since you don’t really care about this issue, you allow yourself to be intellectually lazy in the discussion of this issue.

If you were riding in a car being driven by a maniac straight toward a cliff at 90 mph, would you argue with him about the last time he had his oil changed?

because this is of little import to you, i can never hope to have you look at what i say with any sort of critical thought. your responses demonstrate this well.

My dear carlos, you need not despair! I have been looking at what you say with all sorts of critical thoughts for this entire time. I guess I have not been trying hard enough. :-(

by the way, it’s ironic that you “don’t care enough about this issue to bother” yet posted on it yourself, and have thusfar responded with 4 additional comments. do i hear 5?

For you, my poor bitter carlos, anything. Yea, even unto a fifth comment. Yes, I did post about the topic myself. I think it’s a grand thing to tie teacher salaries to performance. I also think that, to continue the analogy, the car of government education is headed toward the cliff at 90 mph, and the issue of tying teacher salaries to performance is the equivalent of worrying about changing the oil. It’s important if you hope to maintain the vehicle, but in the big picture it’s not going to make much difference. I have no idea how long the government system will stay afloat. If I’m paying for this system anyway, then I’m all for somebody making it better (so long as it doesn’t cost me any more in taxes), but in the end, given the choice, I’d really just rather skip past all these little details and just not pay for the broken system.

As a side note, you could infer most this from the original post. I may not be passionate about debating the topic, but at least I did give you fair warning.

except the florida system has little to do with the free market.

“Whether or not government teachers’ pay is tied to performance is really a matter of little importance to me.”

well, i believe we have arrived at the crux of the problem. since you don’t really care about this issue, you allow yourself to be intellectually lazy in the discussion of this issue. because this is of little import to you, i can never hope to have you look at what i say with any sort of critical thought. your responses demonstrate this well.

i do however, look forward to your post vis a vis the privatization of education. since you seem to care about that issue, perhaps that discussion will prove more fruitful. perhaps.

by the way, it’s ironic that you “don’t care enough about this issue to bother” yet posted on it yourself, and have thusfar responded with 4 additional comments. do i hear 5?

But I know what you mean. I do fully grant that there are numerous valid arguments that don’t address the religious aspect. In my eyes, seeing the schools’ track record in academics alone ought to give Christian and atheist alike pause before putting their kids into government schools, but obviously millions of people don’t agree.

I’ll probably just get rid of the live preview thing, since it doesn’t preview Markdown syntax anyway. The post delay thing was due to Spam Karma 2 being on the aggressive side - it sent your comment into the moderation queue. There’d been some junk getting through lately, so I tweaked the settings. Obviously I need to tweak them some more.

Regarding the IE problem, it’s only in IE as now when I’m on Firefox, it’s very fast (real-time). That said, I made a post on Saturday that would only show up in Firefox and not show up in IE until after you posted. Weird. Good luck sorting it out.

As said above, the use or lack thereof of the proper punctuation has nothing to do with the merit of the argument.

Entirely possible. You’ll note that above, I indicated the problem arises in persuading anybody, regardless of the validity of the ideas in question. Good writing has everything to do with persuasive communication on a very basic level. A genius may have fabulous ideas, but a genius who cannot communicate those ideas in an educated and coherent manner will never convince anyone of their merit. Whether or not you like it (and I do), that’s reality for you.

As a proponent of such an idea, you should be educated on the opposing views and able to explain why public school sucks on a case by case basis.

I would be happy to outline the problems with the government schools. I’m short on time at the moment and will have to expand on this later (it probably deserves its own post), but in brief, the problems are these:

1. The government schools are a godless system, originally designed to indoctrinate Southern children and prevent any repeats of the War between the States. Such indoctrination has been tragically successful, as demonstrated by the gross misunderstanding and deforming of the federal governmental structure.
2. The government schools are an academic nightmare. Try to compare today’s famous thinkers with the brilliant men of the past. The modern school system has simply failed to produce anything that the classical method turned out, despite the fact that the population is overwhelmingly larger today than ever before (suggesting that, proportionally speaking, we ought to have a lot more John Calvins and Aristotles and Thomas Jeffersons, not less). The fact that (speaking in generalities) I can get a better education from a homemaker than a professional government teacher says something.

There are a bunch of smaller issues that are worth pursuing, but off the top of my head, I think they all roll into one of these two categories in a broad sense. A system that publicly denies God will inevitably teach lies, and our current system doesn’t even do that well. For more details, a good book to read is Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Douglas Wilson.

FYI, though an interesting concept, your comment format makes for incredibly slow typing if someone is uing IE to browse your site.

Interesting! I’d not been aware of that; thanks for pointing it out. Now I’ll have to decide whether IE merits any time fixing the problem. :-)

Your argument about the use of proper punctuation, though correctly punctuated, is poor. As said above, the use or lack thereof of the proper punctuation has nothing to do with the merit of the argument. Doing such is akin to dismissing a logically correct argument by discrediting the arguer. Logic stands apart from punctuation. ‘Nuff said.

To your second point, I disagree. Why do you believe the public school system should be dismantled? As a proponent of such an idea, you should be educated on the opposing views and able to explain why public school sucks on a case by case basis. That is, unless you believe the untested idea simply on theoretical grounds, which is okay, but doesn’t make for the strongest argument.

