Obviously, cops are doing a dangerous job. But it’s not the most dangerous job [out] there. So I think the point stands. Conservatives would do well to be a bit more skeptical of the activities of police, correctional, military, and intelligence bureaucracies and most liberals would do well to be a bit more skeptical of the activities of education and social service bureaucracies.
Understanding (MOU) for the Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) Kentucky survey.
See the survey here.“Our teachers know what is working in the classroom,” said Gov. Steve Beshear. “Their firsthand experiences help us differentiate between the theoretical and the practical, and they can tell us whether we are truly headed in the right direction. The TELL Kentucky survey gives our teachers a loud, undeniable voice in that process.”
“This survey is a powerful tool and part of our comprehensive and collaborative plan for improving public education in our state,” said Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday. “Understanding and improving the working conditions in our schools will help us realize our vision of every child, proficient and prepared for success -- that is, college- and career-ready when they graduate.”
Beshear and Holliday joined others in the Coalition of Partners today as the group’s members signed the MOU. The coalition includes:
Office of the Governor, Kentucky
Kentucky Board of Education
Kentucky Department of Education
Education Professional Standards Board
Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
Kentucky Education Association
Kentucky Association of School Councils
Kentucky Association of School Administrators
Kentucky PTA
Kentucky Chamber of Commerce
Kentucky School Boards Association
Kentucky Association of School Superintendents
Jefferson County Teachers Association
Other partners include the Legislative Research Commission, Office of Education Accountability, Partnership for Successful Schools, Spalding University, legislators, teachers, principals and superintendents.
In March 2011, the TELL survey will be administered to all Kentucky certified educators employed in the state’s 174 school districts. There will be questions about facilities and resources; instructional and planning time; decision-making; school leadership; community support; and more.
The survey will be administered by the nonprofit New Teacher Center (NTC), a national organization dedicated to supporting the development of a high-quality teaching force. NTC has conducted similar surveys in other states and provides induction and professional development for teachers and principals across the country.
The TELL Kentucky survey will be administered online, and all responses will remain anonymous. Results from the teacher responses will be aggregated and reported by NTC no later than June 2011. These reports will be a compilation of educator responses to all questions and presented as bar charts for the school (if at least 50 percent of educators respond), district and state.
This from the New York Times:ON A WINTER DAY five years ago, Doug Lemov realized he had a problem. After a successful career as a teacher, a principal and a charter-school founder, he
was working as a consultant, hired by troubled schools eager — desperate, in some cases — for Lemov to tell them what to do to get better. There was no shortage of prescriptions at the time for how to cure the poor performance that plagued so many American schools. Proponents of No Child Left Behind saw standardized testing as a solution. President Bush also championed a billion-dollar program to encourage schools to adopt reading curriculums with an emphasis on phonics. Others argued for smaller classes or more parental involvement or more state financing.
Lemov himself pushed for data-driven programs that would diagnose individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. But as he went from school to school that winter, he was getting the sinking feeling that there was something deeper he wasn’t reaching. On that particular day, he made a depressing visit to a school in Syracuse, N.Y., that was like so many he’d seen before: “a dispiriting exercise in good people failing,” as he described it to me recently. Sometimes Lemov could diagnose problems as soon as he walked in the door. But not here. Student test scores had dipped so low that administrators worried the state might close down the school. But the teachers seemed to care about their students. They sat down with them on the floor to read and picked activities that should have engaged them. The classes were small. The school had rigorous academic standards and state-of-the-art curriculums and used a software program to analyze test results for each student, pinpointing which skills she still needed to work on.
But when it came to actual teaching, the daily task of getting students to learn, the school floundered. Students disobeyed teachers’ instructions, and class discussions veered away from the lesson plans. In one class Lemov observed, the teacher spent several minutes debating a student about why he didn’t have a pencil. Another divided her students into two groups to practice multiplication together, only to watch them turn to the more interesting work of chatting. A single quiet student soldiered on with the problems. As Lemov drove from Syracuse back to his home in Albany, he tried to figure out what he could do to help. He knew how to advise schools to adopt a better curriculum or raise standards or develop better communication channels between teachers and principals. But he realized that he had no clue how to advise schools about their main event: how to teach...Lemov spent his early career putting his faith in market forces, building accountability systems meant to reward high-performing charter schools and force the lower-performing ones to either improve or go out of business. The incentives did shock some schools into recognizing their shortcomings. But most of them ...knew they had to change, but they didn’t know how. “There was an implementation gap,” Lemov told me. “Incentives by themselves were not going to be enough.” Lemov calls this the Edison Parable, after the for-profit company Edison Schools, which in the 1990s tried to create a group of accountable schools but ultimately failed to outperform even the troubled Cleveland public schools.
