In Education Reports There Would Always Be False Negatives And False Positives

There is not doubt the teaching career as it is now was originated as a slavery profession back in history. Anywhere I have been, the problem for teachers seems to be the same, no value in regards of their the time, effort, sweat, and even tears that goes into daily teaching activities.

Following a considerable number of edublogs and websites dedicated to education, we can assert that very few times, posts are writing in such a way that all teachers got interested in. That is what happened with a hypothesis Larry Ferlazzo set up about how teaching attracts a disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.

Larry dugg deep into reports and documents which supposedly backed statements by Bruce Stewart on "quality of their teaching force". You can read his conclusions and the most important is that such cited statistics presented on Meet the Press "appears to be flat-out wrong."

Then, what does make a good teacher?

I recall Downes saying that he does not believe on reports ticketed as research. We all love to read or present reports without mayor explanation of methodology or lacking any basic statistical requirements to be considered relevant.

As part of nature there will be always the good and the bad. We are here talking on good teachers. Professionals that still survive after being beaten up by every newspaper, politician, and parents.

We need people of the National Council on Teacher Quality to come to struggling schools as observers, not as guests. We need research reporter to spend more time in the classroom. Only then, teacher will accept their false negatives and false positives presented on their paper work. As far as we are concerned and speaking about the quoted article, persons behind these reports have no concept of pedagogical concerns.

David Andrade has also concerns about the report: "They never seem to have real numbers or data, are written by non-educators, and the sample sizes are small. In science, we would call that a very poor experiment with useless data."

In a comment in Ferlazzos' post, Mr. Owen speaking about the subjectivity of tests to evaluate teachers, asserts: "This means that just about anyone, no matter what school they went to or what their scores on the SAT were, can potentially improve and become an excellent teacher." No need to be on Ivy Leagues.

So ultimately what does make a good teacher? Good teachers are innovative, think outside of the box, know the how to learn from failure, connect with people, and are continuous learners, writes commenter Marilyn. Good teachers look to the future, instigate conversations, and are willing to let their students guide them when appropriate.

Until we have this as a paradigm, never mind about statistics on reports. Be a good teacher!

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