Why Is It So Difficult To Fire Bad Teachers? 1322
Ant writes with this depressing story about how public schools sometimes work: "This six-page Los Angeles Times article shares its investigation to find 'the process [of firing poor teachers] so arduous that many school principals don't even try (One-page version), except in the very worst cases. Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare ...'"
Two words... (Score:5, Informative)
jdb2
Re:Public education... (Score:4, Informative)
My personal theory is that it's to teach them to take standardized tests.
Drivers permit/license
SAT/ACT
GRE
Industry Certifications
Boards
That, or it's to teach people to work line shifts. Turn on, turn off. Do job a, switch to job b, switch to job c, then go home when the whistle sounds.
It's CLEARLY not designed for learning.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Informative)
Because the teachers union is WAY too powerful!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw
Re:two reasons. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.justnews.com/news/19263827/detail.html [justnews.com]
Re:Difficult to Define a "Good" Teacher (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
Three highschools, two elementary schools, and a middle school, all spread across three states at opposite coasts. In elementary school we got the DARE treatment about how ALL drugs were The Devil, in middle school they kept on with that and went on to abstinence bible thumping, and in all three highschools they outright lied to promote the abstinence agenda.
As a bonus in one of the highschools the principal banned all mentions of south africa because he thought we shouldn't care so much about other race's problems.
Oh and all of these, like pretty much every other school in the country, were Zero Tolerance schools. What kind of liberalism should I have looked out for because every school I've ever been to from florida to oregon has been more religious right than bleeding heart liberal.
Re:two reasons. (Score:5, Informative)
[citation needed]
You shouldn't ask for a citation unless it's actually hard to find. I'm making the radical assumption that you have access to Google. This was the fifth result [justnews.com] when searching Google for all of: broward county teacher scissors. Note that what the report adds is that the teacher had no previous issues and that her freakout was reportedly a result of an adverse reaction to medication.
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
curâ...ricâ...uâ...lum [kuh-rik-yuh-luhm] Show IPA â"noun, plural -la [-luh] Show IPA , -lums.
1. the aggregate of courses of study given in a school, college, university, etc.: The school is adding more science courses to its curriculum.
2. the regular or a particular course of study in a school, college, etc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=curriculum&x=0&y=0 [reference.com]
Re:Two words... (Score:3, Informative)
You also forgot: Tenure [wikipedia.org].
That coupled with the teachers unions means teachers are almost bullet proof when it comes to firing. The only teacher I ever heard of being fired in my school days was a gym teacher who was caught helping a girl put her bra back on after doing god-knows-what with her.
My brothers friend had a public school teacher who was literally burnt out from the years of dealing with students who did not care for education. He was unkempt and had long hair and a bald spot which he covered by wrapping the top of his head with a disgusting greasy spiral of hair. Every day in that teachers class he did nothing, and I mean nothing. The kids were out of control. He would just sit there staring into oblivion or reading a book/news paper. Once a student went up to his desk where he was sitting and pushed his desk out of the classroom and into the hallway. All the teacher did was get up and push the desk back into the classroom. He was said to be in that school for 15 years and there was nothing anyone could do about him. They just had to wait until he retired. Then he will be able to collect upward of a $60,000 pension per year for his 20 years as a useless teacher.
And people wonder why school systems are going bankrupt. The biggest expense is not administrators, teachers or classroom materials. The biggest expense is paying people full salaries for the rest of their life for just 20-25 years of service. A college student graduates with a 4 year degree is most likely 21-22 years old. They will be able to retire on full salary when they are about 45-50 years old. They might live for another 25-40 years in which they will be paid full salaries for nothing.
My mother is friends with a couple who were both in the public school system. One retired as a principal and the other as a school teacher/college professor. Their combined yearly pension income is $170,000. He makes 60k per year and she makes 110k per year! Talk about the good life, you should see their apartment. They always say the school system is the best kept secret. My high school electrical shop teacher owned three successful electrician businesses his sons ran while he taught in the public school system for 25 years. He receives full medial benefits and has a 55k per year pension and the income from his three businesses. He now owns a 10,000 square foot mansion on 50 acres and two three car garages with various restored classic muscle/sports cars. He also has a summer home in Florida and a another home near his mansion he rents out which is water front. the 55,000 is just gravy along with the free medical for him.
