Missing the point in Happy Valley

January 15, 2008

Utah’s Cache Valley is home to the city of Logan, and to Utah State University, the land-grant college for the state. For several humorous reasons, some of them good, the place sometimes is called Happy Valley.

Small county in a beautiful setting + good university with a good school of education = good conditions for teacher recruiting. Logan’s schools have been very good over the years, in academics and all forms of competition.

As we discovered with the voucher fiasco in 2007, Utah’s education situation is not completely happy any more. Classrooms are crowded, teachers are overworked, and for the first time since the Mormon pioneers first settled Utah, educational achievement is declining.

The editorial board at Logan’s Herald-Journal noticed the problems. It’s tough to recruit teachers. If Milton Friedman were alive, we’d look for a classic free-market economics solution, something like raising teacher pay to stop the exodus from the profession.

Milton Friedman is dead. His ghost doesn’t seem to have much clout in Logan, Utah, either. What does the Herald-Journal propose? Loosen standards, look for uncertified people to teach.

When people leave the job they worked hard to earn certification for, what will happen with people who are not certified and are untrained in classroom management?

Why not just raise teacher pay, and attract more well-trained teachers?

Let me ask the key question, more slowly this time so I’m sure it’s caught: Why not just raise teacher pay?

Fishing for teachers? Bait the hook with money.

(Full Herald-Journal opinion below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Political cartoons: Powerful if they hit the audience

January 13, 2008

Thomas Nast helped bring down the crooks at Tammany Hall with cartoons. Boss Tweed, the chief antagonist of Nast, crook and leader of the Tammany Gang, understood that Nast’s drawings could do him in better than just hard hitting reporting — the pictures were clear to people who couldn’t read.

But a cartoon has to get to an audience to have an effect.

Here’s one below, a comment on the security wall being built in Israel, that got very little circulation in the west at Christmas time. Can you imagine the impact had this drawing run in newspapers in Europe, the U.S., and Canada?

It’s a mashup of a famous oil painting related to the Christian Nativity, from a London-based artist who goes by the name Banksy. (Warning: Banksy pulls no punches; views shown are quite strong, often very funny, always provocative, generally safe for work unless you work for an authoritarian like Dick Cheney who wants no counter opinions.)

banksy-israels-wall-77721975_fda236f91a.jpg

Tip of the old scrub brush to Peoples Geography.

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3 Comments | Art, Cartoons, Dissent, History, Palestine, Political cartoons | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A Warren Chisum special: Bill gives Texas kids “right” to Bible classes

January 8, 2008

Cleaning up the mess left by the Texas Lege: Texas kids need help on history, Texas history, math, English and science, according to test scores. Texas colleges are fighting a wave of kids who graduate high school and head off to college without the key tools they need in writing and calculating.Texas Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa

But Republican state Rep. Warren Chisum has awarded them a “right” to get a Bible class, the better to avoid preparation for college, I suppose. No kidding.

Molly Ivins’ Ghost is pounding on your door trying to get your attention. From the San Antonio Express:

A new law soon will require all Texas public school districts to offer a Bible as Literature course if 15 or more students express interest, but one San Antonio public school has been offering such a course for more than 30 years.

Churchill High School in the North East Independent School District has offered the Bible as Literature since the 1970s, when English teacher Frances Everidge pioneered the course. Last year, Reagan High School, also in the NEISD, added one. New Braunfels High School has offered the course for a year, and Seguin High School will begin offering it in the fall.

Last spring, the Legislature passed House Bill 1287, along with two other bills regarding religion in public schools. HB 1287, which Gov. Rick Perry signed into law last summer, states that all school districts must offer the course as an elective at the high school level by the 2009-10 school year.

Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee the bill’s author, said that if 15 or more students express interest in the Bible as Literature course, districts must offer it.

School districts may not be able to provide the mathematics instruction kids need, but — By God! — they must provide instruction in the Bible.

If Warren Chisum were not real, Norman Lear, William Faulkner, the Coen brothers and the screenwriters for “Deliverance” couldn’t dream him up.

