Teacher Layoffs

Joe, who makes decisions on who is best …as opposed to most popular, most politically connected, most gifted in manipulating rules (both school and union), etc.? I’m presuming an “independent” panel (yes, slightly snarky since there’s serious potential for manipulating it by choosing bad apple members), but how to minimize corrupting influences here?
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BTW, why not discuss this on next The Call™ with Adam? You and lovely Amy are due next so take one for the swamp team already, both of you please. If not this topic, how about discussing Muslim families dealing with war both in Afghanistan / Iraq and here in USA, especially Michigan (where Amy is from + huge Muslim population)?

Joe,
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I agree with your comments. One of my 3 sons is a principal. I recently asked him if he had to let a teacher go because of budgetary problems, which would he let go, a young teacher who was a great teacher or an older teacher who was a terrible teacher. He said he had no choice. The young great teacher had to go because of the union contract.
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Pay freezes make a lot of sense but school districts use deception related to pay freezes when they are trying to get citizens to vote for higher school taxes. Actual teacher’s pay increases are made up of two parts. One part is a simple percentage yearly increase. The second part is call a step increases which is a pay increase for seniority.
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Many school boards advertise that teachers and administrators pay is being frozen for say 2 years. This gives the impression that neither administrators nor teachers will get any pay increase for two years. This is in fact a lie. Administrators may not get a pay increases but teachers still get their step increase.
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Deception should not be used to fool voters. We should expect honesty from our school boards, teachers and administrators.
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Colorado just passed a law that will allow the firing of incompetent teachers regardless of seniority. Hopefully this is a trend that will be implemented across the country.

And they cost a lot more than younger teachers?
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precisely. Which is exactly why if layoffs are not done by seniority, then their needs to be another objectively measurable metric to use as a basis. Otherwise any rational human will be unable to ignore the fact that the younger teachers represent a better value.
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You can decry the seniority rules all you want but you cannot deny that they are there for an important reason.

There are a couple of things working for and against this.

Working for it is the fact that the younger generation of teachers tends to not be as enamored with the union and the seniority system (at least in my experience through my wife, who is a first grade teacher). The public is behind the idea of merit based rewards, pay, etc and the union may be near a tipping point based on the idea. Now I know that it won’t always be fair. Some things will be based on politics, principal’s favorite, and similar things. To that I say welcome to the world the rest of us live in.

The issue is nailing down what you base the merit on. I think things are already too geared towards standardized tests and adding this to the list would make it worse. This would be a real opportunity for the teacher’s unions to be progressive for once and join the conversation of what the standards could be. If they spend all of their time fighting this notion they run the risk of being left out of the process.

I’m in Michigan, where teachers have been taking pay, benefit, and retirement fund cuts for a while. I’ve never seen the union and the teachers it represents as ready to come up with a new way forward, at least in the area I’m in. The real test is places like the Detroit school district, where the disfunction is truly ingrained into the system.

Joe, I’ve yet to see you address the monstrous changes to curricula the Texas school board has made. You keep harping on teachers, as if they themselves can change the state of education in America and ignoring the underlying problems. And the way school boards behave is a major part of the problem.

I dislike the way Michelle Rhee is trying to implement change in the DC school system. She’s acting as if education is on par with running a business. But one thing I do support is the idea that she is answerable only to the mayor, not the school board.

Please stop blaming teachers and teacher’s unions for all the ills of the American education system. I’m sure one reason the two unions have dug in their heels is because they feel undersiege and powerless to actually make things better in the schools because most of the real decisions are made by school boards.

You don’t need an independent panel to run layoffs. You just need good management. A principal should be judged by the quality of staff he or she puts together–just as a magazine editor or CEO is. The good ones prosper; the bad ones get replaced. This seems to work in almost every area of professional life…except public schools. Time for a change.

Southernbell–I think local school boards, especially in some of the more isolated and blinkered areas of the country, are a huge problem. And the full-throttle celebration of ignorance in Texas, if applied elsewhere in the country, is a surefire route to second-class economic status for the United State. This sentiment and the need to reform union work rules are not mutually exclusive.

First, when I think of unfortunate situations like this, it reminds me, once again, why I will never be a conservative. Conservatives describe government as this money eating machine.

Yes, some roads are under maintained. Some police departments are under trained. And, yes, some schools do not do anywhere near as much as our economy will need these students to learn.

So, what good does it do to layoff teachers if at all avoidable? Will a room full of unsupervised or under supervised students teach themselves better? Will they teach each other anything at all except how to make better farting noises with their armpit?

Second, I will say that if you did have to rely on one and only one factor we have at our disposal easily to determine who is a good teacher and who is not it would be seniority.

However, I think the problem is a lack of better tools.

There are multiple other factors which school systems have not brought in (and I am plagiarizing from the NYT on all of these very good points) :

1) Statewide exam scores (my relative who teaches high school would want to strangle me for putting this on the list much less first since, despite doing just fine, this relative hates the statewide exams with a vengeance).

2) Peer review. On the one hand, nobody wants to call a coworker in any job a failure since they will see them again and again. OTOH, if the fourth grade class is being taught very poorly, the fifth grade teachers will not like dealing with students who are behind due to an ineffective teacher.

3) Principal, administration review. Yes, principals and administrators are paper pushers and not teachers, but, are less biased than peer review.

4) Student review. I put this last for the obvious reason that students may be like I was who preferred tough teachers who didn’t pull any punches or they may prefer to be unchallenged and consider class just a cool place to hang out with friends and hate challenges of all kinds. OTOH, those who make learning painless are the best teachers, so, it should not be totally ignored.

I believe that all four should happen in every school system and be weighed in that order. Whatever teachers get the lowest average of those four are the ones shown the door and the ones who get the highest scores should be able to make themselves at home with seniority being the tie breaker among close candidates.

As for the unions, half of the time unions are negotiating to get more and, this is one of the other half of the times when they want to negotiate to cut their losses down considering that laid off teachers are going to be in a financial world of pain if they do not take the pay cut and stay where they are.

As for your comment about “hidebound martinets”, did you have lunch with my relative who teaches? That is the complaint to a T!

This teacher was told that a random administrator should be able to walk into the room and hear exactly the same words being said ten minutes into each and every 10th grade math class every single day. That is, each 10th grade class, no matter who the students or the teachers are, they should be on a particular page, literally, of the textbook.

Now, it is true that teachers unions treat them like coal mine workers in terms of seniority, but, also, some (not all, but too many) administrators act as if teachers are pieces of equipment.

I think we are so far behind in figuring out what is and isn’t good teaching that we are just taking random guesses while conservatives salivate that the wealthiest people and the largest businesses won’t have to pay additional taxes to cover the shortfall.

diary of a creative “creative troublemaker”…. 3 teaching jobs in 6 years. Prob will be on my 4th by the fall. Word of advice – being creative in today’s education environment means being a bad employee. The whole system needs to be junked and rebuilt. Workers need protections, but unions are part of the prob here. Teacher training is a useless exercise – in 12 graduate credits in Educ, I’ve had 1 that was useful. Teachers, admins & parents all need to re-think why we keep doing the same thing year after year and expect different results.

typo…. “12 graduate classes” (48 credits)

Thanks, Joe. I agree on what should happen re: management, but alas, biz examples aren’t always that good esp. dealing with CEO’s. (Think Wall St. Bonuses, BP, cronyism with board of directors, etc.) Tony “I’d Like My Life Back” Hayward should be canned for allowing previous sloppy safety procedures / cost-cutting under his watch but I doubt the board will axe him. Hell, just try to get a shareholder proposal passed on anything (pay increases, term limits, accountability). It rarely happens unless Big Investors™ like funds, Buffett, etc. are behind them (rarely happens). Forgive my skepticism.

