So, are people saying there are NO bad teachers?

[KansasVoter]

I read the posts here and cannot figure out if anyone thinks there are bad teachers who should be fired.

Please don't turn this post into a "I hate teachers" thread because if you do, then it means you do not think there has ever been a teacher who deserves to be fired. And we all know that is impossible.

First off, 90% of my teachers in High School were wonderful!!

I had two HORRIBLE teachers in four years of high school. They were basically cruising to retirement and did not give a crap about any of the kids. They were horrible and everyone knew it. I wish they would have been fired. They were showing up for a paycheck, and that was all. But no one could fire them. And I know at least one teacher in my daughters middle school in the same boat. Nothing they can do about her. She is 64 years old and mean as can be and also does not give a crap!

So, can someone who is in the education area, or a teacher, please explain how you get rid of a teacher who is just basically lousy at their job. I have seen teachers fired for porn or for hitting a kid. But how do you get rid of a teacher who is does not really give a crap and is just there for the money and not the kids?

Is it possible to have a civil discussion on the DU about this topic?

[Enrique]

1. nice post, Arne

;-)

[leftofcool]

21. That was unfair

I am a retired teacher and I have seen some bad/ineffective ones in my time. The poster is asking a question and it deserves an answer, not a side comment.

[hlthe2b]

2. Only whe we were kids...

;)

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Are there no bad bankers(insert occupation)?

That's your answer.

[KansasVoter]

12. And most occupations allow you to fire bad ones.

[Hannah Bell]

15. lol. showed your true colors right away. teachers *can* be fired.

[LiberalAndProud]

55. It is difficult to fire a tenured teacher.

And the NEA is part of the problem. Seen it happen that a school district tried to fire one very bad teacher. Small school district could not out-muscle the NEA. Truth.

edit: keyboard error

[Hannah Bell]

63. no, it's not. it's difficult to *arbitrarily* fire one. as it should be.

[LiberalAndProud]

64. What would *arbitrarily* mean?

My mother, also a teacher, thought the firing was warranted. It was easier and cheaper for the school district to retain the teacher in question. It *is* difficult and expensive to dismiss a teacher for cause. The NEA doesn't differentiate between arbitrary and merited dismissal. It's role is to advocate for the teacher, and it does so.

Sometimes that is not in the best interests of the students who, sadly, are not represented by a union.

[Hannah Bell]

68. arbitrarily would be firing someone because someone's mother/another teacher "thought it was

warranted."

maybe someone thought "it was warranted" to fire your mother.

a union protects people from being fired because one person "thinks it's warranted".

[Catshrink]

71. There is something called due process

that is what contracts used to guarantee.

Union bashing is shameful.

[LiberalAndProud]

78. I guess it looks like union bashing.

The fact is, the merits of the case were never explored. The NEA intervened, the teacher was retained ... not because parents or the school board had changed their opinion of the teacher, but because resources were not available, for whatever reason, to pursue termination.

I want equal representation for the students. It should be less about teachers and more about students. Sorry if that's union bashing. If so, then so.

[Hannah Bell]

84. There's a process. If "resources weren't available" to follow that process,

blame the moneymen, not the teacher.

Every worker should have a right to due process v. arbitrary termination.

[LiberalAndProud]

88. Agreed.

However, I would counter that every student should have a right to dedicated and competent teachers. Fortunately, most of them are. The shame is that there are the few who are just sucky.

The money man can be blamed for most bad things in life, I have learned.

[Hannah Bell]

89. agreed.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

19. And most occupations allow you to reward good ones.

Instead of focusing on the small percentage of "bad" teachers, let's focus focus on the large percentage of shitty funding.

:think:


THEN we'll talk about problem #8.

[no limit]

26. Teachers can't be fired? Damn, did I go in to the wrong career.

[JVS]

39. What about bad students? They can't be fired.

[michreject]

59. They just get passed to the next grade

Even tho dey kant spel.

[JVS]

60. That's not tough enough. I demand their expulsion.

[JonLP24]

83. Woah

They could have an untreated and unnoticed learning disability or their could be other outside factors affecting school work. I prefer making someone retake a grade but not expulsion just for bad grades.

[Catshrink]

72. Neither can bad parents.

[alstephenson]

4. In a word: No. It is not possible to have a civil discussion on DU

about this topic.

