Educational CyberPlayGround ®

Those Who Can't - Teach Teachers - Flunk

Develop Technology Skills of Professors

Early Childhood Development - Expulsion
Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation
(ECMHC) Guide Standards,Rationale and Guidance for the State of Maryland
In Partnership With:
The Maryland State Department of Education
Division of Early Childhood Development
Division of Special Education/Early Intervention Services

In Maryland, there are more than 22,000 children in out of home care; most of these children receive care from family child care providers and licensed child care facilities.(Maryland Family Network, 2010). Young children whose social skills are not well developed, as well as those with behavioral challenges are at high risk for expulsion. In the most recent survey of child care providers in Maryland, nearly two thirds of center providers and 70% of family providers reported they had, at some time, expelled a child from their care (Maryland Family Network, 2010). Nationally expulsion for preschool children are substantially higher than rates of expulsion in school aged children (Gilliam, 2005). State funded child care programs with access to a psychologist or social worker reported preschool expulsion rates almost half the number of those programs that lacked access to consultation services (Gilliam & Shahar, 2006).

Lack of support for early childhood education


New Teachers Flunk in Massachusettes - An opinion by John Silber, Chancellor of Boston University and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, helped to design the test given to prospective teachers in Mass.
BOSTON 7/7/98 -- This spring, Massachusetts administered its first statewide test for candidates hoping to teach in the public schools. The recent announcement of the results has provoked astonishment and outrage. Almost 60 percent of the candidates failed. Thirty percent failed a basic test in reading and writing, and the failure rate on subject-matter tests varied from 63 percent in mathematics to 18 percent in physical education.
When the results were published, the reactions were predictable: approval from those appalled by the decline in the quality of public schools and howls of complaint from education professionals, including college professors, deans and college presidents.
The greatest controversy surrounded the results of the reading and writing test, since literacy is the essential requirement for the teaching of any subject.
It should not be thought that this examination was excessively demanding. In one section of the test, a short paragraph from the Federalist Papers was slowly read aloud three times as candidates wrote it down. How could educated people fail to copy accurately what they had heard? It wasn't easy, but scores of applicants managed, recording broken sentences and curious new spellings like "improbally," "corupt," "integraty," "bouth" (meaning both), "bodyes" and "relif."
The writing test also required the candidates to read two extended passages. They were asked to write a summary of the first and to compose responses to the second, which was an essay on a controversial subject.
The casualties here included grammar, syntax, diction, spelling and logic. Neo-spellings included "belive," "refere," "bured" (burned), "survalence," "serching," "decress"(meaning reduce), "messures" and "invation." (Dan Quayle can relax: he would pass this test with flying colors.) Some of the sentences would provide material for Jay Leno: "This method of observation should not be aloud under any cercumstances." "They felt their right to privacy was being impared upon." No responsible person would subject anyone's children, much less his own, to such teachers.
The dismal results have led some to fault the test, claiming it had not been validated. In fact, it was validated by the teachers and scholars who prepared it, all experts in the areas being tested. Whenever they found a question to be defective, they proposed alternatives. When important issues or concepts were missing, the advisers added them.
The exams were validated again by the panels of distinguished teachers, administrators and college professors who reviewed the questions for fairness and agreed on minimal passing scores. For example, to pass the various sections of the reading and writing test, applicants needed to get 71 to 78 percent of the answers right, a "C" average.
Some critics have said the tests were racially biased. The statistics show otherwise: 21 percent of blacks, 23 percent of Asians, 24 percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of whites were successful in answering 89 percent or more of the items correctly. These variations are insignificant, and the slightly higher success rate for whites can more than adequately be explained by socioeconomic factors.
Others objected that no test can prove that a person will be a good teacher. True enough. But the failure to pass a test can prove that one is incompetent to teach. One cannot competently teach what one does not know. Another objection was that no study guide was provided. But why should those qualified to become professional teachers need a guide on how to study for a test in English or in a basic subject in which they have specialized? The results were not surprising, because they are similar to those in other states where comparable tests have been given. The controversy over the test has obscured the real story, which is that so many prospective public school teachers failed a test that a bright 10th grader could pass without difficulty.
This is a telling indictment of higher education in America. Professors routinely complain about the illiteracy of freshmen. Many other instructors, however, contribute to the problem by being overly generous in their grading. Grade inflation has reached the point where even outstanding students accepted at the best law schools are often deficient in writing skills and need remedial courses.
Nowhere are standards lower than in schools of education. In 1997, the average combined S.A.T. score for all students was 1,016. But those hoping to become teachers scored only 964, 5.1 percent below the national average. By raising, over 20 years, the average score of entering education freshmen to 1,227 -- 20 percent above the national average -- Boston University was forced to reduce the freshman class from 400 to 100 and forfeited about $35 million in lost tuition. Few colleges and universities are willing to pay so steep a price to uphold standards.
One way to compensate for low scores among prospective teachers is to offer extensive remedial work and impose rigorous standards. But that rigor is rarely found in schools of education. On the contrary, most have standards so low that they repel the highly qualified students who are desperately needed in our schools. Few intelligent people are so dedicated to teaching that they will endure the mindless courses and textbooks in schools of education. Grading there is typically easy, and many graduates of these programs are ill prepared for the profession of their choice. America became a literate country before there were any schools of education. We would be justified in demanding that schools of education either raise their standards or shut their doors.

