Word: teaching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Report cards on the nation's public schools have been dismal for a decade: teachers cannot teach; students cannot, or will not, learn. The shortcomings of the schools have been documented by lower Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, a national high school dropout rate of some 25%, the shrinking elite of students taking calculus and physics, the proliferation of remedial courses in colleges and in businesses to repair the damage. One study in the '70s found that 30% of 18-year-olds (47% of black youths) were functionally illiterate, unable to read or follow a set of simple directions...
...help them improve instruction. Senator Ernest Rollings wants $ 14 billion, in part to give certain qualified public school teachers $5,000 raises. Senator John Glenn's $4 billion plan would include loans to math and science majors that would be forgiven for students who go on to teach those subjects...
...teachers is especially critical for math and science. Only 50% of such teachers are qualified in their subjects; most have been recycled from other areas. The undergraduates who excel at math or physics are smart enough to know that they can make considerably more money in industry than in teaching. From 1971 to 1980, the number of math teachers dropped 78% nationwide. Massachusetts universities produced only two graduates last June certified to teach chemistry on the high school level and only two who could teach physics. Berkeley, the proud flagship of the California system, did not graduate a single...
...disgruntled teachers, is the need to improve the prestige and power of the job, to restore its practitioners' self-respect. Says A.F.T. President Albert Shanker: "We give people poor salaries, then we lock them in a room with a bunch of kids and instead of letting them teach a subject they know-Shakespeare or math-we have them doing everything else, teaching 'Living,' 'Loving,' 'Life Adjustment.' " Maintains San Francisco School District Administrator Carlos Cornejo: "We don't give teachers the recognition they need. We have them teaching in leaky rooms and supervising...
Harvard's Graduate School of Education started an elite program this fall to help professionals switch to teaching in midcareer. One of the seven "students" in the pilot program is Jim Selman, 59. With his children through college and his mortgage paid off, Selman is quitting his $50,000-a-year job as an electrical engineer at Mitre Corp. Mitre is paying Selman's $8,320 tuition. When he finishes the program, which includes 14 weeks of student teaching, Selman will be accredited to teach science and math in Massachusetts schools, and he is looking forward to being...