[CBR]

8. +1... it is just not possible. nt

[leftofcool]

23. +1

[Barack2theFuture]

5. Are there bad teachers? Yes.

Would Arne Duncan know one if said bad teacher walked up and kicked him squarely in the 'nads? No.

Will any proposal of the bush-Obama privatized education cartel correctly identify bad teachers as opposed to excellent teachers? No.

[KansasVoter]

7. So how do you fix it?

[Barack2theFuture]

14. locally and with zero corporate participation.

[KansasVoter]

34. I agree with that!!!

[Hannah Bell]

6. no, but it makes nice fluffy straw, doesn't it?

[KansasVoter]

10. I'll add you to the "teachers are perfect" like.

[Hannah Bell]

17. lol. i'll add you to the "union-busting is good, using shaming tactics to take down labor = good"

column.

[KansasVoter]

32. Wow, I know where the GOP gets their attitude about us.

[Catshrink]

73. Heck, all they have to do is read the anti-teacher, union bashing

comments here. Actually, most of them are right out of the GOP play book beginning back with St. Ronnie.

[ljm2002]

9. Yes, you've found us out...

...just like the "professional left" are saying to "dismantle the Pentagon", DUers are saying "there are NO bad teachers".

Yep.

:sarcasm:

[KansasVoter]

13. Then I am awaiting a intelligent answer about how to get rid of the bad ones.

[ljm2002]

52. You might try starting with a question...

...that does not antagonize those whose responses you are seeking:

"So, are people saying there are NO bad teachers?"

That was the title of your OP. Nothing divisive there, no sir. No strawmen either. Nope.

"I read the posts here and cannot figure out if anyone thinks there are bad teachers who should be fired."

Reeaallly. Not that you bothered citing any such posts, just a general "Oh those nasty DUers don't want to fire any teachers at all!" claptrap.

And finally you go on to ask

..."please explain how you get rid of a teacher who is just basically lousy at their job."

Well tell you what. Why don't you go ask your school board. I'm betting there are differences between school districts, just for starters. If you've really got a bug up your butt about the bad teachers you had in high school, why don't you go check with that school district. Hell, run for school board in your district. Then you can have some input into the issue.

[Goblinmonger]

106. Read reply 14. That would work. n/t

[NeedleCast]

11. I don't really understand either

From my middle and high-school expereinces, I'd say most of my teachers didn't care. Most of them taught the information in the text book, as laid down by their various school-boards and staff-groups. Only a handful made an attempt to engage the students in any way.

I was the type of student who performed well in classes where my teachers made an effort to go beyond the materials and poorly in classes where they told us to "read chapter 2 and answer the questions in the back of the book" before going back to sit behind their desks and stare at the clock.

[haele]

61. Teachers who didn't care, or teachers who weren't allowed to care?

Most teachers teach the information from the text book - and from a rigid curricula, because of several reason:
1) that is the only way they're allowed to teach unless they get district approval to vere from the plan. By August, districts require teachers provide a detailed curricula on what and how they are going to teach - and test - that year and show they can "hit their marks" at certain times of the year when they go through their assessments. The only consideration they are given is a rough estimate on class size for the year, how many hours they are actually going to be allowed to teach, and when they have to have "development days" where they can re-submit the curricula if things have changed.
This process never takes into account the amount of students they actually get, the quality of the students they are going to get, the individual issues of the students they are going to get (how many disruptive, how many smart, how many troubled), the funding that gets cut in the middle of the year - none of that can be considered when they write up how they are going to teach at the beginning of the year.
2) It's easier when you don't have enough time to actually teach. If you are lucky enough to only have four or five classes a day with 30 or more students in each class, you don't have time to take five minutes out for a student with issues, so you need to make time for the special students, for extra-curricular teaching as well as to prepare for the next day of teaching.
Even when I was a child watching my dad (a high-school advanced history/civics teacher), a "core subject" teacher's schedule has always been at least 10 - 12 hours daily dedicated to work, plus a few hours on Sundays getting ready for Monday.
Exhaustion sets in, and no matter how well the teacher plans or how interesting the teacher is, if the class is large, the textbook ends up being the core of the curriculum for the year. If you're lucky, you get a small enough classroom where the teacher can take the time to engage the interest of the class on the realities of the subject at hand or about "seizing the day" and actually learning to learn rather than waiting to be spoonfed.
3) School boards and District Administrators. Political Hacks. Abusive, ignorant, or detached Parents. Coddled, troubled, or dis-interested Students. No Child Left Behind. A culture where "too much book-larn'in" paints a target on your back as being uppity or elitist. Wondering if your job will still be there next semester, if you're going to be outsourced by a new, "non-profit" charter school or if your "paid hours" or your benefits are going to be further cut as part of "fat-cutting" measures instituted by over-paid consultants to an over-paid school board.
4) Not being allowed to help when you can help a student. School administration would rather triage - would rather shuffle special needs students out of the system than actually take the time to work with a child that just needs a year or so of special help because it takes time out of the standard teaching time - if Mr. Smith has to spend a week's worth of 15 - 20 minutes of his 45 minute 5th period class to help Jimmy wrap his brain around percentages, that's one entire class day worth of time taken away from the 34- 49 other students he may have in that class who are "there to learn" the math course of study that was approved, and they've all got to get their homework covered and take their tests on that Friday. So Mr. Smith has to teach the book to keep on track, and Jimmy might be lucky enough to be able to sit in class after school while Mr. Smith is grading and setting the room up for the next day - and he could get help then. Or there might be a tutor to help Jimmy. Or the district might just shuffle him off from public school to charter school to "special education" school until Jimmy's 16 and decides to quit - because of the program in place and money concerns that would not allow teachers, tutors, or aids to take the time to help him learn during school hours.
That has happened to more young people than I care to count. But of course, most of them were poor or darker, so to TPTB, it didn't really matter anyway - they weren't important enough to warrant more than lip-service.

