[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 @ 15:45 +0000, wa2egp at att.net said:

> > 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's why NCLB was enacted.  To prevent that.  Almost all teachers in
> NJ already fit the requirements.

NCLB seems to have also brought with it all kinds of testing
requirements and restrictions on how teachers teach.

I know a few good teachers, and I hate to see them not get paid what
they want.

But my experience tells me that most of them don't deserve what they
get.

The system won't allow you to pay some high and some low based on merit,
so it is hard to increase pay for the good ones, without also increasing
pay for the bad ones.

> > In 13 years, I can count the good teachers I had on one hand.
> 
> Same here.  Mainly non-public schools.

I wish I could have gone.  We have some pretty good private schools
around.

Either that, or I wish I could have been in the good public districts.
Some of those schools rank as high as the private schools.

> > It's not just incompetence either. A good number of my teachers were
> > abusive on top of the rest.
> 
> I wonder why (just kidding).

I'm sure I was hard to deal with, being smarter than the other kids and
most of my teachers... :)

But more seriously, I mean real abuse, mental and physical, went on a
lot.

Personally, I can't imagine teaching if you hate kids.

But I think it happens because teachers get decent pay, and the perks
are garanteed by union and law.

These were people who coudn't have made it in the private sector.

> The first is required in NJ for YEARS.  In sciences, they require a minor
> in the science you're teaching.

That's good.

> > A lot of the key to doing well in school and on tests is not
> > intelligence, but cleverness, knowing how to work the system.
> 
> Just in school?

No, that's just where the kids learn it, and they continue the crap into
the workplace and other adult life.



-- 
shannon           | All of us get lost in the darkness, dreamers turn to look 
                  | at the stars.
                  |         -- Rush