Thursday, February 4, 2010

Weekly News Blog February 4, 2010

This week we learned that our school placed third in a regional "AP Challenge" index and was written up in the Washington Post (see website for article). As you know, public education is a matter of great debate within national and local politics; how much money education recieves, how it is spent, teacher observations, etc.

Please take a look at the blog below called "Class Struggle" that is published by the Washington Post. Read the postings over, and then when you are done, write an analysis of some arguments presented in the blog, naming the speaker, the topic, the argument, and any RHETORICAL STRATEGIES, being used...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/

32 comments:

  1. Jay Mathews, author of "Class Struggle" argues that the current satisfactory rating of many District educators is biased or untrue. He suggest that neighboring allies of the District should implement new evaluation technigues in order to correctly evaluate teachers. Mathews uses logical appeal when stating that 99.1 95.1 91. of teachers from various school districts are qualified and teach according to standards. His statement of fact also calls forth ethical appeal and shows that he has done his research. In doing so I feel that his statement of facts help to support his ironic arguement that the numbers are indeed biased or in some way inaccurate. Furthermore, Mathews attmepts to evaluate the Impact system. He uses logical appeal as well as his ethical appeal as a writer to quote priniipals as well as teachers. Mathews article is a mere statement of general information of the current IMPACT educator evaluation system. He does not provide his personal opinon but simply states the opion of others to further the reader's knowledge on the changes.

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  2. In the blog, “Class Struggles” Jay Mathews writes on an educator in the D.C. area. Her name is Marni Barron and she states, “But Barron thinks D.C. schools are trying to build this ship when it is already at sea, without involving the crew.” Barron says that to emphasize that D.C. schools lack control in retrieving quality teachers. The blog argues that the DMV lacks the ability to succeed when teachers are unqualified to teach! Mathews uses logical appeal to highlight the problem that schools say that teachers are qualified to teach but show no results in the schools excelling. “….Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6,…” The appeal is used to emphasize that D.C. schools don’t exceed due to the lack of qualified teachers.

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  3. The argument in this article comes from an issues thats it has been out for a while. DC schools are not performing as good as other county schools. Even though this is the case I have been in DC for a while and I feel schools are now getting a little bit more aggressive since DC now is trying to tackle a problem that should have been tackle a long time ago. I also believe the problem in our schools are not that bad because just a few days ago we were ranked number three in AP. This is just one small progress of a big problem.

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  4. In the article the there are talking about the schools.And how sucessful they really are. She the schools be to blame for poor test scores. They stayed that some schools have the best teachers in the descrict and there test scores are still very low. Also in the article the they use types of appeals. To help convey his message. Over all this was a very high writen article.

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  5. In the Article “Class Struggle,” An educator called, Marni Barron is arguing that the way that teachers are being evaluated is effective. The counter argument states that, “But Barron thinks D.C. schools are trying to build this ship when it is already at sea, without involving the crew.” She emphasizes that the journey is not going to happen in one day, yes it will take some time, but the important thing is that progress is being made, more importantly starting with the teachers and their progress in the classroom. Jay Mathews, the author of this blog, uses logical appeal to somewhat put DC Public Schools down. For example he says, “Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on” He is trying to show people to be realistic, DC cannot be 100% when clearly they lack resources that Maryland and Virginia schools have. He also used a second logical appeal, to show that this IMPACT system, which is a system of how teachers are evaluated, is not effective. For example he says, “Barron said her principal, Bill Kerlina, is a fine educator. Whatever IMPACT’s flaws, she said, he does his best to be fair in upholding IMPACT by backing his ratings with evidence. That says to me that good educators, including Barron and Kerlina, are making the necessary adjustments in this new system.” He is trying to point out that Barron and her system are not creating improvement because they are still constantly adjusting the system, so how can we know if the teachers themselves are effective? And she says DC’s teachers are 100% effective. That’s the big question behind all this.

