The story behind the rise and fall of America's master math teacher

by whughes • 17 years ago

57 5 17 years ago

mkelly• 17 years ago

I'd be interested to hear more from the administrators who wouldn't let him run his program how he wanted to run it. Were they just being trolls or was he causing problems for everyone else at the school?

Anecdotally (not so much from my own schooling, but from talking to teachers), it seems that primary and secondary education is full of petty, childish people who are so threatened by anyone competent that they try to sabotage them. I have no idea if that's what happened here, though.

patio11• 17 years ago

Well, he was flouting union work rules routinely. Whether that counts as "causing problems for everyone else" depends on your point of view. Union officers generally consider it to be pretty darn important. They work their entire lives to make sure that nobody can pull a stunt like a) creating a separate advancement path outside of their control and b) negotiate higher pay as a result of it. Note how that is a recurring element in the story -- "Hey, we're demonstrably the best math teachers in the country. How about more money?" "Nope, pay scale says you're less useful than a clock puncher who stayed in one place for the same amount of time. Sucks to be you."

smanek• 17 years ago

I hate teachers' unions. My highschool's highest paid teacher was a gym teacher (who had been around for 40 years), who made ~$150K. While I had a great calculus teacher who only made $60K. The Calc teacher had a masters in math, and had over 90% of his two sections of Calculus BC students get perfect scores on the AP (and no student from his class had ever failed to pass the AP exam).

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/04/2... The problem is that if the district wants to get rid of a poor teacher, that teacher has the right to stay (and force a younger, non-tenured, teacher to get let go instead).

ShabbyDoo• 17 years ago

My father was a union factory worker. Had he ignored the union's work rules, we would have found his headlights broken after his shift.

fgimenez• 17 years ago

My highschool calculus teacher told us his own experience with Escalante. We were in Northern California, not too far from Hiram Johnson, and the calculus program there was considered a failure. Escalante made all his students sign contracts that they wouldn't participate in any extracurricular activities (like sports, clubs, etc..) to be admitted into his calculus program. When he tried to do the same at Hiram Johnson, nobody wanted to join his classes. Apparently, he was also a hard man to work with and needed absolute control over his work (as stated in the article). Though his system obviously worked, imagine having to work with a cocky person who wants absolute fine grained control over everything that goes on in your office. Even if it is successful, most people would probably be more than angry.

The story behind the rise and fall of America's master math teacher

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