Next school"reform" shoe to drop: cameras in the classroom.

Seems it's a pilot program. Gates and the $$$$ gang. Eight cities. With the acquiescence (" OK, OK ! I acquiesce!") of the teachers being filmed.

Next shoe: quite likely hidden minicams. W or W/O acquiescence.

You'd think they'd be running out of shoes by now.... no? Meanwhile.... liberal Democrats slumber away........ ..... their peaceful dreams disturbed only by flashes of Sarah here, Newt there.


This was in yesterday's ( Sat) NYT. I can't copy the actually page w/o subscribing. ( I dunno what that's about. Perhaps someone reading this can try to repost the original articles? There were *two* in the Sat edition. I read it in hard copy.)

This is from a blog:


http://supervidoqo.blogspot.com/2010/12/smile-youre-on-teacher-camera.html



>>>>>>FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010

Smile! You're On Teacher Camera!

The New York Times has a piece on the latest in education reform teacher-evaluation schemes: classroom cameras that record a teacher's performance in real-time. Apparently Bill Gates is investing $335 million in the project. Everyone seems roundly impressed with the value-added opportunities.
“Some teachers are extremely good,” Mr. Gates said. “And one of the goals is to say, you know, ‘Let’s go look at those teachers.’ What’s unbelievable is how little the exemplars have been studied. And then saying, ‘O.K., How do you take a math teacher who’s in the third quartile and teach them how to get kids interested — get the kid who’s smart to pay attention, a kid who’s behind to pay attention?’ Teaching a teacher to do that — you have to follow the exemplars.”
So what's the problem? More data = more knowledge = better results, right?

Wrong. I can't argue with the notion that analyzing teacher performance in excruciating detail isn't interesting on a theoretical level, and may eventually lead to practicable findings for teacher training. But it's a completely misguided exercise if the real problem is not effective teaching the lack of student capital. The focus ought to be on making deeper, structural changes to how we approach the achievement gap, not fiddling with more teaching techniques. Because at the end of the day, you still have one teacher with 30 kids who have severe disadvantages.

By concentrating all our efforts on the teacher, we are ignoring the much larger issues confronting poor children, who are far and away those at the bottom-end of the academic spectrum. Ultimately, teachers will only ever be able to do so much to solve such massive problems.

I admire Gates' engineer-like passion for finding just the right algorithm. But he is ignoring larger social forces that can't be wished away behind the classroom door. Things like reducing class sizes matter. Providing crisis counseling, parent support, after-school tutoring, etc. are just as important, if not more so than adjusting the teaching of teachers in poor schools - who happen to have the hardest job and will look the worst when compared with their peers.

In a different climate, I might see this as a fascinating and exciting opportunity for professional growth. But the reality is that this is yet more education reform on the cheap: ignoring what really needs to be done by emphasizing the marginal instead of the foundational.>>>>>>>>

I hate to say it, but I look at my students sometimes and think, "Why on earth are they doing this?" I'm glad they are, but geeeeez.

This is going to be yet another nail in the already locked-down coffin of interest in teaching.

Once the economy improves ( Under a new and improved DEM president? I'm allowed to have dreams of my own.) only imbeciles and masochists will choose to do this.

Or pedophiles.

You wanna see some *instant* reform.........

It's easy for school administrators and those who make money off the educational system to be a cheerleader for these blame-the-teacher "reforms." It's no skin off their noses, after all.

Let's have a reform of the school boards, the Principals, etc., in administration. They are the ones who have failed our students with program after program that amount to nothing more than self-aggrandizing, switching to new programs before the disastrous results of the old program can be properly tallied.

The problem with the educational system in America is NOT the teachers! The problem lies in the system itself and the politics and incompetence of administration and school boards. Fire them. Keep the teachers.

... when the momentum is completely in the other direction, is the question.

It is a tragedy of our time that those responsible for crafting the plans and programs that have failed our children are walking around scott free and enjoying their full (and lucrative) pensions.

Spoils system, nepotism & The Peter Principle have lead to this complete disaster in which we find ourselves.....especially in the more rural, small systems.......I have hope that larger systems don't suffer from this as much, but I could be operating under a delusion about that since I'm in a small system.

Three yrs ago we had the opportunity to hire a very articulate, intelligent thoughtful, successful superintendent who wanted to live in a small town to raise his kids. He & his wife had both grown up in small towns & wanted to leave the urban system where he was an assistant superintendent. Instead we get a "good ole boy" who "lived here all his life" (he would not have been able to succeed anywhere else!) He frequently says "I'm not all that smart." (Thinks it endears him to to others, what being so humble & all.) I must agree w/his self-assessment of his mental capabilities. How he managed to get through college ONCE is one of life's great mysteries, let alone a Masters, too.

He only taught in the classroom for 3 yrs, then was Asst Principal for 20+, & Head Principal for 7yrs......all at the same jr high/middle school He brought all his "harem" from the middle school to our central office & proceeded to turn all of our schools into middle schools because that's what HE understands. Our high schools are crumbling because of him. He has literally brought a very strong school system down to the gutter in 2.5 yrs. It has been horrifying to watch & live through this, especially when you know what COULD HAVE BEEN. All because the other guy "ain't from around here", so we can't take a chance on some stranger. (Sigh)

The meetings would be awfully boring videos.

