What is Digg?210 Comments
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -8/+216So the first question is does Bosse High School (and the school district in general) have standardized testing? If so, and based solely on the title of this digg and a quick read of the article, he was probably fired for "not doing his job". Thanks in a large part to NCLB (no child left behind), most [public] schools focus primarily on one thing--getting their students to achieve high scores on the standardized tests since it is the results of these tests on which the school's performance is judged. If the school does not do well in the tests, then the school risks losing funding and teachers possibly miss out on pay increases (some of that depends on the school district, not all of that is because of NCLB). It's a shame if this is the case as being able to "think" if far more important than having a couple dozen formula and equations inculcated into your brain. NCLB in many ways can be considered No Child Gets Ahead when it leads to this type of school policy.
- nixonrichard, on 10/12/2007, -2/+179It's sad that so much money is spent trying to get every single kid to the exact same level, when that money would be much better spent helping kids at different developmental levels.
So much money is spent on "special education" for students who have trouble learning, and almost nothing is spent on "special education" for students who are brilliant. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+92Yes they do have standardized testing. NCLB is the #1 focus at schools in this district - I hear stories all the time how the schools sacrifice the auxiliary essentials for NCLB.
- goodegg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+82The McDonaldisation of education.
- jackminardi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+62Welcome to the world of government intervention. Rarely, if ever, do all people fit into one category and benefit from one service. That is the fundamental flaw in large scale governmental policies.
- stevesearer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+52What I find crazy is that people actually believe all students can achieve the same plateau of excellence in education. Little Jonny is just not good at math, no matter how much money is wasted on NCLB, it won't change the way his brain functions.
/rant
(oops, nixonrichard beat me to the point) - cracker42, on 10/12/2007, -1/+42Yes, please do tell. This article says a whole lot without saying anything.
- mrmcbastard, on 10/12/2007, -3/+42@sleepydumbdude:
I'm surprised you remembered to put a period at the end of your "sentence." - ray901, on 10/12/2007, -1/+37Do tell - enrage me...
- TheKricket, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36netmindstorm hit the nail right on the head - it seems as though the entire goal of the public school system is to give the illusion that the students are actually getting exponentially smarter - this is achieved, of course, by touting their standardized tests (isats here in illinois)
my mother and girlfriend both work for the chicago public school system (as a school assistant and 4th grade teacher, respectively) - im amazed at the stories those two bring home on seemingly, a daily basis - i was SHOCKED to find out that the only way a kid could be "held back" a grade is if they fail either english or math - EVERY other subject seems to make no difference at all - my girlfriend is starting to get this hopeless feeling - she teaches "social studies" (history) and tells me, "well, it doesnt even really matter what grade i give them - the school is gonna let them go on" - in essence, these kids could literally FAIL 3 out of 5 subjects every year and still make it to the next grade
she's young so she still manages to keep a good disposition - but i cant imagine a teacher who has taught a subject for the past 10, 15, or 20 years and has come to the realization that no matter what he/she did, those kids are gonna steam right past them and move up to the next level - regardless of whether they know where or what "europe" even is...
the educational system in this country is just appalling... - jackminardi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+34Yeah, because other countries school systems are perfect...
But its popular to make fun of America now, isn't it? - PleaseJustDie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+30What I want to know, which the article doesn't address at all is, what was he doing that was different that the school didn't like? Apparently it was bad and a differing opinion, but WTF was it?
- 13B1303, on 10/12/2007, -4/+30Maybe he got canned for yelling too loud in the classroom and not bringing anything intelligent to the discussion. Or maybe that was just you ^^^^^
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27There is more to this story, it would outrage any reader.
- mrmcbastard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26I doubt that.
- WarpFox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25Actually, I watch disney channel all the time, it's really great what disney is trying to instill in children. There are no commercials on disney channel save for their own shows, and encourage kids to get active and play sports, be creative, and do their own thing. It's culturally diverse, and even though they won't come out and say it, just watch it and you KNOW which characters are the gay ones.
- earthtoandy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+24if one class starts outpreforming others people might start calling for accountability... or at least qualified teachers. we cant have that.
