I chose this article because it had a catchy title to it and I thought it was interesting. We live in a society that sets up our education system and shames teachers. Teachers spend many hours and time working hard to create the best learning environments and they have been set to fail and be humiliated by the system.
A lot of people think...
"Our view of American public education in general has been warped by our knowledge of these failing kids in inner-city and rural schools."
but in reality...
"There are actually many good schools in the United States—in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. Pathologizing the system as a whole, reformers insist on drastic reorganization, on drastic methods of teacher accountability. "
The biggest point being pulled from this article is that teachers are not being respected and are being pulled in many different directions.
"Teachers run from one testing regiment to another. But using the tests to evaluate teachers themselves has been questioned again and again by statistical experts as well as by critics of these programs. The heart of the criticism: the tests measure demographics (the class and wealth level of the students) more than teachers’ abilities."
It simply talks about test-taking has demoralized the profession itself. It made everything competitive and made teachers unwilling to share materials and help/cooperate to ensure that they would be high achieving and teaching to the test.
"We also have to face the real problem, which, again, is persistent poverty. If we really want to improve scores and high-school-graduation rates and college readiness and the rest, we have to commit resources to help poor parents raise their children by providing nutrition and health services, parenting support, a supply of books, and so on. We have to commit to universal pre-K and much more. And we have to stop blaming teachers for all of the ills and injustices of American society."
Honestly, it is all about the approach. We can either look at the facts and real issues or find another finger to point in another direction.
Nice job pulling direct quotes from the article! I think the idea of comparing our ability using testing is silly, and I'm glad you address it here.
ReplyDeleteWe spent time talking about this today! I agree, assessing our ability by using test is silly. It's almost that society wants a way to "control" teachers as they don't trust or respect us enough to let us have our own control.
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