Chisum is at least up front about his bigotry against science, math, literature and other faiths:

Because the law requires a school district to offer the Bible as literature course if 15 or more students express interest, what if 15 or more students express interest in the Koran or any other religious text?

“The bill applies to the Bible as a text that has historical and literary value,” Chisum said. “It can’t go off into other religious philosophies because then it would be teaching religion, when the course is meant to teach literature. Koran is a religious philosophy, not of historical or literary value, which is what the Bible is being taught for.”

One marvels at the coincidence that Chisum never had to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) — with history chops like that, it’s unlikely he could pass the test every high school kid must. (There is neither an education nor intelligence requirement to serve in the Texas legislature.)

I was unaware of the mandatory nature happy to hear the mandatory part had been stripped from of Chisum’s Folly. Nothing like a drunken-sailor-spending unfunded mandate from the legislature. Charles Darwin at least supported Sunday school classes with his personal fortune. Warren Chisum doesn’t have such ethics — he’s stealing the money from your property tax contributions to do it, while stealing education from the kids.

We need one of those New Yorker cartoons with some sage carrying a sign, “The End is Near.”

Cynical tip of the old scrub brush to Texas Ed Spectator (the blog formerly known as TexasEd, now in a new home)

11 Comments | Education quality, Literature, Molly Ivins' Ghost, Rampant stupidity, TEKS, Texas, Texas Lege, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Houston Chronicle editorial on evolution and biology classes

January 8, 2008

The Houston Chronicle continues its campaign for good education and high education standards, with another editorial taking a stand for evolution over the frivolity pending before two different education agencies in Texas government.

Publication of a call to arms labs and books by 17 different national organizations of scholars gave the Chronicle a spot to tee off:

A coalition of 17 science groups, among them the National Academy of Sciences, has just issued a call for their members to engage more in the science education process — including explaining evolution.

The coalition warns in this month’s issue of the FASEB Journal (the acronym stands for Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology) that today’s muddling of scientific education with unscientific alternatives such as creationism weakens Americans’ grasp of the concepts on which science is based.

Texas creationists should be feeling the heat. Hundreds of Texas Ph.D. biologists have called the agencies to task for considering shorting evolution; Texas newspapers that have spoken out, all favor evolution as good pedagogy because it’s good science. The National Academy of Sciences published its updated call for tough standards and explaining why creationism is soft, and wrong. The experts all agree: No junk science, no voodoo science, so, no creationism in science classes.

Should be feeling the heat. Are they?

Look at the comments on the editorial at the Chronicle’s site.

Also see, or hear:

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Biology, Creationism, Evolution, Higher education, Politics, State school boards, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Leadership: Why not Bartlett, or Vinick, for president?

January 7, 2008

Often I ponder that there are few, if any, worthy models of bosses in popular media, especially in television. This realization struck me several years ago when a friend and I were working on a book on leadership (never published). Models of action are very powerful things. When people see other people doing things, people copy the behaviors, even unconsciously — ask any parent whose kid suddenly informed the in-laws or PTA of the parent’s ability to cuss in a fashion that would embarrass most sailors.

So, the models of what we see as bosses probably affect what we actually get in the workplace. This should trouble you: There are not a lot of good models of good bosses in any medium.

West Wing, 6th season DVD

In the comic strips, for example, we have Dagwood Bumstead and his boss Mr. Dithers, who wars with his wife, who seems to be an authoritarian despot who physically abuses his workers. Or in more modern strips, we have Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss, who is an incompetent at all human functions, and most management functions as well. Don’t get me going on Beetle Bailey with incompetents all the way up the line from Sgt. Snorkle.

On television we’ve had incompetents and yellers for years. Phil Silvers played Sgt. Bilko. In every incarnation of Lucille Ball’s programs, a boob boss was required — from Ricky Ricardo’s Cuban temper flareups through Gale McGee’s bosses whose manifold, manifest foibles made them great comic foils. Homer Simpson’s ultimate boss, Mr. Burns, anyone?

