Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Obama Ready to Take on Education Reform
This week, CNN reported on Obama's latest education speech. Check out the link. He called for an expansion of early childhood education. That's good. He called for an expansion of charter schools. That may be good, but it depends. He called for merit pay. Not good. I've never been a fan of merit pay. Teachers are woefully underappreciated and underpaid. What job in our society is more important than teaching? None. Obviously, teachers must be paid more. We need to attract the best and the brightest to the profession. Merit pay will discourage collaboration and the sharing of ideas and the sharing of teaching resources. It will lead to a very unhealthy competition among teachers. We don't need that. Study after study indicates collaboration is one of the keys to a school's success. Principals need to do their jobs and help struggling teachers become successful or encourage them to find other careers. It's that simple. All teachers must be top quality and be paid accordingly. All kids deserve an advanced proficient teacher. Would we go to a partial proficient dentist? How about a partial proficient heart surgeon? I would say we wouldn't even go to a partial proficient barber/hair stylist. Right? Competition in education is not good. Education is not a business. It makes me fume when people try to equate business practices to educational practices. Stop it! Education is NOT a business! We're not selling cable tv! We're molding the minds of the next generation. See the difference? As a former president was fond of saying in his Texan twang, "It's hard work."
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6 comments:
Wait ... you said that "education is not a business". But it is! Education is the business of educating our future leaders. It's too bad that more people, both in business and in education, believe that.
I'm afraid I have to disagree. The sole purpose of a business is to provide a service/product for a profit. If we view education as a business, then I'm afraid our business would deserve to fail. In some nearby districts, the dropout rate is close to 50%. Not too many businesses could survive with a 50% product failure rate. Imagine if we went to buy a new TV and there was a 50% chance that TV wouldn't work. That TV business would not survive. I agree that we are educating our future leaders, but we should think twice about adopting business world practices into our own practice.
OK Ed, I see where you went with your opinion. I AM an educator! I say that with pride and enthusiasm. My job, my business is to make students be successful in whatever they do. My job, my business is to be an advocate for them. My job, my business is to help prepare them for their future. My job, my business is NOT a 9-5 typical business. It consumes my life 10-12 hours per day and even on the weekends. You're right, I'm not going to adopt business world practices because then I would leave by 5, not show up until I'd have to, not worry about a practice or intervention not working. I can't return a student because he/she isn't working correctly. It is my job, my business to find a way to make that student successful in his/her own way. I offer a service; I demand a product. That product is SUCCESS! When's breakfast? :)
ooo--i love this! i was just correcting my vocabulary tests, so this fits in perfectly! let's make it CST style...
read sentence 1 and choose the sentence that uses the word "business" in the same way:
1. "education is not a business."
a. "education is the business of educating our future leaders."
b. i support MVPS's because it is a local, family-owned business.
c. mind your own business!
d. none of the above
if you chose b, you are correct! clearly the meaning of "business" in these two sentences is a company run FOR PROFIT.
if you chose c, you're partially right--i probably should've stayed out of this!
and if you chose a, then your teacher should probably do a mini-lesson on homonyms and multiple meaning words since the meaning of "business" here is work or job. ;>
all kidding aside, it is the job of all or us (ed, sherry, myself) to educate our students, but what ed said (and i agree) is that a merit pay, profit-driven (as opposed to student-driven) business model has no place in education.
sorry. i meant sherrie. clearly i need a spelling mini-lesson! :p
My choice is "d." I'm the principal of a school, not a CEO of a business. (Although I'd love a key to my very own bathroom, expensive office furniture, a rug without bumps, a two hour lunch -heck, I'll take ten minutes - a luxury car and driver, access to a private jet, box seats at Dodger Stadium, and Cuban cigars...when they become legal.)
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