When there are much publicized problems in our state’s K-12 public education system, the Seattle Times is quick to blame teachers and their unions. But when Washington students lead the nation in average SAT scores — for the eighth year in a row — the Times gives “Kudos to Washington students who put the state No. 1 for SAT results.”
Washington state’s continued high SAT scores are evidence of a growing number of students working hard, and successfully, toward college.
No doubt. But what about the teachers? Don’t they deserve mention too? Or are teachers only held responsible when they fail to educate, and never when they succeed?
The Seattle Times isn’t objective. This is news?
You’re still reading the Seattle Times? What for?
Just think how much higher we’d rank and how much better we’d do if we put God back and a uniform Christian perspective back in schools!
http://horsesass.org/?p=29649#comment-1021956
Good for the schools, good for the kids, maybe we can use this bit of good news to shut down some of the nonsense the haters and the theocrats are spewing.
“Teachers are greedy unionists who are killing our economy. We require that teachers get results or get dismissed. In fact we require teachers who get results be replaced by non-union, untrained, low-wage workers. If it weren’t for the Teacher’s Unions the state of Washington would not be in such dire financial straights. We urge the Governor to disolve the public school system and replace it with private industry who does everything more efficiently than governments.” Frank Blethen Jr. (or words to that effect.)
@5 ROTFLMAO. That is a good quote. Coming from a money grubbing scuzbag (Blethen) that does all he can to enrich himself and screw the community he’s in…that’s funny. Yeah, that’s why our states in trouble, our teachers are paid SOOOO much. Really? Wow.
And as for @3, that’s good too! Maybe if we model ourselves after Mississippi we’ll match their test scores soon. Lets rewrite our text books and tell our kids the Earth is 6,000 years old, men rode dinosaurs to work, physics isn’t important but magic is real…yes I’m sure we’ll be the future home of aviation, biotechnology and computers. Or like Mississippi, the home of sad angry confused people. We could do either, I think having Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks and other “for-profit capitalist industry” is a better thing than the poor right wing reality of angry white welfare bums. Remember, the JOBS and 98% of all business is located in “liberal” western Washington. Microsoft and Amazon are free to move to some fundamentalist Christian compound and try to build their products with prayer instead of science…good luck with that. Let me know how that works out. When you launch a geosynchronous satellite by magic I’ll be FIRST in line to admit I was wrong (holding breath).
@micheal – the story says we are ranked #1. your question: how much higher could we be if blah blah blah? answer: not any higher. We are already #1. “moran”
or did i miss the sarcasm? i hate that.
Texas scores drop, apparently due to the failure of the national standards to become normed to the Texas xTian curricula.
From Atrios, here’s a story about a controversy over a story in the Portland [Maine] Press Herald. Was this one of the abortive Blethen Maine newspapers?
http://www.pressherald.com/note-of-apology.html
As I understand it, there was some conflict between Ramadan and 9-11. But I only care if it serves to further embarrass King Frank Blethen.
The problem with any rating of teacher performace, when based upon the student results, is that there are many other factors which impact the student’s results which may have nothing to do with the skill, dedication, or perseverence of the teacher.
For example, some teachers do extremely well at teaching the top 10% of their classes, but are only average at best at teaching to the next 70%, and completely incompetent to teach the bottom 20%. Such teachers would most efficiently be assigned to teach the honors programs, where the students tend to be self-motivating and receive a high amount of assistance from home. In just about every performance-based system, these teachers would recieve the highest scores, as their students would regularly do well on standardized testing and go on to win all sorts of awards and honors. But that’s only 10% of the school population.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the 20% at the bottom of the class. These are the students which have a wide variety of problems requiring individual effort to motivate and educate them. Some have bad home lives. Some have learning deficiencies which were not identified and treated earlier. Some were simply passed along from grade-to-grade without ever learning basic reading and math skills, and are now so far behind that they have to look up to see the bottom. Some have health problems. Some are attempting to learn although English isn’t their home language. Some are simply umotivated or rebellious.
These students in the bottom 20% are going to get either the highly motivated teachers who revel in the challenge, or the worst teachers in the school, whom the principle is hoping will quit. Even if they get the best, most highly educated teachers, a lot of factors will make it difficult for them to score high on performance evaluations. The first is that their students have so far to go – the teacher might spend most of the year just getting to the point where they can TAKE a standardized test. Secondly, these students may drop in and out of classes with much more frequency, due changes in their home life or economic pressures, etc., thereby removing some of their “success” stories from the pool before they are tested at the end of the year. There are lots of other factors, too many to discuss here, which might impact scoring of teachers based upon student’s performance.
That’s why teachers are very reluctant to get involved in such a scoring system. They know the game can be played any number of ways, and there is already lots of competition among the teachers, and conflicts with the school administration which has nothing to do with teaching performance. They know that the situation can be manipulated so that “favored” teachers will get the best scores, and “disfavored” teachers will get the worst scores – regardless of performance.
And yes, my Mother was a teacher (non-union).
@8
You missed the sarcasm and the link to the rightie I was making fun of. But that’s OK, you never seemed like the type for sarcasm.
@6 “Microsoft and Amazon are free to move to some fundamentalist Christian compound and try to build their products with prayer instead of science…good luck with that.”
Reminds me of what the law school dean told us in my first year: “Hoping and praying are no substitute for studying.”
Just think, thanks to the internet, people like Frank Blethen will no longer be able to monopolize the flow of news and information to the citizenry.
[pause]
YIIIIIIPPPPPIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
What, no Professor Kingsfield?
“You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.”
From The Paper Chase (1973)