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How to be a better teacher essay
How to be a better teacher essay
How to be a better teacher essay
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Ray Fisman writes a monthly column for Slate magazine. He is the Slate Family Professor in Behavioral Economics at Boston University. In his article “How to Build a Better Teacher”, which is published in the Slate magazine on the 25th of July 2012, Ray Fisman discusses different methods for improving American education. This article is written for the general audience. Its purpose is to analyze the opportunity of building a better teacher, rather than firing low-performing teachers and hiring new ones in a few school except some big cities in America. Reformers introduced dismissing of low-performing teachers as the main opportunity to improve the American educational system in latest years. Though, firing of teachers was not financially effective – find new recruits and give to them additional training costs much more than making low-performance teachers better. For solving education problem in America, Fisman recommends other approaches and provides some creative …show more content…
The author shows different findings of latest studies in several scientific spheres such as economics, and social psychology. The author tries to show that the vision - “good teachers are born, not made” is incompletely dismissed by the results of programs such as the Teacher Evaluation System (Cincinnati’s approach), the Knowledge is Power Program (Gates Foundation), and Harlem Children’s Zone. He suggests duplicating outcomes of these researches across the whole country to show an improved education system, and also focuses on different problems connected to scaling these methodologies across the country: the size of trials, and cost complications. Though, Fisman still inference that these experimentations perform just the type of research, which are based on logical understandings that can help to get improved teachers “in front of America’s
The oversite committee then evaluates the success of their money allocation and incentivize the success of the public school’s education. “Americans do not appear ready to pay the price.” (Barber, p. 215) Money is the most powerful motivator, and if the success of school districts reaps the benefits of more financial resource, educators will fight to be the best. This new desire to be the best, is possible with the equalization of opportunity from the allocation of funds to the poorer schools. The race to the top would already be won by the larger, richer, and more powerful school districts without those foundational funds. “Because we believe in profits, we are consummate salespersons and efficacious entrepreneurs.” (217) Barber’s essay supports the idea of incentivized results. Not only would districts compete with other schools, but their standards would be raised year after year in consequence to the oversite of the
In 2010, Charlotte Danielson wrote an article, “Evaluations That Help Teachers”, for the magazine The Effective Educator. The purpose of this article was to explain how a teacher evaluation system, such as her own Framework for Teaching, should and can actually foster teacher learning rather than just measure teacher competence, which is what most other teacher evaluation systems do. This topic is especially critical to decision-making school leaders. Many of the popular teacher evaluation systems fail to help schools link teacher performance with meaningful opportunities for the teachers to reflect on and learn from in order to grow professionally. With the increased attention on the need for more rigorous student standards, this then is an enormous opportunity missed. Students can only achieve such rigorous expectations if their teachers can effectively teach them, and research has shown that teachers who are evaluated by systems that hold them to accountability and provide them for continuous support and growth will actually teach more effectively.
The author states in “A New Deal for Teachers” that in America, especially in poorer school districts, teacher quality is lacking. In urban districts, out of the new teachers hired in the next three years, about half of them will quit (usually the quality ones). The recruitment of better teachers is, as the author says, the biggest problem in our education system. He states that he’s been told by urban teachers that many of their colleagues are incompetent. Contributing to this is that state requirements are very low, which allows poor quality teachers into schools. Miller explains that smart and competent people who want to be teachers, are getting more and more difficult to find. This is true mainly because there are fields of work that those
It is a well-known fact that students entering higher education increasingly lack the academic skills necessary to succeed in their collegiate endeavors. It goes without saying that this is largely due to the widespread substandard education provided by legions of mediocre teachers—teachers who deliver shoddy instruction due to their own innately inferior academic abilities. At least, these facts are what Notre Dame Professor of Philosophy Gary Gutting would have readers of The Chronicle of Higher Education believe in his article “Why College Is Not a Commodity.” Although he makes many points that, if true, would be damning of the elementary and secondary teaching professions, Gutting stops short of proving his arguments logically or empirically. He claims today’s budding K-12 teachers often come from the bottom of the heap academically, directly leading to poor teaching—yet he provides no research to back up this connection. Furthermore, Gutting attempts to provide a solution to this so-called travesty by recommending that teaching be “professionalized,” ignoring the already-present professional practices and standards present. Gutting’s critiques, though thought-provoking, ultimately are logically and statistically unsatisfying in both their explanations of the state of teacher qualifications and in their calls to action.