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  6. by Jay mathews, the author Class Struggle. it argue that the teachers need new technology in order to evaluate the the teachers. also tells that they needed improvent. it also said that DC school are not doing good but others are doing good based on the fact. also mathew it also ssid that the teacher are not showing the result during the school year. this shows it emphasize that D.C. school dont do good to the lack of the teachers. but in the article said that 100 percent of teacher is satisfied. but others dont agree with jay mathew because they doing the best they can to improve on the AP test. i think the jay mathew it is right because they should have another way to prepare the Ap Exam.now they now encourage teachers to meet with them after hours to discuss their weaknesses.

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  7. In the Article “Class Struggle" The author,Jay mathews argument about of problem with D.C teaches evaluation and how this affect many school around D.C.In the article " Class Strucggle" Barron interviewed says, in the last year to be a Master Educator. When she asked if these evaluators could provide extra advice and support to teachers who needed it, as was done by coaches in Michigan, she was told no. These show that many school dont have the support people about Class strucggle. but Others have conducted professional development sessions for specific content areas. Still others have developed resource packets to help struggling teachers.Also should help to improve the students AP test score.

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  8. In the Article “Class Struggle,” An educator called, Marni Barron is arguing that the way that teachers are being evaluated is effective. For example, in CHEC, teachers always have to be teaching their students, and of that they are evaluated if the student has shown progress or not. Yet, I agree when the author says, “But Barron thinks D.C. schools are trying to build this ship when it is already at sea, without involving the crew.” She highlights everything is not going to be given at once, there must be progress, and through practice the students get better. Jay Mathews, uses logical appeal to somewhat put DC Public Schools down. Such as, “Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on” Mathews is being reasonable, DC cannot from one day be under scale and then suddenly rise to the top. Then, for example, Maryland and Virginia have more resources so there are more likely to succeed or have better grades. The second logical appeal that is used is to demonstrate how the Impact system does not affect the students. Such as when he says, “Barron said her principal, Bill Kerlina, is a fine educator. Whatever Impact’s flaws, she said, he does his best to be fair in upholding IMPACT by backing his ratings with evidence. That says to me that good educators, including Barron and Kerlina, are making the necessary adjustments in this new system.” So many adjustments to the systems do not affect the teachers, so then how do we know if these teachers are actually effective and doing their jobs as teachers. This all revolves around the progress of the students in their test. Test are the only way that teachers can demonstrate proof that they are succeeding.

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  9. The author of the blog "Class Struggles" is Jay Mathews. In each post there is a different topic being discussed, but most of them link back to the same subject matter, which is the struggles that go on in school. Many of the postings are about schools in DC. One of the postings i was interested in was "Rhee: Uncompromising" I found this post interesting because it says, "I suggested she be more careful of her public words--like her statement that some of the teachers she fired hit or had sex with kids--" This is something new to me. After reading the posts, I saw that Mathew's rarely gave his opinion on any of the discussions, but instead used statements from others to make his point.

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  10. The article "Class Struggle" by Jay Mathews, there are different topics being discussed, they relate to the struggle that teachers have to go through when they being evaluated. and how AP classes are supposed to help students that have not taken any courses so that they can be prepare for future classes. for example it says "They accept the fact that their failure rates are going to be high at the beginning, but see no way to build the programs that will prepare future classes for AP unless they have an AP program up and running."

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  11. The article “Class Struggle” by Jay Mathews, argues that AP Courses re being assigned by schools or institutions to increase their rates of students who take AP classes even before they are ready for them.“ …. before many of their students are ready for them”. It also says that instead of increasing the passing grades the rate of AP exams failures have increased over the years. “36.5 percent in 1999 to 41.5 percent last year” I think that AP courses are a good choice to challenge the students to do better and get ready for college. For example he says “…students did better in college if they had a 2 on an AP exam than similar students did who did not take AP” But I don’t think that students should be required to take them if they don’t feel ready. The author uses mainly logical appeal, and some what of ethical appeal.

