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At 2:29 PM -0500 9/19/07, Paul Lulai wrote:
The administrators can get rid of any teacher they want to. Follow
protocol. Granted it is much easier before the teacher earns tenure.
Then the administrators should get rid of the bad teachers before they
earn tenure. If someone has a great first 5 years and then slumps, it
is the administrations job to tell them to pick it up a notch. It might
not be popular, but that is their job. Bad teachers won't like it, good
teachers do. If the teacher continues to stink after a good start, then
get rid of them. Follow protocol. It can be done.
It is _very_ difficult in most states, including mine, to get rid of poor
tenured teachers. It can be done, but only by following protocol for 3-4
years documenting the poor performance. Even then we still get sued.
Yes, we try to not give tenure to poor teachers (it is quite easy to not
re-hire untenured teachers), but the probation period is only 3 years, not
5, and it isn't always easy to tell how good someone will be after only 3
years.
At 7:49 AM -0400 9/19/07, Rick Tarara wrote:
Teacher salaries are not necessarily out of step. Look at the average
income of American workers and look at experienced teacher salaries--and
compare those to other government workers--never losing site of the fact
that these are nine-month jobs (for the most part) -- with many more
holidays than the general worker. Yes I know all the outside work that many
put in, but not everyone is as dedicated as the people on this list or their
immediate compatriots. The public perception is that teachers have 20-25%
fewer work days than most people for salaries that range from 30 up to
80,000 dollars a year.
I think teacher salaries are out of step. A pure economist would say the
market dictates, so they are only worth what they are willing to take, but
I (as mentioned by others) think we need to raise the social status and
respectability of teachers, partly by raising their pay. Rick, you must
live in a rich state; in my district the highest paid teachers are not
anywhere near $80k: the most a teacher can make on regular salary in my
district (for 25 yrs experience and a PhD) is less than $56k. We need to
attract professionals to the profession.
At 6:30 PM -0700 9/18/07, John Barrer wrote:
Several valid (IMHO) reasons that unions could oppose
"merit pay":
- teachers have NO control over quality of the inputs
to "production" (ie, the kids), both initially and
throughout the year. Would you expect assembly-line
workers to accept a system where their wages were tied
to final quality when they were supplied parts of
wildly varying quality?
- how many administrators REALLY know how to evaluate
classroom performance? How would you like it if your
evaluator used a "seat-of-the-pants" approach? In my
exp, this is all too common.
- even if evaluation were based on gain during the
year on some appropriate (how to define?) instrument,
this would present a tremendous temptation to cheat.
I agree with all these points, which is why I said merit pay is very
difficult to implement. I only said that I'm in favor philosophically.
At 10:42 AM -0500 9/19/07, John M Clement wrote:
Of course the schools and districts are doin a CYA job because they
hide incompetent or even abusive teachers. They will let them resign,
and then not reveal the problems to other schools. I know of cases of
teachers who were caught in the act with a student, were allowed to
resign, and then ended up in another district.
Reprehensible. It wouldn't happen in my district on my watch. We require
a criminal background check for all new hires, but of course this doesn't
catch everything, so we need to be able to rely on recommendations from
other districts.
At 10:42 AM -0500 9/19/07, John M Clement wrote:
Now some schools do treat their teachers like professionals, but all
too often they do not. In the most extreme examples they require that
teachers be covering the same pages of the book on the same day and
give the same tests even across a district. This is not only
demeaning, but also bad pedagogy. They also provide totally scripted
lessons in some schools, so where is the professionalism?
I think the districts, schools, and teachers are responding to public
pressure in many cases rather than using research-based best practices.
This again goes back to NCLB pressures.
Larry
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