Blog Post #14

For this blog post, my class was assigned to read an article titled Teaching Our Children Can Be a Profession by Joel Klein. I found this article to be very interesting and informative. This article is about some of the changes that need to happen in public schools. The three points that are talked about in this article that we have been assigned for this week are to have the best academic training for prospective teachers with a system to choose the best teachers, have a system of job security that isn't based on seniority, and making radical changes to the system concerning privileges.

On the matter of prospective teachers, Klein stresses the importance of good, quality programs in colleges that teach the future teachers. I think this is very important and necessary because I know I want to be an effective and fun teacher. The system that Klein suggests says that there needs to be a more rigorous system of recruiting new teachers. He quotes Sandra Feldman who says that there needs to be a system in place where the top third of the graduates would be selected to work. I think this is a really good idea and allows for all children to have good, quality teachers.

I agree with Klein on the seniority issue. I think that if there is a circumstance where teachers needs to be cut, then it would make more sense to keep the newer teachers that are effective and entertaining, and cut the teachers that may have been there for longer, but are incompetent. Furthermore, I do think it would be good if there were a pay difference depending on how effectively they teach. This would be a good as a motivation tool for the incompetent teachers to step up their game to become a more effective teacher. By giving the effective teachers more of a pay check, it would be a reward for their good work.

Klein writes about having teachers take specialty exams to gain promotions. I think this is an interesting tool and I would think that there are probably evaluations as well. This would be an effective tool to use in schools. I think it is very interesting that they would restrict the number of teachers that get college aids in their classroom. This makes a lot of sense, and it would give the future teachers the best models and teachers to learn from.

I agree with everything that Klein has written in this article. I definitely agree that the system does need to change. This would be a great path to ensure that our children are getting the very best education that is accessible through the public school system. This education system has not changed much in the past 100+ years. It is high time for the system to catch up with the times and prepare students for the future.