I couldn’t agree more that the teachers unions need to stop making a big deal over all of the things they are against and be active in finding solutions for what they are for.
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I brought up to my relative, the teacher, I do believe in standardized tests, but, why not let the teachers write what those tests should be like, for example. My relative verbally bit my head off, even though this relative is so-so on the union they have.
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Just as the Republican party has become the party of no, it seems like the teachers unions have, mostly, become the unions of no.
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If they can get their people together and work on a standard they can all understand and have a part in creating to determine what good teaching is, then I think they may be less villainized by the media.

Accountable how, Joe? I appreciate how passionate you’ve been on this issue but as the son of two public school teachers I can tell you first hand that a good teacher can only be judged by what they have to work with. My parents taught in a poor rural school district and on Native American reservations. What they accomplished is, I think, impressive but there are limits to what can happen because of the home lives of the students, over which the teachers have no control.

I also remember, by the way that my parents, always strapped for cash, spent a lot of their own money on school supplies, repairing musicial instruments, building sets for the school play and funding field trips that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Before the unions give up their raises in a rising cost environment (real inflation, the kind that effects middle class workers like teachers, is real no matter what the economists say) shouldn’t the school management put an end to people spending out of their own pockets just to get their jobs done?

My experience is that principals have lousy management skills and there is massive amounts of favoritism. In this part of the south, being a coach or former coach (which many superintendents are), makes your position “safe” no matter how badly you perform. As my brother said when I complained while pulling together North Central evaluation data about a coach’s history class with 24 A’s and 1 D (and the D just happened to be the kid into “Goth”), no one ever gets called into the office or in front of the Board because the kid got an “A”. When you fail the entire 9th grade starting basketball line-up, you do get a chance to discuss it with the principal as I did. Fortunately, there is now a legislative study in Arkansas on the mismatch of class grades vs. standardized test results in the same subject. But we are only doing standardized high school tests in literacy, algebra, geometry, and biology and only literacy test failures have a consequence-can’t graduate without passing. It is getting better.

Joe, did you see the recent (well, a couple of months ago) New York Times magazine story about education?

There were excellent suggestions for reforming schools that were actually thought up by people who folks who know something about education. One of the main thrusts was that teachers are simply not being taught themselves in college how to teach. And that tests for teaching do not automatically show us who are the best teachers.

As for school curricula, hopefully the day is soon upon us where all lesson plans can be obtained from a national website simply by being printed out and copied to be distributed to students. Not having to purchase books should save all school districts a lot of money.

patrick,

The issue that teachers have on this need for annual improvement in the NCLB testing is that you aren’t testing the same kids every year. It is the luck of the draw who ends up in your class to now be compared to the class you had last year. You now have to get them better than the group you had last year.
You didn’t prepare them so you have to almost assume no background in your subject and in a number of states, you cycle through some of the same concepts every few years, going deeper each time. Once I got a group of 9th graders who had not had the background on the solar system and thus couldn’t start where I was supposed to start but had to back to basics (everone know that stars don’t have pionts right?-no, there is one who didn’t know that and while the rest made fun of her, I congratulated her because I knew that on one day, someone learned something that they didn’t know). What should have been a one week review ended up being a two week from basics to mandated level. That was a week that something else wasn’t covered.
If you are teaching where kids come in from multiple schools, which is very common, you can almost expect a wide variation of subject knowledge.

I second Southern’s recommendation of the NYT Magazine’s story. Lots of food for thought -including JK’s favorite topic, the unions-with examples of how different states are addressing Race to the Top.
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The states that work with the unions (I believe Tennessee was an example), versus being hostile to (Minnesota) or beholden to (New York), were having the best results.

The problem with Joe’s analysis is that in theory it’s a great idea –keep the “good” teachers and get rid of the “bad.” Simple, right? But as decon points out, who gets to decide “bad” and “good” and based on what qualities?
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For better but often worse, the reason seniority is the measure is based one thing only: lawsuits. Seniority is a number, blind to race, religion, sex, orientation, sometimes even age. The teachers themselves are frustrated to have talented hardworking younger teachers go and burnouts remain, but any subjective measure, such as “good” and “bad”, leaves room for abuse from administration and litigiousness from fired teachers. Not surprising, considering there is often a chasm of mistrust between the teachers and administrators involving factors outside of the classroom and quantifiable results.

One more point about the unions though and maybe this comes from my western upbringing but for a surprisingly long time teaching was not accorded the respect of other similar knowledge professions. It was a school marm profession or a profession for people with some specialized skills (athletics, music, drama) who for whatever reason weren’t able to make a living that way.

The teacher’s unions, for all they’re criticized now, did a great job of ending some of that marginalization of an entire necessary profession. We blame them for so much that’s wrong with American education but we’re better off with a professional teaching community than we were before we had one.

We keep offering bandaids to make our education system better, such things as testing under NCLB or the teacher-retention formula proposed in this article, but the main thing we need to improve our system is better students, students who want to learn and work hard at it. So, how do we get such students? From the start of their education, we guarantee every student in America a college education or equivalent upon graduation. From the time a student enters the system, even in pre-school, he or she should start earning advanced-education credits, credits kept in a federal account established for each student, and upon graduation, they would be able to use their credits to pay all tuition at any college they can get into, or at high-level technical/vocational schools if they don’t want a traditional college education. Extra tuition credits would be given for those who make good grades, etc. In this way, each child would have a vested interest in learning from the very beginning. Each parent would have a reason to encourage their child to learn. Teachers with eager students would be better teachers. The emphasis would be on achieving at all levels. Yes, it would be expensive, but not as expensive as what we are doing (or not doing) now.

“The issue that teachers have on this need for annual improvement in the NCLB testing is that you aren’t testing the same kids every year.”
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I am familiar with that problem.
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Although it would make the administration of these exams harder, it should be that if Billy got 55% on his last standardized statewide science exam and gets 68% on his next exam, the teacher who got Billy up from 55% to 68% should get a pat on the back, not a kick in the butt.
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Like many people, I had some amazing teachers and I had teachers who I think would have better served the public by becoming janitors and everywhere in between.
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Unfortunately, most of the teacher’s unions seem to be against standardized exams under all circumstances, so, teaching will remain where it was in the 1960s and not advance to where it needs to be half a century later.
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Also, like I said, standardized state exams should be only a part of the overall picture, not the whole thing.
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Unlike the slash and burn Republicans who just want testing, I do know the difference between a teacher and a robot. You, absolutely, must adjust your class a great deal for your students strong and weak points as well as make some adjustments for your own teaching style. But, I do believe in quantifiable results.
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I am not a big fan of the self esteem world of thinking where students who learn nothing graduate with weak high school diplomas and massive egos. That whole line of thought began sometime in the late 1970s and has served us all poorly.

Joe: Did a teacher hit you with a ruler once?
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Southernbell49, you are right. Change should begin with teacher training. I was an ed major a while back. Most of my classes were worthless. From what I understand not much has changed. What was valuable was the 1 quarter working in a classroom, mentored by an experienced teacher and evaluated by another. I learned more in that 1 quarter than I did from all my ed classes.
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I mentioned this in another post you made on teachers’ unions. It is mentioned in the article you linked to Joe that class sizes are much smaller than indicated. You would be hard put to find any class with only 15 pupils. California has a maximum class size but to arrive at the number that doesn’t surpass the maximum, administrators, support services, etc and factored into the number, not just teachers.
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And, Joe you design the merit evaluations that would take into account:
Class size
Textbooks
Equipment
Administrative support
Time for special needs students that are mainlined
Parental support
Building maintenance and structure
Time for planning
Student turnover
Hours spent working on extra curricular projects

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Many teachers and their union have been working to find ways to judge teachers. Let them decide with consultation with others.
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As they are finding with charter schools and NCLB, it is hard to judge educational excellence. Start judging from the top down and see the resistance you will get.
Eliminate administrative jobs. Lot’s of things can be done.
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Joe, in your last post on this subject, you said readership decides which reporters are successful and which are not. Really? There is no dead weight in the news room? Some columnists write the same screeds year after year. They bring nothing new to their readers (Broder, Bill Kristol, George Will). Heck, if quality was important in the traditional media, half of the reporters would have been fired over their coverage of the lead up to Iraq war.

destor23: you are so right. I started teaching when NEA was just getting some strength. At that time, first I was told not to try for a high school position with a history major. Schools reserved those for guys who were coaches. When I began teaching, I made enough to afford a studio apartment. There were no health benefits. Raises were minimum at best. There were no times set aside for planning. Then when I became pregnant, I had to leave my job at 4 months because children weren’t allowed to see a pregnant teacher.
Quaint.
So many people have problems with unions. They don’t have any historical sense what it was like before workers had some protection and someone to negotiate for them.

