Readings for November 20th

Last set of readings for the semester! These readings cover a couple of different areas.

Myth 13
Teach for America teachers are well trained, highly qualified and get amazing results.
The idea of Teach for America is not new to me, I know quite a few people from my undergraduate education who are taking part in Teach for America. I know these people are very intelligent and extremely hard working, but I have to agree with the myth and wonder how qualified they are. These students go through a bit over a month of training, and essentially are unleashed on a classroom of students. They are not going to be great teachers getting good results for the simple fact that this is their first time teaching. They have no idea what they are actually doing. Being good at something takes time and learning for a lot of mistakes. They need resources, support and cooperative students. TFA's founding idea that new, intelligent young teachers are better than older teachers is incorrect in my opinion. The new teachers are hard working and have the best of intentions, but they just don't have the experience yet. I have no doubt that the people I know in TFA can be great teachers, in a couple of years.

Myth 16
Judging teacher education programs by means of the scores that their teachers' students get on state tests is a good way to judge the quality of the teacher education program.
The above statement does not make much sense to me. I think we have already established that test scores are not a good way to judge the ability of anyone really, and they are definitely not a good judge of either the teachers that taught the students or the institution that taught the teacher. Test scores are not valid or reliable measures of teacher effectiveness or student knowledge. Plus, judging institutions on the first year teachers they produce is not really fair, based on the discussion of the myth above. The teachers are beginners, they will not be great teachers right out of the gate. Also, many new teachers work with classrooms filled with students from low SES classes, and statistically, those students do worse national tests, which would made the institution that trained the teacher look bad, when really it is just the student population.

Myth 31
Bullying is inevitable, it's just kids. It's a rite of passage. The natural effort to eliminate bullying is effectively addressing the problem in our schools.
Bullying is a sad reality for way too many students in schools today. And now not only does it occur at school, it can also occur online in this new technological age. While I feel like bullying is on the rise, this article made a great point that schools need to adopt a comprehensive anti-bullying policy, and then train staff to reinforce it. Students need to know that the school is serious about bullying and that teachers will give out consequences. The anit-bullying campaign is a great idea, but it needs to be backed up with action.

Myth 47
College admissions are based on student's achievement in grades K-12 and their SAT or ACT scores.
While I would love to believe this myth, and did believe it until I started attending Notre Dame, where I was accepted for undergrad, I have found that it is not true in the least. From personal experience at Notre Dame, I can tell you that they admit students by category. Sadly, there were always the 'athletes.' Don't get me wrong, there were some great 'student athletes,' but there was an overwhelming majority of athletes that academically, had no place at Notre Dame. They just could not handle it. But they remained at school because we needed an amazing D1 athletic team in pretty much every sport. Notre Dame is also great at accepting legacy students. Notre Dame is a family school, and will give preference to you if anyone in your family has attended before. They even have a question about it on the application. Legacy and athlete admissions are discouraging to see because they take spots away from other students who could be more academically qualified and they discriminate against poor, non-legacy students (because legacy students tend to be from a rich family).