From today’s News Journal:
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20121031/OPINION11/310310013/Delawareans-should-re-elect-Markell-Denn?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Opinion|p
Gov. Markell also has taken on educational reform. Under him, Delaware was a big winner in the federal Race to the Top money. The administration instituted a new student assessment system and an evaluation program for teachers.
Will they work? His opponents say all he has done is create a bigger bureaucracy and a complicated system that is choking education in the state. But Gov. Markell didn’t make the Race to the Top rules and the student assessment system is a great improvement over what went before it. In addition, the administration managed to develop a teacher evaluation system with the help of the teachers union. That is something other states have failed miserably at.School improvements need time to develop.
Here’s the problem with their analysis: Race to the Top is a prescriptive, VOLUNTARY, federal competition. Saying that he didn’t make the rules is an answer to a question not asked. The correct question for Ed Board’s with intellectual curiosity would be “Why did we apply/should we have applied?” No doubt that News Journal would answer yes to those two questions given their amazing conclusion that “School improvements need time to develop” when no other sincere effort since 1983 has been given time. Truly amazing ignorance going on right there. So the choking and the evaluation of success based on tests move on, damn the consequences, with the News Journal’s ignorant blessing. I hope you enjoy your future job applicants, here’s a preview:
Jack Markell has done some very good things for Delaware and has championed citizens with disabilities and he has supported progressive reforms in state hiring and discrimination. He’ll be re-elected easily. Preferably he could win his lame duck term without the News Journal Editorial Board’s blathering ignorance.
When making an endorsement the News Journal has to also consider the competition. In this case, the Editorial Board really doesn’t have a choice. Markell is it. In answer to the question as to why and when, one factor that so often gets dismissed is the economic free falling catastrophe in which this decision got made. Any money coming into the state the same year all employees were doomed for a 8% cut, (later whittled upward), was to be certainly appreciated…. The objective now appears on how to combine these two trains on parallel tracks racing to see which one gets to the switch first, into one train going the same direction. Where is the win, win ? Any ideas?
From here it looks like we need the corporate funding, but that teachers need to be at least a third of the part of the decision making process? Am I close?
In a business model, you have three parts. 1) the owners or investors. 2) the employees, and 3) those that receive the services, the customers. Every beginning business course teaches you that you have to balance the needs of all three when making a business decision. For example, replacing the workforce with answering machines…. A) it is initially good for the investors, the investment gets spread out versus the weekly cost of labor; B) good for the employees left, who now feel productive and who now can manage their time better, (ie answering all calls at one time) C) bad for the customers because they need to change their habits because they must tie up 30 extra minutes waiting to be the next..customer in line…. That would be a bad decision. Why? Because though it helps two categories, it hurts one giving less a benefit than staying the same…….
it appears that empowering teachers more, giving them more power in the classroom instead of less, would help move forward. Often I hear teachers complain of certain students who tell the teacher “well, I’ll just get my mom to complain, and then I won’t have to do it.” In today’s educational system, the reality is that those students are absolutely right, and the teachers know it. How many administrator has had to write a teacher up for a transgression that was caused by the petulance of a scum-bag child? They are the source of all a teacher’s problems.
As an extreme, if teachers had the power to throw children in jail, we’d have no problem with those who wanted to learn, learning…. We’d have very little problem with those who didn’t want to learn, but refrained from interrupting out or fear, who’d learn anyway through the osmosis of classroom activity…. Bottom line, we’d have very little problem.
As a society, we can’t really go there. But the kids don’t need to know that….
Bottom line, giving teachers more power in classroom, is the better way to implement the changes that corporate America would like to see….
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Agree about 90%. I know it’s unpopular, but there is no law, other than the seemingly immutable law of tradition, that the NJ must offer an endorsement.
they have a choice to be silent on the issue of endorsing…OR, they can be intellectually honest, research education policy, rather than act as a spigot of uninformed pablum on the subject. Either way, the customers (read: dwindling readership) are better and more accurately served if their endorsement reflects that they have engaged an unbiased appraisal of the subject matter,
True there is no law but expectations matter, particularly in a business. If all are expecting an endorsement and you fail to deliver one, then, no one is going to read you next time around… And the framework encompassing education of which you speak, is perhaps too big or too specialized for the endorsement process… If I were to endorse someone, and someone came to me and pointed out a conflict, I would politely agree to the conflict and still say I’m endorsing this person over his opponent. Endorsements are not pure science. The are the best choice out of chaos… and quite often, they are decided on a personal level. …
Can only speak for myself. I don’t expect papers to endorse because I do nor rely on sole source information for my voting decision. I get it that other do have that expectation though, which is why I offer two outs: endorse on net effect without failing to research issues that you cite in said endorsement (cite as many reasons as you wish, but get it right on those issues with research not by just bloviating), or just don’t endorse.
Take your pick.