Arne Tells Teachers To Go To Hell (Again)
Arne has popped up with a statement in reaction to the Vergara tenure-FILO-smashing verdict. You will be shocked to discover that Arne sides with the billionaire backers of this attack on the teaching profession. Let me break it down and translate for you:For students in California and every other state, equal opportunities for learning must include the equal opportunity to be taught by a great te
Well, Damn
The interwebs are currently blowing up with reaction to the Vergara verdict in California which, and there's no way to soft-pedal this, rips the guts out of tenure and seniority for teachers. If this stands, we will all be at-will employees soon enough.My default setting is to assume that people mean well, or at least mean to do what they believe is right. I find it kind of rage-inducing to encoun
What Do We Do About Bad Teachers?
I believe bad teachers exist. I believe that on any given day, in many schools in this country, there's a person standing in a classroom doing a lousy job. I just spent a chunk of bandwidth explaining that I don't believe Find and Fire is the correct policy response to bad teaching. So what do I propose instead?The Heart of the ProblemI'm going to spend the least amount of time on the hugest part
Firing the Right People
One theory of education that reformsters like to put forward is the idea that if we fire the right people, schools will get better.We hear this refrain every time reformsters go after tenure and FILO (as they are currently doing in Pennsylvania) with the usual anecdotal evidence that [insert school district here] had to lay off [insert number here] fantastic young teachers because of that stupid F
6-9-13 Curmudgucation
CURMUDGUCATION: Never Mind the SATToday's Slate includes an intriguing report of the non-traditional application process for Bard College. Rebecca Shuman presents the new elective small-college alternative:Bard College, a highly selective liberal-arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, is about to enter the second year of a revolutionary college-admissions experiment: four wickedly challengi