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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcher who wrote (124016)	8/10/2010 6:44:44 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Marcher, "witness the recent study by obama's lead labor economist who found student test scores do not correspond to teacher efficacy. instead, teachers should be rated according to their degree of professional and instructional skill. this is directly observable in practice". I'm sure there are problems with every measurement of teachers, but you simply have to include an OBJECTIVE measurement of student success (like standard test scores) otherwise a bunch of moronic political hacks with pre-concieved notions of good or bad (or even an agenda) will be making the judgments about the skill of the teacher. In fact it wouldn't shock me if the economist that did the study for obama is a political hack and moron with an agenda.

To: marcher who wrote (124016)	8/11/2010 2:25:41 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Marc, Teachers are not tested the same in all states. Nor is any other profession. I've got to tell you, I have noticed a huge difference between Texas teachers and California teachers, though my observations are far from scientific. At the college level, it's pretty striking. California has 6 colleges in the Top 15 public schools on the U.S. News and World Report (including #1 and #2). Texas has none. For some states, MA, for example, this would not be so bad because you have Harvard, MIT and Amherst on the private side. Texas, a much larger state than MA, has Rice. Which is treated as a pariah because it doesn't have a good football team. <ng> All in all, standards are simply higher for California teachers than they are in Texas. Which does not mean Texas does not have some great teachers and professors. It just doesn't have many relative to its population and its wealth.