FYI, though an interesting concept, your comment format makes for incredibly slow typing if someone is uing IE to browse your site. Cheers-

thanks for you comment matt. why not leave a comment on my post? anyway…

Two reasons: firstly, I don’t care enough about this issue to bother. Secondly, why should I? If I want to talk to you, you’re right here!

Unless, of course, your comments here were designed solely to drive more traffic to your own site…in that case, I understand your pique. It’s a laudable effort, no doubt about it, but I do have a couple of tips to help you for next time: 1) pick a blog with more traffic than mine, 2) despite the overwhelming temptation, do your best to refrain from outright begging people to comment on your posts. It’s classier that way.

communism? where the hell did that come from?

From your seeming allergic reaction to incentives of any sort, which you have since denied. My mistake.

HOW DOES A STUDENT’S PEFORMANCE ON A SINGLE TEST ACCURATELY REFLECT A TEACHER’S PERFORMANCE?

HOW DO A CUBAN IMMIGRANT’S ENGLISH-AS-A-SECOND-LANGUAGE WRITING SKILLS ACCURATELY REFLECT A TEACHER’S PERFORMANCE?

why not have observations and evaluations by administrators of other schools?

Because they are subjective. Subject to bribes!

why not have students do writing tests?

Because it’s not fair to science geniuses!

do group projects that are evaluated by more than just the teacher?

Because teams aren’t fair!

why not use standardized tests as a small component, if people have such a hard on for standardized tests?

Because standardized tests aren’t fair! Oh wait, now I am confused.

why not have parents more accountable for their children’s education?

eh? Hello?

why not require students to complete outside the classroom learning exercises?

carlos, carlos, come back to me! I have lost you!

why not do interviews the same way colleges do?

I didn’t get a college interview. People get college interviews? I feel cheated! The government education system has cheated me! Or are you talking about the little 15-minute pep-talk sales pitch with the advisor?

Enough with carlos. Neal wrote:

Taking jabs at Carlos’ use or lack of use of capitals is kinda silly, isn’t it?

Only if he doesn’t care about persuading anybody of the validity of his point. Poor writing is the sign of either an ignoramus or someone who doesn’t care enough to make an effort, both of which should be disregarded in any serious discussion about education. Incidentally, said discussion is not what we have here, which is why I bother replying to him.

I, too, believe that education should be privatized entirely. However, this is also not the point of this back and forth discussion.

I disagree. The reason I posted this thing in the first place is that I was amused at the government school systems stumbling upon long-established free market principles even ahead of many private schools. Whether or not government teachers’ pay is tied to performance is really a matter of little importance to me. If you truly believe that the government education system should be dismantled, then the vast majority of its affairs quickly become remarkably irrelevant. They’re only really good for the occasional chuckle or heated conversation.

“Would the written exam include testing of the proper use of capitals?”

Taking jabs at Carlos’ use or lack of use of capitals is kinda silly, isn’t it? Capitalization use or lack thereof does not change the merit of his arguments. This is the internet, by the way.

I, too, believe that education should be privatized entirely. However, this is also not the point of this back and forth discussion.

Geoff, would your argument be expressed best as, “Since I had to jump through the hoops of standardized tests and I live in an unfair world, why shouldn’t teachers?” Maybe I misunderstand you. Is this the best argument you can make for why standardized tests are effective means to gauge successful teaching? Sounds a lot like my parents when I was a kid responding with “because I said so!”

As a (secondary English) teacher, it always saddens me and makes me question my performance as a teacher when my students, after leaving my class, do not use in their everyday lives the skills I labored to teach them. Can you quantify that?

I also believe the ultimate responsibility lies solely with the parents, so it should be the free market that determines a teacher’s worth — a parent should fire a teacher who is not doing a good job with his child. I am for a totally private education system.

i give several suggestions for measuring teacher performance, none of which involve your ridiculous hyperbole.

instead of relying soley on the students performance on a single test, i propose using a mix of things. i would rely heavily on a writing exam, which would not be graded by the teacher, but by a 3 teacher committee. there would be proper safeguards so as to ensure that no one on the committee knew who the students or teacher are. i think interviews could be used the same as colleges use interviews in admissions decisions. other tests could be used that involve short answer and essay questions, in addition to the standard multiple choice.

i think you misunderstand my second bad assumption. what i’m saying is that a student can do well on a standardized test regardless of teacher quality–but this system rewards teachers for student test performance. the teacher is not the exclusive influence on a student’s learning. their peers, parents, siblings, and personal makeup influence student learning. this being the case, why reward bad teachers who have good students? conversely, why punish good teachers who have bad students? if we are going to incentivize teachers in this way, why not hold parents responsible for their children’s learning too? tax break for children who show improvement, tax raise for students who “fail to make the grade.”

as neal says, test scores themselves may be rational, but they do not reflect a person’s intelligence, nor what they may have learned in a given class.

if we are going to pay teachers for their performance, then we should seek a system that can best reflect their performance. having students take a one day test and using the results to judge the teacher’s ability is foolish. the student test results at best provide a snapshot and at worst are meaningless. why use such a poor measure? it provides bad incentives, and is ineffective. using multiple criteria would bring us closer to an effective measure of teacher quality.