From Care2.com
posted by: Natasha G

Still More Arizona Controversy: This Time It’s Teachers With Accents

Arizona is on a roll. First the government passed a law permitting police to ask for legal documentation of anyone who “appears to look illegal,” then it banned schools from offering ethnic studies. Now the Arizona Department of Education has told schools they should remove any teachers whose speech is “heavily accented or ungramatical” from English classes.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in the 1990s Arizona hired many teachers whose first language is Spanish as part of its billingual education program. In 2000, citizens voted that only English be taught in schools, and teachers were required to switch languages accordingly. But now that teachers have made the switch, why they are being punished for something they cannot control?

Overlooking the fact that in reality everyone has an accent, the Department of Education did not specify what sort of accent is unacceptable. However one can make a good guess considering so many foreign-born teachers in Arizona are from Latin America. Would teachers with strong Texan, Bostonian or Canadian accents be removed? And how does one measure how heavy an accent is?

The principal of an elementary school with a large Latino population in Phoenix told the Wall Street Journal that the school’s teachers “are very good educators who understand the culture” of their students…I object to the nuance of punishment for accent.”

An accent does not indicate a person’s grasp of a language. If Arizona wants to ensure children are learning, the Department of Education should focus on the qualifications of a teacher that are actually relevant to the job

What do you think about this contreversy?

From Care2:

Great! Another reason to make the poor American education system even worse! Force teachers to teach kids to more tests in order to gain a proverbial carrot!

Merit pay for teachers is a hot topic these days, especially since it’s a crucial requirement if your state is trying to win any of the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” funds.

So far, Denver, CO, has been the city to implement the nation’s highest profile experiment in merit pay. In the Denver model, known as Pro-Comp, teachers can earn bonuses for teaching in hard-to-staff schools or subject areas, as well as for increasing student achievement. Standardized tests are one of the measures used in the evaluation of teachers.

And now, amazingly, as the New York Times reported yesterday, New York will join the ranks of those who are tying teacher evaluations to student test scores. Hard to believe, after the unions have opposed such a move so fiercely for years.

How will this system work? If the State Legislature approves the agreement reached between the State Education Department and New York’s teachers’ unions, it will mean that teachers are no longer rated simply satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Instead, annual evaluations will rate teachers as highly effective, effective, developing, and ineffective. (Sort of similar to the ratings their students receive on those standardized tests.)

To earn their rating, teachers will be measured on a 100-point scale, with just 20 percent based on how much their students improve on standardized tests. Another 20 percent will be based on local tests, to be developed by each school system, and the remainder of the evaluation points will come from observations by principals and other measures. If rated ineffective for two consecutive years (it’s unclear what number of points equals ineffective), they would face firing.

There are a couple of interesting points to note here: New York did not win one of the coveted Race to the Top award on the first try, but if the State Legislature approves this legislation within ten days, New York will be in a better position to apply by June 1, the second deadline. It’s also the case that not all teachers instruct in areas that are tested by state exams, so the evaluation program would have to work differently for them.

How did this agreement make it past the teachers’ unions? It was a compromise. Richard Iannuzzi, the president of the state union, explained, “The concept of this has never been unacceptable. But doing it unilaterally or making evaluations solely dependent on students’ test scores were not options.” It’s also important that those evaluation points are based on how much students improve, rather than on attainment of a “one-size-fits-all” score.

There is no question that the current tenure system for teachers has to be modified; the challenge lies in finding a system that is fair, rigorous, and effective. Around the country, things are moving. This fall, the Harrison School District Two, in Colorado, will replace the traditional salary system with a pay system based entirely on observations of teacher practice and student-achievement results. In Louisiana, the House of Representatives agreed on Monday to revise public school teacher evaluations so that teachers would be partially graded on student test scores. The idea would be to tie at least half of a teacher’s evaluation to how much improvement students make on accountability tests.

It is good that progress is being made on revamping the teacher tenure system, but merit pay alone is not the answer. Students and teachers both need multiple measures of evaluation, and a great deal of work remains to be done on those standardized tests, to bring them up to par. There are plenty of ways to develop excellent supervision and assessment models for our schools and teachers without relying on merit pay. And let’s not lose sight of the goal of encouraging a love of learning and maintaining a climate of excitement in the classroom, the reasons most of us went into teaching in the first place.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This is a map of Edmonton, AB (that’s Alberta, not Alabama) that has been overlayed with the neighborhoods and schools. Each neighborhood is coloured according to the number of children under the age of 14 (the redder the area, the higher the population of children). Over that, are the pegs representing the schools belonging to the Edmonton Public School Board.