“First, when I think of unfortunate situations like this, it reminds me, once again, why I will never be a conservative. Conservatives describe government as this money eating machine”
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No the reason you will never be a conservative is that you believe there is an endless supply of folks to tax and inefficiency and incompetence is not the fault of government.
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“So, what good does it do to layoff teachers if at all avoidable?”
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Here is the sum and substance of liberalism. You get rid of them because they do lousy work and not only do the children suffer but so do taxpayers and the overall economy. Proof positive of the liberal motto “we are mediocre and its ok”. For profit companies (yes there is that ugly “profit” word), do annual reviews and yearly actively work to put on notice those reviewed that are in the bottom 20% of performance. Continuation means dismissal. For teachers it means higher salaries, more benefits and higher pensions. Or more costs no benefit to the schools.
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This is an opportunity to “not let a good crisis go to waste”. The left talks non-stop about how much we spend for HC per capita and the poor results versus other countries. They conveniently neglect that comparison in education where the growth in education spending has outstripped inflation while results have at best been flat. It is time to release our children form the death grip of mediocrity from the teachers union and the left.
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“I am not a big fan of the self esteem world of thinking where students who learn nothing graduate with weak high school diplomas and massive egos”

Practicing self hate today?

3X,
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Why don’t you ever use links?
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“Dramatic shift for educators

The legislation would revolutionize teacher and principal evaluations in Colorado, basing 50 percent of their performance on supervisors’ reviews and the other half on student growth on standardized tests and other measures. It also would change the way teachers achieve tenure and make it easier for them to lose that job protection — a controversial move that attacks a core tenet held by the teachers union.

Opponents call the legislation an unfunded mandate that places too much financial burden on cash-strapped school districts. They fear it would create a school system where educators “teach to the test” to save their jobs and one where longtime teachers are picked off without due process.”
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http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14953971
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To be frank, it is very similar to what I wrote below and I think I like it so far.
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BTW: It was bi-partisan created, not just Republicans. So, please don’t go into your hysterics about how liberals don’t care about students or something else like that.

“if he had to let a teacher go because of budgetary problems, which would he let go, a young teacher who was a great teacher or an older teacher who was a terrible teacher.”
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An interesting comment. This is one reason why unions exist. Why assume that the Older Teacher is the terrible one?
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Methinks you have already decided that perhaps the older teacher makes more money and is over paid. It is frequently the case when times get tough the older worker goes first. There are all kinds of rational for it but, mostly it is a personal bias.

“No the reason you will never be a conservative is that you believe there is an endless supply of folks to tax and inefficiency and incompetence is not the fault of government.”
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It’s amazing how you’re self esteem is so outrageously out of place that you believe that you can read minds
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You fix air conditioners for a living. Give up the pretense.
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“…there is an endless supply of folks to tax..”
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No, liberals have always believed in PROGRESSIVE taxation which taxes fewer people more.
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“…inefficiency and incompetence is not the fault of government.”
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So, you mean that Barack Obama was on the board of the BP rig when it exploded? Ted Kennedy was in charge of Bear Sterns? Nancy Pelosi was CEO of GM? Harry Ried was CEO of Chrysler?
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The profit based world, which I absolutely appreciate and work for, has it’s own share of inefficiency and incompetence.
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Take you, for example.
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You spend all day arguing against twenty five people who know what they are talking about instead of fixing air conditioners.

“So, what good does it do to layoff teachers if at all avoidable?”
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“You get rid of them because they do lousy work and not only do the children suffer but so do taxpayers and the overall economy.”
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“layoff

Suspension or termination of employment (with or without notice) by the employer or management. Layoffs are not caused by any fault of the employees but by reasons such as lack of work, cash, or material.”
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http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/layoff.html
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Obviously your eighth grade teachers did not teach you very much vocabulary before you dropped out because, if they did your statement would read this way:
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“You [should terminate the] employment [of teachers] not caused by any fault of the [teachers] but by reasons such as lack of work, cash, or material not only do the children suffer [when teachers are working] but so do taxpayers and the overall economy.”
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Now, go back to the eighth grade and learn the definitions of words. They aren’t just pretty little pictures on the screen. They have meaning and definitions.
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If you believed that I said no teachers should be terminated, then you, clearly, have to go back to the 5th grade.

I third southernbell’s recommendation of the NY Times magazine article.
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Maybe supporting more research into what makes a teacher good – as was discussed in that article – would one day make it possible to objectively evaluate teaching quality. But we’re not there yet.
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And Joe’s argument that if private businesses can evaluate employees on the basis of merit, so can school principles ignores the fundamental difference between the two: the free market. In a functional capitalist system, a company filled with bad employees will fail. But schools are not business enterprises, so the market isn’t there to provide feedback. Nor can standardized tests serve as a proxy for the market, as the failure of relying on them has showed.
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Importing opportunities for market choice – through things like vouchers – also doesn’t work in practice, for many of the same reasons that America’s market-based health care system has worked so poorly. Capitalism is a powerful and effective system, but it can’t do everything. However, it can help attract talented people to a profession that offers little money or prospects for advancement, by relying on other inducements such as job security and a seniority system.
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What rational creature of the free market would enter a profession with poor job security and no clear, reliable and fair way to evaluate the quality of their work?

nibbly- you seriously think protection from discrimination lawsuits is the only reason for seniority policies??? the policy makes union leadership and all those who are influential with the union invincible. that’s as strong as motivation gets
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note: 1.4 should be 2.4 in case anyone was confused

“Joe: Did a teacher hit you with a ruler once?”
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That reminds me of a song I heard as a boy (sung to the Battle Hymn of the Republic;
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” Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
We have tortured all the teachers – we have broken all the rules
We cheated [principal's name] in a dirty game of pool
And our troops go marching on!

Glory, glory, hallelujah
My teacher hit me with a ruler
I hid behind her door with a loaded .44
And the teacher don’t teach no more! ”
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That was pre-Combine, of course. These days if a nine year old sings that he’ll be taken away by homeland security.

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Joe,

“is a surefire route to second-class economic status for the United State”

In case you have not been watching, this has already happened.

For Southern or Rose (or anyone who read the article)-
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The NY school that was split between public and charter I couldn’t tell if the charter side self-selected.
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Do either of you know?

Joe,

“A principal should be judged by the quality of staff he or she puts together–just as a magazine editor or CEO is”

You cannot be serious. Let’s run them like private companies but let’s fund them with taxes. That is the formula for corruption Joe. Either privatize (vouchers – the Horror!) them and let the chips fall where they may or have the feds take over the failing districts and clean house.

