Comic for Monday, March 8, 2010

Posted: 6:22 am, Monday, March 8

Pat S. linked or tweeted or somehow communicated in a public forum some cool Cracked list about WWII, which got me wasting time by looking at a bunch of their other lists. This one, about great lost books, is wild, and also of interest to the strange number of librarians-in-training in the audience. (Two, one of whom is my wife, so that's not really strange, but, I mean, seriously, who else knows two librarians in training?)(OK, so TeaVee and CK and a few other people in the room.) It also lead me to this list of country music songs.

This article on issues in Britain that I'm not terribly knowledegable about reminds me of this book on England between the Wars that I want to read.

Virginia's attorney general is a classy guy.

Those were some lame Oscars last night. Nothing is improved by the inclusion of James Taylor. At all. I was only kind of paying attention to the crazy white lady who pulled a Kanye, but the whole story is here, if you're vaguely interested.

I got a shit-ton of grading done over the weekend, and also read the thoroughly rockin' Hunger Games. Highly recommended, although I didn't know it was written with a trilogy in mind, and found the ending a bit lacking. Also, I feel like I didn't plan nearly enough for the week. So we'll see how this goes.

bullfrog

Miyaa -- Monday, March 8 2010, 07:23 am

I find it funny how people were surprised that Hurt Locker won Best Picture over Avatar. This is the Oscars, after all.

Also, Hurt Locker was pretty fucking good. We (finally) watched (the DVD of) it (from Netflix that we had for about a month and a half) on Saturday night.

Thanks for the piece about MUSIC BY PRUDENCE. We watched the moment last night going "Wha'd..." and wondered about that.

Anyone who saw both and preferred Avatar on anything more than a pow-zam level is a moran.

I've got the sequel (Catching Fire) around somewhere if you want to borrow. (Well, I think Leigh has it, but I can get it back soon.) TeaVee in fact just read the Hunger Games this weekend as well, so she's delving into the audiobook of Catching Fire right now.

I joined audible.com for my one free This American Life download, to get the Murder of Roger Ackroyd for my sped kids. I was listening to a bit of it, and I dunno, I'm just not an audiobook guy, I guess.

I started the thoroughly enjoyable (tale of an? stories of an?) 8th Grade Superzero that CK sent me two weeks back. It is so wild to be reading a book and see the author throw it up to one of your friends in the back, referring to her as an "editrix". Yowza.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who gets sucked in by cracked.com lists...

The latest issue of http://www.newsweek.com/ did some digging on the public education system.

Should I admit to having an MS in Library Science? It's not usually a big conversation starter.

Ugh. This conversation seems to be happening more and more lately, but, yes, bad teachers are a problem. The tenure system is not perfect. Without tenure, though, no teacher will ever retire with their pension. No administrator will ever look at a 20-year vet teacher and say, "This is a worthwhile cost." They'd be gone in a heartbeat.

You know what's almost never brought up in discussing how hard it is to get rid of these awful tenured teachers? (And there certainly are a lot of them. I work with and have been taught by simply terrible teachers.) THE DUMB-ASS ADMINISTRATORS WHO GIVE THEM TENURE IN THE FIRST PLACE. If all the principals and assistant principals and superintendents out there were doing their jobs, there'd be a lot less terrible tenured teachers. Yes, there's the lazy ones who go to seed as soon as they're tenured. But there's a lot who should never be given tenure in the first place.

Is the system even designed for it to be difficult to become tenured? (That's a genuine question - not rhetorical. Also, I realize you can't speak for each of the nation's 8 zillion school systems.)

Unrelated: If you're looking for a mind-screw, note that this little fella turned SIX the other day.

http://www.fivebuckstofriday.com/archive/archive091504.html

I live in South Slope and filmed this timelapse video through my front window into Prospect PArk over the course of 9 hours last weekend. I think it is a fascinating glimpse into human nature...or whatever. Plus a snowman gets clocked!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-kFEGHWF4o

I just feel the need to point out that tenure is not an issue everywhere--Texas being one example, Indiana another. And even those places where it continues to exist, it is becoming weaker, as with most union things. Tenure always feels like a strawman argument to me. Not that there aren't bad teachers who should not be teachers, but there are other issues that get in the way of good teachers doing their work. And the point about administrators is well-taken and incredibly relevant.

What do you think the biggest issue facing education is, ad? I realize this sounds like a cop-out kind of response, but until we fix the poverty issue in the country, or at least stop pretending that there is one, anything we do with schools is a finger in the dam. (Cop out because it puts the immediate work out of the education sector.)

I also love the handle, Windsor Terror. I hope you also own a terrier named Windsor.

That video would make a socieology professor somewhere very happy. thanks, WT.

ou didn't ask me, and I'm just a cubicle-dweller, so put me in my place if necessary.

Maybe the biggest issue facing education* is a lack of a workable pay-for-performance model for teachers. Teachers that teach well the prior year should get decent raises. Teachers that did not teach well should not get a raise. Those that don't get a raise too many times should, for the sake of the students, be shown the door. Like in business, enforce a curve so that not everybody receives the same performance rating.

How do you measure a teacher's performance? I have no friggin' clue. Group-of-kids A has to perform B% better than last year on standardized tests? I see -some- merit in that, but LOTS of drawbacks, too.

* The NEWSWEEK cover story starts with the assumption that the root of the problem is bad teachers. It tosses a few lines out suggesting that the majority are good folk, but then goes back to focusing on the bottom of the barrel. Hopefully most level-headed readers are backing up a step and internalizing that **PART** of the problem is **A FEW** horrible teachers.

I think the problem isn't necessarily the bad teachers. The bad teachers are a symptom of a system that by and large has failed. And I know it's failed because the first two years of college are now mostly about taking remedial classes because colleges do not trust the education that the students received in high school.

I do believe part of the system's failure is that prior to No Child Left Behind, system-wide accountablilty was not clearly established. The other part is because of No Child Left Behind, students are now geared towards taking the test and thus there is no incentive to retain the knowledge they've learned after they've finished taking the necessary tests the schools need to survive and get semi-adequate funding for the year.

And we're now back to square two.

Bullfrog - your point about poverty is really consistent with David Simon's views on inner city education. I find his arguments pretty convincing on the topic.