TEACHERS WHO FAIL

TEACHERS WHO FAIL 12/12/04
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041212/NEWS/41212
0357/1060>

A survey of certification-test scores yields alarming results
By CHRIS DAVIS and MATTHEW DOIG

More than half a million Florida students sat in classrooms last year in front of teachers who failed the state's basic skills tests for teachers.
Many of those students got teachers who struggled to solve high school math problems or whose English skills were so poor, they flunked reading tests designed to measure the very same skills students must master before they can graduate.
These aren't isolated instances of a few teachers whose test-taking skills don't match their expertise and training. A Herald-Tribune investigation has found that fully a third of teachers, teachers' aides and substitutes failed their certification tests at least once.
The Herald-Tribune found teachers who had failed in nearly every school in each of the state's 67 counties. <snip>

PARAEDUCATORS

PREPARING HIGHLY QUALIFIED PARAEDUCATORS
There are approximately 750,000 paraeducators working in public schools across the country assisting with general instruction, helping teachers manage the classroom, and working with students with disabilities. The role of paraeducators is critical to improving teachers working conditions and allowing teachers to pay greater personal attention to students -- especially in overcrowded, high-need urban schools where up to
75 percent of paraeducators represent ethnically and linguistically diverse groups. Paraeducators are often credited with helping to strengthen communication with students and families, particularly in schools with large non-English-speaking populations. Paraeducators area
also a rich source of potential teachers. But for all their contributions to school communities, paraeducators are often both undervalued and underprepared for their jobs, and concerns persist that low salaries will discourage paraeducators from seeking further education to stay in the profession. While some paraeducators are willing to take a test approved by their district, others are unwilling to take a test or unable to obtain a passing score. With the average paraeducator earning just $14,000, districts face a challenge in convincing them to seek further education to keep their jobs. A new policy brief from Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., tracks state and district efforts to comply with the recently extended No Child Left Behind deadline for paraeducators. The report finds that while many education officials worried they might lose or be prevented from hiring instructional support staff unable to comply with the law, confidence appears to be growing.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 law demands that states prove by June 30th 2006 that all teachers in core subjects -- such as math, science, English, social studies, foreign language, and history have mastered their topics, or risk losing federal education money. Teachers are deemed highly qualified if they pass the state teaching license exam and demonstrate competency in the subjects they teach. They can show competency in several ways -- by passing a content test, participating in teacher training programs, or earning a college degree in the subjects they teach. [source]

NATIONAL BOARD TEACHERS NO BETTER THAN REGULAR TEACHERS, STUDY FINDS The privately organized NBPTS national board had been "sitting on" the results because they were not favorable. Students of teachers who hold certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards achieve, on average, no greater academic progress than students of teachers without the special status, a long-awaited study using North Carolina data concludes. Bess Keller reports that the study found that there was basically no difference in the achievement levels of students whose teachers earned the prestigious NBPTS credential, those who tried but failed to earn it, those who never tried to get the certification, or those who earned it after the student test-score data was collected.