I don’t think that older teachers are terrible and I’ve had quite a few wonderful older teachers, but at the same time, I’ve witnessed FAR too many elder teachers who had burnt out stick around until retirement and FAR too many younger teachers who were full of energy, ideas, and eager to teach that were axed the next year when funding cuts came down.
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There is no perfect system. I have no illusions about that. However, any system that protects people because of status promotes complacency. In the extreme (as has been reported for New York), this system makes it near impossible to fire teachers who are legitimately DANGEROUS to students.
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However, that’s not the part that offends me the most about this idea that seniority should protect. What offends me the most is that, as a man in his 20s who entered the work force just 2 years ago, I look around at my job prospects and know that I won’t be keeping my job more than a few years. Talking with my coworkers at my current office, with exception to my manager who’s built this product from the ground up, none of us intend to be here more than a few years. We all entered this industry and the company fully aware of that and we know that if we were at any other job, it would be the same reality.
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And we LIKE that. We think it’s the best both for us and the company. At each job, we get a chance to grow, to experience something new, and to develop our skills trying new things in new ways. The company, in turn, gets the benefit of our knowledge, experience and approaches (to utilize or discard at its desire) and once it has absorbed that knowledge, our benefit to it is not going to be as great as the guy with fresh experience and knowledge. We’re professionals, growth should be a part of our job.
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But teachers, no. They aren’t required to try to new things, to absorb new approaches, to benefit from new experiences and knowledge and give their own experience and knowledge to others. Once they’ve got seniority protection, they just go about their business in whatever manner they want, taking 5 days a year out to go through PD days and that’s it for personal development. Sure, some teachers still experiment, but after 20 years of doing the same thing, you’re probably running low on ideas and while a really good teacher might be able to tweak and discover small fixes that might help, they would benefit far greater by having a huge influx of new ideas and new approaches from other sources.
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To me, cross-pollination of skills, ideas, experiences, and knowledge is the foundation of any profession – how a profession evolves to become better and more able to work.
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(Also, Teachers Unions are the biggest reason I didn’t become a teacher)

What complete drivel! In many of our communities, government is the largest employer already, and based on the Obama strategy, these numbers will likely increase completely out of proportion with taxpayers ability to support such employment. Government workers are already protected by union and civil service regulations to the extent that a ‘government job’ is a guarantee of lifetime employment, often with ludicrous health and retirement benefits not available to anyone in the private sector, This isn’t simply the case with Teachers, but virtually everyone who’s employed by government. Certainly it now seems ridiculous that anyone would waste their time working in the private sector, facing the tribulations of a free market economy, fraught with downsizing, out-sourcing and off-shoring. Indeed, that would seem to be the crux of the biscuit, and might explain why so many civil servants ‘just show up’ and take home a check, rather than truly try to make a difference. This is particularly true of Teachers, and even more so in secondary education. The objective of hiring bureaucrats and boards to administer our schools is to enforce budgetary constraints just as families and businesses in the real world are constrained to do. The days of government being able to ‘write it’s own check’ against the taxpayers ability to pay has run up against an impediment no one in government foresaw. Citizens who rightfully feel that they are taxed enough already! Tough decisions must be made, and if unions impede the making of these decisions, or diminish the effectiveness of prudent and necessary cuts, then a change must be made. Politicians, Teachers, bureaucrats, government workers work for us, the taxpayers, not the other way around as the Obama administration would have us believe. Taxpayers are about at the end of their rope, and printing money that must be paid back sooner rather than later, is not an option. An argument can be made, based solely on school performance comparisons, that perhaps trying to hang on to each and every person who’s chosen Teaching, or ‘civil service’ as a career, may not serve the needs of the community. One might argue that adding more ‘good paying private sector jobs’ would be of greater benefit, and far more likely to address the social, economic and environmental needs of America’s families.

“First, the unions should forego their raises for the next few years–Michael Bloomberg has already negotiated this sort of deal in New York”

It should be the responsibility of somebody reporting for Time to get the facts straight about an issue that has been widely reported on: Bloomberg has, in fact, consistently failed to do anything resembling negotiating on the 4% raise that he proposed for teachers. He announced that the scheduled raise was off the table in order prevent layoffs, but it’s actually well beyond the powers of any mayor, even Bloomberg, to unilaterally make salary decisions that effect unionized city workers. Thus, the UFT contract, which has been in arbitration for several weeks, will likely be implemented in the fall with a 4% raise, or 2% at the very least. His PR stunt of announcing the wage freeze to save jobs has apparently fooled journalists, which was the point, but it cannot prevent the inevitable–and fair–outcome that will properly compensate hardworking teachers.

I can’t find a single real disagreement with conservatism or argument for liberalism in this entire post patrick, despite it being labeled as the reason you’re not a conservative.
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for some time now democrats have tended strongly toward the teachers unions’ claims that more funding is the only solution. recently that’s been changing since the data on the awful ROI has become overwhelming. its also changing because Obama doesn’t share your commitment to defending democratic positions till death, regardless of merit, never giving the slightest shred of credit where credit is due unless it falls on your own tribe’s traditional territory.
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this is the worst possible issue for you to make your “this is why im not a conservative” stand because the consensus on seniority policies, standardized testing, and competition from charters has undeniably swung right.

A bit off point, but, until parents take full responsibility for their own child’s education, student performance will not change substantially. The quality of teachers is a marginal issue, although not to be dismissed entirely.

We are in NYC and have had the luck to be able to give our kids a private school education.

During the week, any combination of TV/online/game activities/music listening was limited to 30 minutes.

When the kids were young, and there wasn’t a huge amount of homework (which later there was) reading out loud to them and they to us was the major leisure activity in the evening. Sometimes we’d play math, science, geography or history “games.”

Early on in their education, the head of the kids’ school pointed out that even with only 12 students in a class, the MOST individual attention a pupil could hope for is about 15 minutes per day scattered over 4, 5 or more subjects. In classes where there are 24 or even 30 to a class, some simple division tells you how much individual attention a kid is getting.

Bear with me here: When I was in parochial school during the Baby Boom years, we had FIFTY plus kids in the classroom. Most of what I learned I learned at home, doing my homework and reading, reading, reading, because that was the atmosphere my parents created. Neither of them had gone beyond high school, but they were dedicated to education as a) a path to material success, b) a way to transcend class and ethnic boundaries, and c) a more general spiritual and intellectual improvement.

On top of the hampering class size, most of the nuns who taught us had the equivalent of an Associate of Arts degree.

The frightening era we live in now seems to value a vague No-Nothingism and holds a firmly rooted belief that somehow the state is solely responsible for the education and improvement of children.

No teacher, no matter how accomplished, can provide what an involved parent can and should provide educationally. Parents don’t have to be educated, rich or even particularly smart to turn off the TV, computer, X-Box, etc., and encourage their kids to read and think about math. They do have to have a vigorous desire for their children to go farther and enjoy life materially and intellectually.

You’re all missing the point. It’s not a matter of “who makes decisions on who is best” or “good management or bad management” it’s a matter of putting the fear of being laid off or fired in the hearts of public employees; something that they are not familiar with. The same fear that most of us face or have faced working for the private sector. It is fear that makes a productive employee; something entrepreneurs have known all along.

Joe – all teachers I know are evaluated based on performance. I fail to understand why you perpetuate this myth that as long as they draw a check, the harder they are to remove.

“…[Standardized-testing pponents fear] it would create a school system where educators “teach to the test” to save their jobs and one where longtime teachers are picked off without due process.”
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PS, that’s exactly what’s happening in FL…and all over the country.

opponents

What all you dilettantes outside of public education fail to understand is that the whole enterprise is corrupt. Principals are valued NOT for having what you would consider a good school but for having “good numbers” (eg, high graduation rates and low expenses). High grad rates are easy to do by having teachers give out credits freely; low expenses can be had by packing classes with too many students and cutting back on help. As a teacher who gripes because my classes are over-crowded and who gets admonished for having low pass rates (because I use traditional standards), tenure has been the only thing standing between me and unemployment. You can’t rely on Principals or anyone else IN the system (including teachers) to give you the kind of responsible control you would like.

Mr. Klein,

While retaining teachers on the basis of merit is a good one, what you propose lacks any safeguards against teachers being sacked solely on the basis of age or length of service. Such innovators as Michelle Rhee (and Joel Klein) are notorious for doing just that. They’ve managed to slip provisions into the teachers’ contracts in their respective cities that allow administrators to fill teachers’ files with complete fabrications with impunity leaving the targets with not means of redress whatsoever.

