[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>Date: 2007/04/16 Mon AM 01:17:54 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

>Sun, 15 Apr 2007 @ 17:33 -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo said:
>
>> On Apr 15, 2007, at 12:34 PM, wa2egp at att.net wrote:
>> 
>> > That's total BS.  For the same education?  I don't think so.
>> > And don't look at the top scale.  Too easy to use that.
>> 
>> You may know people with good educations who are teachers.
>> 
>> All the teachers I know took easy majors like Psychology etc. and are 
>> ... just ... not ... very ... smart.  There. I said it.
>
>There are plenty of teachers that don't even have the equivalent of a
>4 year degree. In some places they are reducing the requirements, or
>already have.

That is not hte case in NJ - a four year degree is required, along with certification. A career-change teacher can find work with a four year degree and enrollment in a teaching certificate program.

>In 13 years, I can count the good teachers I had on one hand.

I need both to count the good teachers I had, and I do feel lucky... most of the teachers I felt were good were at a small private school, where they were paid less than the teachers at the local public high school.

>It's not just incompetence either. A good number of my teachers were
>abusive on top of the rest.

That sucks.

>Those of you who have seen good teachers in a good system, you don't
>know how lucky you are, or at least you don't seem to.

I do.

>The only way I'll ever support increases in teacher's pay, is if they do
>three things at a minimum:
>
>	- require a four year degree, and not in some trivial program
>	- classes specific to teaching are *extra* requirements
>	- teachers who don't perform or abuse the kids get canned,
>	  efficiently and without mercy

NJ meets two out of the three - I can't speak to the firing of substandard teachers.

>> Try to find out the average SAT scores of those who end up teachers.
>> Those you know are probably way off the charts.
>
>Maybe... I've never thought SAT was a good measure of intelligence
>myself.
>
>A lot of the key to doing well in school and on tests is not
>intelligence, but cleverness, knowing how to work the system.
>
>Testing is not a skill everyone has in equal measure, so what are we
>really measuring?

Some schools are giving up on standardized testing as a measure for accepting students... I think that's a good thing. I did OK on my SAT tests (better than average, but not in the "pick the school you want to go to" range, and what colleges liked about my score was that my math and verbal SAT scores were fairly close).

>In fact, do we even know why we measure? The original purpose of
>examinations and grading was not to score people, but to guide the path
>they took through their studies.

Agreed - it is an aptitude test (SAT) not an admissions test (like the LSAT).

Lionel