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  12. During this week was published a blog “Class struggle” by Jay Mathews in the Washington post about the impact that AP classes have in students who take the AP test to college in DC, also the evolution of DCPS system to improve the education in District of Columbia students as the result that DC schools had the lowest score in national evaluations. Jack Gillum and Greg Toppo of USA Today explain the impact of students who take AP classes in college test “the growing movement to coax average and below-average students into AP has had on the percentage of students who pass the 3-hour college-level exams.” They also demonstrate the evolution in students who pass the Advanced Placement tests for take an AP class “They've gone from 36.5 percent in 1999 to 41.5 percent last year--and a 48.4 percent failure rate in the southern states.” In my point of view AP classes help to students who want to pass the AP test to attend to college since when they take that class they are ready practicing for college test. Some rhetorical devices that the writers used are logical appeal and emotional appeal because they show some real stories about students who pass the AP test and they supported it with statistic and fact.

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  13. We all recently learned about our school placing third in the regional “AP Challenge” index. I believe this is superb because it shows that the school is determined to challenge students, so they can become great scholars. CHEC is one “is the only public school in the region that requires all students to take AP English.” Yes, some of us many think we aren’t ready for theses type of classes, but they benefit us in a great way. We, the students “struggled with the difficult exams at first, but the quality of the teaching is increasing and the school now has more students not only taking the AP exams but passing them.”

    I read the blog “Class Struggles” by Jaw Matthews that is published in the Washington Post. All the postings discuss education, but mostly about AP. In the posting “Finding the better high school,” Matthew argues that it is a good idea to have students taking AP courses. He gives an example of our school which makes all the students take AP courses. CHEC, a school that has low income students as the biggest population shows that “similar family income level try harder to prepare students for college.”

    About teen years ago many schools in the U.S. didn’t allow scholars to take these courses if they didn’t have “strong grade point averages or teachers’ recommendations.” There are schools that still have those policies which frankly show that they don’t want to encourage students to challenge themselves to their full potential. I am glad my school has the opportunities to allow all their students to take an AP course. This is because I for one am someone who would rather have a challenge than get an easy A which won’t teach me anything.

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  14. In the Article “Class Struggle,” the educator called, Marni Barron is arguing that the way that teachers are being evaluated is effective. the name of the author of the article is called Jay Mathews. he uses logical appeal to state the problems that schools say that teachers are qualified to teach but show no results in the schools at the end! i also think that it is very important for someone to think carefully on the subject and on the words that they are going to use or say before just saying something that just might not be true. Therefore, there would be no misunderstandings that teachers were not doing what they were supposed to do. Jay Matthew states that it is great to have students taking AP classes. Jay Mathew gave an example of our school and this makes all the students want to take AP courses. Each time everyone takes AP classes the better it is for us students and for the school also because then people would have a lot to say from us.

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  15. this article is direct to tax payer, parentes of students, and any one is with an educational career ( teachers). the speaker is a concerned citizen- Jay Mathew-. the author is argueing and informing the errors and flause of the DCPS system as well as souronding district public schools. The author uses a lot of logical appeal to inform and persuade. for example, he states,"They've gone from 36.5 percent in 1999 to 41.5 percent last year--and a 48.4 percent failure rate in the southern states." this allowed the audience to see the physicall proff of test scores. he allows shows how other people are concerned about the subject by useing a civilians question. dcresident1 ask him a question about michell reed and he incorporates it into his article.

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  16. I think that in the article "Class Struggles" the author is judging every school in the district. The author doesn't know how hard teachers work to teach kids. Some kids don't even care about eduaction and only go to school to chill. In my school for example teachers make students work the whole time, they never take free periods or anything like that. In some schools teachers don't care about students education and they don't put effort to teach them. The author shouldn't talk about every school in the district.

