Education Tax Credits

Measures Of Effective Teaching Project Will Fail

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:40:00 +0000

So what if the Measures of Effective Teaching project discovers what teachers can do to be effective? It won't matter because public teachers have no incentive to be effective.

1. Ineffective teachers have exactly the same job security as effective teachers.
2. Ineffective teachers get paid exactly the same as effective teachers.

Why would a public school teacher want to become effective? There is no financial reason why they would.

Comparison:
Microsoft employees can be fired. Public school teachers can not be fired.
Microsoft employees can be be financially rewarded for their job performance. Public school teachers can not be financially rewarded for their job performance.

Why does Bill Gates think that discovering what makes an effective teacher will lead to more effective teaching? In the absence of financial incentives this project's findings will just collect dust on the shelves of education researchers. Warren Buffett's money wasted yet again.

The Problem With Public Schools

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:20:00 +0000

"Stellar public schools cannot grow and take over less successful ones. Ineffective public schools have little fear of losing students to competitors because they have no real competitors - they enjoy a monopoly on $12,000 per pupil in public spending."

- Andrew J. Coulson

0.00003% Of New York City Tenured Teachers Are Fired Annually

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

"The Bloomberg administration has made getting rid of inadequate teachers a linchpin of its efforts to improve city schools. But in the two years since the Education Department began an intensive effort to root out such teachers from the more than 55,000 who have tenure, officials have managed to fire only three for incompetence."

- New York Times

92% Of Chicago Public School Students Do Not Graduate From A Four Year College

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:09:00 +0000

"Only eight out of 100 Chicago public school students will graduate from a four-year college."

- WILLIAM MCGURN

LA Spent $583,000 Per Teacher To Remove 6 Bad Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:50:00 +0000

"A report this month in LA Weekly noted that in the past decade the Los Angeles Unified School District "spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance." The result? Four were fired, two others were paid large settlements and one was reinstated."

- Wall Street Journal

Why Are Seattle Voters Funding Failing Schools?

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:47:00 +0000

"School levies passing across Washington"

- Seattle Times, February 10, 2010

The goal as articulated by the Seattle public schools superintendent:

"We need the support and collaboration of our entire community to reach the goal we have for our students - that they graduate from high school ready for college, careers and life. The consistent strong approval for Seattle levies is just one of the many ways in which our community shows that support."

- Seattle schools Superintendent, February, 2010

2006 Seattle School District Graduation Rate: 55.8%
1996 Seattle School District Graduation Rate: 71.0%

The Seattle school district's graduation rate declined 21% from 1996 to 2006. Would you get a raise at work if your performance declined 21%?

47 States Grant Tenure To Teachers Regardless Of Performance

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:19:00 +0000

"Only four states require the consideration of any evidence of teacher performance as part of tenure decisions; the remaining 47 states permit districts to award tenure virtually automatically."

- National Council On Teacher Quality

New Orleans School Choice

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:45:00 +0000

Higher Test Scores Equals Higher Economic Growth

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:02:00 +0000

“There’s almost a one-to-one match between what people know and how well economies have grown over time. It’s not the quantity of schooling that drives success in countries, it is the quality of outcomes that we see that is explaining the relationship.”

- Andreas Schleicher, the head of indicators and analysis for the education directorate at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Democrats' Borrowed Stimulus Money Funding Incompetent Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:59:00 +0000

"Economic downturns are harrowing, but the need to reduce payrolls forces employers to cut ineffective workers and come out of the recession leaner and stronger. By leaving schools unharmed by job losses, we are sparing them from this painful but ultimately healthy process."

- Jay P. Greene & Stuart Buck

84% Of Community College Students Do Not Earn A Bachelor's Degree

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:40:00 +0000

"Only about 29 percent of community college students transfer to four-year institutions and only about 16 percent eventually receive a bachelor’s degree or higher. In addition, there is a persistent salary gap between those who have a degree from a traditional college and a prior associate degree and similar individuals who do not have an associate degree."

- Natalia Kolesnikova

The Most Important Factor In Student Achievement

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:05:00 +0000

"A growing body of evidence tells us that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in student achievement."

- Bill Gates

"We recruit a disproportionate share of teachers from among the bottom third of their college classes. Then we give them lifetime tenure after three years, and we reward them based on longevity, not performance."

