Race to the Top win means $400 million for Ga. Â | ajc.com

Race to the Top win means $400 million for Ga.  | ajc.com

At another date, I will read and post on the actual Georgia race to the top application, but for today I will focus on this article summarizing it. It appears that a good portion old George is focus will be on improving and rewarding teacher effectiveness. as far as I'm concerned, this is a good sign. Both because teachers have such immense impacts on student learning and because having a more specific focus of boys what most. Take me in the discussion surrounding education policy: the millions and millions of conjectured people have for what will be the silver bullet.

Some of the usual conflicts are hinted at in the article: the issue of using standardized tests as the sole measure of teacher and student performance, the tendency of policymakers to leave teachers out of the process of reform, and the political issue of under whose jurisdiction education should fall. I have forced myself to take somewhat of a stance on these issues. It is my opinion that in order to ensure that students have some equality in terms of educational outcome, there has to be some accountability across the board, i.e. at the federal level. The federal government rightfully has some role in setting standards that states should live up to. following from this, national testing in and of itself is not wrong. this tendency of hours to increase and increase the importance of standardized testing is ridiculous, just one of many examples of humankind's imperfect ability to implement concepts, in this case he validation needs some agreement as to what she learns throughout the nation that there should be some way to measure what is learned.

As for the tendency to not include teachers in policy efforts surrounding educational reform, a colleague of mine when I was a graduate student at the University of Texas and I collaborated on a piece entitled " talking past each other" which addressed the disconnect between legislators, bureaucrats, and teachers. comedian. Is a really tricky issue, and both illuminates and underlies the marginalization of teachers in American society is. We complain about the quality of teachers, yet do not treat them us professionals or experts concerning the field in which they practice. We do not pay them well or respect them enough to include them in policy decisions.

Without increasing respect for teachers among lawmakers and the media, respect among the general public will continue to suffer and it will remain difficult to attract the best and brightest in large numbers.