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  17. In the Article “Class Struggle,” by Jay Mathews, one postings that states that “AP failure is up, Success too.” The speaker is Jack Gillum and Greg Toppo of USA Today and they are talking about the issue of AP test failures. The percentages have risen “from 36.5 percent in 1999 to 41.5 percent last year--and a 48.4 percent failure rate in the southern states.” This means that more and more students aren’t being prepared well enough to take these college tests. However the Vice President of College Board, Trevor Packer, wants “to make the equally important point that opening AP to everyone who wants to work hard…” The arguement being that students who want to work hard should be giving the oppotunity to take Advanced Placement Tests.
    Some of the rhetorical devices that are used in the posting are the use of, logical appeal.

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  18. in the article"Class Struggles" is base in what is going on in the nacion with same student. in many school student had being efort to make hard work, but at the same time is good for student. the only bad thing is that some student take evining classes, and there is much work to do. in every school there is a teacher who doesn't care if student learn either or not, but most of the alwas do thier best for student to learn. be out of activity than school activity, be out of trouble, be not giveing hard time to parent will help student to do well as they wants in school.

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  19. The speaker of the article is Jay Mathews, who wrote "Class Struggle”. He talks about how schools have opportunities to take AP courses in there schools in DC, MD, and VA. The argument is that the way teachers have been getting evaluated is effective because it is helping the school board teach things are supposed to be taught. Rhetorical Strategies that he uses is logical appeal to give examples about how DC schools weren’t prepared a couple of years ago. For example he says, “Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100% of their teachers as satisfactory” this shows that Board of Education is now getting teachers are actually do their work and try to help students out. I think that it doesn’t matter how many AP courses are taken by a student because if a student doesn’t want to learn the teacher can’t do anything about it. Also the number of students or number of classes of AP Courses given at a school doesn’t have anything to do with the grades they will get on the exam. Just because a student takes the course it doesn’t mean that they will pass the class.

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  20. “Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on” this is are the racking that were giving to the school that are in AP classes we rank in 3rd but little quetion that i had is does this racking count when it goes towards us or would it matter if we even past the test.

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  21. The speaker of the article is Jay Mathews, who wrote "Class Struggle”. He talks about how schools have opportunities to take AP courses in there schools in DC, MD, and VA. The argument is that the way teachers have been getting evaluated is effective because it is helping the school board teach things are supposed to be taught. Rhetorical Strategies that he uses is logical appeal to give examples about how DC schools weren’t prepared a couple of years ago. For example he says, “Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100% of their teachers as satisfactory” this shows that Board of Education is now getting teachers are actually do their work and try to help students out. I think that it doesn’t matter how many AP courses are taken by a student because if a student doesn’t want to learn the teacher can’t do anything about it. Also the number of students or number of classes of AP Courses given at a school doesn’t have anything to do with the grades they will get on the exam. Just because a student takes the course it doesn’t mean that they will pass the class.

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  22. In the article the there are talking about the schools.And how sucessful they really are. like for example CHEC is the number 3 in th whole DMV. the author is argueing and informing the errors and flause of the DCPS system as well as souronding district public schools. etc...

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  23. I don't belive that this guy has the authority to talk about the DCPS school system and what goes on within it. He speaks about the changes that have taken place whethr good or bad, but we hasn't actually experienced it personally. When he talks about AP testng and why he thinks that students have failed I feel like none of his information is valuable. Is he realizing that all schools work at a different pace that students are able to keep up with. We as students or teh emloyess of the system are the ones who shoudl be sharing what we think is wrong. If we are number three then we derserve it maybe it will encourge others to want to strive harder if one DCPS school can be in the top 10, so can others.

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  24. This article tells about the "Class Struggle". Some people has more problems to study. It happen that, the AP test is very important. They need to get the 100 percent of the grade if they don't they need to take it again for the next advisory. Some students needs to study for the AP finals because they had to pass this class. I was having trouble writing the essay. But this time I might focus on the multiple choice questions. Me and my friends were having trouble too. Students has to turn in for the final grade. This is why they need a perfect chance to make things up for AP test. I failed this test because I didn't make a better choices. I was feeling upset about the test was to hard. They could try this another time.

