Randi Weingarten said teachers should have a bar exam. Joel Klein said the same thing today. (Atlantic)
“Forget about tenure, forget about seniority,” D.C.’s union chief said alongside Rhee. (Fast Company)
The UFT brought in $125.5 million in 2010-2011 but, like many locals, operated at a deficit. (EIA)
A list of city schools that are especially good for students with disabilities has 53 entries. (Insideschools)
Publishers are responding to the Common Core, but education officials are still skeptical. (EdWeek)
Children in foster care are especially vulnerable in Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath. (Child Welfare Watch)
School custodians, such as those readying I.S. 211, have worked tirelessly since Sandy. (SchoolBook)
Students at a Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools became rapidly less poor recently. (Flypaper)
A new analysis finds that L.A. teachers have an unusually wide range in effectiveness. (Teacher Beat)
Eight states did not have a single district submit a Race to the Top-District application. (Politics K-12)
A longtime education policy wonk previews the Assembly’s likely ed issues this year. (Ed in the Apple)
A TFA critic says he was pleasantly surprised by his visit to KIPP’s NYC high school. (Gary Rubinstein)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tommy-Calderon/100000263260717 Tommy Calderon
Can we assume that if teachers pass a bar exam, they will be compensated like lawyers – and remember, it’s not just about salary!
Leonie
Bad mistake in the Fast Company article you link to: George Parker who is quoted as opposing tenure and seniority is identified as the current president of the DC teachers union. INstead he lost his re-election and now works for Rhee so it’s no surprise that he agrees with everything she says.
I noticed that…
If teachers pass a bar exam, wouldn’t union leaders be apprehensive when all these teacher-lawyers start questioning any contractual proposal place in front of them? Hey, does Randi really want 1.5 million teacher-lawyers questioning her?
Randi, be careful what you wish for!
http://twitter.com/nycdoenuts nycdoenuts
Wow, the former union president now works for Rhee?
Next thing you know, there will be cognitive harmony between Randi and Uncle Joel.
Oh wait …
Guest
yes if they work in dv and really raise test scores
Lijnancie4
Klein is still hanging around? These old, ugly white guys crack me up. Instead of enjoying their golden years and spending their millions, they want to pretend to care about the povished minority children in the ghetto. Gimmie a break! Once a money hog, always a money hog. What a disgrace, and Newscorp is a phony company with Bloomberg’s backing. All in the fam.
Tim
There are many, many, many lawyers who make less than teachers, particularly if you factor in the fringe benefits. Public interest lawyers, lawyers in solo private practice, public defenders/district attorneys in rural areas, and so forth.
And the highly paid attorneys are often either A. guys who kill what they eat and can lose big as well as gain, or B. partners at big firms who got there by excelling at the nation’s elite universities and law schools and then working 100+ hour weeks for 10+ years. So there is a strong ‘merit’ component to attorney compensation that you may not be on board with.
Tim
I’d strongly support a ‘bar exam’ for teachers, provided it tested general content knowledge and not only ed school gobbledygook. In my experience content knowledge can be a real problem at the elementary school level, sometimes shockingly so.
BloombergMustGo
Well put, especially since the gobbledygook tends to change every few years depending on who won the latest consulting contracts. The lack of strong content knowledge, and the resultant de-emphasizing of its significance has been one of the building blocks of the Bloomberg, et. al.’s campaign to trivialize teachers. It is also the reason there are so many academically unqualified supervisory personnel in the Bloomberg universe of education.
The “bar exam” concept, if properly implemented, is almost a necessity at this point.
Alex Freidus
I think your editorial synopsis of Gary Rubinstein’s piece is really off-track and misleading. While Rubinstein does say that he was surprised by a couple of aspects of his visit to KIPP, he certainly doesn’t say that he was impressed by the teaching and learning or that KIPP was “better” than he thought. Honestly, after clicking through and reading the piece, I had to question your motivation in describing it this way. Were you trying to get people to think that even “TFA critics” like KIPP? Or were you just being a little bit lazy in your reading?
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