Teacher training a key to school reform, commissioner says

Most teachers who graduate are not prepared to teach. That is no different than many professions. We get people ready to do their jobs. But teaching a different group of students each year changes what any teacher has to know. Kids are very different and come from different backgrounds, dif. cultures, dif. family expectations, etc. So we expect every teacher to provide for all these difference, of course not. We don't expect everyone who attends church to go to the same denomination. No one thing works for every student. What does work is a consistent curriculum, where all subjects have some connection to other subjects and carries through from kindergarden to 12th grade. Then we need teachers who are trained in working with the curriculum. We need to stop changing teachers every year and wasting the first few months of school figuring out how each student learns. This would signigicantly improve efficiency and learning time. Each student should be allowed to work at his her own pace and eliminate grade placement. When children make mistakes, then they correct them before going on, so there are no gaps in learning, which has a greater impact later in education. Remedial work is not required because each student is working at thier own level and pace. There would still be a need for special education and accessibility accommodations, but far less than we have now. We could decrease student to teacher ratio. How do I know this works? I am home schooling the last 4 children, K to H.S. I have graduated 4 and they all went to college. Yes some of those students had challenges, both physical and cognitive, but we worked around and through them. Accomodations were to allow learning, not restrict. We need to get outside the box as educators and embrace and rejoice in learning and dump those stupid tests. Because all that happens now is teaching to the tests. We need to teach students to find information and use it, not spit back a lot of useless facts. We also need to train H.S. students for useful jobs. Not everyone wants, can aford, or has the apptitude to go to college. But honest productive work is to be respected and be the ultimate goal of education!
Words from a SCSU Masters of Special Education Program.

realkook, there is tremendous respect for teachers from parents and teachers, not all, but many. You are not in the classroom so you wouldn't know. There are kids taking multiple AP classes and entering college as second semester sophomores. That is one example of success and is certainly not a waste of time. Your position is specious and reckless.

SES as the leading factor of success doesn't mean we are helpless. It is stated in the article that teacher competence is the greatest factor that is controllable. The idea is to use the greatest leverage available to impact change. That's logical.

The major problems in education are related to the validity of our assessment and measures. Grades are inherently invalidated because they do not simply measure mastery of learning objectives. For example, completing homework doesn't show mastery but simply completion of a task yet a grade is awarded. Adamowski moved CMT test scores in Hartford by having teachers focus on a narrow band of students on only a portion of the test. That doesn't measure overall learning of the district but that's the focus. The state was set to implement end of course exams before the CT lost the Race to the Top then cut funding. That is a much better measure of learning than what we have now save AP scores (which are also end of course exams).

CCSU education faculty are disingenuous with their comments. The state had the best teacher induction program in the country (backed up by peer review research journals) up until two years ago, and the data from that program was indeed disaggregated for the universities to give them some measure of their effectiveness in a teacher's second or third year of teaching. While that one data point surely isn't enough, where were the higher ed voices when the CEA swooped in and blew the induction program away?? People at CCSU and other teacher prep programs should have taken a strong stand to help the department of education save the worthwhile program, but didn't. Maybe it partially held them accountable for the product and it didn't serve their interests.

I am a student at CCSU and am majoring in Mechanical Engineering,
and sir I cannot agree with you more. I am witnessing first hand the effects of very poor teaching practices. And just the fact that no one is there to collect and aces teacher performance in a class other than the educational department itself completely and utterly disgusts me. This takes the whole purpose of teaching and throws it out the window and leaves me truly believing that education is nothing but a business with its eyes set on profit. I understand the ideology of "if you pay more you get more" whether that be with better quality or more hands on learning through equipment, but their needs to be built a foundation here so that the educational system as a whole can be put "on a leash" if you will.
I like and support malloy's idea of having a third party to aces data collected directly from the classroom itself that no one else within the school faculty can put their hands on. This in tern weeds out any "bad apples" and will aces teachers based on their performance and not on their "tenure" at the school.