These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read

[ravncat]

See the great thing about slippery slopes, is that they actually slide both ways...

1. You can legislate the wealth into prosperity, by legislating the
poor out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives for working, another person
must not work without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to somebody anything that the
government does not first take from anybody else.

4. You cannot divide wealth by multiplying it.

5. When the other half of the people get the idea that they do not have to
work because half are going to take care of them;
and when half gets the idea that it does no good to work,
because nobody else is going to get what they work for,
that is the end of the beginning of every nation.

[brianxlt]

Education must start in the home - the student must first have the tools to be influenced by the teacher.
A complaint without a workable solution is nothing more than negativity.
For those who say someone should do something about this (whatever it is) well are they not someone.

[kirbinster]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

Or like someone who has a semblance of an idea of how the education system actually works instead of some spoon-fed talking point.

"Reward the good teachers"? I taught math to students who were in a very low economics class, no parental support and didn't speak English well at all (in high school). Guess what? They didn't do as well academically as the middle class, parentally supported and English speaking kids in the class across the hall. So, I should get fired and the other teacher should be rewarded?

Sorry, but just saying some generic talking point as a solution doesn't cut it.

Rentham is trying to get you to think critically. How would you separate a "good" teacher from a "bad" teacher? You don't have the education nor have you thought enough about the problems you bring up in the OP. You state simplistic generic crap as though it were some grand solution.

Nope you are 100% wrong here. There should be some finite goals for what you are expected to achieve in that class and you should be made to demonstrate that you have met that goal. Should that goal be the same as the "better" class - probably not, but that certainly does not mean you should get a free pass. If all you can do is whine about the deck you were dealt (poor students, parents that don't care, bad teacher the year before....) then you are probably NOT the best teacher for that class. You might be a great teacher for students that want to learn, but those kids need someone that will work to improve their level of math skills and be willing to be compensated based on how well that meet that goal!

As for coming up with the solution, do you really want me to do that, cause I will - but you might not like it. It should be up to "educators" to come up with a way to rate themselves as they know how to do that far better than I do. The entire point is that each and every teacher needs to be evaluated based on what they do in the classroom and compensated based on that performance. Years ago they placed supervisors in classrooms to try to do this but we all know that changes both what the teachers do and what the class does. These days technology can have that monitor tune in whenever they want and observe without impacting the situation. It strikes me as very odd why any teacher that is just slightly above average would want to even tolerate the current system which rewards the slackers just the same as the stars. You tell me why a teacher with 25 years in the classroom that does a crappy job and uses the same lesson plan from 20 years ago over and over should be paid 50% more than the teacher that has been doing the job for five years and truly motivates the students to learn and goes the extra mile.

[ravncat]

This person has already said everything I think about teaching really...

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms - YouTube

I don't remember where I saw this, perhaps here.