Bad teachers or the system

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

And although it's certainly true that the average test scores are among the lowest for ed. majors, I'd like to remind people that any particular individual teacher is likely to be an exception. I assure you that my scores were not among the lowest, nor were many of those of my colleagues.

Wait, what?

This is clearly false - no teacher is "likely" to be an exception unless you can prove some systemic issue whereby there is some small number of abysmal numbers that drag down the mean . . .

Now, any given teacher might be an exception, but on the whole, any particular individual teacher is actually likely to NOT be an exception. Sorry for the nerd rant.

I'm sure what you meant was more like "there are teachers who score well, so don't give up on the whole" - this is a valid point as well, but since most students (or parents) don't have control over this element, it seems somewhat moot. In most places, you get what you're assigned - nothing more or less.

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

Would education be better is smarter people were teachers? Maybe: some studies have linked teacher intelligence and student success, but there might be drawbacks too. I think really smart people are bothered even more by the flaws in the system and if they weren't empowered to make systemic changes, it might lead to more turnover and volatility. Who knows?

You can be darn sure, though, that you aren't going to get smarter people without A) paying a lot more, which I think is unlikely to happen OR B) the rest of the job market starts stinking so bad that teaching looks better by comparison, which I think has happened in a certain fields and overall with health and retirement benefits.

I agree with you here - I think our expectations of teachers (intelligence-wise) are a little high. I may have been slightly terse before with my MENSA example, but I think the point is sound: most smart people can make easier money doing something else.

One solution here is to severely limit teachers' classes to only those things they have mastered, especially at the middle/high school levels - increasing specialization could help. This would also allow the 'continuing education' criteria to focus on interpersonal skills work, etc. I'm not sure how you can help in elementary education, however - it seems there a large number of empathic or nurturing personality types gravitate to the work, which may not create the best pool to draw from. I don't really know.