So you want to know where the real money is? Its in unionized government jobs. You cant be laid off easily and its almost impossible to get fired for things other companies would dump you for in a heart beat. Salaries can approach the 100k mark, you and your family get full medical coverage and you get a nice fat pension when you retire. I know lots of people who work in the government: cops, fire fighters, sanitation, DEP, customs & border patrol etc. You cant loose with jobs like those.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Difficult to Define a "Good" Teacher (Score:5, Informative)
And the income disparity isn't caused by any cultural differences? It's pretty obvious that Asian-American families have lower tolerance for gang membership, deadbeat dads, and and most of the other hallmark problems with stereotypical African-American culture. The cultural differences that make the parents more successful (and leads to higher income) are the same ones that lead to the kids getting a better education (which eventually leads to them having higher incomes, too).
It's far from just a self-perpetuating income disparity where the rich are better educated. Just look at how over-represented people of Asian descent are compared to whites in higher education institutions, and how common entitlement beliefs are among the richer whites. Being rich certainly helps, but the cultural component is significant.
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome to the club man. It's a pain in the ass but worth every minute of it. Just don't forget that part about loving teaching.
Re:Simple answer (Score:2, Informative)
I try not to press her on these questions. Both of these guys were pretty new, but so is her school.
Word of advice about Missouri: the southwestern part of the state is horrifyingly conservative. If you like more liberal, open-minded types, you may want to stick with the north or Columbia.
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
Cut the teamism. Education has been fucked up long before NCLB. In fact, it is a liberal enclave and the left has used "do it for the children" as a means of gaining power for themselves and the teachers union for 40 years.
Biased much? Did you ever stop to think that maybe the liberals actually want to help the children? Especially since the United States maintains its world position through education (though not for long). And do you realize that conservatives have favored government education mandates and control (through funding) since at least Reagan, except with the extreme right in recent years and its anti-science agenda?
We throw WAY too much money at education. Much of it doesn't go to the classroom and teachers where it should. Rather it goes to administration.
The US spends approximately 3.4% of its GDP on public primary and secondary education. That is less than Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Ireland, UK, Spain, the EU as a whole, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Cyprus, Poland, Malta, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, just to name a few. It is, however, about equal with Greece.
Leftist feel-good cirriculums dominate and as such our kids learn to either throw a ball or drop fries.
Leftist? Do you realize that our curriculum is very moderate compared to most of the world?
Science and math skills tank but we have happy little taxpayers who learn to vote in all the politically correct garbage they read in the "picture books" they were given in grade school.
Do you have any figures to back that up? No. How about this: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009001.pdf [ed.gov]
By grade eight, the United States out performed 37 of 47 countries in Math, being primarily beat by 5 Asian countries (Taipei, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Japan) and equal to European countries (Hungary, England, Russian Federation, Lithuania, Czech Republic).
Also according to this study, the US has been improving average scores since it began tracking (1995). We are behind Asian countries because Asian school systems work harder, having much longer school years (220 days average vs 180 days in the US). Asian schools are often 6 days a week, 8 hours a day.
CUT the funding, limit the course work to what matters, fire administrators, and raise teachers' pay to attract our brightest to the field. Otherwise, stop bitching about education and stop using my tax dollars to fund this toilet.
How exactly are you going to cut the funding AND raise teachers' pay? I agree that we need to raise teachers' pay, but we should do it by increasing educational spending and cutting some spending elsewhere ($16 Billion a year in farm subsidies? $613 Billion a year on Defense? $48 Billion in earmarks?)
The US has been in a slight population boom since 1992, meaning more children to educate (approximately 11% increase). The US still has the largest percentage of the population completing upper secondary education (HS) of all countries in the world except Japan, and over the past forty years it has steadily increased (81% in 1960 to 87%). The US also has the largest percentage of the population completing higher education (college/university degree) in the world at 27 percent.
