Obama, taking on unions, backs teacher merit pay

[Saphirea]

When everyone saying that kids receive a better education from homeschooling than they do in public schools are they assuming average public schools or all public schools? I know some public schools that are actually really good, but as i said before, are in wealthy areas and are well funded.

Yeah DC public schools are a great example of a well funded school system that is obviously succeeding. Highest funded per student school system in America and yet the schools still suck.

[Deejay]

If... any of the American TV shows I've seen are accurate........... the problem is not so much in the teacher's salary, as it is the culture itself inside the school. e.g. Romantisizing good athletes while looking down on the intelligent science/maths students. It doesn't really give people much incentive to learn.

Gifted students aren't smart because it's "cool", and the best athletes aren't great because it's "popular". Some people are simply motivated to do well at things because a.) they come easy to them or b.)they devote enough time and hard work.

We should be teaching kids the value of hard work and devotion moreso than teaching them that it's the better for them to be smart or athletic. It shouldn't matter what they're good at doing, as long as they know how to keep at it long enough to achieve success.

[Kuya]

We should be teaching kids the value of hard work and devotion

Who needs hard work when you can be an overpaid hollywood or sports star?

Moneys and hos is all you need nigga

[Seraph]

Who needs hard work when you can be an overpaid hollywood or sports star?

Moneys and hos is all you need nigga

I'd rather more silly entertainment providers as opposed to more completely useless people living off the system.

[Jaybar]

I think a big problem is giving special treatment to athletes -- In college, it's the seniors, athletes, and handicapped that get first rights to class selections. For most students, having seniors pick classes first doesn't affect them (for the most part, the classes are blow-off or 4th level+ classes needed for graduation). However, I've been in many classes (pretty much every freshman class, and several in my major curriculum in the following years) that a) don't want to be there, b) are too stupid for the subject, or c) the exact opposite of a and b.

Do athletes deserve top priority in education or do gifted students deserve top priority? Should there even be a priority system? Some colleges might not have this system, but any college in any of the major NCAA conferences probably do.

[Seraph]

I think a big problem is giving special treatment to athletes -- In college, it's the seniors, athletes, and handicapped that get first rights to class selections. For most students, having seniors pick classes first doesn't affect them (for the most part, the classes are blow-off or 4th level+ classes needed for graduation). However, I've been in many classes (pretty much every freshman class, and several in my major curriculum in the following years) that a) don't want to be there, b) are too stupid for the subject, or c) the exact opposite of a and b.

Do athletes deserve top priority in education or do gifted students deserve top priority? Should there even be a priority system? Some colleges might not have this system, but any college in any of the major NCAA conferences probably do.

Pro Tip: Take classes too difficult for the 'just athletes'.

In all seriousness though, it does suck when some simple class you need to take is locked up because of the insane demand for it. No matter what you do, generally you will have to take at least a few low level or crap classes. I found a big smile and a metric assload of patience helped convince professors to let me into 'full' classes.

[Deejay]

My college is the same way. The way I see it, the gifted athletes are there to make the University money and give them notoriety. If athlete A attends Syracuse University and wins his school the national championship in basketball, kids all over the world are going to be watching him on T.V. and saying to themselves "I wanna go there!". Also, the school is getting loads of cash money from broadcast studios who are paying to air the games on television.

And for that, I think it's only fair that athletes are given free classes/seniority. It's the least the University could do.

Who needs hard work when you can be an overpaid hollywood or sports star?

Moneys and hos is all you need nigga

you can't get the money if you don't put in the hard work

[Jaybar]

Pro Tip: Take classes too difficult for the 'just athletes'.

In all seriousness though, it does suck when some simple class you need to take is locked up because of the insane demand for it. No matter what you do, generally you will have to take at least a few low level or crap classes. I found a big smile and a metric assload of patience helped convince professors to let me into 'full' classes.

My freshman prereqs were full of shit classes (that in retrospect I wish I took AP courses for in highschool). Once you get to your 3rd level courses in the core or major curriculum then there is room for extra in most cases.

I wish I had the charisma or awesome professors that would let me into full+ classes.

And to Deejay, I see your point. But these athletes that you describe (assuming it's for the reasons you describe) are most likely going to take their career into the professional league. What good was their education (Bad question, but just trying to make a point)? I think the least a University could do for them was offer full scholarship imo.

