Bloomberg wants to FIRE half of all teachers.

[Text Drivers are Killers]

From interview in 2011. I agree. Once a student is taught to read, they should teach themselves from books and the internet.

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/12...iY1p9TTVEdghRw

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — It’s a jaw-dropping prescription for fixing city schools.

“Professor” Michael Bloomberg said Thursday he would accomplish more with less by slashing the teaching staff in half — and that’s just the beginning, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

“Education is very much, I’ve always thought, just like the real estate business. Real estate business, there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke,” Bloomberg said. “Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”

[cawacko]

TDAK aside, Bloomberg brings up an interesting perspective. Would you rather have smaller class sizes and not a good teacher or larger classes with a good teacher? (In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to choose between the two but we don’t live in a perfect world)

[Flash]

From interview in 2011. I agree. Once a student is taught to read, they should teach themselves from books and the internet.

Deciding who are the "good ones" can vary tremendously depending on the evaluators. Based on what I have seen one year it might be what the teacher does to "celebrate diversity." The next year under a different boss the criteria becomes "social justice."

Next, it becomes community involvement. So a bad teacher active in the community gets the merit pay and retained.

[cawacko]

Deciding who are the "good ones" can vary tremendously depending on the evaluators. Based on what I have seen one year it might be what the teacher does to "celebrate diversity." The next year under a different boss the criteria becomes "social justice."

Next, it becomes community involvement. So a bad teacher active in the community gets the merit pay and retained.

You make an excellent point. I’m sure we can all think of good and not good teachers we had but judging all teachers by the same standard, and determining what that standard is, isn’t easy.

[Flash]

You make an excellent point. I’m sure we can all think of good and not good teachers we had but judging all teachers by the same standard, and determining what that standard is, isn’t easy.

That is why it often becomes something that is easy to count. It should be student performance but that becomes a big issue such as the socio-economic status of the students taught, quality of the test...........

[Text Drivers are Killers]

Deciding who are the "good ones" can vary tremendously depending on the evaluators. Based on what I have seen one year it might be what the teacher does to "celebrate diversity." The next year under a different boss the criteria becomes "social justice."

Next, it becomes community involvement. So a bad teacher active in the community gets the merit pay and retained.

There is no good way to decide who is a good teacher and that's another reason we should give the kid a book and tell him to teach himself.

[CFM]

You make an excellent point. I’m sure we can all think of good and not good teachers we had but judging all teachers by the same standard, and determining what that standard is, isn’t easy.

Rest assured that any standard will be one based on a left wing mindset like yours.

[Nomad]

If we want to improve education in this country, we need to focus on improving the quality of the STUDENTS by improving the quality of OURSELVES.

The teachers are fine. The problem is the fucked up, asshole society we've become is creating a bunch of semi-literate little dumbass idiots and assholes who can barely think for themselves. Many kids come from "homes" where their so-called "parents" are even stupider assholes than they are and it's common knowledge that kids reflect what they see and hear in the environment they live in. That's why so many kids bring their lazy, uncooperative, trouble-maker attitudes to school and disrupt the learning atmosphere for everyone.

I spent over a decade working in the classroom as a sub at several local high schools and I've seen this first hand. But nobody wants to admit it because if people heard the truth about themselves it would spark public outrage.

We need to concentrate on improving ourselves as a people and a society so we can begin to produce children who reflect positive values rather than the negative asshole values we are inspiring in them currently.

I'm speaking in general terms of course.

There are still a lot of really good kids who'd learn their academic subjects no matter who their teachers were because they've learned positive values like respect for others and for the importance of their education at home.

[cawacko]

If we want to improve education in this country, we need to focus on improving the quality of the STUDENTS by improving the quality of OURSELVES.

The teachers are fine. The problem is the fucked up, asshole society we've become is creating a bunch of semi-literate little dumbass idiots and assholes who can barely think for themselves. Many kids come from "homes" where their so-called "parents" are even stupider assholes than they are and it's common knowledge that kids reflect what they see and hear in the environment they live in. That's why so many kids bring their lazy, uncooperative, trouble-maker attitudes to school and disrupt the learning atmosphere for everyone.

I spent over a decade working in the classroom as a sub at several local high schools and I've seen this first hand. But nobody wants to admit it because if people heard the truth about themselves it would spark public outrage.

We need to concentrate on improving ourselves as a people and a society so we can begin to produce children who reflect positive values rather than the negative asshole values we are inspiring in them currently.

I'm speaking in general terms of course.

There are still a lot of really good kids who'd learn their academic subjects no matter who their teachers were because they've learned positive values like respect for others and for the importance of their education at home.

I've got to imagine subbing is a tough job, even in top schools I'm sure kids look at subs different than their regular teachers. There is a lot of truth to what you say about how home life affects kids performance and expectations at school.

[CFM]

I've got to imagine subbing is a tough job, even in top schools I'm sure kids look at subs different than their regular teachers. There is a lot of truth to what you say about how home life affects kids performance and expectations at school.

You consider showing up and giving out what the regular teacher has prepared as hard?

I agree that home life affects lot of things about how a student does at school. What I don't understand is why teachers are evaluated based on results in situations over which they have no control. If 18 hours/day for many years, especially by the time high school rolls around, isn't getting the job done, how can a teacher be expected to undo what's ingrained in an hour/day.

[Flash]

There is no good way to decide who is a good teacher and that's another reason we should give the kid a book and tell him to teach himself.

How do we know if he learned anything (or even looked at the book)?

Many high school kids today can get through four years of school spending little or no time with books because teachers do not require them to read. That is also true to a large extent in college.

[Nomad]

I've got to imagine subbing is a tough job, even in top schools I'm sure kids look at subs different than their regular teachers. There is a lot of truth to what you say about how home life affects kids performance and expectations at school.

It can be hell. But it can also be great fun.

Depends on the assignment you get on a given day.

Back before our local school board decided to outsource their subs to a privately owned staffing agency, I had a great system that enabled me to avoid the shitty assignments and wait for the good ones.

This was because I knew what to stay away from and what to hold out for.

Any academically average level core subject like science, math, social studies/history, English, health, etc, had the potential and even likelihood to be an unpleasant experience. Even certain electives like art could go either way.

The almost guaranteed good assignments (outside of the AP level classes which were of course always good), were subjects like foreign language, music, business/computer classes, etc. The reason being that those subjects tended to attract the more intelligent, studious, cooperative kids who were there because they wanted to be. Especially foreign language and music. You get a lot of AP kids in those classes. And P.E. was cool because they'd just go to the gym and play basketball.

After the outsourcing, it was almost impossible to even get an assignment much less pick and choose.

That's when I quit doing it.

[Jarod]

From interview in 2011. I agree. Once a student is taught to read, they should teach themselves from books and the internet.

It was a proposal in 2011, In NYC. You guys must be desperate.

[jimmymccready]

As long as we have parents who refused to be involved in their children's education, American education will continue to fail.

If our parents knuckle down and enforce proper education by their children, the system will succeed.

[Celticguy]

Teacher unions would foil the notion that you retain the best ones. But nobody can teach a kid whose parent(s) is not doing their job.