Comments on Into My Own: Teacher experience and student achievement

Paul, thanks again, you are slowly working on my b...

2007-12-12T22:31:00.000-05:00

Paul, thanks again, you are slowly working on my belief system.

MOM, it is really not difficult legally to get rid of a bad teacher if you have competent administrators... that's a big part of the problem. There is a miconception that it's hard to get rid of tenured teachers...in fact I've seen tenured teachers dismissed on pretty flimsy grounds.

It is difficult, however, emotionally and politically. Even bad teachers have their "constituencies." They have supporters within the school and community, and it's hard to confront a group of people who think a teacher is wonderful. It's also very difficult emotionally--speaking from experience--to look a person in the eye and tell them you're taking away their livelihood.

But good administrators know when to make that difficult decision.

How difficult is it for a school to get rid of a b...

2007-12-12T16:22:00.000-05:00

How difficult is it for a school to get rid of a bad teacher? Whenever I catch a story pertaining to this I'm always reminded of a Jr. High teacher who did absolutely nothing in terms of educating. We were given assignments to read and work over in class. Nothing else. He sat at his desk, nothing more. In fact, I don't recall ever seeing him on his feet minus that of in the morning when he walked in to the school and in the afternoon when he walked out. The only time I recall a course of quick action to rid the district of a teacher was when he was caught in a sexually compromising position in a public location. A sad spectacle as he was an extremely well liked teacher. Whether or not that became a firestorm in the papers; I don't remember, too young. But it was certainly hot gossip. Over the last few years I've heard of one only sexually-fired incident that never made it to the local papers and was seemingly never "fixed". At least in terms of the teacher being dispatched. That was possibly two to three years ago. Is it easier for a school to cover up and continue on when they've got a bad teacher, as opposed to replacing or is it all wrapped around not wanting to advertise the district is having a problem teacher? Just curious =)

Dave:A guy named Larry Wilson articulated a concep...

2007-12-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

Dave:

A guy named Larry Wilson articulated a concept that I've always found pretty valid. It goes like this:

He calls the first stage of a new role the Panic Stage. We don't understand the environment, don't know all the rules, and aren't sure how to be successful in the assignment. We experiment, fail, learn, adapt, and experiment some more. All accompanied by frustration and anxiety.

Then we move into a Competence Stage. We may not understand everything about the ecosystem, but we've had enough successes that we now know how to reproduce them. Less frustration and anxiety and more confidence and achievement.

The third stage is Mastery. We have gained enough knowledge of the ecosystem that we can not only follow the rules, we can modify the system itself and therefore create new rules.

Wilson was talking about developing sales folks, but I've found the notion to be broadly applicable whether one is talking about a new professional role, or some very personal like becoming a new spouse or a new parent.

The element that has to be present to progress through these stages, regardless of role, is motivation. Indeed education helps, and can often accelerate the progression. But the person has to want to make progress.

Some - the best - are self motivated. They'll do a good job as long as the compensation and conditions stay reasonable. Otherwise they'll leave.

Others won't try so hard. Or they'll just get worn out after so many years in the trenches. For those people, years of experience isn't helping. In pay systems like those used in schools (and many govt functions) they're just paid more and more to do less and less.

I worry that the cost/benefit evaluation loop is too open-ended to deal with this latter case very well. By that I mean that parents send tax money to hire teachers who deliver their service to kids who aren't necessarily going to tell their parents that a teacher sucks. And if the parents are told, how many will do anything about it? And if the parents go to the principals, what are the principals going to do given how much energy it takes to get rid of a bad teacher?

American consumers are used to having lots of choice. I think one of the consequences of that choice is that rather than fighting with a poor service provider, many of us just find a new one. But that's hard to do when you're talking about schools - you have to move.

That's why I advocate dropping school district boundaries and giving kids a choice of any public school - taking their funding with them.