Note To My Dear Readers: I know nothing about the book at the left. All I do know is...It has a catchy title and the word "teachers" is that title.
Part 1:
Los Angeles Teachers want to be undercover agents. Sort of like the CIA or the Lone Ranger.
The Los Angeles Times reported recently the evaluations of some 6,000 Los Angeles city school teachers based on how well their students performed on standardized tests...
• L.A. is spending almost $30,000 per student.
• Since 1990 K12 education spending in California has grown by 191% and now consumes 40% of the state budget.
• Currently less than 2% of teachers are denied tenure in L.A.
• Teacher evaluations do not take into account whether students are learning.
• High school graduation rate is 40.6% which is second worst among large school districts in the U.S.
• The Times rated teachers using a “value added” analysis that has been popular in education research for years.
• Teachers are saying this way of evaluating their performance is not fair.
• The measure of school success currently is how much money was spent by the schools. (There you go thinking I made this one up.)
The teachers do have a plan of action. They are organizing a boycott of the L.A. Times. That ought to make the students smarter.
The Smartfella? would like to come to the defense of the teachers. I have done research of my own and I have found out that the reason the teachers did not want the 40.6% graduation rate published is not because they are ashamed. It is actually because they are so humble that they wanted the 40.6% kept quiet. You see the rate used to be much lower and they don’t want to be seen as braggarts.
Ok. I made this last part up ... Or did I?
Part 2:
As concerned citizens, we ought to take action to cover for our Government Education System. You, my dear reader, are now going to be the first to read about my Someone’s Got To Do It Initiative (SGTDII). You will be amazed at its simplicity and its logical approach to this all important problem...
• Recruit an army of volunteers 40 years of age and older.
• Why 40 years old and older? Research has found that the recently educated do not have the basic knowledge of Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, History and Geography to be able to take on these educational challenges. (Oops. Did I just insult a lot of people?)
• The volunteers will be equipped with bull horns and when the children are released for recess (if they still do have recess) the bull-horned volunteers will move in to educate the students.
• They will shout through their bull horns the many things that have fallen by the wayside in modern education (see numbered examples list below)...
1. 2 + 2 is 4.
2. The D.C in Washington, D.C does not stand for Da Capital. It stands for District of Columbia.
3. It’s “A Stitch In Time Is Worth Nine”. It is not “A Stitch In Time Is Worth Two In The Bush”.
4. Cultural Dancing is social interaction and fun but it is not a Career Path.
5. Spelling and punctuation is important. Filling in the “Why You Should Hire Me” part of a job application by saying “yo dude i wnt to wrk for yo biznes cuz i wnt a Ipad” will not get you hired.
6. Roe vs. Wade was not the decision that George Washington had to make before he crossed the Delaware.
Sorry this one went so long but this is a weighty issue.
Do you feel you have spent too much time reading this? If so, it probably is because you read it too slowly. Go back to the beginning and read it a lot faster the second time. I know that will fix your problem because a government teacher told me it would.
Would I kid u?
Image via WikipediaThe Score Is Not Important ... This Not-Keeping-Score practice in sports has been hard to enforce because somehow our young sporty children have learned to how count. The big unsolved mystery is whether our government schools taught them to count or does Sesame Street get the credit?
