Fluff no more

Multiple posts today because there is just so much going on in education. The first concerns a great blog post and subsequent comments by Joanne Jacobs on New York City’s teacher and student requirements. The blog post is definitely worth a read as are the comments that people have left about the post.

One of the things that absolutely drives me crazy in education is the fluff that gets passed off as critical elements of the teaching practice or learning process. Joanne’s article calling out New York for excessive fluff is dead on. For me, the two most annoying terms to me are ‘reflection’ and ‘portfolio’. Only in education can going home and thinking about what you did right and wrong during the day can have a fancy term and be held in such high esteem. And only in education could you submit a collection of your best work and have it be the determination as to your ability to perform on a daily basis.

Now – both of these have a place in helping teachers become better teachers so I will end the extremist rhetoric with that thought. Yes teachers should take a good hard look at what they are doing right and wrong. And yes we should look at a portfolio of their work to ensure that we see signs of solid performance. But we should not talk about it as if this brings teaching into the highest levels of achievement. We need real performance evaluations to truly judge our teachers.

The Irate Parent Ploy

Joanne Jacobs has a post on sports in high school. While the point is improving leadership skills, I am driven to respond to the other issue that will come up more often in the next few years: threatening to cut sports and after school activities due to budget constraints.

It always amazes me that there are no inefficiencies in school districts since this is never a part of these budget cut discussions. The “cutting sports and after school activities” ploy is used by many superintendents as a great way to get parents totally up in arms and protesting to the county for more money for schools. Since the parents of the kids that participate in these activities are usually pretty involved, the supe can get the response they need to get more money for the district.

In Loudoun County, where we live, they are going to charge $100 per student to participate in sports next year to make ends meet. I have no problem paying since that investment is certainly well worth that price. And if students can’t afford it, they will bring back fundraisers and have a hardship process.

In the mean time, every business in America that wants to survive this recession will have done a total review of all spending and make the sharp cuts necessary to increase efficiency. Is it too much to ask for school districts to actually analyze their budgets and find efficiencies instead of using the irate parent ploy?