Thursday, January 12, 2012

Have you read these articles?

The first is about the lovely study last fall which concluded that teachers are overpaid. Since I'm having significant difficulty these days keeping my head above water (never mind building up savings), I just don't understand how they reached their conclusion. But then, as a teacher, it's well established that I'm not very bright, so it must be WAY over my head. Here's the link:  http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/01/11/17richwine.h31.html?tkn=WZQFDKeM7aBYfNlR9oUH6TYmsAoXCQk0u%2FiS&cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS2

The second is about the recent study which shows that students who have an excellent teacher in 4th grade are a whole 1.25% more likely to attend college and less likely to get pregnant as a teenager, by the same percentage. The study also concluded that the future salary impact of just one excellent teacher during grades 4-8 is a whopping 1% at.... age 28. So, I guess the take-home lesson here is that I can blame my financial situation on NOT having had one of those great teachers. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/kristof-the-value-of-teachers.html

So, now, the question is: Am I a teacher because I'm a dummy, or because I had dummies for teachers?

MONDAY UPDATE 1/16/12: It turns out that all is not as clear as it seemed. Not a surprise. The data used for this earth=shattering study is over 10 years old. In other words, pre-NCLB, Will it hold true in he madness of AYP, RTTT, EOCT, HSGT, ABC123? Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/education/study-on-teacher-value-uses-data-from-before-teach-to-test-era.html?src=recg

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