Generally, even where someone plays a pretty good boss — Crockett’s and Tubbs’ boss on the old Miami Vice, or the lab heads in any of the current CSI series — there is another boss above them who has some massive failing, or a vendetta against the good team.

Exceptions are rare. Some of the Star Treks did better than others. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: Next Generation, was ideal as boss in many ways. It was particularly interesting to watch him give his “No. 1,” Riker, first choice in missions on foreign planets. The character Picard had a particular way of showing confidence in subordinates, in subtly demanding the best from them. He’d ask for opinions or ideas on what to do next; when someone came up with a workable idea, or even only the best idea of an apparently unworkable lot, Picard would look them in the eye and delegate to the team the authority to make it happen: “Make it so,” he’d say.

If only we could make it so.

Then there was The West Wing. I think it premiered when I was teaching at night. For whatever reason, I didn’t see a single episode until reruns shortly before the second season. I caught new episodes almost never. Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Campaigns, Ethics, History, Leadership, Politics, Presidents, Religion | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Richard Feynman, science vs. public relations

January 7, 2008

Feynman speaking from the grave? You decide:

Feynman uses a glass of ice water to show the Challenger's O-ring problem, 1986

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Richard Feynman, in the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, appendix (1986)

Photo: Richard Feynman, at a hearing of the Rogers Commission, demonstrates with a glass of ice water and a piece of O-ring material, how cold makes the O-rings inflexible; photo credit unknown

    2 Comments | Famous quotes, Physics, Politics, Quotes, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Randy Forbes, you get an “F” in history — I don’t care if you are a Congressman

    January 6, 2008

    Oy.

    U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Virginia, wants a resolution designating a week in May as “American Religious History Week.”

    Alas, alack, and every other epithet you can think of, Forbes’ resolution, H. Res. 888, is loaded to the gills with historical error. Adding hypocrisy to error, Forbes plagiarized a raft of “citations” in a lengthy set of footnotes in an oleaginous “footnoted” version of the resolution. It’s clear that Forbes did not read the sources of the footnotes, and it appears that he didn’t bother to read the footnotes either. The footnotes claim religious language in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 43 U. S. 127, 198 (1844), for example, but fail to note that the language mentioned was repudiated by the Supreme Court in their upholding of the will of atheist patriot Stephen Girard, turning back arguments that the U.S. is a Christian nation with Christianity in its common law. Forbes is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and a graduate of the University of Virginia’s law school. Hypothetically, he should know better.

    The resolution is so wrong on history, it has the effect of repudiating the No Child Left Behind Act’s call for standards in education, in the worst possible way.

    Chris Rodda, the author and indefatigable correcter of such historical error, has a long post at Daily Kos detailing the problems.

    Baffled at the astounding lack of scholarship in the resolution, I want to know:

    1. Does Rep. Forbes’ mother know he turns in work like this?
    2. What is the view of any serious Virginia history association?
    3. Will any Virginia university history department endorse the resolution as accurate? Would such a paper not violate ethical standards for a student at Randolph-Macon College (Forbes’s alma mater)?
    4. What is the view of the American Historical Association?
    5. What does the Department of Education say about it? Nothing? How about the mavens at the National Assessment of Educational Progress? Is there any way this resolution could fail to damage the history attainment of the entire nation?
    6. Is Forbes bucking to get on Leno’s “Jaywalking” segment, in the playoffs?
    7. Why does Rep. Forbes hate America’s history teachers so?
    8. Wasn’t there any staffer with enough sense to stop Rep. Forbes from embarrassing himself with this stuff?
    9. Has the House historian signed off on the historical accuracy of the resolution’s “whereas” clauses?
    10. Has Rep. Forbes ever looked at the 23 bas relief portrayals of lawmakers around the House Chamber and wondered who they were, why they were there, and why his resolution insults most of them? (He cites the sculptures in one of the whereas clauses — one might wonder if he ever looks up.)

    Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
    Read the rest of this entry »

    10 Comments | Bogus history, History, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Religion, U.S. House of Representatives, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Call the bakery: Millard Fillmore’s birthday is January 7

    January 4, 2008

    Monday, January 7, is the 208th anniversary of the birth of Millard Fillmore.

    millare-fillmore-campaign-poster-american-party-loc-3a48894v.jpg
    • Campaign poster from the 1856 presidential election, when Fillmore ran on the American Party ticket. The American Party is better known as the Know-Nothing Party. Library of Congress image. Fillmore failed to win the nomination of the Whig Party in 1852; he lost in 1856 with the Know-Nothings, too.

    The rumor is inaccurate that there will be a big celebration in the organizing offices of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, same as they also celebrate the births of James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, and Warren G. Harding — those who bar the way of Bush’s being acclaimed as the worst president in U.S. history.

    Watch a C-SPAN video on the Millard Fillmore map collection at the Library of Congress. Fillmore was a surveyor (a profession he shared with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, among others), and when he got the money, he collected maps. It’s a nice collection which I knew nothing about when I was in Washington, and which I would love to see. (I found the video via the American Presidents website.)

    Fillmore was the last Whig Party president. So far as I can tell, the Whig Party has no plans to celebrate in any fashion. Peter Brimelow, Vox Day and Cleon Skousen were all unavailable for comment.

    Fillmore Days in Cayuga, New York, are the last week in June.

    The University of Buffalo organizes a gravesite commemoration, set for January 7, 2008, 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time at Buffalo’s Forest Lawn Cemetery, where Fillmore is interred. Fillmore founded the University of Buffalo and was its first chancellor. If you plan to attend, you should register for the event.

    Near Buffalo, in East Aurora, the annual dinner commemoratng Fillmore’s birthday will be held Thursday night:

    This year’s dinner at The Roycroft Inn will be held on Jan. 10 at 6 p.m., missing Fillmore’s 208th birthday (Jan. 7) by just a few days. The meal is said to be inspired by Fillmore’s early days in East Aurora, and features a “Know-Nothing stew.” Guests can also enjoy a birthday cake provided by Tops. The Greater East Aurora Chamber of Commerce hosts the event, which is sponsored this year by OPCS Federal Credit Union. Seating at the dinner is limited, and reservations are available by calling the [East Aurora] Chamber [of Commerce] at [716?] 652-8444.

    How will you celebrate Fillmore’s birthday?

    Should we also note March 8, the day that both Fillmore and William Howard Taft died? Forgotten Presidents Day? Bathtub Presidents Day?
    Read the rest of this entry »

    7 Comments | History, History video sources, Humor, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Carnivalia: Education, Liberals (liberal education?)

    January 3, 2008

    A couple of carnivals I recommend: At So You Want to Teach? the Carnival of Education #152

    Horace Mann Elementary, Duncan, Oklahoma

    And once you’re stocked once again with notions of a liberal education, go check out the Carnival of the Liberals #54 at Neural Gourmet.

    1 Comment | Education, Politics, Teaching | Tagged: , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    This morning! Texas science standards on radio and internet

    January 3, 2008

    P. Z. Myers tells us to tune in to a Houston radio station (and he’s in Minnesota, so it must be important to come from so far away):

    I was just notified that one of the people working for Texas Citizens for Science (the good guys) will be discussing the Chris Comer incident with someone from the Texas Freedom Network (more good guys). It doesn’t sound like there will be a lot of drama and confrontation, but there will be information and an opportunity to see the decent, intelligent side of Texas represented.

    Thresholds’ host George Reiter will be interviewing Steven Schafersman, President of Texas Citizens for Science, and Dan Quinn, communications director for the Texas Freedom Network, on the politics in Texas that led up firing of Chris Comer, director of science at the Texas Education Agency for ‘misconduct and insubordination’ and of ‘siding against creationism and the doctrine that life is the product of ‘intelligent design.’ The show is on KPFT, Houston, 90.1 FM, from 11am-12noon this Thursday, Jan 3, 2008. It can be picked up live on the website, http://www.KPFT.org.