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  25. This article talks about different topics related to education and he talks about DCPS, he talks about the failure of AP exams that it has increase from "36.5 in 1999 to 41.5 last year, 48.4 percent failure rate in the southern states." Furthermore, he seems to point out some obvious flaws in the system so parents students and everyone that could get affected by education could be aware and try to take a stand. He also seem to try to call for action. The issue of misleading of DCPS seems to be a controversial topic, either it's the chancellor Rhee making autonomous decisions in different school through out the district. HE also has arguments that come from some of his readers questions like the Rhee article which came from a question of a reader and pursued the argument.

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  26. In the blog post "class struggle" by Jay Mathew's throughout this article he talk about how teachers are evaluated based on a combination of their students' test scores, aca­demic gains, and classroom observations. for instance, in the part that says "problems with D.C teacher evaluation" it talks about how the washington school rate nearly 100% which means that the teacher work hard to get their student for AP exams. on the other hand alexandria and other metro area ranked less than DC teacher this is one of the argument he try to show for other.

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  27. The article "Finding the better high school" suggest that our school among whole nation is a great school, the author also use logical appeal, the statisctic as a eviden, by comparing the evident it show how great our school was. also the author state the word "low income" could also suggest we as a low income family CHEC is the best school to choose from and even we dont have money we could still achieve better education.

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  28. In article "Class Struggle" the author Jay Mathews is arguing about how teachers are been evaluated on how good they are doing they jobs by helping students success when they go to college. Ap Classes is one way that shows how well teachers are doing they work when students pass their test. For example, there is CHEC which is in the third place because its the only DC public school that offer students to take Ap Classes. It wasn't the same for Our school years ago because it didn't offered the AP program where students and teachers can shows how well they are doing they jobs by passing their classes at college level and teacher by preparing them. Logical appeal is one of the rhetorical strategies the the that the author Mathews uses when he say "Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory"(I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on.) This quote directly from the article reveal that the head of education feel that teachers are doing ok by helping students out, but that it would be better if all school would offer students to take AP courses. Because as CHEC all DC publics school can be where Bell is now.

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  29. While reading the articles I found myself stunned of what the U.S Secretary of education said in response of New Orleans Katrina. I was amazed to read that "Katrina was the best thing that happen to the education in New Orleans" by reading this words I was able to depict that the U.S Secretary support the fact that Katrina was the best thing that ever happen in education, it breaks my heart because what happen in New Orleans was not the best thing it was a catastrophe, and I believe that he should be removed from office, he seems to not care about our education nor the next generation education as well.

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  30. In the Class Struggle written by Jay Mathews says that teachers in DC public schools area are being evaluated effective. The percentages of these evaluations are “Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on.” Jay Mathews also says that schools need strong support from their community in order to do well in the learning of the students. “The success of schools is dependent on what voters think of them. Schools cannot get a good start without strong community support. Schools should do what community leaders tell them to do, even if that clashes with their own knowledge of what works in the classroom. The author’s rhetorical strategy is a logical appeal. He uses this strategy to state the progress of public schools.

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  31. In the blogs of the article “Class Struggles” by Jay Mathews writes to the educators in D.C. The blog talks about the school and its incapacity of evaluating or having the evalution they need to teach student. In the blogs logical appeals is used for example, he uses logical appeal to show the problem that schools and teachers are qualified to teach but when it comes to the progress of the school its nothing, “….Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6,…” The appeal is used to emphasize that D.C. schools don’t exceed due to the lack of qualified teachers.

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  32. In the Article “Class Struggle,” An educator with a lot of experience about called, Marni Barron is arguing that teachers are, “100.percent satisfactory” But that there isn’t enough done. She thinks that there is no way to worry about the education, but should we believe her? Yes, the answer is yes because she is training people in a program called IMPACT. She is preparing teachers to do well when teaching. The speaker of this education topic is an educator. The argument is that teachers are doing good teaching in DC. That there is no reasons to worry about the way teachers are teaching. This speaker is using many strategies to convince the audience. One of them is ethical appeal; she is an educator training teachers to do good when teaching. Another strategy used is, statistics, She gives statistics of how teachers were rated in each district and region.

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