The US also has one of the worst student to teacher ratios in the world, averaging out to 16, but in lower income schools averaging over 35.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003026.pdf [ed.gov]
There is a charter school in Oakland with minority (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Informative)
It differs from system to system, but the main issues are failing to teach well. For us, there are three areas a teacher needs to have proficiency, content development, promoting engagement, and classroom management. The teacher has to be able to develop a lesson that is appropriate for the grade level, cognitive ability for the students in that classroom, and that covers the standards being taught. Most teachers can do this well.
Promoting engagement is where a lot of problems arise. Can a teacher make a lesson engaging? Do they ask relevant questions that probe a student's understanding or that prompt a student to look further for a more robust understanding? Does the teacher work with all the students in the room in ways that at least attempt to get a student involved.
Finally, teachers have to manage the classroom well. Do they spend forty minutes taking roll and asking about the students' plans for the weekend, or do they get right to the lesson? How do they deal with students who are acting appropriately, or inappropriately? Do they control the situation or let the student? Etc.
If a teacher isn't proficient in many of these areas or is egregiously negligent in one of them, you can begin the process to terminate employment.
Of course there are several steps involved.
Of course, the article is correct that it is much easier to fire someone who is negligent. Proving a teacher is bad in the classroom isn't easy.
Bill Gates' TED talk (Score:3, Informative)
Unions think teachers should not be accountable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, she shouldn't believe that her parents are infallible either. Google is a mispelling of Googol, which is actually just 1x10^100. If you'd like, you can Google it [google.com] :)
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
Look at a state like NY where the education unions have forced the state to provide funding to lower average class sizes and raise teacher salaries.
Now teachers average $65k/year and class sizes are decreased dramatically. The urban district where where I live has an average class of 19. When I attended school in NYC in the early 80's, it was 30+.
Guess what? Performance still sucks, particularly for the lost generation of urban youth growing up in broken households, with parents who don't care and a culture that embraces ignorance and dependency.
It sucks in the burbs too, where the precious Connors and Jennifers get B's in watered down classes and have an inflated view of their own abilities.
Memo to the moderators (Score:1, Informative)
I think it's high time those who downmod on Slashdot ought to be required to write a minimum 50-word statement explaining what they find objectionable, especially when they're downmodding something that someone else upmodded.
I'm looking at the "reactions" to this one, and I can only assume the downmodders happen to be people who slid through the educational system and are precisely the sort of moron I'm describing!
Re:Public education... (Score:3, Informative)
While the intended meaning of the sentence is clear, the sentence is poorly written. "Showing up on time" isn't a rule, it's a action, and as such doesn't make much sense modifying 'rules.' A more correct statement would look something like "insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as the rule requiring teachers to show up on time."
Of course, that's awful too, so probably the whole thing should be rephrased to something like "insubordination, repeated violation of rules, or chronic tardiness," which conveys all the intended ideas much less awkwardly. I'm sure a better phrasing exists, but the point is, if this is the sort of writing produced by professionals today, our education system has been a mess for a long time now.
Re:Same as any other profession (Score:2, Informative)
Lots of places: several startups, industry and govt, one superlarge corp, etc. I have seen a lot of people fired for basic HR violations--running a business out of one's cube, not showing up to work, etc. But nothing regarding skill.
As an employer and someone who has fired programmers before I can tell you that lack of skills or incompetence is usually the reason that we let someone go. If someone is really good an employer will often look the other way.
The reason that it seems to you that someone has been fired for reasons other than incompetence is that we do not want to end up in front of the labor board with unfair firing claim filed against us and it is easiest to document and write up employees for being late or not calling into work when they are sick, etc.
Re:News for nerds? (Score:2, Informative)
Wish I had some mod points.
Public education in the US is not about education, the objective is to teach submission and to act as expected in your chosen profession.
Personally, I quit and got my GED after grade 10. Sure they offered "honors" classes, but these classes really just required more homework and were graded to a higher standard (read, no one gets an A). My choice was to work my ass off to make a B, take "regular" classes and make a A+ or quit and wash dishes, cook food and make some money.
Re:Public education... (Score:5, Informative)
Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't you have 3 months a year to do some other work to make up a chunk of that difference? Or do teachers end up working during summer break?
