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Originally Posted by Ether
Nobody is blaming anybody (yet) in this thread.
What is your solution?
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Thus why I didn't say "people in this thread" in my initial post.
My solution? To what? Teachers being blamed for things that are the result of larger cultural problems? If that's the problem you're asking me to solve, it's a difficult one indeed. But the first step is ridiculously simple. Listen to the teachers.
Rather than beating them silly with poorly designed metrics and state-manipulated evaluations, actually talk and listen to them to understand in what respects they're struggling and why they are. A lot of the struggles of inner city schools have been touched upon in this thread already. The teachers are more than willing to share this information with you if you're willing to listen to it and not simply evaluate student performance in terms of test scores and dollars spent. It's not simply that students are failing/being failed by the educational system, but why that situation exists. Diagnose the actual root cause of the issues at hand (many of which have been discussed in this thread), rather than placing blame at the easiest.
Beyond that first step is to raise the cultural perception of the teaching profession. The
Finnish education system has generated a lot of press for its outstanding scores and rankings. A good deal of their system wouldn't necissarily be the best route to pursue in the United States for a variety of reasons and an entire thread could be devoted to that topic alone, but one aspect that I feel should certainly be incoporated in the reverance of teaching as a profession in their society.
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For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.
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