Building a Better Teacher

Doug Lemov gets to the point... well, at least one of the points that are of importance when looking at educational outcomes... "The smarter path to boosting student performance, Lemov maintains, is to improve the quality of the teachers who are already teaching."


This is the path I favor in improving educational outcomes. We can't just sellout and fire all of the teachers in failing schools. We have to help the ones who need help and want it. If they don't want it, then out they go. Too many teachers are victims of poor training, and I don't think it's fair to hold them accountable where the system has failed them without offering to help make up the difference. We also need to elevate the standards for those coming into the classroom now and in the future so that the cycle is ended, and we need to pay teachers in accordance with the significance of the job they do.

Nothing new in this article from my perspective. It's just something that needs to be said. Subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical competence add up to good teaching. PERIOD


Building a Better Teacher - NYT Article

School’s Shake-Up Is Embraced by the President

If an entire faculty needs to be fired - which I find hard to believe yet not impossible - then there are clearly some deep and pervasive issues here.

School’s Shake-Up Is Embraced by the President - NYT Article

Bill Perkins Opposes Charter Schools Popular in Harlem

Mr. Perkins' voice needs to be heard. I'm with him insofar as questioning the wholesale selling out of public schools that seems to be being advocated today. If bureaucracy is such a huge issue for public schools, then let's change the system so that we can devise better ways to educate!

“When you are dying of thirst, you will drink whatever is wet,” Mr. Perkins said of the parents who yearn for more charter schools. “You are at the mercy of whoever is holding out some hope for you. So I don’t see the number of applicants as evidence of success for charters, I see it as evidence of failure of others.”

Bill Perkins Opposes Charter Schools Popular in Harlem - NYTimes.com