The assumption that youth is correlated with new ideas and age with a lack of creativity is a fatuous stereotype and nothing more. The result has been a veritable pogrom of older teachers, even with the current seniority provisions in the union contracts. Why not put older doctors out to pasture? Why not send executives older than 45 years old to carousel or make soylent green from them? I’ve worked in a school where some of these ostensibly inherently meritorious younger teachers lacked basic literacy skills (English teachers at that), not to mention any critical thinking ability. Do they get a pass because they are young and cheap? As long as our educational system has Cristal tastes and Colt 45 budgets when it comes to teachers (and seemingly the opposite when it comes to administrators or charter operators), students will suffer.

You also fail to admit that the problem of ineffectual, corrupt and just plain stupid administrators and school officials is just as pervasive if not more so as that of incompetent or “burnt-out” teachers. Maybe the unions should drop seniority provisions in exchange for the right to sue (with no limitations on damages) for defamation or discrimination on behalf of their members and eliminate any indemnification for principals and assistant principals. That would be real reform.

The problem with standardized testing is regional as much as anything. My Dad’s business partner’s daughter was a teacher and in her first few years, she taught at an inner city school. She had a horrendous time. Many of the students were poor, many of their parents were uneducated, and it was near impossible to expect homework to be accomplished.
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In fact, I feel that’s the problem with using any concept of “unbiased” result – it is inherently biased in how well it takes into account all sorts of factors. Let’s take this inner city school example: a good teacher, compared to a bad one, will generally be trying new methods may have a bad year or two but will generally be better than his/her peers *at that school*. However, that teacher will still have worse results than an average teacher at a school where the students are actually motivated.
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As long as you take into account relative success, a multi-year average for each teacher should show their actual capabilities. Most standardized testing regimes are, however, analyzed at a state or district rather than school level and do not properly account for regional issues

Rev Jim

One of your more pathetic arguments and that is a high bar. Layoffs when its not the teachers fault. Paying (and let’s be generous) 20% of the teachers who are useless which runs up the budget to the point where there is a budget deficit is the fault of not only the teachers but the teachers union.

When there inefficiencies and poor performance not only are there layoffs but cuts in salaries. We hold this pampered class of “public servants” to no firings, layoffs salary or benefit cuts while the children are awash in mediocrity of education. And the response is more money.

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“You spend all day arguing against twenty five people who know what they are talking about instead of fixing air conditioners.”

The gospel word according to Rev JIm. And if you doubt it ask the other 24 because they “have the facts” and medication but I digress. Don’t try to fix air conditions you fail at that just as miserably as you did at cab driving and used cars. But you always can look back fondly to your “middle class” upbringing from what has to be the most incompetent set of engineers and chemists of the boomer generation.

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Progressive tax: French for wealth re-distribution to support the looney left who will never be anything but a burden to society

@swissarmy: I’m sure what you say is true. Like most, I have issues with the teachers’ union, but I also don’t think schools should be run like a “business” as Klein analogizes. Often individual teachers are dealt a bad hand, inheriting students already behind, or administrative issues, or funding problems, or any number of problematic issues. How can those teachers be judged “good” or “bad” fairly? I have no answers.

Patrick,
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Ever once in a while you become rational. Unfortunately those times don’t last very long.

Paul, I can’t remember if the article specified between charter and conventional public schools. I saved the mag, though, because I thought it was the best I’ve read on the subject in ages.

“In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.”

Most performance reviews for teachers are jokes. These seven were probably the walking brain-dead (possible Demo Congressional careers) and they still can’t get rid of them. It becomes easier for administrators to give OK reviews because they know it is too costly and not worth the time spent to do otherwise. But let’s hear a round of applause of our union loving leftists as to what a great thing they still are. $3.5 million at $75,000 per teacher is 46 new teachers that may actually give a crap about their job.

Your solution guaranteeing a free college education to anyone offers an abundance of guaranteed jobs to educators, bureaucrats, elitists, and union flunkies, and promises an abysmal future for taxpayers. Under such a scenario, everyone would eventually become a teacher, simply to assure their spot in a cushy, protected, taxpayer funded career where they, unlike those in their classes, need never fear competition, or the vagaries of a free market economy.

Indeed, a great majority of available jobs, even those in the high tech industry do not require a college degree. Like it or not, requirements for college degree’s in a great many employment endeavors are simply employers method of insuring certain levels of fundamental reading, writing, language skills, and an ‘age demographic’ for applicants that they feel appropriate to departmental functionality. Often it’s simply a means of excluding the riff raff that may have been able to ‘work it’s way up from the mail room’ to mid-level management position.

Major corporations such as Microsoft and others in the so-called high tech industry’ utilize degree requirements to exclude domestic applicants in deference to foreign workers, reaping tax benefits as well. Just another means of corporations avoiding competition for workers to keep their costs and exposure to a minimum. Once these ‘high tech’ jobs, especially in production and manufacturing, were the aspirational jobs that entry level workers dreamed of. The kind of jobs that provided ‘on-the-job training’ and personal growth and upward mobility for the proletariat. These were the jobs that made working your way up the ranks suck less. Indeed, it’s axiomatic that the educational outcomes for the high tech industry occur at Colleges and Universities where lab facilities and class agenda mimic these ‘on-the-job’ training practices that were once commonplace through many industries. Employers once trained the workers they needed for the jobs they had to fill, both worker and corporation benefited. Now major employers simply download the costs of training on U.S. taxpayers, while exploiting low cost alternatives to hiring American workers.

A large number of professionals with degrees, perhaps the majority, are employed in professions and functions that have little or nothing to do with the disciplines for which they originally matriculated.

Pragmatically speaking, the reason a college degree earns more money than a person who isn’t carrying a sheepskin is purely a reflection of the disproportionate influence that self dealing elites and educators have within our economy. Ostensibly, a person with 4 years of college earns more than a similarly situated high school graduate (who might prove to be a faster learner in a particular new hire scenario) because someone else with a degree says they should. In most jobs, an empirical analysis of degreed and non-degreed personnel performing the same job function would demonstrate little difference. A professional degree at Starbucks is arguably little more valuable than showing up on time, clean and ready to work. Likewise, a degree in Liberal Arts is of no perceptible value if your in sales, or working as a pipe fitter. The fact remains that a college degree is of value only so long as the majority of other applicants don’t have a degree. High school graduates were prized when they were the rare commodity among the workforce. College degree’s became even more valuable when high school degree’s became common place. Once degree’s become common place, the equalizing effect of commonality diminishes both the uniqueness and the value of the distinction of having avoided the 40 hour work week for 4 years longer than a high school grad are likewise reduced. The majority of all jobs in our country, indeed, across the world, do not require a college degree. Arguably those jobs that do require a degree, already have an abundance of potential applicants for any openings. Such an abundance it should be noted, that the appreciable benefit of said degree is negated by the employers ability to negotiate downward on pay and benefits, rather than compete fairly for the workers they need. One need look no farther than DOL statistics to recognize the large number of highly educated professionals who are working in mundane careers that don’t require such high levels of education to appreciate that the law of supply and demand is a cruel mistress, and that such cruelty extends across all socio-economic boundaries. Degreed professionals, all competing for the limited resource of available jobs has the counter intuitive effect of placing downward pressure on incomes, benefits and incentives bein offered by employers. Conversely a scarcity of of something is what gives it appeal and value.

In summary, a college degree offers benefits only so long as the majority of workers don’t have a degree. If everyone has a degree, then it behooves everyone to continue in an endless cycle of education, garnering degree after degree, simply to stay ahead of the pack. At such time, it occurs to most that ‘Teaching” to those who are goofy enough to continue to seek the competitive edge of having more and more degree’s to justify bigger and better lifestyles, is the one sure way to get off the ‘education treadmill’, get comfy in your wealthy lifestyle, and wait for more suckers to come back for even more sheepskins.