Lemov doesn’t reject incentives. In fact, at Uncommon Schools, the network of 16 charter schools in the Northeast that he helped found and continues to help run today, he takes performance into account when setting teacher pay. Yet he has come to the conclusion that simply dangling better pay will not improve student performance on its own. And the stakes are too high: while student scores on national assessments across demographic groups have risen, the percentage of students at proficiency — just 39 percent of fourth graders in math and 33 percent in reading — is still disturbingly low. And there is still a wide gap between black and white students in reading and math. The smarter path to boosting student performance, Lemov maintains, is to improve the quality of the teachers who are already teaching.
But what makes a good teacher? There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.” ...
By figuring out what makes the great teachers great, and passing that on to the mass of teachers in the middle, [THOMAS KANE, a Harvard economist who studies education] said, “we could ensure that the average classroom tomorrow was seeing the types of gains that the top quarter of our classrooms see today.” He has made a guess about the effect that change would have. “We could close the gap between the United States and Japan on these international tests within two years.”
Kane is serious about finding the answers. He took a leave from Harvard in 2008 to work on a $335 million Gates Foundation project that will identify and support effective teaching practices. One study involves filming some 3,000 classrooms across the country and measuring them against a variety of practices...
Retired Los Angeles teacher
keeps at it, for free
The district balked at first, but now Bruce Kravets is back in the classroom at Palms Middle School doing what he loves.
Five mornings a week, Bruce Kravets, 66, puts on a coat and tie, straps on his helmet and bikes to work at Palms Middle School on L.A.'s Westside, where he teaches math. For free.Last June, after 42 years of teaching, Kravets retired.
He'd put so much money into his retirement fund over the decades, his monthly compensation if he stepped down would be greater than his regular pay. But that didn't mean he was ready to abandon teaching. His plan was to stay on and teach for no salary, because he couldn't think of anything more fun or rewarding than teaching algebra, geometry, logic and stage craft...
This from Beth Lewis at About.com:
Thinking About Teaching?
Here's Why You Should Take The Leap
Teaching is more than just a job. It's a calling. It's an ever-surprising mix of grueling hard work and ecstatic successes, both big and small. The most effective teachers are in it for more than just a paycheck. They keep their energy levels up by focusing on why they got into teaching in the first place. Here are the top seven reasons you should join the ranks and find a classroom of your own.
1. The Energizing Environment: It's virtually impossible to be bored or stagnant with a job as challenging as teaching. Your brain is constantly engaged in creative ways as you work to solve a multitude of daily problems that you've never faced before. Teachers are lifelong learners who relish the chance to grow and evolve. Moreover, the innocent enthusiasm of your students will keep you young as they remind you to smile through even the most frustrating moments.
2. The Schedule: Anybody who enters teaching solely for a breezy schedule or carefree lifestyle will be immediately disappointed. Still, there are some benefits to working at a school. For one thing, if your children attend school in the same district, you will all have the same days off. Also, your will have approximately two months off per year for summer vacation. Or if you work in a year-round district, the vacation will spread throughout the year. Either way, it's more than the two weeks paid vacation given in most corporate jobs.
3. Your Personality And Humor: The greatest asset you bring to the classroom each day is your own unique personality. Sometimes in cubicle life, there's a need to blend in and tone down your personality. However teachers absolutely must use their individual gifts to inspire, lead, and motivate their students. And when the job gets tough, sometimes it's only your sense of humor that can keep you moving forward with any sanity.
4. Job Security: The world will always need teachers. If you are willing to work hard in any type of environment, you'll find that you can always get work - even as a brand new teacher. Learn your trade, earn your credential, become tenured, and you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that you have a job you can count on for decades to come.
5. Intangible Rewards: Most teachers find themselves encouraged and uplifted by the little joys that accompany working with children. You'll cherish the funny things they say, the silly things they do, the questions they ask, and the stories they write. I have a box of keepsakes that students have given me through the years - birthday cards, drawings, and small tokens of their affection. The hugs, smiles, and laughter will keep you going and remind you of why you became a teacher in the first place.
6. Inspiring Students: Each day when you go in front of your students, you never know what you will say or do that will leave a lasting impression on your students. We can all remember something positive (or negative) that one of our elementary school teachers said to us or the class - something that stuck in our minds and informed our viewpoints for all these years. When your bring the full force of your personality and expertise to the classroom, you can't help but inspire your students and mold their young, impressionable minds. This is a sacred trust we are given as
teachers, and definitely one of the benefits of the job.7. Giving Back To The Community: The majority of teachers enter the education profession because they want to make a difference in the world and their communities. This is a noble and valiant purpose that you should always keep in the forefront of your mind. No matter the challenges you face in the classroom, your work truly does have positive ramifications for your students, their families, and the future. Give your best to each student and watch them grow. This is greatest gift of all.
