Teachers have historically resisted attempts to get them out of the business of pedagogy and curriculum development, which many of them are manifestly unsuited for, and instead have them concentrate on classroom management, progress tracking, and limited individualized instruction.
I'm a big fan of that transition taking place, which may involve taking 100 units of work currently done by teachers (i.e. people who are, aspirationally, highly skilled and highly educated) and replacing it with 40 units of work done by teacher's aides (semi-skilled labor like, ahem, many teachers in the status quo), 40 units of work done by teachers (close to the ideal of today's teachers), and N units of work done by a handful of curriculum experts whose amortized cost per class taught is rounding error next to the teacher's salary.
I mean, last year BCC essentially added twenty full time teachers to the US just by preventing people with masters degrees from preparing for class by cutting construction paper with scissors and then writing on the construction paper with markers for more than an hour at a time. That's hideously inefficient use of resources... and there are still hundreds of thousands of teachers who do it the bad way.
> I mean, last year BCC essentially added twenty full time teachers to the US just by preventing people with masters degrees from preparing for class by cutting construction paper with scissors and then writing on the construction paper with markers for more than an hour at a time.
I love the description and love your HN contributions as much as anyone, but that sounds just a wee bit inflated. I would think BCC purchasers more likely to use the hours saved as leisure rather than as additional professionally productive time. You also dismiss the possibility of these teachers finding another satisfactory program in BCC's hypothetical absence.
(Unless you've already factored out those factors before you arrive at the "20 full time" figure. Then please ignore me.)
I'm a big fan of that transition taking place, which may involve taking 100 units of work currently done by teachers (i.e. people who are, aspirationally, highly skilled and highly educated) and replacing it with 40 units of work done by teacher's aides (semi-skilled labor like, ahem, many teachers in the status quo), 40 units of work done by teachers (close to the ideal of today's teachers), and N units of work done by a handful of curriculum experts whose amortized cost per class taught is rounding error next to the teacher's salary.
I mean, last year BCC essentially added twenty full time teachers to the US just by preventing people with masters degrees from preparing for class by cutting construction paper with scissors and then writing on the construction paper with markers for more than an hour at a time. That's hideously inefficient use of resources... and there are still hundreds of thousands of teachers who do it the bad way.