We’ve seen decades of variations of this scam. Corporations downsize, off-shore, or out-source workers. Workers frantically pursue new training, new degree’s, funded by taxpayer dollars, for careers that are in turn, downsized, off-shored, or out-sourced. Taxes go up, cost of everything goes up, the need for a better paying job is apparent, ergo more education and degree’s are required, etc,,,. Degreed professionals make less and less, and educators, protected by unions, civil service regulations, and Elites in the legislature, make more and more while contributing less and less to the value of life in America. It matters not if everyone has lots of degree’s, so long as there remains someone who is willing to fix the Lexus, rotate the tires on the Bently, unplug a toilet, etc,,,. Indeed, it would seem that the surest method of assuring oneself of wealth and a career lasting a lifetime would seem to be to forgo the education rat race, find a job that is necessary, but one that sucks so bad no one else wants it, and focus on being the best and most efficient at a job that well educated people will pay you a fortune to do, because they can’t!

“Standardized-testing pponents fear] it would create a school system where educators “teach to the test” to save their jobs and one where longtime teachers are picked off without due process.”

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So you have a problem teaching to an actual outcome? It seems lawyers, doctors and every other professional takes a standardized test to determine that they are qualified.So it is pure rubbish that this is a bad thing for our educational system.

Picked off without due process? Most workers everyday face the possibility of being fired for poor performance. The recipients of bottomless tax dollars should be treated no differently.

“While retaining teachers on the basis of merit is a good one, what you propose lacks any safeguards against teachers being sacked solely on the basis of age or length of service”

Theses are the same dangers every other worker in America faces. This is a red herring to protect the useless. Conversely, there is no safeguards to spare the younger less tenured (and possibly) better qualified teachers from being canned to protect the older teachers.

Okay, thanks Southern.
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I am thinking about the parents with one child in each school.
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I can’t imagine how Klein has the stupidity to blog his opinion after he’s proved he believes in a world where only his opinion can be allowed by law. The fascist cretin actually argued that anyone who disagreed with him should be fired, and the disputing opinion never put in print. Klein’s monstrous hate-mongering is unforgivable, and anything he thinks is obviously wrong.

@freeinpa

That’s why we have courts. That is also why, if teachers are stripped of tenure, school officials should be stripped of personal indemnity. Just because every other worker in america faces the same (illegal) treatment, doesn’t make it right. I have no problem with staffing decisions being made on merit alone, so long as the determination of merit is made objectively, without regard to extraneous factors such as age or length of surface, and subject to review. As much as my argument is “a red herring to protect the useless,” yours is one to protect the corrupt and bigoted.

ed, after reading your response, I think I would also require a year of reading comprehension to the required course work.

3X,
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Every once in awhile you realize that we are in a place of exchanging ideas and not at a Mets vs Cleveland Indians game rooting for your R team.
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In a previous discussion when I said something fairly similar to this you insisted that all of us cared only about unions and not about students.

Danny DeVito Inpa,
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You still do not have a grasp of the word “layoff”.
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If it is the result of poor work performance, it is called a “termination” or “being fired”.
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Layoff by definition means that it is not caused by the employee.
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“Progressive tax: French for wealth re-distribution to support the looney left who will never be anything but a burden to society.”
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Actually the first income tax system in the US taxed only the very wealthiest and came from the left wing communist Abraham Lincoln.
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Try and explain to me how Abraham Lincoln was French.
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So, stop telling me that I want to all teachers to stay on. I never said anything like that.
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Some of the failing teachers could benefit and become good teachers with proper training and a good definition of what good teaching is.
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If I say “layoff” I mean somebody who is terminated from their job through no fault of their own.
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When I say “fired” or “terminated” I mean people who are removed due exclusively to their own actions.
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When I say, “moron” I mean people like you who have no idea that words have meaning but just look at how pretty they look on the screen.

swissArmyBrain,
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The conservative argument is that unions are the cause of all of the problems with the educational system.
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I say that, when they can be approached on better terms and if they elect more pragmatic people, they can be a part of the solution by helping to create exams which better fit the realities of teaching. That is the specific types of questions, not the level of accomplishment.
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It has never been a liberal position that our schools are fine and do not need any change.
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So, as far as I am concerned I am making an argument for high teacher pay and benefits while creating a better and better means of determining which teachers are the most or least effective.
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The teacher’s union is the defensive mode against conservatives who want to slash and burn budgets and use test scores as an excuse to do so.

This is one area taxpayers want to see their money spent…on schools. If we don’t start taking care of our kids and giving them the best education possible, our society is going to be in bigger trouble…there are so few teachers who stay in the field…no money, no respect from kids or parents and a system that demands more and more from them while giving less and less. This concerns me, because it shows how skewed our society is when it comes to priorities. We need more schools, more teachers and why would anyone want to be a teacher after reading this? President Obama talked about paying teachers and soldiers a decent wage…maybe if we quit declaring war on our problems and work for solutions we wont be wasting money. For instance, how much money have we spent on the “war on drugs”? And guess what? We will never win that one either.
History has shown that people who feel their country is being invaded will never stop fighting. Afghanistan broke the USSR…so why not fight this war the way they fight it? Use our special ops…infiltrate the organization and take them down from the inside. Then we will have plenty of money for schools, alternate energy development etc.

“…the most incompetent set of engineers and chemists of the boomer generation…”
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My late father, who was of the Korean War generation almost fifteen years older than the youngest baby boomers, was an award winning engineer and chairman of the New York chapter of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.
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My mother works at a government job and doesn’t earn much but is the same age as 3X, older than a baby boomer.
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Why are you such a moron?

forgottenlord,
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“In the extreme (as has been reported for New York), this system makes it near impossible to fire teachers who are legitimately DANGEROUS to students.”
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There are problems with some NYC public schools which is a concern of mine down the road, but, the variation from one school to another, often not more than a mile away is staggering.
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But specifically, I believe you are talking about “the rubber room”.
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Individual schools may refuse a teacher internally if they do not want them due to their previous history in NYC.
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Unions demand a hearing.
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In an overwhelming majority of cases, the teachers who will not be given a place to teach also loose their hearing and are terminated.
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The rubber room is one classroom where teachers who won their hearings but did not find a principal who would deal with them. They are required to show up on time and be in a room all of the teaching day and get full pay.
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However, NYC has 80k public school teachers. The number who fall into the rubber room for being too bad to place but won their hearings was about 15 or 20 people or, less than one in four thousand teachers.
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When you have children in NYC, the neighborhood schools are extremely important since they vary from failing to award winning and everywhere in between.

Well said! Fear or respect they both have the same potential for benefit. Except, fear is a true motivator, while respect is seldom earned.

Gee, and here I always thought it was working at something you loved and genuinely believed made a positive difference in the world, while fear just made one over-cautious, inhibited one’s performance, and eventually led to burnout.
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What an amazing difference in worldview.

Joe, Joe, Joe. Did you forget to take your smart pills again?

What would be the worst that would happen if the federal, state and county governments and unions got out of meddling in education and we left all decisions to the local school boards? Could the quality be any worse than it is today?

Yes.
This has been another edition of easy answers to easy questions.

Amen. Home is everything. When I did my student teaching, I had a boy who was a latch key kid. His dad was single and had to work. He was 10 and had no one at home when he left school at the end of the day.
Being young and naive, I wanted to go to his home and intervene. My cooperating, mentor teacher had to give me a lesson on what my limitations were.
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She also taught me not to read a students file when first taking on a new class. Wait a while and do your own evaluation, don’t accept others’ assumptions.

Thanks m9. Do you think JK will acknowledge your correction? No. He will continue to make the same point with the same amount of ignorance.

Joe Klein: Are you one of those that believes in the superiority of European schools. Please read this article about the 2 track system, how students with lesser ability are not tested after they are taken off the college track.
.http://open.salon.com/blog/drew_muse/2008/09/30/researching_european_schools
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It should give you an idea how difficult it is to evaluate outcomes consistently.
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Also, take a good look at the much vaunted charter schools and the fact they do not seem to improve outcomes.
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Before supporting changes do your research. Also, I hope you read comment 14 that disputes your reporting on Bloomberg.