    And in his comments, this one is rather vital:

    That’s 9 am Pacific, 10 am Mountain, 11 am Central, noon Eastern. Wherever you are, you can go to http://www.kpft.org and click on the ‘listen now’ button.

    The host (G. Reiter) is also a professor of physics at U. of Houston and so presumably knows a thing or two about science. (I’m his postdoc, but that might not be much of an endorsement.)

    Listen and learn!

    Update:  You may download the program for a limited time, in MP3 format, from the radio station’s website.

    People listening to radio, from GlowingDial.com

    Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, TEKS, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science, Texas Freedom Network | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Quote mystery

    January 3, 2008

    Who said “There’s nothing so powerful as truth,” and was that what he really meant?

    5 Comments | Elections, Humor, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Creationists dispute editorial: ‘We don’t teach that’

    January 2, 2008

    Henry Morris III, CEO of the Institute for Creation Research, which hopes to grant graduate degrees in science education in creationism, responded to the Dallas Morning News’ editorial (see “Science and Faith,” or look here) which urged the State of Texas not to authorize degree-granting authority, in a letter published New Year’s Day.

    In a brazen demonstration of chutzpah, Morris complains he and his faculty don’t know what principles of science they deny.

    It came as a surprise to both faculty and administration when the editorial stated that the Institute for Creation Research “rejects so many fundamental principles of science.”

    ICR would like to know which “principles of science” are supposedly rejected by our school. Surely not Newton’s gravitational theory. Nor Mendel’s laws of heredity. Nor do we deny natural selection, suggested by Edward Blyth 24 years before Charles Darwin’s writings. All were creationists.

    What ICR scientists openly question is Darwin’s “descent with modification” or macroevolution. Even renowned evolutionary biologist L. Harrison Matthews wrote that “evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory.”

    Despite what The News implies, ICR is a science-oriented institution, employing experts since 1970 whose credentials meet or exceed the qualifications of numerous secular universities and who conduct research across various disciplines. Many researchers bring extensive experience from such recognized facilities as Los Alamos, Sandia Labs, Cornell, UCLA and Texas A&M.

    Amazing.

    Can anyone who has read ICR materials over the years, read that letter with a straight face? Plate tectonics? Thermodynamics? Using the Bible as a science text? “Hydrological sorting” and a subterranean rain cycle? Speed of light and Big Bang cosmology? Opposition to space exploration?

    That’s not science. That’s not even normal.

    Read the rest of this entry »

    8 Comments | Creationism, Evolution, Higher education, Politics, Religion, Science, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    “Grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions

    January 2, 2008

    I tell students to go to the source; if they read the original documents, that puts them ahead of 99% of the people who claim to know what they are doing, especially in history.

    Do you know what is a “grave breach” under the Geneva Conventions? Below the fold, material from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with links to more original document material. DBQ, anyone?

    Read the rest of this entry »

    3 Comments | DBQ sources, Ethics, Government, International law, Iraq, Justice, Peace, Politics, War | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Bush continues push to make U.S. a banana republic

    January 2, 2008

    Some of us were still digesting the heart- and conscience-rending story of the Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) who resigned rather than continue to work in an organization that unethically endorsed torture, when we also became aware of the Bush administration’s plan to politicize the justice operations of the U.S. military. (See Geneva Conventions, here.)

    Jurist, a news organ from the University of Pittsburgh Law School, with the short version here (with a recounting of other political troubles in JAG); the Boston Globe has the longer version here.

    It’s the sort of move one expects from Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharaf; it’s the sort of move one would expect President Hugo Chavez to try in Venezuela, before the college students and military shout him down. It’s a banana republic-style action. It’s a move beneath a U.S. politician. Or, it should be.

    If Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter were alive today, you can bet this proposal would be dead.

    For high school history and government teachers, these are exciting times. Abuses of the Constitution and potential crises cross the headlines every day. Each of these stories tells students the importance of knowing government and where the levers of power are.

