CURMUDGUCATION: Why You Can't Fire Your Way To Excellence

CURMUDGUCATION: Why You Can't Fire Your Way To Excellence

Why You Can't Fire Your Way To Excellence

For some reformsters and accountability hawks, the dream remains the same-- find those Bad Teachers, fire them, and replace them with Awesome Teachers. Crack the accountability whip and fire our way to excellence.

We have discussed some of the obvious flaws with this approach. How do you even define a Bad Teacher, and is it a permanent condition or a day-to-day variable? How do you find your Bad Teachers if you are using a crappy invalid system like test-based VAMification? And where is your magical tree that is so ripe with a limitless supply of Awesome Teachers?

There's another reason that this approach won't work. We can start to see it if we ask the question, "Why is the Bad Teacher bad?" But so far that has led to more criticism of teacher preparation programs.

So let me trot out, again, my favorite W. Edwards Deming observation. It's not a quote exactly, because he made the point several ways without ever reducing it to a handy aphorism. But here's the basic idea:

So you're firing the deadwood in your organization. Was it dead when you hired it? Or did you hire a live tree and then kill it?

Was that teacher bad from Day One? Well, then-- who hired her? Who looked at her credentials and leafed through her records and recommendations and interviewed her face to face and maybe even watched her teach a sample lesson and through all that, never once saw the signs that she was a less-than-stellar prospect? And why is that-- do you not know what question to ask CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Why You Can't Fire Your Way To Excellence

Vaping in the Classroom | deutsch29

Vaping in the Classroom | deutsch29

Vaping in the Classroom

One of the challenges of being a public high school teacher is developing a constant awareness of what is transpiring in my classroom. Even when I conference individually with my student, my eyes and ears are open in a hyper-observant manner that I have cultivated over decades.

Of course, times change, and over those decades, what I’ve needed to pay attention to has evolved– including smoking, it seems.

Now, there’s vaping.

I saw a commercial for vaping in which the advertiser stated that vaping is meant to help smokers who are trying to quit.

Nice try.

As that advertiser was speaking, I was hearing my own high-school-classroom, overlay script:

Vaping makes it easier for teenagers to access nicotine without being detected. Why, they can even vape during class, in the classroom, and many teachers would not even realize it because it would not occur to them to even consider that it could happen. Oh, yes, and that means we will make a load of money off of teens even as we promote the idea that Smoking Is Bad for Your Health.

Vaping in class– during class! I learned that this was possible only months ago. And part of the problem for many school districts is that they may not have CONTINUE READING: Vaping in the Classroom | deutsch29

Can the LAUSD Ensure Student Safety During a Strike? #REDFORED #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #March4Ed #WeAreLA

Can the LAUSD Ensure Student Safety During a Strike?

Can the LAUSD Ensure Student Safety During a Strike?

In addition to threatening the health and safety of students, a strike would also…”

– Exhibit A in LAUSD Court Filing

For over 25 years the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has been unable to satisfy the terms of a Consent Decree meant to ensure that students with special education needs receive the education that they are entitled to by law. Yet when faced with a strike by United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the District has suddenly shown a concern “that students with disabilities not be deprived of legally-mandated services.” Therefore, lawyers for the District asked the court to enjoin “UTLA, its officers, and representatives from causing, encouraging, condoning, or participating in any strike, slowdown, or other work stoppage by any UTLA bargaining unit member who provides educational services to LAUSD special education students.”

Included in the motion filed by the LAUSD is a statement that “students with serious disabilities will be placed in extreme danger of injury due to lack of trained personnel or supervision.” According to the District, these students “could get hurt, hurt themselves, or hurt others” if teachers, counselors, school psychologists, and therapists are allowed to participate in the strike. In summary, a strike would threaten “the health and safety of students” and “affected special education students will be irreparably harmed”.

Without commenting on LAUSD’s claims about the danger faced by CONTINUE READING: Can the LAUSD Ensure Student Safety During a Strike?

SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: NANCY BAILEY'S EDUCATION WEBSITE (nancyebailey.com)

 SPOTLIGHT BLOG OF THE WEEK: NANCY BAILEY'S EDUCATION WEBSITE (nancyebailey.com)

How School Reform, Including Common Core, Has Devastated Children and Their Joy of Learning to Read

by Nancy Bailey / 1d

School reform has taken a toll on children starting in kindergarten (even preschool). There’s little doubt that children are being forced to learn to read earlier than ever before. The reading gap likely reflects the developmental differences found in children when they are forced to read too soon. Why are schools doing this? Forcing kindergarteners […]

DEC 31 2018

Nineteen For 2019: Choose This, NOT That, to Save Public Education in the New Year!