Are you kidding? Have you ever dealt with or belonged to a local school board. Mostly they are filled with people who rubber stamp the Superindent’s or Principal’s proposals. Like most middle management types they are not there to protect the workers.
I have spent hours in meetings with school boards, belonged to a board for a while, worked with them on raising money through levies, and tried to represent the needs of the kids. Believe me, you don’t want school boards running the schools. Example: Texas

Local school boards, the ones who brought us the “debate” over evolution, the “debate” over climate change and, soon to come, the debate over gravity since, after all, scientists use the term “the theory of gravity” so, we can debate gravity, can’t we?
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The school boards are no better and no worse than the town they serve nor know more about education than the average Joe. If you are in a very well educated town, they can be great. If not…

Wouldn’t it be nice if the world were so simple, Joe? If only there were a fair method to determine which teachers “merit” job security? Think about it: What if we determined which doctors were good, based on their cure rates? Would you really want to become an internist? Or would dermatology suddenly seem attractive? In this climate of accountability, wouldn’t you rather teach non-gang members in affluent suburban areas? The day when all teachers get the same students to teach, is the day when you can assign “merit” based on educational outcomes. Until then, some outstanding teachers get less- than- fabulous results with the non-English-speaking children of single, drug-addicted teen parents living in homeless shelters… We are not processors of identical widgets on some academic assembly line.

Your stereotyping that more experienced teachers are less creative or effective is absurd. In my Master’s degree program, the most outstanding professor I had was 83 years old!

Teaching is an art as well as a science. The bean counters will always look to more tests, more numbers. Outstanding teachers and principals in my state stand to lose their jobs, if the MCAS tests don’t show the requisite percentage of annual yearly progress. Stop the insanity!

Teachers are highly educated, oft-evaluated professionals working eleven hour days, and putting more and more of their paychecks into supplies they need for students. The challenges we face on a daily basis would overwhelm many of the businessmen who love to apply their models to us.

My daughter is a “teacher” and is leaving what’s the point of sticking it out it will be at least FIVE years before there is sufficient revenue to hire the necessary number of teachers for the young population we have. 50 1st graders in one classroom is going to be a disaster. She like so many she knows can’t keep a job because she is the last hired. She has been substitute teaching this year. a thankless stressful job seeing ALL the senior teachers that haven’t changed what they teach for 10 or more years. Many have BAD attitudes and don’t like the students as the are ill mannered and don’t really care about learning and have no respect for any adult. My daughter has a degree in Biology and a masters in teaching…many courses in teaching methods. a smart energic person just entering the profession at the wrong time I guess. Good luck to the majority of up can coming “citizens” attempting to compete in this world. there is a bunch of $7hr jobs waiting for them … in USA that won’t get you very far..
The funding for teachers should be 1st priority and freedom to weedout the burnt out should be simple. Staffing has become confused. the high school she graduated from had 10 administrative staff then, now there is 35. same number of students and less teachers. some of the same teachers that we had her have outside tutors for because the teacher knew the subject but couldn’t teach it or was burned out…they are still there …. She left research because of the professed teacher shortage and she wanted to make a difference…what a joke.

As a parent who put two kids through the system from the ’70s through the ’90s (long story), I have a few suggestions. Teacher education must change. Teachers are not taught properly from the beginning and the good ones are the ones who can take it further on their own because they are smart and they care.
Secondly, tenure is fine but it should take longer to achieve. That would go a ways towards separating the wheat from the chaff from the beginning.
Thirdly, if teachers must be let go, let parents and students have a big say in who stays. Parents and students who have something to say are probably involved and anyone who just has a personality conflict will become apparent.
Lastly, for the love of everything stop teaching to the test!
That is NOT education. In real life, there are no tests. If you need to verify something, you can look it up. Give kids a basic, relevant education, including the tools to learn on their own. Please.

Robert, I’m sooooo glad you brought this up. It’s *not* at all off-topic, but very much at the center of education.

My parents helped found a private secular school before I started kindergarten in 1956, a tiny school in Texas. It was modeled on the British system — we even had an English headmaster, complete with his Oxford academic gown and mortarboard (which he wore to assembly every morning).

Our teachers, and all other employees, were poorly paid. It was common for parents to have to reach for their wallets when, say, a water pipe burst.

Yet I got an excellent education the years I was there. (My parents pulled me out after 7th grade for reasons irrelevant here.) By the time I left, I had had four years of Spanish and two years of Latin. I also had been introduced to the basics of trigonometry, algebra, and plane geometry. Each year from third grade on, each class did a skit or play — highschoolers did a full-blown Shakespearean play in the early years, a selection later expanded to classical Greek and Latin plays. In the second semester of first grade, we wrote “mini-essays” of two or three short paragraphs. My first- and second-grade teacher, a retired university dean, used children’s poetry as part of our reading class — and we loved it.

Parents were *expected* to foster their children’s learning in various ways, especially in engaging with their children at home — reading together, going to museums and the like, etc. — and in interacting with the teachers and the headmaster. Interacting with teachers and the headmaster extended to social interaction, so parents and school staff could truly get to know each other — and to discuss our education openly and frankly but in a friendly atmosphere.

At home, my TV time was strictly limited. But my parents were generous in taking me to the library and buying books for me — and reading themselves (if they hadn’t already) and talking with me about them. I took piano lessons. When I was in primary school and they realized I was fascinated by astronomy, they promptly bought me a cheap telescope and took me to the regional planetarium. The encouraged me when I wanted a chemistry set (got one the next Christmas) and then model rocketry. I grew up on a small ranch, and they *also* insisted I learn that side of life, so I spent a lot of time outdoors, working the cows (yes, on a horse had my own from the time I was five), fixing fence, etc. And they flat made me go outside if the weather at all permitted, not only for the exercise, but so I would go “exploring,” a favorite childhood activity of mine.

We spent all of one summer and part of the next in central Mexico, except for Dad, who had to stay in Texas working to finance the jaunts. That first year, my Sister and I had to go to the local parochial school — where not a single nun spoke a single word of English. My Sister was left at sea, but my Spanish came in handy. (Mom couldn’t speak Spanish either, so it fell to me to be the family interpreter when needed.) Further, my teacher required me to take part in classes. so my Spanish improved rapidly, of sheer necessity. Even the *maid,* herself entirely illiterate and able to speak only Spanish, got in on the act: she would command me to take a seat and practice conversation with her. Believe it or not, though she was illiterate, she was an absolute natural as a teacher.. Besides, I adored her.

We also took less grand trips in America, going to places such as Carlsbad Cavern, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, art museums, zoos, symphonies — you name it.

And it was FUN. For me and my Sister, and for our parents.

When I first entered the public school system, a poor — even impoverished — tiny rural school that at the time went only to 10th grade (though the last two years were added before I reached that level), I was bored to death. I am not particularly smart, but owing to my background, I was way ahead of my fellow students, which presented a real problem for my teachers.

The school, through no one’s fault, was essentially the rural equivalent of an inner-city school. There were no foreign languages taught, for instance, not even by the time I graduated. That’s not to say that a number of my teachers weren’t good — one helped me win a National Science Foundation scholarship to a university for a physics program in the summer between my junior and senior years, for instance, something the superintendent (and neighbor; he rented the house next door from my family), a good man himself, simply couldn’t understand. He was a typical rural Texas administrator, an ex-coach, and he simply couldn’t understand how any teenager would want to “waste” — his word — two months of summer studying, especially at university level for 5-1/2 days a week (including labs). But that was the atmosphere in which *he* had grown up — and, importantly, he not only didn’t try to block me but backed me 100% in the end.

