The Hardest Job Everyone Thinks They Can Do

Via

This piece was inspired by a heated discussion I had with a man who believes that teachers have an easy job. Please feel free to share it with others if you agree with the message.

I used to be a molecular biologist. I spent my days culturing viruses. Sometimes, my experiments would fail miserably, and I’d swear to myself in frustration. Acquaintances would ask how my work was going. I’d explain how I was having a difficult time cloning this one gene. I couldn’t seem to figure out the exact recipe to use for my cloning cocktail.

Acquaintances would sigh sympathetically. And they’d say, “I know you’ll figure it out. I have faith in you.”

And then, they’d tilt their heads in a show of respect for my skills….

Today, I’m a high school teacher. I spend my days culturing teenagers. Sometimes, my students get disruptive, and I swear to myself in frustration. Acquaintances ask me how my work is going. I explain how I’m having a difficult time with a certain kid. I can’t seem to get him to pay attention in class.

Acquaintances smirk knowingly. And they say, “well, have you tried making it fun for the kids? That’s how you get through to them, you know?”

And then, they explain to me how I should do my job….

I realize now how little respect teachers get. Teaching is the toughest job everyone who’s never done it thinks they can do. I admit, I was guilty of these delusions myself. When I decided to make the switch from “doing” science to “teaching” science, I found out that I had to go back to school to get a teaching credential.

[readon2 url="http://www.musingsonlifeandlove.com/2010/09/13/the-hardest-job-everyone-thinks-they-can-do/"]Continue reading...[/readon2]

Education News for 04-12-2012

Statewide Education News

• School achievement tests to get tougher in 2014 (Newark Advocate)

The tests Ohio's third- through eighth-graders are preparing to take later this month will look vastly different in a few years. No. 2 pencils and bubbled sheets will be replaced with computers; simple multiple choice questions will be replaced with questions requiring more thought. The tests also will be more difficult. Much more difficult. Read More…

• Ohio Continues to Fall Short on Providing High-Quality Preschool (State Impact Ohio)

Ohio isn’t doing a great job of getting children, particularly low-income children, into good, state-funded preschool programs. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s been true for several years running. Steven Barnett is the director of the National Institute for Early Education Research. His group’s new annual report on the state of preschool doesn’t do Ohio any favors. Read More…

• Test question raises concerns among Jews (Cleveland Jewish News)

An Ohio Graduation Test question asking for the Arabs’ perspective on the founding of the state of Israel has raised concerns among members of the Jewish community. Objections range from bias to over-simplification of history. Tenth-graders in public and private schools across Ohio took the OGT March 12 to 16 in five subject areas. Makeup testing took place the following week. Read More…

Local Issues

• ‘Realistic’ financial projection requested by Liberty schools panel (Vindicator)

The fiscal commission prodded and picked at the latest revision of the Liberty school district’s five-year forecast Wednesday, telling the district’s treasurer it wants a more-detailed projection to ensure it is receiving adequate information for future cuts. Roger Nehls, chairman of the fiscal commission charged with guiding the district out of fiscal emergency, said districts sometimes will use the forecast as a budgetary planning tool. Read More…

Editorial & Opinion

• Complex evaluation (Akron Beacon Journal)

Public schools are a favorite target of politicians fixed on accountability, on showing the worth of money spent. Last year, Ohio lawmakers approved in the budget bill provisions that require the State Board of Education to develop a new framework for evaluating teachers. The new assessment will apply, beginning in 2013, to school districts, plus charter schools participating in the federal Race to the Top initiative. Read More…

• Raise the bar

State Auditor Dave Yost is right that Ohio needs higher standards and stricter accountability for charter-school treasurers. As some recent high-profile cases involving ruined schools and misspent tax funds make clear, it’s easy for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be lost before corrective action takes place. Read More…

A difficult year

The Shanker Institute has a very comprehensive look at the year in corporate education reform research. It covers 3 basic areas

• Charter schools
• Performance pay
• Value-added in evaluations

All topics we have covered in some length at JTF. You can view a lot of the research we have brought forward at our document center at SCRIBD.

If 2010 was the year of the bombshell in research in the three “major areas” of market-based education reform – charter schools, performance pay, and value-added in evaluations – then 2011 was the year of the slow, sustained march.

Last year, the landmark Race to the Top program was accompanied by a set of extremely consequential research reports, ranging from the policy-related importance of the first experimental study of teacher-level performance pay (the POINT program in Nashville) and the preliminary report of the $45 million Measures of Effective Teaching project, to the political controversy of the Los Angeles Times’ release of teachers’ scores from their commissioned analysis of Los Angeles testing data.

In 2011, on the other hand, as new schools opened and states and districts went about the hard work of designing and implementing new evaluations compensation systems, the research almost seemed to adapt to the situation. There were few (if any) “milestones,” but rather a steady flow of papers and reports focused on the finer-grained details of actual policy.*

Nevertheless, a review of this year’s research shows that one thing remained constant: Despite all the lofty rhetoric, what we don’t know about these interventions outweighs what we do know by an order of magnitude.

Alas, the piece concludes with much the same problem we have been documenting all year long, the headlong, unreasoned, non collaborative rush to implement corporate education reform policies whose impacts at best are unknown and at worst are highly damaging to student achievement and the public education system

Overall, then, it was a productive research year in the three areas discussed above, and it might have been even more productive but for the fact that, in too many cases, the policy decisions this work could have guided had already been made.

It has been a difficult year for those seeking to defend public education from the plethora of corporate reform policies, and next year is bound to see the continuation of this struggle. But once where there were few voices opposing these damaging policies of privatization, there are now many more.

The corporate education reformers are going to have to work a lot harder and be more accountable than they have ever have.

Sommers sweats gifted student question

The reckless budget includes moving $60 million for gifted student services into a larger pot of state aid with no spending requirements. As budgets are slashed across the board the clear ramification of this will be the wholesale elimination of gifted student programs around the state, as districts use this money for general revenue and operating purposes.

This is proving to be politically difficult for the administration. One the one hand it wants to claim it cares about excellence in education, but the realities, with examples like this, are running contrary.

These difficulties can be seen and heard in this interview with the administration's education czar, Mr. Sommers