Education Week
“Some Sobering News on Math Education”
I chose this article because I am a middle math teacher. The article talked about a study that took place that centered around two issues: preparation of math teachers and teacher’s on-going professional development. Research revealed that future US elementary and middle school teachers are in the middle of the pack compared to future teachers in 15 other nations. They based this data on a new test designed to gauge teacher skills.
The first year findings of another study of 77 middle schools suggest that even after intensive, state-of-the-art efforts to increase teacher skills on the job may not lead to significant gain in student achievement right away. My initial thoughts about these test and the results was that the problem may not be with the teachers. We must admit that the relevance of math has changed in the past 15 years but the curriculum has not.
As a principal, I think we must look beyond blaming the teachers and empower and equip the teachers with the knowledge, skills and 21st century technology to implement within the classroom and give them a reasonable about of time to show progress. I would make sure that all math teachers received relevant professional development and implement some type of expectations within each math classroom. Honestly, we have teachers who are what I call, “old school”, still using the overhead projector because they are not comfortable with the latest technology in the their classroom. Once professional development is in place we must hold teachers accountable.
Educational-Leadership
By Marge Scherer
I chose this article because, “teacher effectiveness”, is the new phrase for the pay for performance plan. The article began from a natural stand point of what does an effective teacher look like. Some to the characteristics of an effective teachers included: caring, enthusiasm for the subject, and getting the best out of your students. These things are abstract and cannot be easily measured. Policy makers believe that student outcomes instead of years of experience and advanced degrees would have a greater impact and be more measurable.
Most teacher evaluators have not been trained to analyze teaching in this way, and relying on student outcomes as indicators of effectiveness often fails to take into consideration student differences, working conditions, and group accountability. Finally, the new measures must also take into account that teacher influence goes far beyond student academic performance. Teachers also foster students' motivation, perseverance, and citizenship. To really support good teachers, any new evaluation system must consider the whole picture.
Those who measure teacher effectiveness have a difficult job ahead of them, but not as difficult as the job of teaching itself. As an administrator I would make sure the teachers are aware and knowledgeable of how this process is measured and I think it would be very helpful to have master teachers from another school to come into staff development and demonstrate what and effective lesson looks like and allow feedback from teachers. This will give teachers a better understanding of what evaluators are looking for during their teacher observations.
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