As Malcolm Gladwell expresses, America must be critical and selective when hiring teachers. By hiring a seemingly good candidate, it is inconclusive if he or she will fit the standards of an adequate teacher. In Gladwell’s article, “Most Likely To Succeed,” he reiterates which traits and actions an advanced teacher should employ, compared to a below average teacher. A candidate may fit the job requirements, but may lack an important skill once they are hired, such as using effective communication skills to teach students in a positive manner. Even if a student is bright enough to do well in a class, they may not reach their full potential due to being taught by a poor teacher. Evidently, this is an inconvenience to students and creates an
Besharov, Douglas. "Teachers Performance: A Review ." Journal of Policy Analyis and Management (2006): 1-41.
The most important reason public schools provide an excellent education is that teachers are required to be highly qualified and suited for the job. When asked if public schools were a wise investment for the government Barnard answered,” Yes, not every parent [very few in fact] are trained and suited to educate students”” (Barnard). In particular, they must acquire and maintain a license to teach. In order to earn this teaching certification, they must demonstrate proficiency in all basic skills, study their subject area in depth, and learn effective techniques of instructing all kinds of learners. They also are required to get on-the-job training under the guidance of an experienced teacher. They have to motivate students to learn and have a passion for teaching, maintain their license, and continue their own education and training throu...
The costs and benefits of an excellent education for all of America’s children. Teachers College, Columbia University Levin, Henry, Clive Belfield, Peter Muennig, and Cecilia Rouse. 2007.
Some locations in the United States are trying to improve their education by adding quality teachers. A major reason why there is an achievement gap in education is because there exist a gap in teachers as well. Research has shown that teacher quality counts. Some states are seeking ways to keep quality teachers and ways to attract them. In New York City, the schools will not hire teachers that are not certified. Also, New York and California are adding some sort of incentive in public schools, to attract quality teaching to minority schools. Sometimes school add annual bonus up to $10,000 for qualify teacher to work in public school, with low achieving schools. Also, many state provide some sort of tuition assistance for teacher, but of all of the states only seven target the candidates to commit to the lower achieving schools (Olsen, 2003).
In order to understand how teacher evaluations can be positive, we need to look at their purpose and how districts do teachers evaluations. According to different articles written by Education Leadership, reformers many times neglect teacher evaluations as a tool to improve student learning, this is because most schools lack credible systems of measuring the quality of
This book, Dare The School Build a New Social Order by George Counts, is an examination of teachers, the Progressive Education Movement, democracy and his idea on how to reform the American economy. The book is divided into 5 different sections. The first section is all about the Progressive Education Movement. Through this, George Counts points out many downsides and weaknesses of this ideal. He also talks about how he wants teachers to lead society instead of following it. In the second section, he examines 10 widespread fallacies. These fallacies were that man is born free, that children are born free, they live in a separate world of their own, education remains unchanged, education should have no bias, the object of education is to produce professors, school is an all-powerful educational agency, ignorance rather than knowledge is the way of wisdom, and education is made to prepare an individual for social change.
There are many ways to compile data on a teacher and determine that person’s performance. Teacher performance can be based upon classroom observation, a teacher’s continuing development and education, and students’ standardized testing scores. The controversy centers around using student test scores to determine the performance of a teacher and thus her pay. Scott Andes, a research analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation voices the merits of performance based pay with his article “Getting Serious with Education: Why Can We Measure Students but Not Teachers?” High School English teachers, Jordan Kohanim and Ashley Ulrich vehemently state why there is no merit with performance based pay with their article, “No Merit to Merit Pay Arguments.” In each article both sides debate how performance based or merit pay will affect students, teachers, schools, and com...
The state’s new evaluation system was in response to administrators who produced, “superficial and capricious teacher evaluation systems that often don't even directly address the quality of instruction, much less measure students' learning” (Toch, 2008). Too often, the “good-ol-boy” attitude would insure mediocre educators would remain employed. Realizing this was often more the rule then the exception, the governor created educational mandates to focus, “on supporting and training effective teachers to drive student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013). Initially, they expected the school districts and the teachers would have issues and experience growing pains, but in the end the goal was, “to improve teacher performance, year by year, with a corresponding rise in student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013).
Jupp, B., & Education, T. (2009). What states can do to improve teacher effectiveness. K-12
Public school education system is important and should be taken very seriously. It is the starting foundation to each and every one of our lives. Our educators, lay down the pathway for education.. In today’s world, teachers play a big role in building America. They are the ones who encourage our children to excel into their greatest self. Without teachers, society would face a drastic downfall. There would not be many professions around. Doctors would be unable to save the lives of our friends and families. There would not be any police officers to protect and serve, nor there be a president to lead this country. The public school education system, as a whole, is something that has been over looked for some time. While other professions are progressing in life, the Public Education System, in general, is staying the same. Teaching is not an easy job. The hours are long, the demands are high, and the working conditions are often challenging .Given the conditions, in which, this profession is carried out, a better financial plan is needed to accommodate for the, unbalanced, priority.