    Jan Carlzon at SAS Airline used to say people armed with knowledge cannot help but act. We must be missing the boat — where is the action?

    Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

    2 Comments | Government, Justice, Law, Politics, Presidents, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Class sizes swell, teacher incentives shrink

    January 1, 2008

    Lisa Schencker writes about Utah’s problems in The Salt Lake Tribune, but you can find exactly the same story in every state in the union, plus Guam and Puerto Rico:

    The two Utah men don’t know each other, but they have at least one thing in common.
    Ben Johnson is a first-year math teacher at Alta High School. He loves his job, but it’s exhausting and pays well below what he could make elsewhere with his bachelor’s degree in mathematics.
    Marc Elgort is a University of Utah graduate student who researches cell metabolism at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. He tried teaching but found it stressful, all-consuming and riddled with bureaucratic frustrations.
    Both men’s stories reveal different shades of the same problem: retaining and attracting teachers in Utah, especially in math and science. Utah schools were 173 teachers short – including nearly 20 science and math teachers – on the first day of school in 2007, according to a recent report by David Sperry, a University of Utah professor of educational leadership and policy and Scholar-in-Residence with the Utah System of Higher Education. State education leaders worry Utah’s students and economy could fall behind other states and nations if something isn’t done soon.

    Utah voters rejected an ill-thought-out voucher plan in November, but the Utah legislature had no plan B — so Utah’s classrooms are still crowded, there’s not enough money to provide merit increases to teachers who need them, teaching is a grind instead of a calling, and that means it will take a lot more money to get the teachers the students deserve — money the legislature hasn’t appropriated and probably won’t when they get back to the issue early next month, for the legislature’s 30-day budget session.

    At some point we will have to stop working for education reform, and start working at education rescue, if these conditions are not changed.

    Don’t smirk if you’re not from Utah. I can find a school in your state, probably in your town, with the same problems:

    Johnson, like 8 percent of new teachers hired to work in Utah schools this year, came from out of state. Several Utah school districts recruit from elsewhere because Utah colleges and universities trained about 1,200 fewer teachers than schools needed this school year, according to Sperry’s report.
    Johnson made most of his contacts at a job fair in Michigan.
    “Every person that found out I was a math teacher pulled me aside,” Johnson said. “You could see how desperate they were.”
    He said he interviewed with several school districts and received an offer from each one. He ultimately chose Jordan.
    That’s where the easy part ended.
    On a recent school day about three months into his career, Johnson invited juniors to the board to work with polynomials.
    “Let’s take a look at a couple of things first. What do you see that we can cancel right away?” Johnson asked of one problem.
    Several groups of students chatted and laughed among themselves.
    “Guys, listen up,” Johnson said. It was one of many times he had to remind students to pay attention.
    “It’s really tough,” Johnson said earlier. “I have to be really firm. They’re talking all the time.”

    Holding on to the dream: Johnson said classroom management has so far been his biggest challenge – his largest class has 37 students. Utah has some of the largest class sizes in the nation.
    “There’s no way I can keep an eye on every single student,” Johnson said.

    Utah appropriated a cool half-billion dollars to encouraging teachers in shortage areas, like math, in schools that desperately need them. What does that look like on the ground?

    Johnson also puts a tremendous amount of time into teaching. As a new teacher, he is building curricula for several of his courses with help from the district.
    “Just building that curriculum takes hours and hours outside of the classroom,” Johnson said. “So does correcting papers.”
    Johnson said he has about 180 students. If he gives one assignment or test per class a week, and it takes him five minutes to correct each one, that’s another 15 hours of work.
    Johnson makes just over $30,000 a year and estimates he works about 65 hours a week. That boils down to about $13 an hour for the weeks school is in session.
    “My wife and I get by, and that’s all I can expect,” Johnson said.

    Schencker’s story lists ten bills in the Utah legislative hopper designed to hammer at the problems.

    5 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, Science, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

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