Oh good, we had become very worried about what has appeared to be a brief lull in teacher-bashing but now that everyone is bored with bashing gays and saying ignorant things about buttseks, we can all go back to bashing teachers now, hooray. Anyway, turns out that too many teachers are too good. We know this because an old ratings system rated over 90% as "satisfactory."
I represent the Local Ditch Diggers Union #210, and I formally protest that fine profession being lumped in with Texas bureaucrats. We have standards for entry into ditch digging, doncha know?
In any profession, you're going to have some people who are exceptional, a lot of people who are competent, and a small number who couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. But it seems that teachers are only judged based upon the last group - anytime a bad teacher gets in the news for being a moron and breaking the law, 75% or more of the comments on the story will be how *all* teachers suck, we should fire them all, and hand the whole education system over to big business because "kids only need to learn basic job skills, not this wussy liberal crap". I tell people like that that it's not that hard to get a substitute credential and come into a classroom. I bet they'd last about a week.
This "we must change the standards to expose (and replace) the poorest performers" bullshit has made me crazy for forty years. And, yes, it was probably Boomers that invented it.
After I graduated college, I spent nearly three years as a ROTC officer in the Air Force. Because I was actually quite bright, it only took me a couple of weeks to realize that what holds the military together, and makes it work, is the mid-level NCOs (that would be E-4 to E-6). The very competent mid-level NCOs. Of whom, probably 90%+ were "competent" or better, because the job filtered them out. Certainly, some of them were better at their jobs, and they tended to get promoted sooner, but you didn't disparage someone for being merely competent.
When I went into the chip business, I discovered that few of my colleagues had even non-combat military experience. As a result, some of them tended to undervalue competence. Actually, for thirty years or so, this gave me a bit of competitive advantage. I wasted very little time on pointlessly upgrading (churning) the "bottom" ten or twenty percent of my staff.
There are a lot of jobs where "competent" or "satisfactory" is a perfectly acceptable evaluation. Who really cares if someone is a "brilliant" teacher, or electrician, or plumber, or rocket surgeon, or journalist, or cop? What we really want is for them to be competent. And with a modest amount of care, it is not at all unbelievable that 90% of a given sample might be competent.
Raising the bar of "competence" is something that should only be done after very serious contemplation.
Teaching used to be an honorable profession. Now it seems that it is heading towards the same social status as garbage haulers, ditch diggers and Texas bureaucrats.
I represent the Local Ditch Diggers Union #210, and I formally protest that fine profession being lumped in with Texas bureaucrats. We have standards for entry into ditch digging, doncha know?
In any profession, you're going to have some people who are exceptional, a lot of people who are competent, and a small number who couldn't find their ass with both hands and a map. But it seems that teachers are only judged based upon the last group - anytime a bad teacher gets in the news for being a moron and breaking the law, 75% or more of the comments on the story will be how *all* teachers suck, we should fire them all, and hand the whole education system over to big business because "kids only need to learn basic job skills, not this wussy liberal crap". I tell people like that that it's not that hard to get a substitute credential and come into a classroom. I bet they'd last about a week.
I stand corrected.
Don't try to shift blame, libtard! It's that failure Obama's fault.
This "we must change the standards to expose (and replace) the poorest performers" bullshit has made me crazy for forty years. And, yes, it was probably Boomers that invented it.
After I graduated college, I spent nearly three years as a ROTC officer in the Air Force. Because I was actually quite bright, it only took me a couple of weeks to realize that what holds the military together, and makes it work, is the mid-level NCOs (that would be E-4 to E-6). The very competent mid-level NCOs. Of whom, probably 90%+ were "competent" or better, because the job filtered them out. Certainly, some of them were better at their jobs, and they tended to get promoted sooner, but you didn't disparage someone for being merely competent.
When I went into the chip business, I discovered that few of my colleagues had even non-combat military experience. As a result, some of them tended to undervalue competence. Actually, for thirty years or so, this gave me a bit of competitive advantage. I wasted very little time on pointlessly upgrading (churning) the "bottom" ten or twenty percent of my staff.
There are a lot of jobs where "competent" or "satisfactory" is a perfectly acceptable evaluation. Who really cares if someone is a "brilliant" teacher, or electrician, or plumber, or rocket surgeon, or journalist, or cop? What we really want is for them to be competent. And with a modest amount of care, it is not at all unbelievable that 90% of a given sample might be competent.
Raising the bar of "competence" is something that should only be done after very serious contemplation.
If all the teachers are above average, that explains the kids.
Note, however, that Lake Wobegon is not a uniquely American phenomenon:
"If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses." -- Goethe
Brownsville Station?
Teaching used to be an honorable profession. Now it seems that it is heading towards the same social status as garbage haulers, ditch diggers and Texas bureaucrats.
Students just need tax cuts.
With a voucher system, everyone will be able to go to Andover and Exeter.