an A. The
> Dean's list is primarily populated with education students. The students
> are simply processed - and then bring this mentality to the schools
> where they are employed after graduation.
>
> Education students need to learn more than just a list of techniques. As
> you implied, they have to be taught how to assess themselves and how to
> take action for self improvement based on the particular circumstances
> they are in. They need to personally search the relevant literature for
> techniques that have worked for people in similar situations.
>
> However, one of the frustrations I had during my brief stint teaching at
> the high school level was that there was no reward for excellence (not
> that I personally deserved it). The teachers who were known for their
> skills and adaptability got exactly the same pay raises as those who
> should have been fired years ago. This is where I think NCLB is weak.
> The carrot and stick are applied to the schools, not the teachers. There
> is little a "manager" can do if the individual teachers are shielded
> from accountability by a strong union presence that prohibits merit pay.

The real difficulty is how you determine what is good teaching, and what is
not.  The evaluations of teachers have always used a rubric of some sort
which really shows only whether teachers adhere to specific rules.  In TX
for example one had to adhere to the Madeline Hunter rules, even though
Hunter had said that her rules were not designed to evaluate teachers.
Generally it boils down to whether the administration "likes" the teacher.
Honest self evaluations are then held against a teacher, so one must lie, or
at least stretch the truth and leave out any problems.  I know a good
example of where the admin. favors certain teachers, and one of them
probably produces no learning.  But by doing the popular things even
potential abusers can become darlings of the principal, while feisty
effective teachers can be let go.

This is why unions have walked into many schools.  Unions can serve as a
brake against arbitrary administrations.  If unions were the problem then
the Southern schools would be models of good education.  TX one of the most
antiunion states has one of the poorest educational systems.

Rules that mandate measurable improvement and merit pay are not better.
Teachers who have a large number of LD students are lumped with teachers of
better students.  So the reward becomes the luck of the draw or of the
administrations assignments.

I know of a class where I was able to give the FCI and a heat evaluation to
students in the spring after being taught by a respected PhD.  From both the
scores and my observations the students had little to no understanding of
Newton's laws, or heat.  There was no union pressure, yet students could
leave without having learned much.  In addition it was clear from talking to
the teacher that he had no pedagogical knowledge, or was even aware that
there was a problem.  So teacher's colleges are turning out people who are
not necessarily good teachers, but respected universities are churning out
PhDs who also are equally as poor at teaching.

NCLB is making the situation worse by pressuring schools to raise test
scores on simplistic evaluations.  I know from personal experience that
friends are being told to just drill by the administration.  Then many
teachers are given scripted lessons.  These are welcomed by new teachers,
but it deskills them.  The school becomes more and more a rigid institution
which will produce unthinking individuals.  Then they remove recess, music,
...  If this type of thing worked then TX which instituted this before NCLB
would produce model graduates with a high graduation rate.  They don't.

Private schools are not the answer either.  I have a significant number of
seniors who could not give the volume of a box when presented with the 3
sides.  This is in a private school, and most of the students have been in
private schools all of their lives.

Of course universities are not better in this regard.  The rewards are for
bringing in $$$$ and publishing papers, not for being effective in the
classroom.  And rewards for effectiveness are generally given for good SETS
(student evaluations of teachers) which are easily manipulated by giving
high grades.

So I submit that in the end improvement will come only by educating teachers
in methods that have proven to be effective.  At present there are such
methods, such as Modeling and Thinking Science.  But it is difficult to get
either new or experienced teachers to take the necessary multi-week
workshops.  Good education departments can improve teaching by effective
training, and I cited Uteach as an example of this.  All of this is going on
completely independently of NCLB, but it could be promoted by providing the
necessary incentives for teachers to take these workshops.  Meanwhile
schools retard this by mandating review instead of using the effective
methods, so NCLB is effectively retarding reform.

Meanwhile administrators need to be trained in recognizing effective
pedagogy.  It is quite common for elementary school teachers (who generally
score concrete operational) to advance by becoming HS administrators.  Just
think of the ramifications of that.  You need to test at the formal
operational level to understand the necessary pedagogy.  The concrete
operational thinker will generally go for quick fixes using simplistic
methods, because they can not understand what is needed to promote formal
operational thinking.  Note that I am using the Piagetian level
classification as a score on a thinking skills test of the precursors
mentioned by Arons.  Rigid levels do not exist, but the classification
scheme is still relatively valid.

As the grandson of 2 founders of the screen actors guild, I have heard about
many of the abuses that existed before the unions were created.  Unions
exist as a reaction to abuses, and without them the companies do not
necessarily work better.  As I understand Japan has unions, but they are
only allowed to strike during one week of the year.  That way all strikes
happen at once, and are then over.  Remember that dictatorships generally
outlaw all unions, so while unions can create problems, they are not
generally the only problem.  Europe has heavy unionization, and also the
best health care in the world.  Americans are not the healthiest or even the
tallest people in the world.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX