Opinion: Failing Teachers Should Get the Boot, Kids Come First

While I respect the claims made in "Waiting for Superman", before you rush to judgment please consider some other the other facts, ones Mr. Guggenheim chose to ignore.

First, very few teachers in this country are protected by unions. In fact, in my home state of Georgia, with the exception of Atlanta City, it is ILLEGAL for teachers to join a union or to participate in collective bargaining. Striking is also illegal. Professional organizations that solely offer insurance protection are the only option.

Second, paying for performance is of questionable validity and veracity. In fact, repeated studies have demonstrated that merit pay increases fraud and does not impact student performance.

Third, charter schools are not a panacea. They get a lot of press; however, much of that press ignores important facts. Charter schools choose what kids they serve. Even if they are lottery based, they can expell kids who do not perform to the expected level or who are behavior problems. Traditional public schools rarely, if ever, have that option. Charter schools are neither required to follow state mandated curriculums, abide by contract rules or labor regulations, or employ certified educators. For every successful charter school out there, there are 10+ bad or failing ones.

Before you make snap judgments or allow propoganda to inform you, please do your research. We need school reform that works, not band-aids that fail to cover the whole wound. Take those feelings you felt during and after watching "Waiting for Superman" to educate yourself and make a difference!

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Kids are not stupid....They are sad at what they see going on in our government. The government should be a good example but are not. They see that our country is failing because all the jobs have gone overseas. Many parents are not teaching morality. TV programs are disgusting for our youth to be watchiing. Nothing but sex drugs and killing. Shame on what is allowed. Its the trend, not the teachers. Our country seems to be too greedy about money and fame. They say Kids learn what they live and I believe that is true. Grown ups must change before kids change.

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My daughter just started teaching in public high school. She came home crying. There are 96 young girls pregnant, unmarried, and certainly not old enough to take care of children. These girls are between 13 and 16 years of age......scared and sad. They dont want to do their school work. They leave there heads on the desks, They actually say why should we have to learn poetry. They constantly cut class. A boy was stabbed, one was killed in a gang. Dont blame the teachers, most of them are dedicated, they go to parent night, but parent dont show up. Dont blame the teachers. My son teaches in a public middle school. Most of the kids do well, but they are so young, he feels he can make a difference in their lives. He teaches them technology. Technology should be a main part of the curiculum in all grades as that is what kids will need in this country to get any job eventually

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I agree with the poster who puts responsibility for children failing on the parents. Absolutely true!! If parents don't value their children's education and instill a sense of importance, even the most dedicated and proficient teacher will not be able to make these kids come to school, behave, do homework and succeed.\
Second, much has been said about the failure of the teachers. But why is nothing ever said about the failure of principals and assistant principals. There is a big push to give principals more power in getting rid of poor teachers--but who says that the prinicpal is any more qualified than the teacher? Why is there little accountability when it comes to administration? If a school is doing poorly, and teachers are going to be fired, shouldn't the principal be fired as well? Many principals today have little teaching experience. They go to principal school and learn how to be an effective manager, but shouldn't they have extensive classroom experience? How can they motiviate and help teachers if they don't have the experience themselves? Education is in trouble today, but to blame it solely on teachers and their unions is naive and does not look at the whole picture.

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The problem is that it is very difficult to say what makes a teacher "good" or "bad". Please explain to me how my value as a teacher is supposed to be measured by evaluating 8th graders that have raging hormones, horrible home lives, and enough various "growing pain" problems to fill a semi-truck. Merit pay is a joke also. We give end of the year tests that are totally meaningless to the students, and yet my pay is supposed to be affected by that? In other words, my pay is to be determined by the attention span of my students? Talk about the cart pulling the donkey!

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I was in an Algebra class in high school where EVERY SINGLE STUDENT grade was BELOW a C...most were F's. We were all given a practice assessment test at the beginning of the class to see where we were all at. I did better at Algebra before this particular teacher started teaching us how we were supposed to do it. I remember very clearly, I only missed 3 out of 40 questions. By the end of the class, I failed that very same assessment test because we had to show our work, and "do it the proper way".

I actually lost knowledge in his class, because I couldn't do it the way I was supposed to, and not because I wasn't paying attention. It was the teacher....every one of his students were failing, except the history teachers daughter, and I think that was only because the history teacher and math teacher were hunting buddies. Even she was getting a C.

One time I actually caught him in the act of trying to throwing away one of my assignments I handed in, just so he could give me a zero on it. Every day he would put the stack of papers on the end if his desk, and have everyone come up to "find" their graded paper (Also allowing everyone to see other students scores). Any person whos paper wasn't there got a zero...and there was no way to prove you turned in your work if it wasn't there. So after I caught him doing that, I always made photocopies of my homework, with the date and time on them. The principle didn't believe me when I told him about it.

So, it wasn't the students, it was the teacher...he couldn't teach math successfully, and he purposely failed his students, but he still kept his job. I dropped his Algebra class as soon as I could. I can still do Geometry because I refused to take a class with him again, and I did pretty well in most of my other classes too. High B's mostly. So I know I'm a good student...I just wish I had a good math teacher.

I think teachers should be graded as well, and if they can't actually teach successfully, they should do something else. I know there are great teachers out there, and I know they don't do it for the money...but there are also bad teachers out there too.

Sometimes it really isn't the students refusal to learn, or the parents lack of attention, but just a really bad teacher.

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I empathize with many of the other comments that I am reading here. I worked for a principal who had only been a teacher for two years before getting an administrative position. Her method of evaluation was to include boilerplate suggestions for improvement related to the content area she used to teach. Public education does have leaders that have little to no classroom experience, yet they evaluate the educational performance of more experienced teachers. Personally, I feel that if you haven't taught for a decade, you're really just still getting your feet wet. After five years, you've only just hit your stride, and if you don't have a decent length of teaching experience after you really become practiced at your craft, that teaching expertise doesn't really stick. Suffice it to say, that principal was a horrible administrator who neither properly understood the dynamics of the classroom nor supported teachers when it really mattered. Imagine that... A member of the teaching profession's SUPPORT STAFF who failed to support teachers. I'm sure many others will find that their administrators are much the same.

When it comes to the issue of merit pay, though, I understand the AFT's position. Merit pay should reflect the merit achievements of the TEACHERS, but there's no way to accurately gauge that because you're measuring by the achievement of the STUDENTS. I've seen children who will take standardized tests and mark C or ABACADABA all the way down the scorechart, or simply refuse to take the test. Maybe they're having a bad day, or have problems at home, or don't like testing... There are a host of other factors involved beyond the teacher's proficiency at teaching that would reflect in the teacher's "merit pay". Teachers who receive the best students would have the easiest time earning merit pay while those who work with students with the greatest needs (typically those who perform poorly in schools) would have the most difficult time. Teachers who are good... Teachers who want more money would gravitate toward those schools and classrooms with better performing students while teachers who aren't as good would find themselves working with students who need them the most. Your best and your brightest wouldn't be where they're most needed (which is one criticism of teaching in general, related to pay - the best and brightest minds go for higher paying jobs; although you still have great minds go into teaching because that's what they're driven to do). Merit pay presents a false solution.

Charter schools and private schools also present a false solution. They are able to select their student population; a luxury that public schools do not have. They can expel students who are not meeting the school's academic or behavioral standards, while public schools have a much more difficult time expelling students. Charter schools and private schools typically have waiting lists to get in, so they can afford to be more selective - and by extension, afford to charge more. Students who may be in the greatest need then must rely on lottery assignment to get scholarships to go to such "great" schools. Imagine if you couldn't afford to send your child to the best schools in the nation and the lottery didn't choose in your favor. Now imagine if you couldn't afford to send your child to the middle-of-the-road schools because there no longer was a public option (in this hypothetical scenario, public schools have "failed" and have been phased out). Now imagine if you couldn't afford to send your child to a poorly-performing-and-inexpensive school; you just can't afford to send your child to school at all because public schools don't exist anymore. Scary thoughts, aren't they?

What public schools desperately need are fair and impartial standards that are absolute. Consistent evaluation across the board, coupled with consistent expectations that are universally applied and held to. Fair and balanced systems of both reward and consequence that are applied the same way to each student every single time. It would cut down on discipline problems, would provide every student the same opportunities for achievement and reward, and provide a consistent guideline for the evaluation of student growth - not based upon what kind of achievements students can make, but what kind of progress they can make each year. I can say with every confidence that students who can achieve a 10% increase in academic achievement from a 40% to 50% average have a much better teacher in their classroom than students who can achieve a 1% increase in academic achievement from a 94% to 95% average. However, the perception is that the teacher who has students who get those 95% scores is the better teacher.

Reason, objectivity, ethics, effort and consistency will improve education much more effectively than well-intentioned but emotional knee-jerk responses to core issues.

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