The teacher wars. The Teacher Wars 2022-11-17
The teacher wars
Rating:
6,3/10
479
reviews
The "teacher wars" is a term used to describe the ongoing debate and conflict surrounding the role and importance of teachers in education. On one side of the argument are those who believe that teachers are the most important factor in a student's education and that they should be given the resources and support they need to be effective. On the other side are those who argue that other factors, such as funding and school resources, are more important in determining student success.
One major point of contention in the teacher wars is the issue of teacher pay. Many teachers argue that they are underpaid and that their low salaries are a major barrier to attracting and retaining highly qualified educators. Supporters of this view argue that teacher pay should be increased in order to attract and retain the best and brightest in the profession. They also argue that higher pay would help to improve the overall quality of education by attracting more highly qualified candidates to the profession.
Another issue at the center of the teacher wars is the role of teacher unions. Teacher unions are organizations that represent the interests of teachers and advocate for better pay and working conditions. Some argue that teacher unions are an essential part of the education system, as they help to protect the rights and interests of teachers. Others, however, argue that teacher unions have too much power and can sometimes be a barrier to education reform.
A third issue in the teacher wars is the role of standardized testing in evaluating the effectiveness of teachers. Some argue that standardized test scores are an important measure of teacher effectiveness, as they provide a consistent and objective way to compare student performance. Others argue that standardized test scores are not an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness and that they put too much pressure on teachers to teach to the test.
Overall, the teacher wars reflect a deep-seated disagreement about the most effective ways to improve education and the role that teachers should play in this process. While it is clear that teachers are an important factor in student success, it is also clear that other factors, such as funding and school resources, also play a significant role. Ultimately, finding a way to balance the needs and concerns of all stakeholders in education, including teachers, students, parents, and policy makers, will be key to resolving the teacher wars and improving education for all.
The teacher wars: a history of America's most embattled profession
In her groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education, Dana Goldstein finds answers in the past to the controversies that plague our public schools today. Writing about such efforts in Austin recently, Goldstein is blunt: Underperforming teachers were not hiding some sort of amazing skill set they failed to use either because they were too lazy or were disgruntled about low pay; they were already trying as hard as they could to improve student learning, but they did not have the skills to do so. The first one, at Lexington, Massachusetts, today is Framingham State University. . After the Civil War, the need for freed slaves to learn to read and write was crucial. In short, it teaches well. The chapter titles of the book illustrate her discussions.
Next
‎The Teacher Wars on Apple Books
Public education in the Old North State has become more than a politically charged debate; it is a topic that sways votes and midterm elections are approaching quickly. Board of Education decision that declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. My goal was to try and demystify this lightning-rod organization. Both are exaggerations, designed to obscure a political subtext. Beecher and Mann, along with Anthony and Cooper, provide Goldstein with three very different portraits of 19th -century educators. She got her start as a school teacher, but soon found the pay demeaning and the subject matter dull. The Teacher Wars reminds us that good teaching is an essential, if not sufficient, part of fulfilling these larger goals.
Next
The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession
The spirited bravery and achievements of Edward Pierce and Charlotte Forten in teaching stand as monuments to their beliefs in fairness, civility, and opportunity. Early reformers Catherine Beecher and Horace Mann envisioned secular education as an alternative to their own Calvinist upbringing. That is if one is willing to learn from the past. If one were to look at the terrain of North Carolina public education, it would be easy to make a list of various players and initiatives: vouchers, Teach For America, charters, teacher recruitment, value-added measures, data-driven results, Common Core, Race to the Top, merit pay, philanthropic funding, etc. The legacies of Beecher and Mann are long and profound.
Next
The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession by Dana Goldstein
It also pinpoints how localization goes against what should be the starting point for any conversation about education: that schooling should be public, common; that it should be about the shared world we hope to create or keep alive for our children. What Goldstein does is uncover the roots of those manifestations. In short, it teaches well. Cheating, once the provenance of cavalier students, had become the specialty of staff. Goldstein demonstrates that, from the mid 19th century to today, the plight of the American teacher has aligned with the plight of progressivism in general. Board of Education decision that declared segregation in schools unconstitutional.
Next
Teacher Wars
Many of the proposals Goldstein makes could, no doubt, be integral parts of a larger project of education reform. It is detached from opinion where needs be and offers erudite opinions without dominating. Beecher and Mann, while sloughing their Puritan skin, disclosed an even deeper core of Puritanism. Underfunded, overcrowded schools had difficulty retaining talented and ambitious teachers, who often went North, where their prospects improved. What are they doing wrong? Of course, we aver—with no sense of our own knack for self-contradiction—if the better teachers prove more effective, then their pay shall reflect it. These two strategies make her book compulsive reading, especially for people who know only the very recent history of the teaching profession in the last decade or two. It also makes a convincing case that education reform must account for particular local concerns, needs, and approaches.
Next
The teacher wars : a history of America's most embattled profession : Goldstein, Dana : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
A serious conversation about improving schools would start by talking about investment in teachers with the expectation of union transparency and collaboration with thecommunity. According to Dana Goldstein, there's nothing new about the conventional wisdom. At the start, expectations for schools were impossibly high. We need to know where we have been in our commitment to public education before we can go forward with sensible planning and practice. Goldstein argues that long-festering ambivalence about teachers--are they civil servants or academic professionals? While her own views are often quite clear, she does have history speak for itself. That successful teachers do succeed often appears to be in spite of heavy odds against reaching their goals. Today, teachers have many advocates and opponents—many people willing to provide an opinion on how best to do their job—but Goldstein convincingly argues that the profession still lacks the reputation that befits its importance to society.
Next
The Teacher Wars: A Review in Two Parts
North Carolinians only have to look at the current Innovative School District and its shaky start to see but an example of a community wanting to have a say in its public schools. Recruit more men and people of color. Goldstein puts the failure of this style of education reform in the context of similarly ill-conceived top-down approaches attempted over the past decades. A top-down approach is certainly a burden when it constrains itself to rigid notions of what can be quantified and analyzed. More importantly, it reminds us how a noble cause looks in comparison with a base cause.
Next
The Teacher Wars
It is now out in paperback. Might we want to throw it across the room at times? A collectivist perspective on education would, for example, acknowledge the importance of universal preschool and, as Goldstein emphasizes often, the still-incomplete task of desegregation. I grew up in Ossining, New York. Goldstein recounts almost two centuries of friction between male and female teachers, community control and centralized authority, states' rights advocates and desegregationists, teachers unions and non-unionized charter school advocates, veteran teachers and inexperienced neophytes. Hopefully I will write more books! How can they be motivated to do better? Washington also show some of those same dynamics concerning curriculum working a century ago. Much like the educators formed in the Mann and Beecher mold—who struck out West, to inculcate the mass of pioneers—the educators who heeded the call to go South found themselves presented with a difficult task that was nonetheless undertaken with missionary zeal. She clearly sees education as crucial to how a country defines itself.
Next
Q&A: Teach for America's place in ‘The Teacher Wars’
But the lessons of those failures should not be to scale down our approach; it should be to shift its fundamental perspective. At times, Goldstein seems convinced by particular large-scale failures that we should give up the dream of large-scale reform in general. The reality is that the pressures of trying to meet such expectations have led to numerous cases of cheating and a charter schools system that prides itself on high test scores, but threatens to create two distinct tiers of service in public education. Even the most deprived individual should have the opportunity to improve his earthly lot. Then, when externally mandated solutions fail, they take the blame. I was certain she would love school. In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been similarly embattled for nearly two centuries.
Next