Building a Better Teacher

The title to this post is a link to an article published by the New York Times titled, "Building a Better Teacher." It highlights a few researchers who have been trying to get down to the essentials of what makes a great teacher. It's encouraging that they are finding good teachers are not born but instead they learn specific techniques that increase student learning and are seeing incredible results. It also discusses how merit pay does little to improve student learning because teachers don't know how to improve learning so the competition only frustrates them. Though merit pay with the proper support and training could attract and hold onto better qualified teachers.

Jobs really saved or created?

The New York Times just posted an article entitled "White House Chalks Up 650,000 Jobs to Stimulus". Click the title of this post to see the full article.

This article states that because of stimulus money, 650,000 jobs have been saved or created claiming that this is right on track with the goals of the stimulus money. But how can we really determine how many jobs were saved because of stimulus money? The article even gives the example of schools in New York City where before the stimulus the schools were going to be faced with huge layoffs. The writer of the article then goes on to say that Mayor Bloomberg likely would not have allowed that many layoffs because of how it would hurt his re-election. So can we really count those as jobs saved?

Secondly, how many of these jobs created (or saved) by stimulus money are long-term jobs? And what will happen once money from the stimulus runs out and these people are out of jobs once again?

Additionally, what about all the jobs that are being lost each day? Where does that number fit into this picture? Unemployment continues to rise and daily large numbers of people are running out of their unemployment benefits.

So I really have a hard time believing Vice President Biden's comments that, "There is strong and mounting evidence that the recovery act is putting people back to work." And I strongly feel that this article really is missing the whole picture and just trying to make the politicians who passed the stimulus packages look good.

One final note: If the stimulus packages were really working, wouldn't we all see it for ourselves and not need to be told that they are working?