Valuing Quality Teachers

Education Secretary Arne Duncan talks with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the state of the country’s education system and the importance of good teachers.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

John Stossel on ABC's 20/20, did a story on the American school system. This report on the state of the US education was done back in 2006.  It has been 5 years since the 20/20 news report and not much has changed.  Most of the problems addressed in this report are the same exact problems that are covered in the the recent documentary Waiting For Superman.  Why do you think it is taking so long for education reform/change?

Algebra on the IPad

Students in Riverside, CA are learning algebra on iPads and the school is saying their grades are improving.  Check out the video clip.  

Why We Are Having Problems Teaching Math to Elementary Level Students

I had a meeting with the chair of the Math Education Department at a neighboring University recently. I learnt, to my HORROR, that elementary math teachers are only required to take a maximum of 2 Math classes in their whole college career that devotes to Math teaching. They may choose to take more or an advisor may suggest they take more classes but the requirement is only 2 classes. I ask what the stats were of teachers who do take more advanced classes. Shockingly, he replied that it was rare to none. He told me that this is a huge problem his department is facing and as such they concentrate more on educating secondary level teachers. Wow!!! I then asked if this was universal in many other universities. He said he recently went for a conference and found that this was a similar problem many universities faced. And we wonder why we're rank 25th...oh sorry...recent stats show we are now 31st in Math out of 35 developed nations. Hmmm...  

Please continue to spread the word on our Giveaway! We want to get more fans for our Facebook page so we can continue to spread our revolution. More than ever, I am more convinced Abacus Prodigy will bring a more valued and quality Math education to our children!

A World of Learning

This is an interesting short documentary about how technology is influencing our classrooms and affecting the way our children learn all around the world.  It mainly focuses on the use of the electronic white-board. Check it out.

A World Of Learning from David Betteridge on Vimeo.

Help a Teacher

If you haven't watched Waiting for Superman yet, go buy the DVD and watch it.  When you buy the DVD, there is a $25 DonorsChoose.org gift card inside where you can give that $25 to a teacher of your choice to be used toward school projects/activities.  Pretty cool!

School Pride

Waiting for “Superman” teamed up with NBC’s “School Pride” to ask students a Hollenbeck Middle School in Los Angeles what education means to them.

Save Great Teachers

StudentsFirst.org posted a new video about the importance of great teachers.
Watch this video and then forward it to your friends so that they know the impact effective teachers have on student learning.

A great article about our education!

What it Really Means to Put Students First

Posted by Tony Pedriana - a studentsfirst.org article!

Tony Pedriana worked for over thirty years as a teacher, principal, and mentor in Milwaukee's central city. During his career as an educator, he has focused on improved pedagogy and professional development for teachers in reading. He is the author of “Leaving Johnny Behind: Overcoming Barriers to Literacy.” 

The expression “Children First” was a mantra that reverberated throughout my career as an urban schoolteacher and principal. In retrospect, what I have come to discover in countless situations is that high-minded expression of child advocacy has proven to be little more than a thinly veiled lie. Many in education seem to operate under the mistaken notion that if we say it loudly and often enough, it will somehow be true. But in the end, it is what we do rather than what we say that will expose our true agenda and ultimately reveal who precisely it is that we desire to put first.

Let’s take just a moment to examine what has evolved during our continuing crusade to place children at the heart of all our efforts:

• Student achievement is disallowed as a factor in teacher evaluation decisions.
• Teacher seniority takes precedence over teacher success in determining who stays and who goes when staff cuts are made.
• Those given the task of teaching the teachers continue to send their clients into the field with an inadequate skill base, then leave them hanging in the wind when their ill-advised strategies prove woefully inadequate.
• Legitimate reform based on evidence-based practices soon crumbles beneath the weight of adult wrangling and political posturing.
• Two-thirds of American 4th graders read below a proficient level and nearly 80 percent of poor and minorities cannot demonstrate even basic reading competency.

Let’s face reality. Despite our ubiquitous and sanctimonious claims that children are our first priority, it really hasn’t been about children at all. Rather it has been about elections to win, careers to validate, jobs to keep and in some instances, axes to grind.  

Michelle Rhee’s movement at StudentsFirst represents the first serious effort to counteract these insidious forces. If we really seek to walk the talk, we must follow her leadership. Yes, it will take courage—courage to challenge the conventional wisdom, courage to risk being characterized as politically incorrect, and courage to confront the special interests and bloated bureaucracies that have prevailed for so long. Rhee has demonstrated that kind of courage. It is time for the rest of us to makechildren first a reality rather than just another empty promise.

Technology in the Classroom

According to an article by Bob Wheaton of the Jackson Citizen Patriot, many schools in the Jackson area are embracing technology in their schools.  Quite a few of the local schools are "using high-tech gadgets such as Tablet PCs, Flip video cameras and document cameras. They’re podcasting, vodcasting and visiting teachers’ Wikipages."  14 teachers are also participating in a cell phone project where students can text their teachers questions with homework and get more personal feedback outside of the classroom.  

These are just some of the things the article states are happening in the school regarding technology:

A sampling of some of the technology being used in Jackson County schools:

• Columbia: Nook e-readers for cognitively impaired students at Columbia Central High School; iPad tablet computers for fourth-graders at Brooklyn Elementary School.

• Grass Lake: Interactive long-distance learning technology that allows students at Grass Lake to take advanced placement classes by communicating electronically with teachers at Stockbridge High School; touch-screen SmartBoards at Grass Lake High School.

• Hanover-Horton: Document cameras that interface between computers and multimedia projectors; e-readers for special education students; CAD software, Fischertechnik robotics and stress analyzers for bridge trusses for pre-engineering students.