This graph demonstrates how the areas in most need of schools (denser and higher population of children) are the same areas that lack these ‘fundamental’ structures. “Rich” areas with a lower population of children have an over-abundance of schools in their areas. The black pegs denote schools that have been shut down, or are in the process of closing, while the green pegs are schools under construction.

As you can see in the South of the city, where there is lots of expansion, these schools are a necessity, but in the North, there are already plenty of institutions where parents can shuttle their kids.

The original (interactive) map is available here.

Yet another reason to homeschool…

By ANDREW HANON, EDMONTON SUN
Last Updated: April 27, 2010 10:28am

The 12th-grader has the highest marks in her class at Fort Saskatchewan High School, with her math and science scores in the mid-90s. She’s her class valedictorian.

Imagine Sarah’s outrage when she discovered Alberta Learning can arbitrarily lower the scores of her diploma exams through its practice of “equating” provincial test results.

“It seems so random,” the 17-year-old fumed. “I don’t know how they can do this. “I’ve been applying for some very competitive scholarships, and if they lower my grade even 1% it could affect that.”

Sarah wrote three diploma exams in January — English, chemistry and pure math — which made up half her final mark in those classes.

She later received her “official” scores in the mail: English 71%, chemistry 92% and pure math 93%.

But then she found that her math teacher also received her “raw” math score (before it was equated). It was 96%.

She doesn’t know if her English and chemistry scores were altered, but if her math class is typical, it’s highly probable.

Sarah figures nearly half of her 28 classmates had their marks equated. Several of the top students had their marks lowered, while about half a dozen of the kids “just scraping by” had theirs lifted from a failing grade to a pass.

Her mother, Beth Budd, an elementary school teacher, scratches her head over what’s happening to Grade 12 students across Alberta.

“It’s kind of disheartening for kids who’ve done well but had their marks lowered,” Beth said. “Sarah is a bit of a perfectionist.”

But as Sarah boils with frustration, government officials defend the practice as the best way to ensure fairness.

Provincial test questions must constantly be changed, both to prevent cheating and safeguard against “item exposure,” where everyone knows a specific question that will be on the exam.

This means that the difficulty of the tests can vary from year to year, and even semester to semester.

Exams are designed with a series of “anchor questions” that have appeared in previous exams. The rest of the exam has new questions.

Each exam is compared to an older exam to determine if it’s easier or more difficult than that one.

If it’s considered easier, scores can be lowered. If it’s deemed more difficult, they can be raised.

“It is very technical,” acknowledged Alberta Education spokeswoman Erica McDonald. “It’s a statistical process.”

But Sarah argues that doesn’t explain how some kids in her class had their marks lowered, while others saw their scores raised.

“You can’t have it both ways,” she said.

Sarah was so irate over having her marks lowered that she wrote a letter to Education Minister Dave Hancock.

“It is very disturbing that Alberta Education is this arbitrary with (its) policies and decisions. Ultimately I would like to receive the marks that I earned with my dedication and hard work, but as this appears to be unlikely, I would settle for a department that dealt with students’ futures in a fair and consistent manner,” Sarah wrote.

Just wait till she starts trying to figure out income tax.

andrew.hanon@sunmedia.ca

One of the greatest misconceptions of homeschooling is that it is expensive. I have read it in many publications, as well as many places on the web, that a person needs to budget hundreds of dollars per child per year in order to give each a proper education.

I understand where this mindset comes from; we have all been led to believe that it takes money, and loads of it, in order to teach children. This is driven mostly by the huge public education machine in our country. Every voting season the media is bursting with pleadings for more funding, with the stories of teacher shortages, building shortages, etc. It is unfortunate just how mis-managed these dollars are, but that is the stuff for other entries and another day.

Fact is, if God is our Source, we have no fears for tomorrow–just to be happy to have enough for today.

If I only had $20, I could homeschool my children. First, I would purchase a few cheap spiral notebooks, which can be found during back-to-school sales for as little as .10 a piece. I would buy some pencils and a small sharpener. Some color crayons would be good as well. I would make sure I had a Bible handy for reading aloud, copy work, etc. A set of watercolors and some playdough could also be helpful (you could make this with flour and salt–little or no expense there!).

Keep reading…