Posted on 08/03/2010 9:59:59 AM PDT by george76
school principals should have the power to fire teachers who do not perform. As numerous educators have told me, union protections being what they are, dumping a teacher -- even a bad one -- is an almost impossible task.
Americans seem to be rallying around a demand for education reform. Apparently, we've had enough of students failing schools and schools failing students. We know our kids are capable of better -- and that in a competitive, hyper-connected world where China is rising and India aspiring, not delivering better is no longer an option.
Unfortunately, whenever anyone seeks to require better, they seem to find themselves at odds with the last people you'd expect: teachers. Or, more accurately, teachers unions.
It is time teachers embraced accountability. Time parents, students and government did, too.
Because ultimately, what is as stake here is not grades, not jobs and not blame. No, this is an argument about the future -- and whether this country will have one. The fact is, it cannot in a world where information is currency and American kids are broke.
There is a groundswell building here. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
If I don’t perform well, I lose clients.
Screw the unions.
“Americans seem to be rallying around a demand for education reform.”
....more and more they’re paracticing their own method of ‘reform’....home schooling!
bump
Local middle school had an 86 year old teacher who’d been teaching for over 60 years. It was to the point where she would zone out in the middle of class, fall asleep, just stop talking in the middle of a lesson to sit down and rest, and the list goes on. She blamed it on the myriad medications she was taking. Parents started to complain, and the PTA meetings were getting contentious with the staff defending her while the parents sat astonished that there was an 86 year old woman teaching their kids, and not doing a very good job at that.
Long story short, when confronted with it by the Super, the principal said that she was a valuable asset, and she would not be fired despite all of the allegations and having to have an occasional “minder” in the room with her.
She died over last summer after teaching for all that time, but she was never fired.
Crist vetoed a bill that would’ve made it easier to fire underperforming teachers. The libs don’t like this since it quashes the power of yet another union.
*spit*
I’ll be homeschooling my kids, thanks.
Home school or private schools. If parents want to send their kids to private schools, they should be able to deduct the costs. As it is now, if they use private schools, they pay twice.
I’m curious if all of the laws and issues we discuss and lament about nowadays are a result of solid Democrat rule of government from the 1920s through the present? If so, wouldn’t it be pretty easy to make a nice little Glenn Beck slideshow of all of the garbage we put up with that didn’t exist prior to 19XX?
Every day I read about some law or tax that didn’t exist at some point in the 20th century, and it boggles my mind. The time period of change is really very short, and it’s amazing how people just roll over when something truly egregious is allowed to go into law.
Personally, I think we should repeal everything passed since 1787 and start over (Well, Slavery should still be illegal so we'll keep that one.) I think it was James Mason who refused to sign the constitution because he thought the original document gave the feds too much power.
He had a point
Amazing, coming from Leonard Pitts. How soon before he’s accused of being racist?
Thanks - I never knew Kennedy started this. I just remember hearing as a kid that teachers were on strike somewhere... probably NY. Some unions just didn’t need to be!
On the flip side, in some places the battle to reach children who are aged way out of grade and where neither parent or child is interested in the education part can be a daunting task. I wonder how many dissenters can claim that as an issue.
Clearly there are teachers who could be weeded out. But I am extremely suspicious of state/district imposed “accountability’ schemes that fail to consider the student’s obligation to the learning process. Sixty to seventy percent of the variability in student learning is related to factors over which teachers have little or no control.
Allow teachers to be fired; allow merit pay for good teachers.
I agree. It’s easy to think immediately of the ‘lifers’, there in body only, keeping their teaching jobs till early retirement just because the union protects them. They need to go. As to the other factors that teachers can’t control, it seems the solution to that is merely raise taxes and throw more funding at programs, successful or not....
A
Get rid of government schools and mandatory school attendance.
Wanna send your kid to school? Pay for it.
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