Here's another idea founded on the theory that teachers are the root of all evil. It's all about evaluating teachers, nothing about how teachers are not the only variable in the classroom.
Here's a line I love: "The effort will have enormous consequences for the movement to hold schools and educators more accountable for student achievement."
Because, of course, schools and educators are the only contributors to student achievement and are not already held accountable in draconian ways for student achievement.
Here's another gem: "With videos, for instance, several professionals, rather than just one principal, could rate the same classroom performance, making ratings less subjective... ."
Because, of course, what a teacher does in the classroom is performance, and video always makes things less subjective.
Someone's going to be making money: "Teachscape, a contractor providing cameras, software, and other services for the research, estimated first-year startup costs of about $1.5 million for a district with 140 schools and 7,000 teachers to buy one camera per school and lease the software to carry out classroom observations using digital video."
What a jolly way to end the first half of the school year.
Yay, nannycams in the classroom. Just what we need.
ReplyDeleteBut I propose that every student have a camera installed in his or her head before going to kindergarten, like that art guy several posts ago, only in the front. That way the helicopter parents won't miss a thing.
Maybe there should be cameras-not focused on us, but on the lazy, uninspired fucktards we call students. Let their parents see their half dressed, hungover asses day in and day out. Let their parents see that they are a complete waste of money. Hell, let all the moron researchers see that the only thing that creates student achievement is a student-a living, breathing one.
ReplyDeleteI love this childish belief that if we control, supervise, boss around and humiliate the teacher just a little bit more, this will finally unleash the student potential and bring the student achievement to high-sky levels.
ReplyDeleteI just finished grading the final essays of my college students. Twenty percent of those essays were plagiarized. But I guess it's all my fault because I wasn't filmed or anything during the lectures.
Universities in even the most dictatorial regimes in Central and South America have long unfailingly rejected cameras in the classroom, for high-minded reasons. It won't happen in my classroom, without a fight.
ReplyDelete@Marcia: I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd be required to take a head-cam. I promise, they won't be able to install it without a struggle, before the general anesthesia. I also promise I'll scratch at it incessantly.
@Joe: Good idea. I may start bringing a camera to class and doing that myself. I do take their picture once during the beginning of the semester, to learn names, as well as during exams. I'll have to be careful no one throws up on the camera.
@Clarissa: Yeah, in addition to the lousy pay and the intolerable working conditions, let's give even more incentive for good, capable teachers to find some other way to make a living.
Froderick, your last point to Clarissa was exactly my reaction. This is a sure way to motivate competent, dedicated people to seek employment outside of the realm of education.
ReplyDeleteI am seriously concerned about Gates, his wife, and their money. The need for control is alarming, and now each has a strong footing in American education: he in K-12, she in CCs.
It's bad enough that we have jackasses with advanced degrees in some sort of education management, people who have never taught, steering the K-12 boat in the U.S. Now we have everyone from publishers to college drop-outs like Gates poised to shape U.S. education policy.
This is truly frightening. I'm seeing much of what happens in K-12 (other than the students, I mean) trickle up to the CCs.
Hurray! More jobs for administrator bean counters! Employment opportunities as a video evaluator will abound.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, my school recently called for applications for those who want to be classroom evaluators. You go into online classrooms and check off boxes on a form according to set criteria. Those forms go up the chain of command and the shits rolls back down hill.
Less trust, more control. Less creativity and personal engagement, more statistical conformity to a national goal. Fantastic.
AdjunctSlave, is there any way to sabotage those, like the kids do with their evals sometimes? You know, fill in bubbles so they make a giant smiley-face, or write the narrative part in Klingon?
ReplyDeleteThe flip side of this situation is that there are a whole lot of lazy, ignorant, morally reprehensible, and just plain shitty, shitty teachers in the public school system. Teacher certification guarantees nothing about the quality of the certificate holder.
ReplyDeleteEvaluating teachers is a complex task, and one that most school administrators are not fit to carry out with any degree of competence. I wouldn't want to work under the system the article describes. But I can also see the attraction of having some empirical evidence to hold against the really awful teachers, because they are notoriously difficult to get rid of. Everyone knows they suck, but they always seem to hold onto their jobs.
Does it ever occur to any of these geniuses that when students fail it might be because they are lazy fuckwits?
ReplyDelete