Schools of Education and DOE Regulations–A Closer Look
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40 responses to “Schools of Education and DOE Regulations–A Closer Look”
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Mine is a series, Dick. I’ll be back to it soon. As for this article, it’s Labor Day weekend. I’m at the beach. Back later.
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An inauspicious beginning does indeed make a series.
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Especially if you don’t let pesky things like facts get in the way of jumping to conclusions.
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Thank you for a fair and objective article. We need more of these and less of the ones that need to be read with a jaundiced eye.
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Would you book a flight with an airline if, every day, 40 percent of their flights were cancelled because of mechanical problems with their aircraft? Would you take a drug that caused adverse reactions in 40 percent of the people who take it? Would you buy a car or television from a company whose quality control was so poor that 40 percent of their products failed to work when you took them home?
Why then, should parents be satisfied with a public school system in which 40 percent of the students can’t read or do math at grade level? And why is criticizing educators and education schools for this appalling lack of quality and performance wrong? The problem isn’t angry parents. The problem isn’t the kids whose needs are going unmet. The problem is that the people responsible for running public schools are failing miserably. And they are failing to a degree we would never accept from an airline, a pharmaceutical company or a car maker.
Why should we invest more money in people and a system so awful and so very resistant to change?
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Virginia is in the top 10 in the nation on k-12 schools. Hardly a “failure”.
You make the curriculum tougher and guess what happens -more kids will fail.
You cite airlines. They’re in the news almost every day for cancelling flights and delayed flights. Failures?
How many cars are recalled every year?
How many drugs are determined to be harmful and lawsuits and warnings to stop using?
Not sure what exactly you’re looking for but Nirvana is not a choice.
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Larry, we all know that airlines cancel flights, that cars break down and a small fraction are recalled for repairs that make them safer and more reliable.
We know most drugs work. Except those who didn’t want to take the world’s first mRNA vaccine.
The fact is, the overwhelming majority of the time, they meet expectations.In terms of what I’m looking for — How about 85% to 90% pass rates, instead of 40% fail rates? We’d still be expecting less from educators that airlines, drug makers and auto makers.
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How do you get 40% “fail” rates if Va ranks in the top 10 for all states?
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BTW – NAEP includes both public and private schools:
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“ED” = “economically disadvantaged,” essentially those students who qualify for the free lunch program. “Not ED” are their more affluent peers.
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Yes. If you did not include the ED , Virginia would score even higher and probably compare to PISA countries.
Our problem is not the regular schooling and kids – we do well at that – better than most other states.
Where we “fail” is with ED kids urban, rural and suburban with the exception of Mr. Hurtt’s Region VII.
This “failure” happens in county systems that score high on the SOLs overall – like Fairfax, Henrico, Chesterfield, etc.
Richmond’s issue is that they have a large number of ED kids AND they don’t do any better with them than other counties with small numbers of ED who also do as poorly as Richmond.
I’ve posted here before the 20-some schools in Henrico who score just as badly as Richmond does – same problem – ED kids.
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If schools are failing to meet the needs of kids everywhere, then there’s not much comfort in being among the best of a bad lot.
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You do realize that NAEP scores include private schools, right?
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Achieving “Basic” feels like a failure to me when the goal should be to make every student “Proficient.” Why should parents and taxpayers settle for “Basic?”
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And, where is the evidence that most kids can’t become proficient?
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I am not defending the teacher licensure requirements or the schools of education. As I said at the beginning of the article, I have long been skeptical of them.
I certainly don’t think criticizing educators and education schools is wrong. There is much to criticize.
What is wrong is leveling broad, exaggerated charges without any documentation. Jim Sherlock wants readers to believe that all the problems with teacher training and licensure emanate from the 2020 and 2021 when the Democrats came into power and the education schools “captured” the regulatory process. This is despite the fact that the system of teacher education and licensure stretches back over decades. The one piece of evidence he offers to substantiate his claims are the changes made to the primary Code section on teacher licensure, changes he claims “created a whole new teacher qualifications regime.” An examination of those changes reveals one substantive change along with a few marginal changes. He claims that the Democrats made changes to “virtually” all the provision of law respecting public education, when that is demonstrably not so.
I believe there is a case to be made that the teacher licensure requirements and the schools of education are not serving the Commonwealth well. But a partisan-based rant that does not even attempt to examine and analyze the actual regulations in place does not make that case.
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Thanks for your examination of the record and straightforward fact based presentation.
Sherlock has once again exercised his jesuit MO of jumping to conclusions, making broadly judgemental accusations based on little to no evidence and/or making things up.
Sherlock is no Holmes.
In his comment above Sherlock has promised more of the same, that this is a series. Please dig in and be ready to debunk even more incoming nonsense. Perhaps after that is accomplished we can evolve into a useful, and needed discussion of licensure and schools of education.
“Would you book a flight with an airline if, every day, 40 percent of their flights were cancelled because of mechanical problems with their aircraft?”
Which airlines is that? It would make them one of the better of them.
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Name a national carrier that cancels 40 percent of its flights every day because there’s a mechanical problem with the aircraft?
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Would you consider lack of crew to be a “mechanical problem”?
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An issue with all on board systems, from engines to instrumentation to landing gear to flight surfaces and controls. Not weather. Not lack of crew.
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Oh, then 40% makes them just mediocre.
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You’ve clearly never boarded a 757 in Manchester NH bound for Norfolk VA at 10PM with only 10 passengers. It’s a guaranteed mechanical failure.
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Sombitch, we’ve had a mechanical failure, y’all will have to take a bus back to Norfolk. 🙂
OTOH, they’ve still got to get the 757 to Norfolk for where it’s going in the morning.
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I’d rather ride a carrier that found mechanical problems and grounded the planes than flew defective planes.
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Fix on the ground, or fix in the air. That’s your choices.
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Fixing in the air can have precipitous outcomes, as in pieces parts and people raining down.
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Duct tape. Lots and lots of duct tape.
Every time I fly, I carry 10′ of wire rope in my briefcase. In case anything goes wrong, I can break out a window any dangle one end outside. It’ll catch on something.
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A few years ago my wife decided to sky dive. That the raggedy ass jump plane was largely held together with duct tape encouraged her to actually jump.
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Jump from a perfectly good airplane? And a perfectly good airplane is one that’s on fire and corkscrewing at 90 degrees toward the ground.
The difference between golf and skydiving…
WHACK! Oh $#!^!
Oh $#!^! WHACK! -
Sequence is everything.
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How’s the wire rope work when it goes through the TSA scanner? 🙂 Do they do a double take like they did years ago when I had a bottle of scotch in my carry on? OTOH, duct tape and WD40 can fix many of the world’s problems.
Wire rope is not on the list of prohibited items. Oddly, 200′ of anchor chain is. Never understood why. Fits under the seat.
Great article. Thanks Dick.
There are alternatives… just pick one of the 6 best countries for teaching without a license or Bachelors required…
https://www.internationalteflacademy.com/blog/6-best-countries-to-teach-english-without-college-degree
ab
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What we might want to compare is the way teachers are licensed and accredited in very good school systems like the states rated higher than Virginia on NAEP – like Massachusetts and New Jersey.
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