I see a lot of Back & Forth in this forum about "overpaid teachers" and how "Right-Wingers" don't want to "invest" in education.
It is all nonsense.
NOBODY begrudges a good teacher a good wage. The taxpayers, however, perpetually feel like they are being screwed because the Teaching Establishment - whether unionized or not - perpetually and emphatically refuses to allow itself to be evaluated according to RESULTS.
If the taxpayers could be assured that the school districts (or the states) were doing a reasonable job of evaluating teachers, weeding out the bad ones (with TERMINATION, not years of special training, re-evaluations, and crap like that), and rewarding the successful ones, then the complaints about "overpaid teachers" would mostly stop. (Early retirements would continue to be an issue, but that's a discussion for another thread).
Because there are two facts about teachers that EVERYBODY who has ever gone to a public school knows: (1) there are bad ones out there, and (2) teaching is a career that burns people out. Even many teachers who started off like a house on fire are simply burned out after some number of years, and from that point forward they are just putting in time until their plush, early retirements. And as long as the bad teachers and the burned out teachers remain in these sinecures, invulnerable to any sort of sanctions or removal, the public is indeed getting screwed.
Because the existence and permanence of the bad ones is also a cancer to the good ones. Why should they work hard year after year, when IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE?
It is undoubtedly true that a gross measurement of student performance would result in many teachers appearing to be incompetent, through no fault of their own. Any system of evaluation would have to take into account demographics, environmental factors, marginal administration, and other things extraneous to the teachers' classroom performance.
But these obstacles are NOT INSURMOUNTABLE, as the teachers and their unions would have us believe. They are simply challenges to be overcome. And the teachers' representatives COULD BE IN THE FOREFRONT of meeting these challenges: developing evaluation criteria that are able to focus on teacher performance, while factoring in all the other extraneous things that can affect gross performance numbers (as measured through quantitative testing).
Dare I point out that we "professionals" in the private sector are evaluated year after year, and are subject to termination for a whole laundry list of reasons, MOST of which have nothing to do with our actual level of performance...and we manage to SURVIVE! I've lost my job 4 times in the past 40 years, and had to change jobs under pressure a couple other times, and none of it had anything to do with my performance. It was reorganizations, cutbacks, companies going out of business, etc. Life is a bitch. Why should teachers be immune from any of it?
A friend of mine used to be a School Director, and every year he used to embarrass the Director of Human Resources by asking her how many teachers had received "unsatisfactory" performance reviews in the preceding year (out of more than 500 teachers). The answer was ALWAYS zero! She never was able to explain how this particular school district - alone among all of the employers on the PLANET! - had managed to assemble five hundred people for teaching positions, and not have even a single one who was a poor performer.
But of course, that school district was not unique. In fact, most of the thousands of school districts in the country are exactly the same in this regard. No teacher is EVER fired for non-performance. Maybe for fucking an eleventh grader, or getting caught smoking dope in the teachers' lounge, or being convicted of a felony, but for poor performance? Never.
Yes, am I truly sorry for begrudging teachers their "professional" salaries for 9-1/2 months of employment per year. But give me some assurance that they are all competent and that the bad ones are periodically weeded out, any maybe I'll be more sympathetic.
But you'll have to pardon me if I'm not willing to hold my breath until that happens.
It is all nonsense.
NOBODY begrudges a good teacher a good wage. The taxpayers, however, perpetually feel like they are being screwed because the Teaching Establishment - whether unionized or not - perpetually and emphatically refuses to allow itself to be evaluated according to RESULTS.
If the taxpayers could be assured that the school districts (or the states) were doing a reasonable job of evaluating teachers, weeding out the bad ones (with TERMINATION, not years of special training, re-evaluations, and crap like that), and rewarding the successful ones, then the complaints about "overpaid teachers" would mostly stop. (Early retirements would continue to be an issue, but that's a discussion for another thread).
Because there are two facts about teachers that EVERYBODY who has ever gone to a public school knows: (1) there are bad ones out there, and (2) teaching is a career that burns people out. Even many teachers who started off like a house on fire are simply burned out after some number of years, and from that point forward they are just putting in time until their plush, early retirements. And as long as the bad teachers and the burned out teachers remain in these sinecures, invulnerable to any sort of sanctions or removal, the public is indeed getting screwed.
Because the existence and permanence of the bad ones is also a cancer to the good ones. Why should they work hard year after year, when IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE?
It is undoubtedly true that a gross measurement of student performance would result in many teachers appearing to be incompetent, through no fault of their own. Any system of evaluation would have to take into account demographics, environmental factors, marginal administration, and other things extraneous to the teachers' classroom performance.
But these obstacles are NOT INSURMOUNTABLE, as the teachers and their unions would have us believe. They are simply challenges to be overcome. And the teachers' representatives COULD BE IN THE FOREFRONT of meeting these challenges: developing evaluation criteria that are able to focus on teacher performance, while factoring in all the other extraneous things that can affect gross performance numbers (as measured through quantitative testing).
Dare I point out that we "professionals" in the private sector are evaluated year after year, and are subject to termination for a whole laundry list of reasons, MOST of which have nothing to do with our actual level of performance...and we manage to SURVIVE! I've lost my job 4 times in the past 40 years, and had to change jobs under pressure a couple other times, and none of it had anything to do with my performance. It was reorganizations, cutbacks, companies going out of business, etc. Life is a bitch. Why should teachers be immune from any of it?
A friend of mine used to be a School Director, and every year he used to embarrass the Director of Human Resources by asking her how many teachers had received "unsatisfactory" performance reviews in the preceding year (out of more than 500 teachers). The answer was ALWAYS zero! She never was able to explain how this particular school district - alone among all of the employers on the PLANET! - had managed to assemble five hundred people for teaching positions, and not have even a single one who was a poor performer.
But of course, that school district was not unique. In fact, most of the thousands of school districts in the country are exactly the same in this regard. No teacher is EVER fired for non-performance. Maybe for fucking an eleventh grader, or getting caught smoking dope in the teachers' lounge, or being convicted of a felony, but for poor performance? Never.
Yes, am I truly sorry for begrudging teachers their "professional" salaries for 9-1/2 months of employment per year. But give me some assurance that they are all competent and that the bad ones are periodically weeded out, any maybe I'll be more sympathetic.
But you'll have to pardon me if I'm not willing to hold my breath until that happens.
