that is the difference with the British system. instead of asking the student to pick the answer he or she thinks is right, the question would be one which requires the student to discuss the topic in essay format.
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40% of kids fail pruebas nacionales
that is the difference with the British system. instead of asking the student to pick the answer he or she thinks is right, the question would be one which requires the student to discuss the topic in essay format.
ABC tests do test knowledge, but the question is, do they test useful knowledge? Choosing someone else's answers is not at all the same as coming up with your own answers and putting them in a coherent form. Teachers like these because they can be graded by a machine.
If you want to see some truly hateful multiple choice questions, check out the ones on Mensa's tests: A is to B as C is to ( ).
If you want to see some truly hateful multiple choice questions, check out the ones on Mensa's tests: A is to B as C is to ( ).
when you pay people 8000 pesos per month, i don't see them sitting at a table reading through 50 essays and grading them individually.
And with the wages they make, how can they ever expect to get anyone qualified?
I've been to some rural schools. One room for all ages, no lights and no chalk for the chalkboard. No paper, no books for the kids. Hard to teach in those conditions even if you do know what you're doing.
Why would you expect miracles at this point. First, you need to get parents to send their kids to school. Then you need better training for teachers. This is an on going long term process. Look at it this way. They have no were to go but up. Are the results poor? Certainly, but the DR is on the right track. Getting the kids into organized education is a process in itself.
Their wages are higher than many others in the DR, including most of those that work in banks.....etc. They get subsidized or free training. If a rural school has no supplies it's because either the person at the school district is incompetent or the school principal and teachers are stealing the stuff and selling it. I know that here in Jarabacoa that all the schools have to give their registers to the school district or a form that says how many children in each grade. The school district then orders the textbooks for each school. When they arrive , they separate them, and deliver them to all schools, including the little one room rural schools.
Children are expected to provide themselves with a pencil, notebook, and backpack. All affordable on the money the government gives to poor people to send their kids to school. Notebooks are 25 pesos and pencils usuall 8-10 pesos each. Chalk is readily available and inexpensive as well.
Bob, forgive me for going slightly off topic here. I was going to pm you but it's not to clear how to on tapatalk. Would you say doulos is a good school?
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Education vacuum ?
The government was under the gun to show that it had and interest in education when in previous years the education budget fell short of the 4% of GDP demanded by law. Well, to do so it had to do something visible and that is to build more classrooms, a behavior sort of like paving the streets before elections, to present a false face of using tax revenue in order keep the population happy.
They can build as many classrooms as they wish but government is forgetting the classrooms must have foundations of teachers, teachers that now do not exist. There will be many new classrooms empty of instructors. The public can see the classrooms from the outside and what a wonderful job the government is doing. However, the inside personnel are not in view hidden behind the schoolhouse walls. The government is building ships but not supplying the crews.
What will happen unforgivably is classrooms will be staffed with more incompetents to fill the teacher void just to give the appearance of government meeting its obligations to education. It will create an education vacuum that will lead to more than a 40% student failure rate in the future, unless the testing standards are weakened. Right now the government has a 0% failure rate on construction and a 99% failure rate on staffing the new facilities with qualified teaching staff.
Regards,
PJT
The government was under the gun to show that it had and interest in education when in previous years the education budget fell short of the 4% of GDP demanded by law. Well, to do so it had to do something visible and that is to build more classrooms, a behavior sort of like paving the streets before elections, to present a false face of using tax revenue in order keep the population happy.
They can build as many classrooms as they wish but government is forgetting the classrooms must have foundations of teachers, teachers that now do not exist. There will be many new classrooms empty of instructors. The public can see the classrooms from the outside and what a wonderful job the government is doing. However, the inside personnel are not in view hidden behind the schoolhouse walls. The government is building ships but not supplying the crews.
What will happen unforgivably is classrooms will be staffed with more incompetents to fill the teacher void just to give the appearance of government meeting its obligations to education. It will create an education vacuum that will lead to more than a 40% student failure rate in the future, unless the testing standards are weakened. Right now the government has a 0% failure rate on construction and a 99% failure rate on staffing the new facilities with qualified teaching staff.
