Would Firing More Teachers Improve School Performance?

[RobDownSouth]

Would Firing More Teachers Improve School Performance?

An Op-Ed in the New York Times says "not so fast":

In fairness, it’s true that the main reason inner-city schools do poorly isn’t teachers’ unions, but poverty.

Southern states without strong teachers’ unions have schools at least as lousy as those in union states.

The single most important step we could take has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with providing early-childhood education to at-risk kids.

Agree?
Disagree?
Dolf?

 

[Liar]

Just firing teachers will of course be nothing but blatant stupidity.

Firing expensive teachers to replace them with cheap ones is equally dumb.

Firing the occasional bad teacher in order to hire a better one? Yeah ok.

Does firing the occasional bad teacher in order to hire a better one have an impact on overall education result? Only marginally, as most teachers are not bad.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Firing more teachers would help. However you need to come up with an effective way of grading them.

Here in California we had a highly Asian (Korean if I recall properly) community with a school that was ranked very highly. When teacher evaluations started and included student improvement they plummeted. Turns out that if your kids are scoring 475 out of 500 and improved to a 480 out of 500 that it's not really fair to say you got your ass kicked by a teacher who had students getting 200 out of 500 and improved to 250 out of 500. Sure they improved MORE but they probably could have accomplished that playing pokemon.

Nobody seems to have a how to grade a teacher scale.

 

[haute_cuisine]

We need great teachers! and what better way to get them than for them to know they could be fired if their job isn't done to their greatest potential. In all other professions if you don't put your all in ... your out! Why should they be protected. Let them work hard like everyone else to keep their jobs.

Enough of hiding behind the union for protection! there are too many horrible and mediocre teachers out there doing nothing but the bare minimum. Yes, there are some great ones.. they won't have to worry about losing anything.

 

[RobDownSouth]

We need great teachers! and what better way to get them than for them to know they could be fired if their job isn't done to their greatest potential. In all other professions if you don't put your all in ... your out! Why should they be protected. Let them work hard like everyone else to keep their jobs.

Enough of hiding behind teh union for protection! there are too many horrible and mediocre teachers out there doing nothing but teh bare minimum. Yes, there are some great ones.. they won't have to worry about losing anything.

Great talking point regurgitation!

Hey! Why don't we apply your standard to police and firefighters too!

We can rate each cop against how many arrests actually result in conviction! The lowest 10% or so obviously aren't doing their jobs and should be terminated.

Same thing with firefighters, judge them by the number of buildings they save and/or people they rescue. We don't need firefighters who don't save buildings or people, amiright?

 

[Off]

It would help education more if they could fire students.

 

[RobDownSouth]

It would help education more if they could fire students.

True, but then we'd end up with a rather large underclass that would tend to vote Rapepublican.

 

[RjThoughts]

How about firing some parents as well, or make them attend classes as to how to help their children?

 

[LongPenStroke]

Firing teachers has been proven to be a complete and utter failure. If you want to see how to improve student performance, then look at what Finland did. They went from being at the bottom of the pile for post industrialized nations to being ranked 2 in reading, math and science.

 

[SeatWarmer]

Good teachers can't teach kids with no will to learn. Neither can bad ones.
Take a guess how much more blame goes to children not willing than to teachers not able? RjThoughts hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. If a parent doesn't raise a child to be able to think things over, willing to solve problems, and wanting to apply these skills towards any kind of goal, the fault lies just as much (if not more) with them than the teachers for children being unable or unwilling to do well in school.
(To answer the original question, firing more teachers should only happen if the "more" consists of teachers with a pretty shitty rate of success when teaching students who do well elsewhere in school. "I can learn the shit, but Mr. Forces-his-religion Economics teacher just makes it so damn terrible" was not an uncommon thought in high school.)

 

[richard_daily]

Does anyone wonder why the teacher retention rate is so abysmal?

I wonder if that's at all tied to the high costs of public schools, and the low performance.



There's lots of neocon lip service to retaining good teachers, but there's no actual effort being put forth to do so.

It's a concerted effort to ruin public education, privatize it, and make money off of it. None of that agenda has anything to do with kids or giving them a good education.

 

[RobDownSouth]

It's a concerted effort to ruin public education, privatize it, and make money off of it. None of that agenda has anything to do with kids or giving them a good education.

Add "indoctrinate the young to the proper conservative worldview" and I'll whole-heartedly agree with you.

 

[SeatWarmer]

It's a concerted effort to ruin public education, privatize it, and make money off of it. None of that agenda has anything to do with kids or giving them a good education.

While I admit I know nothing about the profiteering of many trades and therefore can't agree or disagree with this in specific, it does seem true that the focus doesn't seem to be on actually teaching the kids. You could teach first graders how to do Algebra--high school math--as long as you approach it right. Children are often not stupid, just not properly challenged and stimulated. So why the fuck are we wasting about eight years trying to baby them through things that bore them out of wanting to learn anything they actually will need in the future?

