The Education Wonks
Interesting, and yet speaking as one who actually does teach in Texas, we were just chatting today about how nobody wants to seem to hire anybody who isn't bilingual anymore. That's where the state is pushing us.
via con dios!
I teach in a "small" Texas high school of about 1300 students. While Mister Teacher is partially correct, two larger parts of the problem are the Texas insistence on focusing only on the mandatory TAKS tests to the substantial exclusion of actual learning, and on the inability or unwillingness of urban high school administrations to actually establish and enforce discipline policies.
It is interesting that in those schools where students are most likely to misbehave, even engage in criminal activity in the classroom beyond common juveniles misbehavior, that principals and school districts often partially or completely fail to back up teachers. No teacher, no matter how brilliant or "highly qualified" (in the words of NCLB, but don't get me started on that one), can be successful, or even last long, if they--and students--know that all a student has to do is ask "Oh yeah? And if I don't, what are you going to do about it?" because the answer is "nothing."
I would tend to agree with Mike. I also teach in a small district (for Texas - just one high school of about 1500 students). Where administrators' enforcement of discipline fails, no teacher can succeed. NCLB and the TAKS tests, along with funding tied to daily attendence rates, locks many administrators (and teachers, for that matter) into a bodies for dollars mentality. It is not uncommon (though there are many exceptions) for the powers that be to opt for dollars, regardless of student behavior. This does not even touch on the near impossibility to expell a student - even at times after assult on a school official.
So when you claim that "maybe our best and brightest college graduates will choose to serve in the classroom..." I have to seriosuly wonder just how many would last a full year at a wildly undisciplined, inner city school in, say, Houston or Dallas. It goes well beyond pay - Dallas started new teachers at $43.5k last year, without bonuses.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
