

Raising Standards For Teachers - rafaelc
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/meredith-ely/raising-standards-for-tea_b_773465.html

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bloomshed
>"With a direct relationship between teacher quality and student achievement,
the fact that our teacher pool is shrinking will surely undermine other
attempts, policy-wise or grassroots, to realize positive reform in education.
No amount of money or measures of accountability can counter the harmful
effects of teaching position vacancies."

Exactly. This happened to me. I was teaching in an inner city school when
myself and 491 other teachers were removed from our classrooms and shuffled
around because tax revenues were down last year because the economy sucked. I
was left out of the shuffle because I didn't have the seniority to get
reassigned.

I want to put forth my idea of "teacher quality" to give people an idea about
what I think should be discussed:

"Quality" teachers create an environment in which students feel safe and
supported in their learning. Experienced teachers who have tried and failed
many times learn how to create and maintain this supportive environment.
"Teacher quality" isn't about academic achievement or intellectual capacity of
teachers, it's about their ability to set up an environment for students to
learn and then guide and challenge students to grow.

I'm saying that increasing the average IQ or SAT/ACT scores of teachers won't
make schools better unless those new teachers have the strategies and
emotional strength it takes to sustain a learning environment for students.

The program I went through did a horrible job of training us how to create a
learning environment. The sentiment was "Oh, it's different for everyone,
you'll figure it out." That's a wildly ignorant strategy for implementing the
most important part of a classroom.

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hamilcarbarca
For all those interested in datasets/statistical analysis, it is worth your
while to watch this video:

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/how-the-
times-...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/how-the-times-built-
its-database-of-teacher-effectiveness-.html)

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bloomshed
This guy is saying that schools don't want parents to know what goes on in
their classrooms?

I have a feeling that every single principal and teacher who is worth a damn
in America would disagree with him.

I also feel like the LA Times spending tons of money chasing a story that has
what they essentially admitted to being a limited slice of information
regarding teacher efficacy wouldn't happen if the LA Times was doing well
financially. I assume they're scrambling to stay alive just like all other
newspapers. . .

