I’ve had a recent conversation with a principal about expensive programs districts purchase for teachers to use in their classrooms. They are research based, sometimes computer based, and sometimes scripted programs, but is that what we need? Do we need to have teacher read scripts from a manual to teach students? Do we need to put students on computers so they can learn from a researched based program?
Stance One: We need computers to help us with the workload in a classroom.
In the following article, they state that the computer math program, Teach to One is helping raise test scores. Read the article and make your own judgments.
Stance Two: We need to train our teachers better and continually to meet the needs of the students.
Here is an article that states we spend too much money on professional development based on the increase in effective teachers. So do we stop providing professional development? I don’t think so but we need to rethink it.
I believe if we spend the money we spend on computer programs to help our teachers improve their teaching, we will be better off. We spend so much money purchasing programs and “bandaids” to help our teachers but we do not take time to give our teachers adequate professional development in order to help them become more instructionally sound educators.