N.J. Governor Wants to End Teacher Tenure
Posted on January 17th, 2011 by ASEE
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says teaching can no longer be the “only profession” without consequences for failure. Teachers in his state can gain tenure after three years. While defenders of the system say it ensures due process, critics contend the method for getting rid of bad teachers is too long and costly.
Filed under: K-12 Education News | 2 Comments »
Tags: Education Policy, Public Policy, Teachers
Making sure students “get their hands dirty,” and build things, instead of just working through hypothetical problems, helps them better understand how engineering design and processes work, says this former middle school teacher, now a doctoral candidate. 
Physics teacher Ed Linz learned the value of teamwork commanding a submarine, where crew members place their lives in each others’ hands. He now collaborates with a special education instructor in teaching a mixed class of high school students. 
An panel convened by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education is calling for an overhaul of teacher preparation in the United States, with training programs operating more like medical schools and setting tougher admission and graduation standards.
The Maryland Business Roundtable plans to start an online networking site where STEM teachers can share lesson plans and connect with university, government, and corporate experts. The STEMnet site will debut in one large district this spring then expand to other districts next fall.
It doesn’t take a genius — or a lot of money — to attract students to engineering and keep them coming, says Amir Abo-Shaeer, a 2010 MacArthur “genius” Award winner from California. But this energetic engineering teacher has plenty of valuable advice for K-12 STEM educators.
Amir Abo-Shaeer, a Goleta, California physics and engineering teacher at Dos Pueblos High School, last week got more than just a bit of spotlight — he was one of the 23 MacArthur Fellows of 2010. The MacArthur Foundation annually gives out so-called Genius Awards — a no-strings grant of $500,000 each — to folks who excel in their professions.
The Obama Administration has pushed for greater use of merit pay to reward teachers when students make gains in standardized tests. Yet, a new study has found that merit payments of up to $15,000 didn’t improve academic performance.
A presidential advisory panel is calling for the federal government to recruit and train 100,000 “great STEM teachers” over the next decade, recognize a master corps of the best educators, and create 1,000 schools devoted to science, technology, engineering and math.