I like Obamas idea on the matter. We exchange higher pay for more accountability. Pay teahcers what they are worth, as long as they are worth it... you know, like other jobs. - glc17, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21@warpforx
Of course, the irony to the Disney Channel's "be active, etc." message is that the kids are sitting still and watching TV. - keane, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19oh, (sorry missed edit time) forgot to include "Ms. Campbell and her significant other, Assistant-Principle [sic] Gregory McDaniel"
so it looks like the story goes:
- cool, well qualified science teacher arrives at school, is well-liked by students
- head of the science department feels threatened by said teacher, is jealous
- head of department gets her boyfriend (asst. principal) to write up teacher for violations of school policy (should be teachers discretion)
- school administration has the board force-quit Hassman - satanatnmtedu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18*****. If you can think, then these tests should be easy. Much of test taking is knowing what you don't know. If I have to guess, then can I eliminate some answers to have a higher chance of guessing right?
I may be bitter, but I went through mucho crap when i wanted to teach high school. I have two engineering degrees, and I did very well in all my math classes. But, it took over a year to convince the examiners that I was qualified to teach math in Ohio, and I had to appeal the first decision that I didn't have enough math hours. The thing was that I took high level math than half the current, certified math teachers in my local district. The basis was number of hours instead of level. I didn't need to take low level math courses because I WAS GOOD AT MATH.
Then, there were the students in Algebra who couldn't multiply. Students that relied on the crutch of a calculator for "what is 5 multiplied by 6?". There is something broken in our schools. It is the same things that are broken in government and industry. People cover their asses. And, if someone does it better, then those people are ganged up upon to get rid of the "troublemaker".
Again, if you can think, then standardized tests should be simple. If they aren't, then the wrong things are being tested. - sleze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Umm...it doesn't really say at all what he did to get fired. He isn't commenting. The school board isn't commenting. The students say they want him back but they aren't shedding any light on why he got fired. We can speculate that it either had to do with the standardized test scores OR the fact that he refused to pass a failing student but since we have no clue, how can anyone get outraged?
- keane, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18from the comments in the article - http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/mar/02/teacher-calls-loss-of-job-a-mystery/#c48544
"Not much is known for sure about the "resignation" of Mr. Hassman, but there is much speculation. What we do know is that for some reason, Hassman rubbed Science Department of Head, Ms. Campbell, the wrong way, causing her to file a complaint against him...
Fact- Mr. Fred Hassman has 2 patents for medications he created
Fact- Ms. Karen Campbell has none
Fact- Mr. Hassman was certified by the USI Chemistry Department to teach his Advanced Chemistry course for college credit
Fact- Ms. Campbell IS NOT certified by the USI Biology Department to teacher her Advanced Biology course for college credit
Fact- Mr. Hassman was written up for allowing students to have snacks during class
Fact- Many students in Ms. Campbell's first-period Advanced Biology class admit to eating breakfast during her class
Why is it that Mr. Hassman was the one that was forced to "resign", when he is obviously the more qualified candidate...
I personally believe that Ms. Campbell as an inferiority complex when she is around Hassman. Mr. Hassman exudes brilliance, which must have threatened Ms. Campbell in some way. Many other students have expressed this opinion as well..." - moose09876, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23I'm from Evansville. WE MADE THE FRONT PAGE OF DIGG FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE HOME OF THAT GUY THAT SHOT AT THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!
- improvclown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15It's true, schools sacrifice essentials all the time for NCLB. This is a sad story because the students were actually excited to learn and then their motivator is booted.......sad times.
- superal1394, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Sounds like Dead Poets Society
- pikpikcarrotmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Dead Poets Society with no death, less poets, and infinitely worse society. A darn shame.
- BobsYourUncle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14This is exactly why the education system doesn't deserve any respect. (I said system, not teachers...)
- pinoyboy82, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14"Me fail English!? That's unpossible!" I thought of that quote when I read the article... unrelated but funny anyways... ;)
I hope this gets dugg more so this school district can feel the wrath of the digg effect (online AND offline) - 13B1303, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13This is as specific as the article gets....