[Deejay]

I was just using an extreme case, and even then, it's hard to say that all the best athletes in college will go on to become professional athletes. Take Tim Tebow of UF for example. He's already considered a god of college football, but many still think that his game won't translate well to the pro level. For him, it's beneficial to finish his 4 years, get a degree, and then get a real job.

Furthermore, most athletes who are only there for sports leave after their 2nd or 3rd year to become pros (if that). Most of the best basketball players leave after 1 semester.

Also, a lot of colleges value tradition over fame. For example: School A has won 23 regional championships in football over the past 50 years. Send your son to our school!!!!11

Most of the kids who attend a University and win regional championships for their schools are going to go on and find real jobs too.

Edit:

Also, people need to realize that not all athletes are total idiots. I remember hearing the other day that one of the Cornerbacks at Florida State University just accepted an offer to be a road scholar at Oxford. They only offer the program to a hand full of students and one just so happened to be a "dumb jock".

[Jaybar]

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say all athletes are dumb; I've seen a small handful of very smart athletes (my stepbrother is a prime example of that, in fact with a major in business and minor in physics with a 3.6 average).

The problem with advertising a university using sports is that it's false advertising for students that don't want to be an athlete. If a university has won 15 bowl games in the last 20 years as a selling point, yea I'd join the university...if I was going to join their athletic program. It says absolutely nothing about their education level. If I'm a parent, I want my kid to join a school they want that has a respectable education background.

Of course, there are many schools that rank high in quality of education while having a great athletic program (and those are mostly the very large schools). People really dismiss Division 3 schools a lot when that college might actually give a student a better education.

[Cesaria]

I pity the US if it starts to follow the UK model of education "standards". The problem with paying by performance is that kids don't start from a level playing field. You go to some parts of the surrounding areas around here and the kids come into school aged 3 (half-day nursery) still in nappies, barely aware of their own name, with incredibly limited speech and no social skills at all. Then you go to another area and find the same 3 year olds enter knowing some of the letters in their names, able to chat quite articulately to you, knowing what books are for and that you turn the pages from front to back etc... the second group are more than likely going to do better in school than the first group, however many hours in the day you work to plan and resource activities for them. The second school is going to come out better on exam results - but if anything, teaching there is probably a slightly easier job than in the former school.

Because of that - they started also ranking schools in the annual league tables over here based on value added from when the kids entered school. Trouble is - that's easily fiddled. I taught reception for a year (4-5year olds, the first year they're in full-time education over here) and we assessed the kids when they enter the school in order to have a baseline for these value added calculations. I got a very very bright cohort in the class - lots of them came in counting to 10, knowing how to write their names and the like - so I recorded what they COULD do on the sheets.... got told by a head who didn't know the kids that they couldn't possibly do all these things, rank them all down so it didn't trash our value added scores when they left the school. That's common place - pretty much all schools do it.

Teaching in the UK now basically boils down to - find the kids you can push up to the level needed for the league tables, write off the ones who aren't going to make the grade and throw resources at the 10 kids in the class teetering on the borderline between level 3 and 4 (I'm talking 4-11year old kids here but it's the same for the older kids). I feel bad for the lower-enders who just get babysat and it's fucking morally wrong to ditch those in favour of those who are going to bump your scores up more. Then you basically pressure cook the 10 and 11 year olds from December to May for the national tests to make sure the school looks good in the scores. At the age of 4 you sit down and predict whether they'll get a 3 4 or 5 in their tests and teach them accordingly - call me nuts, but I don't like writing a four year old off as kids develop differently and you never know if they'll come into their own 2/3 years down the line - if you don't give them the chance they never bloody will.

It's not quite performance related but it's getting close. Every teacher (I'm a sub so I avoid this bullshit most of the time) gets set performance targets and observed - and generally these will be to get X Y and Z children to a set level... while it doesn't directly affect your pay at the start of your career - it can affect your application to get onto the upper pay scale you hit after 6 years teaching. It's destroyed a lot of teaching, taken the flexibility to follow kids' interests out of it - you can't explore a sideline of discussion these days as you have to get everything covered on the planned day or else it might come up in a test (and sometimes kids come up with stuff you'd really like to explore and discuss - one of mine came up with "I don't think I'd want to be cloned Miss as then there'd be another me and that would be odd" once and we had the most incredible discussion following on from it).