 

[bronzeage]

We need great teachers! and what better way to get them than for them to know they could be fired if their job isn't done to their greatest potential. In all other professions if you don't put your all in ... your out! Why should they be protected. Let them work hard like everyone else to keep their jobs.

Enough of hiding behind the union for protection! there are too many horrible and mediocre teachers out there doing nothing but the bare minimum. Yes, there are some great ones.. they won't have to worry about losing anything.

This is spoken like someone who was never a supervisor and probably never had a job, either.

It's easy to ask someone to "put your all in," but not so not so easy to answer when they ask what their "all" is worth. The real reason conservatives want to bust teacher's unions is not to get rid of poor teachers, but to hold down the cost of teachers.

One thing every teacher knows, if the general quality of teachers is raised, the field of available teachers will shrink, which in any other field would drive up salaries.

No one thinks this is a realistic outcome, so no one is buying the bullshit.

 

[Sean]

Any of you ever taught in an inner city school? I have, I did supply for about three months. Most kids want to learn. Seriously, they do. You get one or two hard cases. They're easy. Intimidate the fuck out of the hard cases and you're golden.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Sean]

Mah...Dawg...Eaten Ass.

You think God made the world. Fuck off while I try and teach reality.

 

[garbage can]

The only teachers that should be fired are the teachers that teach their kids...

Barack Hussein Obama Mmm, mmm, mmm.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[bluntforcemama]

Just firing teachers will of course be nothing but blatant stupidity.

Firing expensive teachers to replace them with cheap ones is equally dumb.

Firing the occasional bad teacher in order to hire a better one? Yeah ok.

Does firing the occasional bad teacher in order to hire a better one have an impact on overall education result? Only marginally, as most teachers are not bad.

This. This needs to be plastered on a billboard and driven around Las Vegas on those crazy skinny billboard trucks.

 

[haute_cuisine]

Good teachers can't teach kids with no will to learn. Neither can bad ones.
Take a guess how much more blame goes to children not willing than to teachers not able? RjThoughts hit the nail on the head, in my opinion. If a parent doesn't raise a child to be able to think things over, willing to solve problems, and wanting to apply these skills towards any kind of goal, the fault lies just as much (if not more) with them than the teachers for children being unable or unwilling to do well in school.
(To answer the original question, firing more teachers should only happen if the "more" consists of teachers with a pretty shitty rate of success when teaching students who do well elsewhere in school. "I can learn the shit, but Mr. Forces-his-religion Economics teacher just makes it so damn terrible" was not an uncommon thought in high school.)[/QUOTE

All children have the will to learn. Good teachers bring that out. Agreed parents play a role in a their children's learning but some do not have that luxury at home. A good teacher can make a difference in a child's life and inspire that desire for learning.

 

[LongPenStroke]

All children have the will to learn. Good teachers bring that out. Agreed parents play a role in a their children's learning but some do not have that luxury at home. A good teacher can make a difference in a child's life and inspire that desire for learning.

That's not true. Not every child has the will to learn and some don't have the ability to learn. You can't paint all children with the same brush and say that there is always a way to teach them, it's simply not true.

With that being said, we should never give up trying and there are many that fall into the category that you state.

 

[haute_cuisine]

This is spoken like someone who was never a supervisor and probably never had a job, either.

It's easy to ask someone to "put your all in," but not so not so easy to answer when they ask what their "all" is worth. The real reason conservatives want to bust teacher's unions is not to get rid of poor teachers, but to hold down the cost of teachers.

One thing every teacher knows, if the general quality of teachers is raised, the field of available teachers will shrink, which in any other field would drive up salaries.

No one thinks this is a realistic outcome, so no one is buying the bullshit.

That is very mature of you to insult me because you do not agree with my opinion Your assumptions are wrong. I was a Nursing Supervisor in two very large NYC hospitals for a number of years before leaving the medical field to raise my children and start my own business which is now very successful. I have had my children in the NY public school system and find many faults within. Many teachers that should not be teaching do so. I could go on an on about that. What good does that do any child? Poor test scores, poor student performance. Tell me why you would want these teachers for your children? Why shouldn't these teachers be tested yearly and then after consecutive years of poor results be told they may lose their job? I don't know if you have children in the system or not but I do and I see first hand. I removed my children from public school and work my ass off very hard to pay out of my pocket for a better education for them in private school. With the school taxes I pay in NY suburbs I should not have to do so for such poor standards. Annual cost for a NYS education for a child is 22,000 a year in public school. Why is it I pay half as much less per child a year in private school for outstanding results? possibly because those teachers are held responsible and will be fired for poor scores and poor student performance. These teachers earn the same salary as public school educators. Every child deserves the opportunity for a good education and given the right tools they can do so. While firing teachers may not be the complete answer, getting rid of the ones who do a poor job and monitoring the ones that remain is a great start.

 

[Phelia]

I think we should just can school altogether and do that Hunger Games thing. Kids have Google now. They don't need no education.