Monday, September 9, 2013

Innocent by Reason of Fairness.

The bipartisan panel investigating the Tony Bennett incident of grade fixing concluded he did nothing "nefarious". The changes made to get a benchmark charter school up to an "A" rating were applied across the board and likely even improved the grades of urban schools. FWCS might even have gotten to hang up their "A rated" banners again. But they protested too much. Like with the computer glitches during ISTEP which turned out to have no measurable effect on the scores.

What Bennett did was just ill advised, especially when the education establishment held him in such contempt. So he gave them an opening to denounce testing and grading, which they also despise, while telling us they welcome accountability. Hey, not everyone was socially promoted.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Write what you will, but Bennett's wife was hired by the charter school that he bent the rules for. When you say bipartisan you mean five Republicans for every one Democrat. Parents need to start parenting and maybe the scores would improve, but as long as parents have people like you blaming public education for society's ills this will never happen.

Code Blue Schools said...

The first time I ran for school board Karen O'Frisco" wrote me off because I "blamed the parents". That proves that it's not the parents.

So if there's nothing you can do with these kids then what's the problem letting someone else try. That's what the charter school people are trying to do, If they fail, then they'll disappear, or do you believe they're just in it to make money?

Your inflation adjusted funding has increased threefold over the last four decades with no improvement in educational achievement. There are countries like Poland that achieve the same academic results as the US spending half as much per student. So if this is the best you can do with these kids let's cut your funding in half and see what happens. What you're losing to vouchers and charter schools is insignificant compared to the taxes we're paying for what amounts to overpriced day care.

Anonymous said...

You are such a wise man.

Code Blue Schools said...

Read Ball State Economics Prof. Hicks column in the business section of yesterday's NS, ranking Indiana's education system as "dismal to undistinguished."

Anonymous said...

Maybe we should blame Prof. Hicks. If he did a better job educating future teachers maybe we would not be in this position.

Code Blue Schools said...

Prof. Hicks is an economist, who's quoted in national media. He's not in the school of education, which he called a "bastion of mediocrity" in an earlier column.

Finland, which supposedly has the best teachers, started by closing all their education schools and picking future teachers from the top 10% of their college applicants.

Anonymous said...

I am sure Finland started their teachers out at a low salary. I wonder if Prof. Hicks ever ran a business or a school. I doubt it. It is a lot easier to throw comments from the sidelines than enter the fray.

Code Blue Schools said...

Teachers in Finland make about the same as they do here. But since the selection process is much more stringent and those selected attend the elite universities the statue of a teacher in Finland is comparable to an MD.

Here we let anyone go to a college of education and we graduate twice as many teachers as we need. They're diploma mills, much like our public high schools. Dr. Hicks as a professor of economics, also known as the dismal science, knows dismal when he sees it. He should come to an FWCS board meeting.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Hicks should try the private sector. I wonder if Dr. Hicks ever received a paycheck from a free business venture instead of an easy government university paycheck? I bet Dr. Hicks teaches three classes a week and spends the rest of his time walking the streets of Muncie throwing out his wise comments to anyone that will listen. Hicks sounds a lot like someone I know.

gadfly said...

You will find that Giaquinta ESQ is politicking outside the confines of FWCS about that horrible Tony Bennett and the unfair school rating system.

His comments are published at NYU Professor Diane Ravitch's blog and also at Balloon Juice.

Code Blue Schools said...

Diane Ravitch has become a paid speaker/shill for the AFT, BFF with Randi Weingarten.

BTW, I was offered a position teaching chemistry at Canterbury, but declined to join the fray in favor of snow birding.

Anonymous said...

I didn't realize Canterbury's standards had fallen so low.

Anonymous said...

Improving teacher education in this country, starting by raising admission standards, may be the first concrete solution you have ever mentioned. Congrats.

Code Blue Schools said...

You'll have to ask the three GiaQuinta kids who went to Canterbury about their standards. I did teach three (different) kids in a calculus class with 800 scores on their math SAT.

Raising standards for admission to education colleges has been discussed for a long time. it would put most of them out of business, so it won't be easy. But that's what needs to happen.

Anonymous said...

No. What needs to happen is for you and you queer professor to take over the United States and tell us idiots what to do. Fuck GiaQuinta. You are the real deal.

Anonymous said...

I work in with private schools, much more elite than Canterbury. For myself, Canterbury is a low-rent cash operation that provides mediocre to average kids in Fort Wayne a path to a Ph.D. in Latin History. A few students will come out of Canterbury and do well for themselves, but I have found several of the kids do well because of ties to old connections in town. If parents were really serious about great education, then they would send their child to a boarding school on the East or West coast, where students get one-on-one attention, more rigorous academics and better cultural perspectives.

Code Blue Schools said...

Canterbury has four or five National Merit scholarship finalists every year, FWCs has one or two in the whole district. Typically 100% passed ISTEP and the ECA. When they put their senior class listing in the paper their colleges are much more impressive than any other system in the county. No IVY Techs maybe one IPFW.

I don't know what other private schools you're familiar with.

Code Blue Schools said...

Need a Hawaii birth certificate to take over the country. Aloha.

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