Obama Proposes Financial Incentives to Push Changes at Colleges of Education

won’t work without getting much better ed profs who are much more than just “leader teachers” who are overpaid and have some real background and accomplishment in the field, learning thoeries, and research creds as well.  You get the goodstudents and they leave because of narrow brain dead profs and mickey-mouse courses.  As Whitehead said Education is often where old ideas go to die.  The Homles agenda and the Holmes view of Colleges of Ed and educational profs as revived Normals Schools is one of the major root causes of where we are.  The other is ed administrators at all levels have no management training or experience whatsoever but they have Leadership training and visions …just visions from drinking the kool aid.  Both were better in the 1970′s; take it from an old timer.

Its not only about setting aside money for training, but we also have to eliminate teachers who are underperforming. They shelter themselves under their unions and let their students do whatever they want in class. If they work hard or slack off, they still get sheltered and paid, so there is no incentive at all, to work incrementally harder and put in more effort to our student’s education. This may be a bold thing to say, but I think unions are antiquated, and they need to be eliminated. Teachers need higher pay for high performance as an incentive, and we need to eliminate those who can care less. They know who they are. There have been cases of teachers who have sexually abused their students; and principals have no say. They hide under their unions for years before anything can be done. The formula for success is simple: help our students get smarter and become more proficient in math and reading, and you will be compensated accordingly. Leave our students behind, and you will be left behind.

Carl M. Letamendi, MBA
PhD Candidate, Department of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Nova Southeastern University
School of Humanities and Social Science
letamend@nova.edu  
Thank you! Grazie! Merçi! Gracias!

Not only must standards be raised, but salaries as well. In addition the myth that anyone can teach must be put to death. Education is not the only place where one finds lazy people who get paid for not working. Unions were not meant to keep teachers who don’t do their jobs. School administration must also take much of the blame for being too lazy to do work required to have teachers who are not doing their job dismissed from the job.

Education and teaching are only given lip service in the U.S. Teaching and teachers are the Rodney Dangerfields of the Professional World they don’t get any respect. To recruit qualified people teaching must be desirable  something to reach for like being a medical doctor, a lawyer, an architect etc. Right now teaching is the laughing stock of the professions as evidenced by all of the negative comments here.

Good teachers are not allowed to do their jobs because they must teach to the test and many good teachers are NOT supported by school administration. There are too many people in school administration and not enough good teachers in the classroom. Poor teachers get out of the classroom as quickly as possible where they become poor administrators. Teachers need to be allowed to teach and they need to be respected which they are not in the U.S.

I taught in the P-12 system for nearly 10 years and now I am a teacher educator and I do my job well. Having a high GPA and high GRE does not in and of itself qualify one to be a competent teacher. People come into teaching for the wrong reasons “I love children” 
(Pedophiles love children too, but you don’t want them in the classroom) It’s family friendly, You get the summers off, you work part time. Any teacher worth his or her salt is working on improving their teaching during the summer by thinking of better ways to teach for the following year. Talk to my ex husband about teaching being part time. He always complained that I never had any time for him because I was always grading papers.

First and foremost stop blaming teachers,  teacher union and schools of education for the state of education in this country. Yes raise standards, raise salaries, show poor administrators and teachers the door. Look at dispositions before GPA and GREs when admitting a person in a teacher ed program. Schools will improve when EVERYONE IN SCHOOL (from the custodian to the principal) BELIEVE THAT ALL STUDENTS CAN LEARN. Get education out of the hands of the politicians who believe that because they went to school for 16 years they know what it takes to be a teacher. If that were the case I could also be a medical doctor because I’ve gone to the doctor all my life.

Support parents and children and give them necessary skills required to be successful. There are successful public schools all over this country duplicate what is already being successfully done. There was a study done by the University of Michigan a few years ago that documented affluent and upper middle class parents wanted teachers to make their children feel good about themselves while working, lower middle class and poor parents want teachers to teach their children something. It’s too easy to point fingers at a very complex an issue and play the blame game. Put your money where your mouth is and do something to improve the situation or get out of the way.

Cool, so from whom are we borrowing this $5 billion?

I have always heard the following about teaching.  THE PEOPLE THAT CAN DO, DO.  THOSE THAT CAN’T DO, TEACH. That is why many of the teachers come from the bottom of the class.

If it were really a myth, there would not be as many problems.  Many of the graduates at the top of the class work in industry.  They work in industry because the pay is usually lower in education.