He declined to discuss the turn of events that led to his forced resignation, other than to call it "a difference of opinion," although he still isn't sure why some school officials didn't support him.
He did allow that "maybe I came on as too arrogant, wanted to make too many changes," but he stressed that he enjoys teaching at Bosse.
What the hell can we base any judgment on? He has credentials out the ass and the right teaching attitude, OK but what did he do? - aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12@mrmcbastard
Lay off sleepydumbdude. He admits he's sleepy, and dumb. That's the first step towards proper usage of the English language. - prisoner24601, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Um, doesn't it seem a bit ironic that many here seem to be *assuming* one or another reason for his "firing" when the article doesn't really give any reason for it at all. The title of the article is completely unjustified by the content of the article itself. The given title only becomes "justified" if you choose to speculate wildly about reasons for the event.
I have to wonder what this teacher would *think* about so much *speculation* here. - iconnor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11This guy really sounds qualified to teach chemistry. I know the best teachers I had were the ones that had the deeper understanding (not just the "chapter ahead" types that think if you are a chapter ahead of what the class is on that the students won't notice that you don't really understand the subject).
Having said that, the only people that would notice that he had the deep understanding is other chemistry aware teachers and this sounds like it might be lacking in this school so the kids suffer.
If the school only wants a "chapter ahead" type teacher that follows the NCLB model that is all they will get.
Also, if you focus on "children left behind" - as the CLB stands for then adding a "not" to the front does not really make the program sound positive. It really shows you are focused on a problem and not a solution. Smarter teachers must be part of the solution and getting them to resign does not help. - floppyparty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11WTF?
This article doesn't say ANYTHING.
The article basically says "he was trying to get students to think outside the box" over and over again.
dumb. - tidu, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14Mickey Mousication, I might add.
- sachmanb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11http://duggmirror.com/politics/Teacher_fired_for_causing_students_to_think/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Another future campain promise that will never come to be, the teachers (and their huge union) would never go for mass pay movement up & down for teachers based on annual performance, they will only vote for the huge pay increases for doing well... Not to say that idea couldn't work, but if they used standardized testing like the NCLB act, teachers will teach 100% to their pay increase test, and CHEAT rampantly (as already happens around the country-read Freakonomics) for their pay hike.
- d00ley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9How did the school system get so bad? Between 1896 and 1920 a small group of industrialists and financiers subsidized university chairs and researchers with the aim of bending schooling to the service of business and the political state. For leading industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie and John T. Rockefeller, public schooling was engineered to serve a modified command economy and an increasingly layered social order. And how best to do this? By copying the Prussian model of public education.
The Prussian way was to train only a leadership cadre while other students would be taught to fit in their place. Moreover, fear of European immigrants in the 1840s, specifically Catholics, made it essential to leading industrialists and educators to adopt a system based on three Prussian principles:
• The state is sovereign, the only true parents of children.
• State appointed teachers are the guardians of children.
• The schoolroom and the workplace shall be dumbed down into simplified fragments. - threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@pikpikcarrotmon:
that was poetic - jackminardi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12It may be a fact that he funded the school, but it most certainly is not known as a fact that those were his reasons. Someone needs to go back to first grade and play the "Fact or Opinion" game. Its pretty fun.
- Methodius, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7O captain, my captain...
- carcass350, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Did I miss something in the article? It doesn't say what he did and the teacher declined to elaborate. He may have made kids "think outside the box", but I am assuming that he did not follow the curriculum, or something like that, which would totally justify his termination. But without details I am forced to guess what he might have done.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's not always the teachers' fault. Plus, how can you have accountability AND teach children to think? You get one or the other. Either teachers teach for the test, or they teach for the students. That's what I don't understand about NCLB. I'm planning on going into teaching (actually, already work as a teaching assistant for a special ed program), and I agree that teachers should be doing their best, but I think the best way to do that is to work on getting teachers who actually WANT to teach. In my experience, it was in some of my worst classes (gradewise) in high school that I learned the most. Coversely, though, I also had bad grades in some classes with terrible teachers. Given that grades, test scores, etc., don't seem to correlate with teaching ability, certainly not in my personal experience, how do you plan on establishing accountability?
