Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Interesting article about high-quality teachers

Out of touch administration is certainly not unique to the profession of teaching. In fact, I'd say it borders on being ubiquitous, yet no other industry comes to mind in which the ability of an administrator to fire a subordinate proves to be so problematic. You seem concerned that the wrong teachers would lose their jobs, while I'm concerned that hopefully many of the right teachers (finally) would.

So what makes teaching (without research) so different?

Add me to the list of teachers not leaving the profession too - I'm not going anywhere either, other than into 2 new courses I've never taught before this fall (I'm excited about teaching them)

What leads you to believe the supervisors would get it right? The article at the top of this thread clearly indicates they don't.

The article indicates that school supervisors make no distinction between high performing and low performing teachers, and the result is that high performing teachers leave (on their own... which is different from being let go, despite what your re-telling of the article implies). Of course, I know that teacher's unions typically fight evaluations every step of the way, and force pay to be based on objective measures like years of experience and education level, which have little to do with effectiveness. Basically the supervisors do what their teachers' contracts require them to do... and that's the problem.

In principle, tenure protects researchers whose results or studies are unpopular or not aligned with current political orthodoxy. So, say a conservative researcher works at a liberal school (or vice versa) and publishes something the administration doesn't like. Tenure protects him: they can't fire him because they don't like his ideas.

Tenure doesn't protect people who act fraudulently: that same researcher has to have proof to back up his claims.

The assumption behind tenure is that we expect that unpopular-but-true results will happen. As a society, we recognize that squelching research projects because some people just don't like them is counterproductive.

This situation doesn't apply (or applies very rarely) to primary and secondary school teachers. Even if it does apply, they aren't employed to do research: they're employed to teach a curriculum approved by a school board or other body. If they want to teach and do research, they should go to a tertiary-level institution.

Sure, tenure may protect teachers from dimwitted or clueless administrators. But by that logic, everyone else in the world should have tenure, too. So I don't see this argument as a valid justification for granting tenure to teachers. In fact, using this idea for granting tenure just trades one problem for another. Sure, tenure protects good teachers, but it also makes it impossible or nearly so to sack the bad ones. The good ones have an easier time getting a job somewhere else, and the bad ones stay. Why would a less-talented person leave a secure job? Too much protection creates a tendency to mediocrity.

"Many said they were not even encouraged to stay another year."

Hmmmm.

How many is "many"? What constitutes encouragement? What did the administrators report when they were asked?

Basing pay on performance as it relates to GT education is often even more misleading. The vast majority of incentive / performance pay is based on standard performance tests, many of which the material is focusing on a standard range of age appropriate questions. This of course works poorly when testing GT students who aren't so standard, their improvement is often in areas / subjects not yet approached by "standard" students.

Incentive pay by improvement alone is even more tricky. Teachers then want the student groups with the greatest potential for improvement on standardized tests, leaving those students with the least potential for improvement on standardized tests with what is remaining for teachers.

With mass public school budget problems, it's pretty typical that the best person for the job isn't the one hired. Most public schools when looking for new administration are hiring those fresh out of college with little or no actual teaching experience....they're a lot easier on the budget than the teacher with 10-20 years of experience who went back to school to get their Masters in educational administration.

Contrary to popular belief, tenured teachers can be let go, there is just a specific process that needs to happen including consultation and observing the teacher for progress / lack of progress over a period of 1-2 years. Most administration though fails to do proper observation and is unwilling to put forth the effort or time to follow the process and instead just look the other way.

The best and worst teachers become well-known to the parents. I think an eye-opening tool for administrators would be to survey the parents to pick their child's teacher(s). It would become clear who was doing their job effectively, amazingly, and abhorrently.

Physicians, therapists, coaches, dentists, et al create successful businesses through their reputation of quality work . I am compelled to serve my client (ie: customer) to the best of my ability because A - it's my job AND B - it's my future jobs.

I have a real issue with the firing process. It just shouldn't be this hard to get rid of an employee. We had personal experience with this process at our school. It was dreadful. We had bad apple teacher who had been a source of concern for years. At a minimum the administration needed three different families to file complaints in the same year. It also took an administrator and a school psychologist who both were retiring and didn't care about ongoing relationships with the union reps. In the meantime, the school counselor was advising parents not to allow their children to loop with this woman because she thought it would be psychologically damaging. Even then, this teacher did not get fired, just shuffled to another school. Disgusting.