Should veteran teachers be tested in order to keep their job?

[ForgoTheConsequence]

Hillary Clinton thinks so.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/14/us/teachers-group-seems-to-relax-testing-view.html

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Boy, I hope no one holds me to ideas I held 30 years ago.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

4. She hasn't recanted it.

Apparently we're not suppose to hold her to ideas she had in the 2000's (iraq war, gay marriage, syria) either.



She supported testing new teachers in 2000 also.

[Igel]

6. That's an awfully high bar there.

I suppose I should have kept a file of all the things I believed or said because I know I haven't recanted a lot of them.

I mean, if it doesn't come up, if it's something that hadn't come up for years, if it's embarrassing, why should I stop everything and announce that I no longer think that Mahogany Rush is the greatest band ever? (Don't even ask me about the Bay City Rollers. Or The Sweet. Just don't. Still looking for that Spanish-language version of "Brown Eyed Girl" I heard on a station out of DC, though.)

In fact, it's likely it hasn't occurred to her any more than bands I briefly liked in the mid '70s and forgot about by '77 have.

If it's an issue, people ask. If it's not an issue, the older the view the more in doubt it is.

For the record, I support the testing of new teachers, too. It's standard law and regulation in pretty much every state.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

13. This wasn't just a brief idea she had.

This was something she pushed for, and was quite a big deal in the 80's. The NAACP called the idea "racist" and the teachers unions were pissed. Given she still supported testing teachers in the 2000s its not a high bar at all. And when your platform changes with every little political wind it's not unreasonable to expect that people will wonder what your positions really are.


Comparing this to you having shitty taste in the 70's is more than disingenuous, it's idiotic.

[SheilaT]

2. Think of the larger issue.

Should anyone in any profession need to be tested to keep the job?

It's not a simple yes or no. Airline pilots are tested every single year because we want them to have very sharp skills. In the airline industry, they tend to to recurrent training and testing of people like flight attendants and ticket agents as well.

Lawyers have to take Continuing Ed courses to maintain their licenses.

There are probably lots of other fields that test that I don't know about.

Teachers almost always still have to take continuing ed type classes. About 25 years ago my son's first grade teacher sighed over this. She'd been teaching long enough that she'd already taken every possible relevant course and found it to be a bunch of crap. I considered her a pretty good teacher.

But there's an underlying issue that's barely being discussed in all this testing. Who is making up the tests? How are they validated? Who is scoring the tests?

The crucial thing in my opinion is how the tests are validated, because it's quite clear that ever since No Child Left Behind became law thousands of new tests have sprung up, and a lot of them aren't very good.

Oh, and just in case anyone has forgotten, back when NCLB was passed, people who looked at it said This is guaranteed to make every single school in this country a failing school by 2014.

[Igel]

7. And would the test be "teaching" or "subject"?

Teaching fads come and go, mostly changing their names. There's usually a pedagogy test for such things and the laws and regs that go with teaching. Those change, too.

Content doesn't change that much, but standards do. Even then, there are fads. My pre-calc course in high school is radically different from the one I see taught at my high school. Then again, it's exactly the same. Words have changed, procedures have changed, but it's really the same. It's just when I solve a problem for one of my kids they stare at me like I'm crazy--"That's not how Mrs. Marple taught us." I don't teach pre-calc.

[LWolf]

9. And, if

Obama hadn't offered waivers to NCLB, that prediction would have been pretty close.

Of course, those waivers were worse; the negatives of NCLB have been magnified under Obama.

Your larger issue?

Teachers are tested on subject matter competency. We don't get our teaching license without passing those tests. If I've already proved competency, I don't need to keep doing so. It's not like I'm going to suddenly lose what I know about a subject.

Already, if a teacher wants to teach a different subject, there are subject matter competency tests required to be licensed to teach that subject. Already, in order to keep our licences, we are required to be constantly updated on new research, new ideas, and new methods.

So NO, veteran teachers don't need to keep taking tests to prove subject matter competency we've already proved.

[jwirr]

3. No more damned tests.

[-none]

5. NO!!!11!!~ Because by the time they are veteran teachers, everyone concerned already knows if

they are any good or not. This is just more crap to keep the good teachers down, or move them out, instead of letting the good teachers excel at teaching.

[Igel]

8. It's flame bait.

Old position.

The real issue isn't "to test veteran teachers or not."

The real issue is your choice of
"do we insist that everything a politician has ever said be taken to be the politician's current platform"

or

"how many ways can we find to diss the horrible, nasty candidate we don't like and spin things to make our fantastic, awesome guy look even awesomer."

I'll probably be alerted on because I said "awesomer," meaning I'm accusing a DUer of potentially using improper grammar and thereby demeaning him.

[-none]

10. Ahh, that makes more better sense.

Thanks.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

14. Ahh the old "IM OFFENDED BY THE FACTS!" argument.

It's not flame bate, you just don't have a suitable response and that pisses you off. I recommend the sticking your fingers in your ears and stomping your feet maneuver.

[99Forever]

11. I'm a veteran crane operator and lift operator...

... I get tested annually as to my skills and abilities.

Do I whine about it? Nope, I just prove myself and move on.

What's the problem?

[MineralMan]

12. Well, she did in 1985, apparently.

Much has changed in the past 30 years, I believe, including some of Hillary Clinton's positions on things.

Has she said anything about this more recently?

[ForgoTheConsequence]

15. She supported teacher testing as a senator in New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/05/nyregion/lazio-and-mrs-clinton-put-schools-at-the-forefront.html



She also supported merit pay for teachers.

"I support school-based merit pay. We need to get more teachers to go into hard-to-serve areas. We’ve got to get them into underserved urban areas, underserved rural areas. The school is a team, and it’s important that we reward that collaboration. A child who moves from kindergarten to sixth grade in the same school, every one of those teachers is going to affect that child. You need to weed out the teachers not doing a good job. That’s the bottom line. They should not be teaching our children." - Hillary Clinton 2007

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. I can see both sides of the tenure issue.

The longer you work at a job the more seniority you have and that should be rewarded. On the other hand seniority can be abused.