• Jackson Christian School: NComputing devices that make computers more available at Jackson Christian Elementary School; mobile language labs at Jackson Christian High School that includes 24 netbook computers, headsets and a printer so students can study as many as 32 languages.

• Jackson Public Schools: Airliner wireless tablets; teacher Wikipages for use by students and parents; cell phone project in which students or parents can call or text participating teachers after school hours; document cameras; computer response systems that allow the class to answer multiple-choice questions on a handheld clicker, with the results calculated and displayed; hand-held Neo computers and document cameras at McCulloch Academy of Technology & Science; new media center at Sharp Park Academy that will focus on technology.

• Jackson County Intermediate School District: LifeSize video-conferencing system used for Springport and Jackson Public Schools advanced placement biology class; e2020 online curriculum used by Jackson Area Career Center.

• Michigan Center: iPod touches; iPads; podcasting; vodcasting; Macbooks/laptops; morning announcements that are edited and put on the website SchoolTube.

• Paragon Charter Academy: Document cameras in grades K-8; amplification systems used by teachers; Flip video cameras; Promethean ActivExpression Learner and Student Response Systems that allow students to answer multiple-choice questions and have classroom results displayed.

This is definitely the direction that schools need to continue going.  Technology, used correctly, can help teachers teach more effectively and students learn more efficiently.  Do you think technology in the classroom can make a difference?

Nick Dentamaro | Jackson Citizen PatriotAmanda Keinath, right, a teacher at Columbia Central High School, shows Stephanie Smedley how to use a Nook e-reader.

Appreciation of Teachers

I saw this floating around on Facebook and thought it was a good read.  It's by Meredith Menden.

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE....

That's $585 X 180= $105,300

per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's

something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher's salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.

I thought this was a good reminder that although there are issues with the American school system, those GREAT teachers out there teaching our children deserve more.  What do you think?

Improving Teachers

This was an extremely interesting read from The Economist: Lessons learned, At last, America may change the way it trains, recruits and rewards teachers.



In the documentary, Waiting for Superman, we learn more about our dysfunctional system in America. Apparently, teachers have a 2-year period, after which they receive tenure. An excerpt from the Time Magazine explains this problem:

"Though tenure doesn't guarantee lifetime employment, it does make firing teachers a difficult and costly process, one that involves the union, the school board, the principal, the judicial system and thousands of dollars in legal fees. In most states, a tenured teacher can't be dismissed until charges are filed and months of evaluations, hearings and appeals have occurred. Meanwhile, school districts must shell out thousands of dollars for paid leave and substitute instructors. The system is deliberately slow and cumbersome, in order to dissuade school boards and parents from ousting a teacher for personal or political motives. 


But the system also makes it extremely difficult to flunk a bad teacher. Each state has its own stories: A Connecticut teacher received a mere 30-day suspension for helping students cheat on a standardized test; one California school board spent $8,000 to fire an instructor who preferred using R-rated movies instead of books; a Florida teacher remained in the classroom for a year despite incidents in which she threw books at her students and demanded they referred to her as "Ms. God...

New Jersey became the first state to pass tenure legislation when, in 1910, it granted fair-dismissal rights to college professors. During the suffrage movement of the 1920s — when female teachers could be fired for getting married or getting pregnant or (gasp) wearing pants — such rights were extended to elementary and high school teachers as well. But where the tenure track for college professors can require a record of published research and probationary periods of up to 10 years, K-12 teachers can win tenure after working as little as two years in some states. And thanks to the rigid testing requirements put in place by the No Child Left Behind Act, the academic freedom that tenure was meant to protect has been severely curtailed.

Some school districts have resorted to separation agreements, buyouts that effectively pay a teacher to leave his or her job. The practice has evolved as a way to avoid the extensive hearings and appeals required by union contracts and state-labor laws in firing a tenured teacher. (Costs can run as high as $100,000). Other districts simply transfer inadequate teachers to other schools in what Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called "the dance of the lemons." Former Mass. Gov. William Weld tried to pass legislation requiring teachers to take competency tests every five years, a move that triggered a number of complaints from local teachers' unions who called the bill adversarial and intrusive. Weld defended himself by explaining his stance as "anti-slob teacher," not "anti-teacher."

That, to me, is a huge problem. Sure, our system has other flaws but this is perhaps one of the larger issue we're dealing with currently. Not only are we wasting our money on ineffective teachers, we are spending more money trying to get rid of them. It also makes me wonder why the teacher-unions do not see this as a problem. I understand what unions need to be there for. The unions need to be there supporting the teacher, when he or she, is unjustifiably terminated. However, if a teacher is terminated because of her/his failure to teach, shouldn't the unions simply do a investigation to verify that cause, and if, the cause was the right one, not support the lousy teacher?  As I watch video clips of the teacher unions who fight for the teachers, I see many of their faces as moms themselves. It makes me wonder why these women do not care more about the type of teachers children are getting in the classrooms. While I believe that the teachers do need more training and curriculum support, I do believe that we need to re-evaluate the whole teaching system and perhaps put it through a refining process. Although many people may lose their jobs, many more, who are more deserving, will take those teaching spots. This, in turn, will help attract the best students in our colleges to consider the teaching profession. If we want our kids to have a better future, they need to be taught and nurtured by the best minds in our country. Having been teaching children myself, I find it hard to not give my best effort and ensure that the kids I'm teaching are getting the best instructions possible. It certainly boggles my mind to see teachers who don't give a hoot about helping the children realize their potentials.

What are your thoughts parents and teachers?