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"In my opinion, if teachers can’t produce results, then they have no business teaching and it should be up to the teacher to call a parent if the. If there is any problem with a child turning in work, distrupting the classroom, etc. the teacher should notify the parents that day! If teachers don’t communicate with the parents, then parent’s can’t do much of anything to correct the situation."

While I agree that many teachers ARE culpable for failures such as the ones you mention, it has been MY experience that, when I call parents, almost no one ever answers. If there is an answering machine and I leave a message for the parents to get back to me, SELDOM do I get a response. When I e-mail parents with student behavior issues or lack of effort issues, same thing.

While I sympathize with your situation, MANY teachers make the ATTEMPTS to contact parents, but the parents do not respond more often than not. What are teachers who make these attemtpts to do if parents do not take active interests in corresponding with the teachers?

I will give you the benefit of a doubt when you say that you call and parents don’t always answer the phone or call you back. I always call back, however, most of the time teachers get our answering machine too because they call when we are out.

I would suggest the following if you don’t get a call back: Request a conference with the parents, discuss the situation with school councellors, the school principal, etc. Perhaps the child gets home from school and checks the answering machine and erases your messages before the parents even hear it. There is usually a reason a call doesn’t get returned by a parent. Most parent’s care about their children and I believe they will respond if repeated attempts are made to contact them.

There may be some children that can’t be helped or that have parents that just don’t care, but I think there are more that would welcome the communication.

The problem here is that teachers throw out the idea of merit based on measuring the performance of students as if this were the only criteria. How is it that every college in America manages to offer merit pay? There are hundreds of possibilities here beyond tests scores, graduation rates or other similar methods.

Teachers like to pretend they are above such things as techniques that businesses have used to improve every other industry. Well, they work in education as well. Here are some ideas.

The teacher volunteers to stay after school every night to tutor students for free deserves merit pay. The teacher who makes a home call to check on a student gets merit pay. The teacher who earns a masters or a doctorate in his or her field (not an education degree) deserves merit pay. The teacher who writes a textbook, or a scholarly article, or who makes a professional presentation at a conference deserves merit pay.

These are just some possibilities. I'm sure you'll find the teacher that does any of these actions probably also has pretty good students in the classroom, and I'll bet those students excel.

Take four students--One gets straight A's is on honor roll every semester, great kid; Two gets straight C's, struggles a bit, but is hanging in there; Three gets D's and F's but hasn't really given up yet; Four is a Straight F student, a juvenile delinquent, and a bully. At the end of the semester, will each student receive the same grade? No, of course not.

If those four students were teachers, then not only would they get the same reward, the unions would file lawsuits in heartbeat to defend No. 4's right to really suck as a teacher. Certainly none will receive a dismissal letter.

There is the problem. Putting in place a system that rewards those outstanding educators and punished those who basically occupy space inside the building.

How much better would our schools be if we could rid the schools of those No. 4, the ones who not only fail, but refuse to try, and hinder those who are trying. Let's leave behind a few here and there, instead of trying to bring the entire system down to the lowest level.