i wish ED advocates would shut about about needing more funding.

One of the crop of Fordham Fellows (a TFAer from Atlanta, whoot!) blogged yesterday about how we need a new model for the profession of teaching.

I absolutely agree. In our nation’s worst schools, being a good teacher is, in the long run, a losing proposition. I regularly worked 75-80 hours a week when I was teaching. 75-80 hard, heart-wrenching hours, and it was still never enough. There were still papers that went ungraded, positive calls to parents that didn’t get made. I could have worked 24/7, and it wouldn’t have been enough. I was tired, and I was 22. Four years out of the classroom, I feel too old to do it again, and I’m not even 30 yet.

So, G proposes that we have two teachers per class and split the teaching day, nurse-style, with an overlap between for debriefing. I love it! I added in my comment my hope to one day see year-round school with every Wednesday as a planning day. The folks who put together afterschool programs would have to get creative about how to occupy the babies on these days, but it would give teachers a chance to actually plan, grade, contact parents during time they’re actually getting paid for. I choose Wednesday because my kids always seemed most attentive on Mondays, so this would, in effect, give me two Mondays per week, YMMV. Hell, my flame taught at a crappy-ass technical school with low standards that paid for shit for a few years, and even THEY got a full planning day per week.

Anyway, the reason I felt moved to put pen to paper is because the first commenter mentioned that “From a practial standpoint, though, how would you see this arrangement accomplished? With districts strapped for cash as it is, what incentives do they have to spend money on TWO teachers for every classroom? Would each teacher only receive half a salary? That seems like an unfair deal, if you ask me.”

In the case of large, urban districts, I beg to differ. I also am pretty sure (without pulling any real numbers) that most of the kids served by insanely bad schools are in these urban areas. So, I think my point is an important one. We have this friend, R, who made more than my flame and I put together. His wife also (usually) worked, yet these people were always having their phones cut off. I would not call them “cash-strapped.”

Atlanta Public Schools spends over $14,000 per student per year, more than twice what some of the districts in rural Georgia spend. Now, I don’t know where all that money is going, but while scores are creeping up in APS, it doesn’t match up with the progress its peer districts nationally are making.

A colleague recently told me that when you do a scatter plot of achievement vs. per-pupil expenditures for every district in Georgia, there is a negative correlation. More money per kid, lower achievement.

That being said, I’m sure that many rural districts are cash-strapped because of the property-tax system of funding, and I heard all the stories from corps members in the Delta and other rural placements about schools with no books and kids with no shoes. I just think that we should get districts’ financial management systems up to par and their priorities for spending a) in the right place and b) on stuff we’re pretty sure makes a difference before we start crying about needing more funding. Right now we’re flushing money down the toilet while begging for more.

Moving toward leaving no child behind

What he said.

Updated to fix the link.

the morality of the lottery, or why 4alarm is a big fat hypocrite.

Today, I read this article from the New York Times on how little revenue lotteries create in the scheme of K-12 education budgets, and how the business of running lotteries is eating increasingly into the already slim profits. In fact, the blog entry through which I read the story was titled “What has six balls and screws teachers?” These lotteries have exploded across the country – 42 states and the District of Columbia now have them. In most instances, the lotteries fund education projects of various flavors. And this is how they are sold to the electorate. “The lottery is great! It’ll pay for cute little children to learn how to read. All for freeeeee to the taxpayers!” That sort of shit. I remember this exact propaganda when Virginia passed a referendum to start a lottery when I was a kid.

But you know what, even when you discount the added cost of the social burden of gambling addiction and such, the lottery doesn’t pay for shit.

game day!

i forgot until i opened google news this morning that today is my favorite day of the year! the georgia-clemson game!!! er…i mean, the college board’s annual release of average SAT scores. the atlanta journal constitution, atlanta’s sorry excuse for a newspaper, offers this priceless assessment:

The good news? We’re still not last in the nation.

yes, indeedy. all those years of fighting with south carolina for who would occupy the honored 49th highest average SAT score slot, and now we’re in the enviable position of expanding our news reporting to include not just the georgia-clemson game, but a no-holds-barred free-for-all between georgia, florida, hawaii, pennsylvania and south carolina.

why would gen X teachers behave differently from gen Xers in other jobs?

over and over, articles like this one cite very real statistics that about one-third of new teachers leave the classroom within three years, and about half leave within five. okay, yes, this is problematic because in combination with the fact that most teachers’ retirement systems allow teachers to retire after 30 years without substantial incentives to stay longer (22 + 30 = 52), lots of teachers are leaving the classroom at both ends. attrition is something around 9 percent a year, and it has the potential to grow even larger.

now, don’t get me wrong, i know that teacher recruitment and retention is a major problem. but the assumption that young teachers are leaving because there is a problem with the education system seems really stupid considering that changing jobs every 2-4 years is a pretty defining characteristic of generation X in the workforce.

why lefties are wrong about no child left behind.

it’s about time for my quarterly blog post…

i am currently reading my life in france, julia child’s lovely memoir of falling in love with france and french cuisine. i was surprised to find that julia had a realization unrelated to food at a dinner party talking with a man with whom she fervently disagreed politically. it sums up perfectly the frustration that i have with left-leaning folks and the public debate about the elementary and secondary education act of 2001, a.k.a. no child left behind.

julia wrote:

Under pressure…my “positions” on important questions…were revealed to be emotions masquerading as ideas. This would not do!

the same folks who claim to want to close the achievement gap for minority students, claim to want to end the vicious circle of poverty, claim to want all children to have the opportunity to attain an excellent education are also coming out in droves against no child left behind (NCLB), a law that changed the way most states evaluate their public education systems.

these folks, including many individuals that i adore and respect, need to get real, get informed and get rid of their emotions masquerading as ideas.