The break varies, in my district it is 9-10 weeks. Most teachers are required to take continuing education to maintain their licenses, and many of those classes, workshops, and other professional activities are done in the summer to accommodate teacher schedules.
For example, I would love to get a part time job this summer--and I am looking--but I have a week-long workshop in June, and a few other job-related full-day commitments before the end of the summer. Many employers are not interested due to the swiss-cheese scheduling that is required to accommodate my professional obligations.
Re:Difficult to Define a "Good" Teacher (Score:3, Informative)
It's pretty obvious that Asian-American families have lower tolerance for gang membership
Sweet christ do you ever need to visit Canada sometime. No, it's not pretty obvious at all. In fact it could easily be argued to be just about the opposite
We don't have black gangs in Canada, we have asian gangs. It's got sweet fuck all to do with race or culture, I'm afraid to say.
Re:Difficult to Define a "Good" Teacher (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I know this. I edited that post a couple of times for concision. But, since you brought it up, let me explain.
Given that the distribution of the normative sample is known, one could quite easily estimate the necessary sample size for a given difference to be considered significant. This should be done *before* the research took place. The fact that these researchers stated that their no-difference findings may be due to a small sample (which was equal to about 10% of the size of the entire norming sample) hints that they *thought* there would be a bigger difference.
It may actually be quite clever: If you expect a big difference, sample narrowly so that only your expected difference would be significant, while still plausibly dismissing non-significant differences as the result of a small sample.
Also, while you are correct that the specific caveat of sample size wouldn't be applicable if they found a significant difference, there are other important limitations (e.g. external validity) that would have to be discussed. The research I have seen on the topic tends not to bring up those or anything else that could lessen the impact of their conclusions, but only when they find a difference.
Thanks for keeping me honest on it.
Re:Simple answer (Score:1, Informative)
I think you also need to get rid of these asinine feel-good legislation like No Child Left Behind. All little laws and regulations like that do is teach the test as well as cheapen the education experience for everyone, especially those who actually want to learn and better themselves. I've gone through the New York City public education system and let me tell you that it is like playing a game of russian roulette. Some schools are excellent while others are down right shit holes. The ridiculousness of Math and Science in the High School system is terrible leaving my graduating class naked holding their balls in the higher education system. I am talking about the motivated smart students who just didn't know a lot of the things a College Freshmen should know coming in. Most all of us had to play catch up and pretty much work our asses off just to keep up for the first semester or so. I went to an engineering school and my first year was a crash course in much of the Math. You can forget about the mediocre or the poor students who coasted by. The government, local and higher, needs to stop blaming people who succeed and start preparing kids for higher education rather than to be a good little consumer or inmate number 135432. You can't blame poverty so much as a giant welfare system of entitlement that the government has provided. Why does anyone think that anyone from a shithole country of poverty comes here and excels? It's because they were given a golden gift and runs with it while our kids domestically don't give a shit because if they fuck up welfare and other programs that get abused up the ass will be their safety net. Not everyone is going to be a rocket scientist but our collective responsibility should be to make sure everyone has the potential and the guidance to be the most productive member of society they possibly can.
Re:Simple answer (Score:2, Informative)
The overwhelming majority of European states did NOT implement voucher schemes.
The governments of UK, France, Italy, Spain and (afaik) Germany are constantly being lobbied by (overwhelmingly faith-based and predominantly Catholic) private schools to adopt such schemes, but it's always been refused because this would very quickly create huge disparities between rich and poor schools. You know, we already had to deal with class in our history...
Re:Teachers Union reason you have any good teacher (Score:1, Informative)
Oh of course, blame the Republicans for all the ills of the world. Can we have a discussion where it doesn't turn into a partisan "the republicans are evil" dogma. What about the no child left behind act. That really did great having the Federal Government basically derail public education because of some feel good agenda. Also if most republicans had it their way, not just your stereotype of evangelical bible thumping 'publicans, public schools would actually not exist, and not because they want everyone to be stupid, or jesus lovers, but because they believe a public education system breeds the lowest common denominator in education. Now whether you agree with that or not is your opinion. Lets also look at the Federal Government system that has seemed to gotten us into this mess in the first place. I am far from anti-welfare or trying to help our most economically distraught citizens but the abuse and massive mishandling of the system has gotten many Americans believing that it is a system of entitlement. These same Americans have children and believe that public school is nothing but a state mandated babysitter service and that if their son or daughter doesn't make anything out of their tax-payer funded education, that they can also blame their race/gender/poverty on it and collect money.
