Senate Bill: Atlasian Education Modernization Act (Rejected)

[TJ in Oregon]

Banning private schools from funding themselves through tuition would effectively ban religious schools unless the government is willing to fully fund them, which I doubt anyone here would support, including me. I have no problem with charter schools or vouchers, so long as the charter schools are nonprofits. Competition, if structured properly, makes everyone better.

I have a potpourri of other concerns:
1. I will oppose TNF's suggestion of requiring a master's degree. Teaching does not require such an advanced specialized pool of knowledge that four years of higher education does not suffice, and if that is the case we may want to consider reforming our higher education system. Master's degrees for most teachers are simply a bureaucratic hoop that much be jumped through.
2. I don't necessarily disagree with the line giving teachers the ability to choose their textbooks, but I think we need to give schools the power to ensure all teachers instructing the same course are using the same textbook.
3. Requiring recess in all grade levels is a waste of time. High schoolers are not going to make good use of recess time to further their physical conditioning. It just makes their lives more complicated by adding another hour of something required to their day.
4. I don't think the federal government should require study hall. Let the schools make that decision.
5. How can there be a federal standardized test with no federal curriculum?

[TJ in Oregon]

So I take it that no one's on board with giving every student the opportunity to attend any school they want, regardless if the school is public or private?  Because if we can't agree on something as basic as that, the bill is practically DOA, and I will scrap the entire thing.

I would be on board with creating a vouncher system for students in poorly performing impoverished areas to do that, but I can't support fully funding all private schools like this.

[TJ in Oregon]

So you want the government to fund all private schools but are against vouchers? Why? The point of funding students at a private schools is to make it so parents can have a choice about their childrens' education. If we have the government annex all the private schools and make them into public ones, then there's no point in having a choice anymore because all the choices are the same.

[TJ in Oregon]

I would like to direct the Senate to a bill we passed in the Mideast in late 2012. There are definitely some good ideas in here on how teachers should be paid, evaluated and receive education level promotions.  

https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/A.R._2:_Teaching_Reform_Act_of_2012

I think the Mideast system is quite good, but I also don't think the federal government needs to outline a particular formula to the extent of the Mideast's. I would be fine with specifying that the system must take performance into account in some fashion, but that's as far as I think we ought to go on the federal level.

[TJ in Oregon]

date=1373484942]

No quantifiable data, just anecdotes here. What percentage of bad teachers are kept on the job because of their union, Scott? Actually, I'd like to know what this bill defines as a 'bad teacher', because nowhere does it define what are the grounds by which a principal may fire a teacher, it just gives a principal the right to terminate a teacher without regard to due process. You mention an evaluation procedure, but why should teachers not have a say in how they are evaluated? Surely a teacher-created or even co-created evaluation process is far more fair than a process determined by some bean counter at the DoIA or a school principal.

This is the mentality that leads to a stagnant and underperforming system. If you are performing significantly below the expectations of your boss in any field, you should be able to be fired. That's how the world works. People are employed to accomplish things, not to build their self-esteem. Being fired is not incarceration; it is not being charged with a crime. If folks believe they have been wrongfully terminated, there are lawsuits for that and thousands of such cases are brought forth every year. I don't see why teachers should be held to some other standard than the rest of the world.

TNF, I agree teachers have one of the most underpaying and thankless jobs around. I agree they should have the option to collectively bargain for better wages and benefits. However, I reject the notion that they are above performance or the notion that teachers should be deeply afraid of performance metrics. That's not to say standardized testing is all that great because it isn't. Performance should be based on a number of different criteria and one of them ultimately has to be the principal. Making employment decisions is part of an administration job and there's no real way around that. If the school doesn't trust its principals to make sound decisions, perhaps they should have hired different principals.

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay.  

The 180 days requirement is the only part of this I'd really support. I'm also a little bit conflicted on the 8 hours requirement. The mandatory recess, study hall, and not starting before 8am requirements, though, are unacceptable, especially in conjunction with the 8 hours part. If we're going to mandate longer school days, it had better not be for high schoolers to have recess and mandatory study, and we would then definitely need to allow them to start before 8am.

[TJ in Oregon]

Why do high schoolers need to have mandatory recess and why do kindergarteners need study hall? Or am I reading that wrong?

[TJ in Oregon]

If we're tests but want to change them up a bit, how about getting rid of multiple choice sections? What's wrong with putting having them simply put the answer on a blank answer line? I can see scenarios where multiple choice makes some sense in the reading section where there have to be options, but why are there multiple choice math questions?

[TJ in Oregon]

If we're tests but want to change them up a bit, how about getting rid of multiple choice sections? What's wrong with putting having them simply put the answer on a blank answer line? I can see scenarios where multiple choice makes some sense in the reading section where there have to be options, but why are there multiple choice math questions?

I would think the opposite. Multiple Choice for Maths and No-multiple choice for English.

Why would you ever want multiple choice math problems? You want people to have to actually solve them and come to the right answer, not plug in all the choices and get around actually solving the problem.

The reason why you would want them in English is questions like, "which of these words best completes the sentence?" where open-ended answers would turn grading into 50 shades of grey.

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay

[TJ in Oregon]

I object to 56:12 because I don't think study hall should be required and recess required for upper-level grades.

[TJ in Oregon]

That language is already in the current text. 56:12 is I think only focused on the school lunch issue.


This is why sometimes with Amendments, the lest text you incorporate, the better.

Objection withdrawn then.

[TJ in Oregon]

Aye

[TJ in Oregon]

Aye

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay

[TJ in Oregon]

Do English classes count as cultural?

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay

I think even if a school lacks the capability to teach music or dancing, there's no reason why a school would be unable to offer a course on poetry, prose, or the written word, for example. However, with already requiring four years of English and not permitting English to count as "cultural" I would not support requiring two additional years.

[TJ in Oregon]

Aye

Let's get this thing finally voted on.

[TJ in Oregon]

Nay