300+by Nancy Bailey / 6d

1. Kindergarten NOT The New First Grade Kindergartners should be treated like the four and five-year-old students that they are and not pushed to be first graders. The activities and instruction for this age group are well established. Real educators should take charge and ensure that there’s much free play and age appropriate activities. 2. […]

DEC 26 2018

Arne Duncan Continues to Push Dangerous Corporate School Reform

500+by Nancy Bailey / 10d

With Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, it might be tempting to see Arne Duncan as an educational expert, but Duncan has never formally studied education, or been a teacher. Duncan paved the way for DeVos. EdSurge recently brought us Arne Duncan’s 6 lessons about education. They are nothing but the same old corporate reforms that have […]

DEC 22 2018

Technology or Books? The Right Book for Christmas and the Holidays

66by Nancy Bailey / 15d

When I was a child, my aunt and uncle, who lived in Chicago, would always send me a cool present for Christmas. I would eagerly run home from school looking for that package attached to the mailbox. It would be wrapped in brown paper and string. The packaging paper would be removed on Christmas Eve, […]

DEC 20 2018

What Santa Claus and Social Emotional Learning Have in Common

38by Nancy Bailey / 16d

You better watch out, you better not cry, Better not pout, I’m telling you why Santa Claus (and SEL assessment are) comin’ to town. ~Song lyrics to “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” by Songwriters: Haven Gillespie / J. Fred Coots (with alteration). Why is there such an intense push for social-emotional learning (SEL) involving young […]

DEC 16 2018

School Choice Deception: Florida’s Plan and Students Who Don’t Measure Up

100+by Nancy Bailey / 21d

Florida is a bellwether state. What happens to schools there will move to other states in one form or another. I would like to share a personal story of how I met school choice as a teacher in Florida and how it helped cement in me the desire to advocate for a public school system […]

DEC 13 2018

Seclusion and Restraint: 16 Ways to Address Acting Out Behavior Without It

200+by Nancy Bailey / 24d

Restraint or seclusion should not be used as routine school safety measures; that is, they should not be implemented except in situations where a child’s behavior poses imminent danger of serious physical harm to self or others and not as a routine strategy implemented to address instructional problems or inappropriate behavior (e.g., disrespect, noncompliance, insubordination, […]

DEC 10 2018

How School Reformers Try to Convince Us You Can Fly a Plane Without a Real Pilot

100+by Nancy Bailey / 27d

Spending time studying how to teach and how children learn has been replaced with fast-track programs that breed future workers. These people know little about children, but they follow the script. They will keep children focused on their computer lessons, and collect data on their progress. It’s like getting on a plane and learning the […]

DEC 01 2018

Vocabulary Used to Sell Technology to Teachers and Parents

80by Nancy Bailey / 35d

It’s the use of only technology in education without qualified teachers that is the concern. It’s “tech without teachers” and without public school buildings, a sense of community, student socializing, and the misuse of data collected on children that keep parents and teachers up at night! The problem is that there is a concerted effort […]

NOV 29 2018

Common Core Creator Slammed Reading Teachers for Having a Research Gap—How Ironic

100+by Nancy Bailey / 38d

Teachers have enough difficulties. Sometimes you find an article so full of hubris and irony it cannot be ignored. Several weeks ago, I criticized a series of reports about reading by journalist Emily Hanford. Hanford claimed teachers didn’t understand reading instruction and that their education schools failed to teach them what they should know. I made […]

NOV 27 2018

What’s Behind the Chan Zuckerberg (CZI) Push for “Brain Science?”

40by Nancy Bailey / 40d

It doesn’t matter how much trouble Mark Zuckerberg might appear to be in with Facebook, he and his wife still find time to mess with education and give elitist advice to teachers. Their latest initiative is to claim teachers need to learn brain science. They’re donating $1 million to Neuroteach Global, an online PD platform created […]

NOV 24 2018

Personalized (Online) Learning Fails at Classroom Dynamics and Socialization

87by Nancy Bailey / 42d

Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah Think of all that we could sha-are Let’s get together everyday Every way and everywhere And though we haven’t got a lot We could be sharin’ all we’ve got Together ~Haley Mills, From Walt Disney’s