In that school, parents almost never interacted with the teachers, almost all of whom lived in the county seat some miles away, so there was no social interaction, either. About the only interest most parents took was in sports after a bond election passed — passed on the premise that an astounding 40% would be spent building a gymnasium would be built for a basketball team. The parents’ only real gripe was that the community simply couldn’t afford a football stadium; don’t forget this was in Texas, arguably the most football-crazy state in the Union, including at the high-school level.

It wasn’t that they were bad people, but most simply saw no value in education; every autumn, farmers who raised peanuts and had sons took their sons out of school to help with the harvest, and one doesn’t need an education to harvest, not the “book larnin’” kind. Only two or three had any college; none had a degree (except teachers). Some had as little as two or three years education.

I’m a teacher, though at the university level. My Mother is a retired high-school teacher, and my Sister is a specialized sort of special ed teacher at the middle-school level. So I do have a direct interest in those of us who teach giving the community good value for the parents money and the students’ time.

What makes a good teacher? I don’t really know, but I do know one, as the saying goes, when I see one. I do believe, strongly, that successfully teaching to a test is at best of very limited value in identifying good (and bad) teachers. I equally strongly believe that for a teacher to remain good, community support and interaction are essential. Otherwise, the teacher will either move on, or give up. That happened to some excellent teachers I had in public school — they found themselves flowers in a garden but with no gardener to tend them.

Defining “good teaching” is a difficult exercise, on par, perhaps, with defining “creativity.”

One last tale of the possible. In the village a mile up the road there was a handyman who had dropped out halfway through second grade. When I was a junior in university, I was taking a course in Shakespeare and had a textbook, Bible-sized, of Shakespeare’s complete works. The book’s cover was beautiful.

On my way home from that late-morning class, I stopped at the only cafe in town, which was quite full. I sat with Johnny, a simple man with simple needs, and certainly not given to airs. He spotted my book and asked what it was. I told him “the complete works of a man named ‘Shakespeare’ who lived a long time ago,” and I said it in a not-so-nice way. He went into ecstasy, snatching the book up, first turning to the table of contents. To the astonishment of one and all, he began quoting lengthy passages from plays and sonnets, me flipping furiously around to check his accuracy, which was near-perfect. He also went into lengthy literary criticism. Some of what he said matched what I was learning in class, and I started taking notes when he went *beyond* my knowledge.

As I said, the place was pretty full, mostly with farmers and ranchers. There wasn’t much work done that afternoon; they sat around listening, at first agape, then entranced.

How in the WORLD could this uneducated man know so much about Shakespeare? Turned out he had cleaned a storage shed for someone and found a moth-eaten, water-stained complete works of Shakespeare, and illustrated one, and had asked the owner if he could keep it.

Then, painstakingly, over a period of years he taught himself to read, starting with a child’s dictionary then slowly getting increasingly higher-level dictionaries.

But he never told anyone before that day.

I told my professor, who couldn’t believe it, so I took him to meet Johnny. They quickly left me in the dust. And they did so pretty much as equals, this man with less than two years’ education and this professor with his doctorate and widely regarded as a leading scholar on Shakespeare. The county newspaper picked up the story and did a lengthy feature piece on Johnny, with my professor featured as the consulting expert.

It can be done. It just takes our joining together in common cause to deliver the best education possible to our children.

(I haven’t proofread this long entry, so I sure hope I didn’t make any mistakes!)

A few more points I forgot to mention.

First, my Sister teaches in a small public school, and despite the fact her salary is relatively low even after a quarter of a century, she buys supplies for her students *routinely* — I’ve been with her when her main shopping mission was to get notebooks, pens and pencils, rulers, you name it. If she doesn’t, then her students simply don’t get the supplies. Further, some of her students are well below the poverty line, and she regularly buys food, clothing, etc. for them — not as often as she does supplies, but she spends more on the non-school stuff than the school items. I’ve never seen her teach, so I can’t say how well she does in the classroom, though I do know most her students adore her.

Second, as a Texan I can confirm that often school boards are just about the LAST people you want running schools in Texas (and, I would guess, in at least some other states). And as the lengthy battle over textbooks in this state that reached its peak this year showed, yes, idiots get elected to our state school board, too.

I wish it were financially feasible for local school boards to be made up of salaried professionals hired by an expert on at least some aspects of public education. And it would be nice if at least some of them had prior experience *in* schools, as either teachers or administrators. But that’s a pipe dream, and I know it.

Thirdly, the personal debates over liberal/conservative issues, at least in this thread, contribute little to the conversation. Over the years, I’ve known people from pretty much along the entire political spectrum who had solid, useful ideas that *did* contribute to our public discourse about education. I’ve also known idiots, also pretty much from along the entire political spectrum; usually, the idiocy manifested itself as a single, one-size-fits-all, simplistic solution.

I’m very moderately liberal, so I’ll use a liberal example. Money alone won’t solve this. It’s one important component, yes — but far more than just adequate funding is needed. I student-taught in a wealthy school district in which the poorest family’s were only “moderately wealthy,” while at the upper end some were filthy rich. Yet discipline was a joke, even when it came to trying to keep students from flat walking out of class, not doing homework, refusing to do in-class assignments, etc. Grade inflation was rampant because teachers knew if they graded accurately they’d be fired, if not immediately, then at the end of the year. So, no, buckets of money alone won’t take care of this.

“families,” not “family’s”

In a complicated and involved discussion like this, sometimes it is helpful to get back into the classroom to gain perspective. What is truly making a difference in the lives of the students? I’m sure everyone has a story to tell either way. It has been my experience that two elementary teachers were my heroes growing up. They both literally changed my life in so many ways. And…they were both very experienced older teachers. [The younger teachers unfortunately didn't know how to help me, and they didn't take the time to find out.] One went so far as to put her own money in to obtain services for me and other students that we would not have had otherwise. I am forever indebted to these wonderful women who invested their time and skills to help level the playing field of life. I kept in touch with them up until they passed away. That’s what I call a legacy of learning.

I have worked in education. In different states and public schools, private, universities, community colleges. Especially in some heavy union states like the president’s home state, the unions are crazy. I didn’t read Klein say all old employees need to be let go, but there needs to be real review to keep the best old and the best new. As the system is now,all the old/tenured employees stay whether they do good work or not and some very very good teachers and workers go. That system is killing us.

Example: the department in which I work. There are four union people of a service org, all about 50 yo, all making roughly a starting teacher salary or $40k. (And, agreed, no one’s going far on that salary.) One person goes above and beyond, does her job and does others’s jobs too. She could be smarter and she could do more but she is worth saving, even though she’s “old” – for the sake of this argument. The three other people are doing the work of one person, quite literally, and not very well. When asked to do more, they say, that’s not in my contract.

I think teachers are worth saving but if anyone should know how to EVALUATE it should be teachers and principals. They claim to know how to fairly evaluate our children every day. Keep the best teachers, the best workers regardless of their tenure status. If that means getting rid of the unions, so be it. The unions must move into the 21st century. Yes, they did our nation much good service. But they are a heavily entrenched system that can not see what is good for themselves, the students or the taxpayers. They are stewards for the values of this country and that must be their primary objective.

It is amazing to me how non educators have the thought that there is a way to measure “merit” within the teaching profession. Public school educators face a bewildering number of variables in their instructional practice. People from other professions confuse the production of parts with the education of children. Children are assigned to teachers. those teachers have no control over who is selected and sent to them. You desire to create some magic formula that (I presume) fairly determines a teacher’s merit. It is impossible. You may as well try to measure whether or not a marriage while two people are dating. Relationships are at the core of teaching. Student-teacher and Teacher-Teacher and Teacher-Parent and Teacher-Administrator. How will You measure those???
Additional factors include the child’s willingness to learn, the child’s physical ability to learn, The way children in a specific room get along, the resources of the classroom and the the individual children at home. to name a few. Merit pay for teachers is akin to criminal penalties for doctors whose patients die on the operating table. The notion itself is ridiculous.

The Profession has already established evaluation criteria, they are procedural and not outcome based for the very reasons I mention and more.