- moxx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Eh, I had two kinds of teachers in High School...
The ones who tried to explain concepts, and the others who based the courses around the regents (standardized state tests)...
The only real difference is that, at the end of the course, (the ones who explained concepts, in a fresh/new way)...I still had an understanding of the subject...the other classes usually left my memory right after the standardized state tests were done...The grades on the tests are essentially the same too...
The ones who can help you understand concepts, make the course more enjoyable probably just take their job a bit more serious...but then again...if you can understand concepts...the standardized state tests are easy... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Once Hassman, his wife and two sons settled into their Warrick County home, he enrolled in a yearlong University of Southern Indiana program that helps private-industry professionals transition to teaching."
Say no more! Professional scientists need no additional training to teach at the high school level. This is just more teacher union silliness purely intended to hobble the free flow of higher quality candidates into the teaching profession. This fellow would be better off in private school. - adio88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This recently happened in a Catholic school on the westside of Evansville. The parents didn't like how the teacher was teaching outside the box, so the teacher got fired. It is pitiful how this generation is slowly getting everything dumbed down.
- jemmrich, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I totally with what he says, education teaches students how to pass tests.. Wasn't it Einstein who failed math in his early years only to be one of the worlds most famous mathematicians and theorists. How many students of today are genius's but fail to reach their potential because the education system ignores how the student learns best.. As an example, I hated math and failed it every year of highschool... however going to summer school and having to do an entire semester in 3 weeks never allowed me to get bored. While highschool did a chapter or less a week, summer school have me 2 chapters a day and kept the pace up where it was fun and interesting. Needless to say I aced my math classes during summer school and enjoyed having a free class during the school year to do other things.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@Bamont
My comment was not meant to be political in nature. While I mention NCLB, perhaps I was not clear in that it is not the only reason that many schools have put such high emphasis on standardized tests. As someone else mentioned, standardized tests are nothing new, I had to take them long before NCLB. However, the scope and the consequences associated with the output of the standardized test has changed. Back in the day, if you failed the stand. test, you got left back, or placed in a lower level class; schools still got their teachers and their money. In the current school district in my area (BTW, I'm not a teacher), students can't even get an F and if they don't turn in an assignment, that's okay with the school administration as well. The assignment get marked as incomplete. Why?
1. Ratings, ratings, ratings (aka blue ribbon award winning blah blah blah)...and this is tied to NCLB as I understand it...if the school doesn't do well, it loses funding
2. Kids are not our problem--that's right, the principals don't want "flunkies" in their schools. I know of teachers who have be "ordered" to pass students just to get them out of the school. This is not becuase of NCLB, but rather an administration/district cop out IMHO and is also tied to social promotion
3. Lack of "qualified" staff--drama teachers teaching physics, spec ed teachers teaching math. It's not that those teachers can't do it (well some can't), but they are not able to provide the benefit of their expertise when teaching in this manner. Part of this is tied to NCLB because while NCLB sets goals and objectives for the schools to meet (that's a good thing), it fails in many cases to provide the funds to help reach these goals (bad thing)
My biggest gripe isn't with the core objective of NCLB--to give each and every child an education. It's with the incentives and awards tied to NCLB. Because of them, many schools teach to the "lowest common denominator" at the expense of those children who have the potential to get much more out of a given class. When you have a teacher who has to teach the full spectrum of students (e.g. spec ed to honor, etc) in a single class because there are no funds for spec ed teachers (or because the parents threaten to sue if you classify their child as spec ed--different topic all together), none of the students benefit. The "smart" students get bored and lose interest and the "dumb" students act out because they do not understand the material (typically--pardon the gross generalizations) - archlich, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5uhm phychics? psychics or physicists or psychicphysicists? Not only can they predict the future, but can put it in equation form.
- gsiliceo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is one of those times that somebody is way more competent than the hierarchy he/she is currently in, can handle, The Peter Principle explains it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
And no this is not spam, see for your self - Mahkra, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Unexposed Facts lead to speculation. How do you know he wasn't putting his hand females shoulders inappropriately? Oh wait let's blame it on no child left behind. God forbid we test our students.
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