Latest News and Comment from Education

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Louisiana Educator: The Course Choice Cancer (promotional posting) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Louisiana Educator: The Course Choice Cancer (promotional posting) | Crazy Crawfish's Blog:


Louisiana Educator: The Course Choice Cancer (promotional posting)

You need to read this post by Mike Deshotels.  One of the reasons John White is handing student data over to private, unaccountable vendors is to make it easy for them to enroll you kids in terrible virtual courses, taught by uncertified teachers, on the state’s/your dime.  Not only are these often classes taught by uncertified “teachers” recruited from Craigslist, but school districts have no choice in the matter of awarding students credit for these courses.
This is especially bad for the following reasons:
  • Student performance is tied to teacher performance.  If a student takes a Course Choice class in Algebra I and passes, but without learning anything, and then reports to another real teacher’s class for a higher math class, that teacher will get a horrible score and face possible termination.
  • School and district closures and takeovers are tied to student performance.  If a significant number of students take these crap courses to get easy credits, then take the tests used to determine SPS scores