Reply to when schools focus on the wrong things (from a teacher)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ok I'll bite... Of course GE has different levels of Admin, but they also have different brands, different products, HR, PR etc. each with it's own specialty. GE also has easily quantifiable products;  X number of ovens, lightbulbs or dollars made.

Education has one purpose- to teach and prepare the next generation of citizens.  This is something EVERYONE knows something about(we have all been to school) and is NOT easily quantifiable (although Greatschools and testing companies are trying). Because of this, even within the profession (much less society) we  have not actually come to consensus about what makes a teacher good and found ways to quantify it.  This makes it much easier for bullying and power to take precedence because the very definition of what higher ups are looking for changes with each observer. Any higher up can observe any teacher (or employee) and decide the teacher is doing XY and z wrong and there fore that person is ineffective, but the next observer will say teacher is good at XYZm but Q is more important and they are not doing Q.  
All of this uncertainty makes it more difficult for a teacher to stand up and know whom to present ideas to. Not to mention that the targets ZYX change yearly as "new research" is repackaged.
Not everything is a business and I hope you understand that children are not products![/quote]

The problem of higher ups dictating what others do has been going on for centuries in all professions. The main difference over the years I've seen is that teaching like every other profession is getting more specialized requires more collaboration. The profession is trying to do better often with poorer children and to do things better typically requires more people. The teacher in the one room schoolhouse might have had to do a wider variety of tasks, but wasn't judged as much on effectiveness and didn't have to collaborate as much. Some professionals welcome decisions made by higher ups and others don't. Even in a profession as autonomous as surgery, some surgeons are happy to watch a higher up do it one way and use that method while another one wants more autonomy and is willing to risk their insurance to try something better.

Your problem is an internal one. You are not getting anything out of the time spent on the meeting. It is not one that can be fixed by parents or administrators. It requires teachers to speak up and maybe actually volunteer to type up the parking lot questions and send them on and follow up verses expecting someone else to handle it.

I have read about ineffective meetings by teachers and other professions for years. School Board members complain about them too. No one wants to pay for ineffective meetings. [b]They want teachers in the classroom[/b]. So you have that on your side. They just need teachers to speak up on what is working and what isn't without complaining. Saying teachers don't want to be judged by others is an ineffective argument. [b]Saying this method didn't work as well as this other method or this method took five times as long to achieve the same thing as we got with the previous method are just better arguments[/b].[/quote]

No, actually they don't.  "They" are in Central Office for a year or two. "They" are more concerned with exerting their own power than anything else.   "They" will require us to do the data entry rather than going to our vendor or technology staff and asking that a simple report be made that will pull the data for us so that we can spend our time analyzing rather than typing.  "They" don't value education or the value of teaching and learning.  "They" value the excitement of hearing their voice more than "they" value hearing the voice of a child learning.

I have been working in my school system at two different schools for 8 years.  Every year for the past 5 years or so (since we have had SchoolNet) I have asked for a report that I can run that pulls my students SOL scores and grades in reading and math from prior years.  So that I can see their trends.  I have made this request to my Principal, my AP, our subject area Coach, the Central Office curriculum specialist for my subject area, Help Desk, and at the Teacher Advisory Council.  Each year I provide data on how long it takes an individual teacher to gather this data.  Each year I suggest that it would be better to make a report (or two if that is what it takes) to do the same task.  But each year instead I spend hours going through SchoolNet looking for this data record by record by record for each student and that is over 120 children.  Whether I can show this data is part of my evaluation when my evaluator wants to know my students' progress.  I am asked to give it electronically to the AP who then, I'm sure, uses it for exactly nothing at all since he or she frequently forgets that I've turned it in and asks me to resubmit it.  Usually the AP asks me for it again during the middle of class because she or he is heading into a Central Office meeting and she or he needs to show it to some flunky there.

I understand what you're saying, PP, but you are presuming that our school systems are well-run by well-intentioned people.  They aren't.  Our School Board is a flat out mess and the stuff runs downhill.  At the bottom of the hill is a teacher with a bucket panning for gold and getting...stuff.[/quote]

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