Regards,
PJT
Yes, from the point of view that many of the Dominican children there become fluent in English. My understanding is, from talking to several of those students that have graduated from there that they have successfully applied and been accepted into American universities and colleges. However I'm not a fan of religious indoctrination schools.
Teachers obviously is the key and how other Latin American countries have prospered in this area. They need to find a way to budget for some foreign teachers and give them a reason to work here. Obviously the pay cannot compete with 1st world teachers salaries but sometimes the younger teachers would love to go on a 2 year teaching sabbatical in a foreign country or better yet a Caribe island. This is the template for the top private schools im sure but needs to be more of the normal.
absolutely correct about that. the ex-British caribbean islands laid their foundations in the good old days, when their exchange rates were on par with the US dollar, and the pound sterling. they brought in foreigners as teachers, and the locals learned from them. with the peso at 43:1, it would be hard to get foreigners to teach here.
A demanding task
PJT and wife and friends are fully involved assisting the public and private schools in the Punta Cana tourist zone. What we have encountered is a mix of qualifications of teachers and a mix of schools.
The private schools marketed for the middle class and up have competent teachers local and foreign with some form of higher education degree. The private schools for the poor run the whole gambit. Some actually provide an education and others are nothing more than baby sitters of children of working parents. Some of the teachers at these schools have credentials others not. The public schools are a mix, they are basically staffed with teachers having degrees or those working for degrees. Those teachers having degrees can be good teachers and the others with same credentials are there for the paycheck, nothing more.
We have gone as far as hiring additional teachers for some schools and assisting with the continuing education of staff with the intent of providing the school students with teachers that instuct and motivate. Calls by us to the Minsitry of Education to provide more qualified teachers have mostly fallen on sympathetic ears ending with little or no government proactive results. Some of the very few teachers it has sent to assist lack the enthusiasm to teach.
The history of a lack of spirited government action to provide teachers for the tourist zone leaves PJT aware that filling the newly constructed classrooms throughout the country with able staff will be a demanding and expensive task for government.
Regards,
PJT
PJT and wife and friends are fully involved assisting the public and private schools in the Punta Cana tourist zone. What we have encountered is a mix of qualifications of teachers and a mix of schools.
The private schools marketed for the middle class and up have competent teachers local and foreign with some form of higher education degree. The private schools for the poor run the whole gambit. Some actually provide an education and others are nothing more than baby sitters of children of working parents. Some of the teachers at these schools have credentials others not. The public schools are a mix, they are basically staffed with teachers having degrees or those working for degrees. Those teachers having degrees can be good teachers and the others with same credentials are there for the paycheck, nothing more.
We have gone as far as hiring additional teachers for some schools and assisting with the continuing education of staff with the intent of providing the school students with teachers that instuct and motivate. Calls by us to the Minsitry of Education to provide more qualified teachers have mostly fallen on sympathetic ears ending with little or no government proactive results. Some of the very few teachers it has sent to assist lack the enthusiasm to teach.
The history of a lack of spirited government action to provide teachers for the tourist zone leaves PJT aware that filling the newly constructed classrooms throughout the country with able staff will be a demanding and expensive task for government.
Regards,
PJT
Not to mention, when you do find a good teacher who wants to be there, then they run into problems with the administration as I have, because we aren't "doing our job right". I am certified and qualified to teach ms/hs Language Arts, but I am also teaching civics, economics, and sociology in hs and about to take on 5th grade science, because the administrator says I have to. I hardly know anything about economics and sociology, and certainly not much from science...
I walked into this job with my eyes half closed I guess and now in retrospect I wish I hadn't even taken the job because of how unprofessionally I am being treated by administration at the private school I work at. Most of their teachers here aren't even teachers or qualified, and they claim to be an American-certified curriculum, but if they truly were, they would not have a problem with how I grade (because in the states, we do not grade the same way across the subjects; you cannot grade a student in math the same way you grade them in ELA). There is always something to critique about what I do. If it's not the way I grade, it's how I grade, with the latest open-hanging threat as, "Your students need to pass your class..." or what? I cannot help the student who refuses to do any work! And I try to really help all the students! I want to teach; I love the kids, and if I didn't have any problems right now, I would love to stay here. But I think I will be walking out in a couple weeks...
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