- Mike Bloomberg

The Only Path To Equality In America

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:04:00 +0000

"Melinda and I believe that providing every child with a good education is the only path to equality in America."

- Bill Gates

Democrats Are Successful In Trapping Students In Government Schools

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:05:00 +0000

"More than 1.5 million students now attend charters, an 11% increase from a year ago. That's only about 3% of all public school students..."

- Wall Street Journal

"....06% of all k-12 students in the United States use a voucher to attend a private school."

- EducationTaxCredits.com

Democrats Are Ruining The Lives Of Detroit Public School Students

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:21:00 +0000

"Sixty-nine percent of Detroit children scored below basic level on fourth grade math and 77 percent of Detroit eighth graders scored below basic."

- ABC News

"Politically, the city consistently supports the Democratic Party in state and national elections ...Detroit is the most liberal large city in America..."

- Wikipedia

States Do Not Need Charter Schools To Get Race To The Top Money

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:04:00 +0000

"Under the final regulations, however, states that prohibit charters can still receive Race to the Top dollars so long as they have other kinds of "innovative public schools." That's an invitation for states to game the criteria by relabeling a few traditional public schools as innovative."

"The requirement to eliminate caps on the number of charter schools has also been eliminated. If the caps are generous enough, Mr. Duncan now says, they might be okay—which also gives him political wiggle room to give a state a break."

- Wall Street Journal

Absolutely Certain Education Fact

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:17:00 +0000

"Teachers matter more to student achievement, more than any other factor inside our school building. This is something we know absolutely for certain at this point."

- Melinda Gates

"We recruit a disproportionate share of teachers from among the bottom third of their college classes."

- Michael Bloomberg

Unionized Charter Schools Are Just As Bad As Regular Public Schools

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:37:00 +0000

“Students accepted by lottery at independently operated charter schools significantly outperformed students who lost the lottery and returned to district schools. But students accepted by lottery at charters run by the school district with unionized teachers experienced no benefit.”

- Tom Kane

The Toughest Problem Bill Gates Is Facing

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +0000

“Education is a tough issue,” Melinda French Gates said Thursday in a conference call. “Bill and I often joke that maybe it’s the toughest issue we’ve taken on,” she said, tougher even than the intractable health problems the foundation has tackled in the third world.

- Melinda Gates

What Bill Gates Worries About

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:27:00 +0000

"The long-term thing that I don't lose sleep over but I worry about is that we do have our education system, particularly the K through 12 part, not improving as much as we should. And it's an important system for opportunity, it's an important system for the economic strength of the country, and since it hasn't improved that much, that's a bit scary and needs a lot more attention."

- Bill Gates, 11.12.2009

Chinese And Indian Students In American Universities

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:03:00 +0000

"...at college campuses across the United States, mainland Chinese dominate the study of science and technology and form the backbone of the engineering, chemistry and pharmacy departments. They receive twice as many doctorates in this country as students from India, the next-closest foreign competitor. And among foreigners, they register by far the most patents in the United States."

- John Pomfret

Teacher Unions Are Happy Obama Weakened Education Reform

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:01:00 +0000

“The Department of Education worked hard to strike the right balance between what it takes to get system wide improvement for schools and kids, and how to measure that improvement.”

-Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers

“The innovative reform piece was charter schools, they’ve muted that. The teacher reform piece was performance pay, they’ve muted that.”

- Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform

99.8% Of Public School Students Are Taught By A Unhappy Teacher

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:09:00 +0000

"The chances your child will go through 12 years of schooling and never be forced to have his future crippled by a disheartened teacher are 0.2%."

- Greg Forster

Democrats Fund Private Schools In Pakistan But Not America

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:50:00 +0000

"The U.S., for one, says it plans to invest in private schools as part of a multibillion-dollar aid package designed to erode extremism in the nuclear-armed country battered by Taliban attacks."
- Associated Press

"Members of Congress send their children to private schools while denying poor, inner-city children the same opportunity."
- Wall Street Journal

Boston Public Schools Are Failing Males

noreply@blogger.com (founder) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:05:00 +0000

"This summer the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University published the results of a study tracking the students who graduated from Boston Public Schools in 2007. Their conclusion: For every 167 females in four-year colleges, there were 100 males."

- wsj.com