The New York Times published an article, “Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers” which describes several initiatives to pay teachers based on the improvement of their students.
I find myself disagreeing with those who believe teachers should be paid this way. In thinking about all of the best teachers in my life, those who actually made a difference, whether they were teaching exactly what they were supposed to or not, probably would not have benefitted from having me or many of my peers in a class. What they offered us was definitely not anything measurable by standardized tests. They offered us knowledge and wisdom that was most certainly beyond the scope of any curriculum that any state committee could develop.
I highly disagree with using standardized tests in general. While I have tended to score fairly well on many of them, I realize that so many people who did not are denied opportunities they might have had without this movement toward standardization (a topic of a future rant, perhaps). Let measurement play a role in areas where measurement is legitimate and accurate; don’t force it into areas that it does not apply. Passion and enthusiasm cannot be expressed as a number. Keep standardized tests away from killing off the good teachers. They are the some of the only people that make people like me want to be educated.
I think these state legislatures should instead toy with killing off or heavily reducing tenure for any teacher below higher education. I’ve always found competition is a great motivator for success.
This is a Reliant Robin, made by a British company which is now defunct, and yes, it only has three wheels. Apparently, there was a version with a Rover (more powerful) engine in it which made installing wheelie bars required. How cool would it be to need wheelie bars on your car?
Admittedly, this decision is mostly because of this:
Where the gents of Top Gear decided to create a reusable space shuttle using a Reliant Robin (because it looked most rocket-like, of course).
A sad story in today’s Times: A widowed mother of seven resisted masked men who demanded she leave her home by calling American and Kurdish soldiers at a base less than a mile away. They apprehended the men as they were trying to escape, but the woman was shot and killed while doing errands the next day.
This was from/featured in the Fifth HOPE the month before the convention:
Other digests noted a planned campaign of “electronic civil disobedience†to jam fax machines and hack into Web sites. Participants at a conference were said to have discussed getting inside delegates’ hotels by making hair salon appointments or dinner reservations. At the same conference, people were reported to have discussed disabling charter buses and trying to confuse delegates by switching subway directional signs, or by sealing off stations with crime-scene tape.
The East Campus Residential Staff, both the SEAS and CC Senior Funds, and the Senior Series have teamed up to bring you a joint event featuring food from DINOSAUR BAR-B-QUE and ROAR-EE next Sunday night! Come by, have some food, contribute to the funds, and learn about what keeps Columbia strong for the next generations!
Hmm, yes. Dinosaur vs. lion vs. dead cow. That would be an interesting matchup. I put $5 on the dinosaur, but I’ll pay $5 to get the dead cow.
Professor: If someone came to me and said that there is an invisible dragon in my garage, what can i do to prove it doesn’t exist? Student: You can have a knight in shining armor enter the garage and the dragon by its very nature will be forced to fight it.