Look at it as if you paid someone $5000 a month without any incentives on your part, that person will just spend the money and continue to collect because they didn't have to earn it and you're not lighting a fire up their asses to become financially independent. I don't care if republicans or democrats support their bungling of welfare but I do think that a system of endless entitlement is what breeds laziness and incompetence. Get a poor kid from a 3rd world country and put them in the United States and watch how fast given the opportunity they will try to make something out or what is virtually non-existence in their country. We just grow fat and lazy in the United States with encouraging the ignorant to stay ignorant and the poor to stay poor.
Now getting into teacher salaries, while I agree that most people won't find the pay very attractive, you shouldn't get into teaching for the money. It should take a certain passion and self sacrifice that motivates someone to take a pay cut to make sure that the you do the best you can to foster the country's future to become the most productive members of society as their potential allows. It should be enough to allow a teacher to live comfortably but we can't pay all teachers near six figure salaries either and I honestly don't think an artificially inflated or deflated salary does the system any justice as well.
Re:Simple answer (Score:2, Informative)
If you thought "educated" meant "capable of thinking critically and understanding important scientific, social, and political issues" -- well, that was never what "public education" was for, anyway.
This sounds good in theory, but when thrown in practice noone actually wants to do this.
In practice this obviously means (just 2 examples) :
-> teaching data denying global warming
-> teaching data agreeing with global warming
-> teaching against evolution
-> teaching for evolution
AND tolerating, without ridicule ANY conclusion any individual kid comes to.
Can you see the greenie nuts (/religious nuts/socialist nuts/...) turn red already ? There are many issues where society currently just does not tolerate varied (and better or worse supported).
You cannot teach kids critical thinking in a society that states (or worse : teaches) it's "a crime" to deny global warming. That it's stupid to agree with OR deny evolution. Especially if one might state the trivial argument that we can't reliably predict weather 1 week out, and we're making huge claims over the weather in 100 years. There are other arguments, like that the sun is a 1400 petawatt nuclear reactor, and a 0.0001% variation is solar temperatures will make a hell of a lot more difference to earth temperatures than 1000 years of coal burning. Combined with the observation that solar temperatures regularly vary 1% or more, it's kind of hard exclude these effects.
All such arguments, especially when referenced, would have to be unquestionably accepted by the teacher, and the teacher should make other students accept these arguments too.
Re:Simple answer (Score:5, Informative)
Schools should teach some basic statistics. This includes the difference between statistically analyzing a random variable (climate science) and trying to predict the outcome of a single instance of the random variable (weather prediction), and why the two are fundamentally different.
There are other arguments, like that the sun is a 1400 petawatt nuclear reactor, and a 0.0001% variation is solar temperatures will make a hell of a lot more difference to earth temperatures than 1000 years of coal burning.
Schools should teach the Stefan-Boltzmann law in physics class. It gives a good first approximation of the impact of a 0.0001% variation of photosphere temperature on Earths surface temperature (it's, um, 0.0001%, or about 280 uKelvin. Good luck finding a thermometer that's that accurate).
Re:Memo to the moderators (Score:1, Informative)
It got down modded because someone thought that someone else might have been offended by the content and tone of the message. This is how political correctness works, you don't have to be offended by something you just have think it might offend someone else.
It ain't fair. (Score:4, Informative)
Couple of guys from high school who struggled to get D's started a lawn care and snow removal business. While I was farting around in the Navy and in college, they were making a couple of hundred grand a year with a crew of workers under them.
Now I have a great job, and those guys are probably retired. Boo fricking hoo.
Education is a bunch of facts and ideas that can help you be more successful. Intelligence is the ability to cope and thrive in your environment. Neither concept is a complete subset of the other.
Re:The Freshwater case is a prominent example of t (Score:1, Informative)