Klein set this up as a way of enlisting a powerful ally in each of the 1500 schools.

The cabinet meetings are teacher-free. As far as I know, that's where decisions re. money are made.

The budget is where "the bodies are buried".

They don't even want teachers in there. Forget about cameras. I guarantee you, though, that true transparency at that point in the allocation process would eliminate a huge amount of REAL corruption.

Which may be one of the reasons... if you think about it... that they always have talking about these half-assed classroom reform schemes.

Keeps us from talking about other things.

nt

But if someone is making big money spying on us, who cares if the program actually improves education. It won't, it'll hurt it.

If teachers are going to have their performances immortalized on video, they need to be paid as screen actors. Should lead to healthy compensation for teachers -- more than their current salaries! See "stunt performers and coordinators" (surely appropriate to the drama of daily teaching) below. Some colleges and universitites are already recording professors' lectures. How long before someone decides to market those recordings, and get rid of the lecturers?

Soon there will only be a few teachers who teach online over videos. This is a way of finding the best & offering them those few jobs.
If you want to land those jobs, you better be Barbie & Ken, too......just like news anchors.

Then they can staff schools w/aids (or better yet, outsourced subs)to keep the peace while kids sit in computer labs taking the online classes. Obviously there will still be a need for the early elementary teachers. But the rest......adios. Just think how bad this will impact social skills which are already very poor.

edit: typo

To record these punks bullying other kids and driving them to suicide. It would really help bullied kids and teens to file suit against schools that allow bullying to happen, if there were security camera video that could be confiscated to prove the bullying.

To hell with examining the teachers' lessons with a fine-toothed comb. Put the cameras to good use, instead.

As an Asperger's sufferer I've been at the brunt of bullies attention more than I'd care to remember.

“It potentially creates a cottage industry for retired principals, or even expert teachers, to moonlight on weekends scoring classroom observations,” he said.

An Internet-based approach to teacher evaluation could also alleviate some pressures on school districts. New laws in many states, after all, are requiring more frequent observations of teachers

. . .

Dr. Kane said doubts may disappear with time. “We’re not naïve,” he said. “We realize that most principals and teachers imagine an in-person visit from a human being when they think of classroom observations. But that could rapidly change. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that millions of classrooms could be using this technology within four or five years.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/education/04teacher.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp

>>>>It potentially creates a cottage industry for retired principals, or even expert teachers, to moonlight on weekends scoring classroom observations,” he said.>>>>>>>>>>>>

This will help bring this idiotic idea to fruition. There's always a portion of the staff... union or not... that's ready to be bought off by the chance to get in on the $$$$ gravy train.

KIBBLES n BITS!!! KIBBLES n BITS!!!!!!!


*Expert* teachers indeed.

now the camera "industry" is set to make a boatload. Bill Gates: Stay out of my classroom. I'm a well-trained and experienced educator with a masters in my content area. I'm the expert, you're a 'retired' software peddler with no expertise in my field. Why are you telling me how to do my job?"

He's looking for investment opportunities to increase his billions. Still, I don't see how they're going to get this past the parents. Kids are minors, so parents have to approve of any filming, right? Seems like a huge potential lawsuit.

That's SOP around here.

I would never allow videorecording, particularly if it involved the teacher. More parents need to say, "Hell, no!"

School locker searches, metal detectors, searching their bags. Kids have no privacy rights.

Anyone who uses their company email similarly has no expectation of privacy. Here in Dallas there are cameras everywhere and I prefer it that way.

Spending one's entire day under scrutiny of camera is no more healthy for the teacher than it is for students to spend their entire day under the scrutiny of certain teachers. School should be about developing the skills of reading, writing, math, and grammar and not about standardizing the contents of each child's mind, as if our goal is to fill up each little pitcher with every last idea in western civilization. Young people should have an opportunity and environment for self-development, instead of being whittled away at like a block of wood under the hands of a sculptor. Over half of our population sits around waiting for someone to tell them what to think. More freedom in our youth might get the adults used to the idea that we aren't supposed to feel like captives in the so-called "land of the free".

The October 2010 Scientific American, p.102, quoting the October 1860 issue:

A child who has been boxed up six hours in school might spend the next four hours in study, but it is impossible to develop the child’s intellect in this way. The laws of nature are inexorable. By dint of great and painful labor, the child may succeed in repeating a lot of words, like a parrot, but, with the power of its brain all exhausted, it is out of the question for it to really master and comprehend its lessons. The effect of the system is to enfeeble the intellect even more than the body. We never see a little girl staggering home under a load of books, or knitting her brow over them at eight o’clock in the evening, without wondering that our citizens do not arm themselves at once with carving knives, pokers, clubs, paving stones or any weapons at hand, and chase out the managers of our common schools, as they would wild beasts that were devouring their children.

That would hit a huge roadblock.