There are far more teachers who care but are trapped in a cycle of corporatist mediocrity outside of their control than there are teachers who really have checked out and shouldn't be teaching.

Haele

[LWolf]

80. +1

[Angry Dragon]

16. On another thread that is still going

someone mentioned perhaps better terms to use:

Effective and in-effective teachers

perhaps some of the in-effective teachers will never be effective

There are both kinds of teachers and yes education needs to be discussed.

Question for the people out there: What should starting pay be for teachers??

[KansasVoter]

18. Raise the pay of Cops and Teachers and both will be better!!!

[Common Sense Party]

36. It's interesting that some people who seem to think there are NO bad teachers

are the same people who think there are NO good cops.

[Angry Dragon]

37. Where should the pay start??

[Starry Messenger]

20. No, no one has ever said that.

Repeating that tired straw meme is why it is impossible to have a civil discussion about this on DU. The non-teachers shot first in this particular battle.

[KansasVoter]

22. I have seen very few people agree on a way to get rid of bad teachers.

[Starry Messenger]

28. Then you aren't reading all the threads about this.

We talk about these issues all the time. Most teachers who are not going to work out in this profession usually "self-select": they quit. For all others there is a system of evaluation that is already in place. Just because random members of the public think someone is a "bad teacher" is not a really professional basis for evaluation. This isn't American Idol.

[LWolf]

81. "This isn't American Idol"

"thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Mz Pip]

24. Of course there are bad teachers

just like there are bad people in all the other professions out there.

I worked for 20 years in education, mostly as a high school counselor. It is possible to get rid of bad (though I would rather use the word incompetant) but it takes some effort. It requires lots of observations, documentation and conferences to do it. Most administrators don't want to be bothered unless they just can't avoid it. Often incompetant teachers just get moved around the district, going from school to school to school.

[FLyellowdog]

44. Bingo! You go to the head of the class.

Districts/administrators/whoever are very reluctant to go the distance of firing a teacher...even in districts who put less than competent teachers on Professional Development Plans after unsatisfactory evaluations. I taught for 25 years and I might have enjoyed (not really sure about this yet) the public knowing about my glowing evaluations...always excellent/outstanding/superior ratings which resulted in several Excel Awards and a District Teacher of the Year Finalist award. (That's my vanity talking.)I posted my awards on my classroom wall for all to see because I earned them and was proud of the work I did and my status in the educational community.

BUT, I also think that those teachers who were struggling did not deserve to have their evaluations published because the public can be so unforgiving and is so unwilling to take responsibility their own role in education. Most who were in that position were willing to improve their skills by taking classes and receiving mentoring from the more capable teachers. Given the choice, no one wants to lose their job over poor performance.

It is clear that the problem of "bad" teachers (which is the only term that the public seems to understand)is not that these teachers are incompetent but that their supervisors are UNWILLING to take the time and effort to help improve their skills or remove them from the system.

Let us not forget that teachers have to SUCCESSFULLY complete specified courses, SUCCESSFULLY complete supervised internships, and undergo annual evaluations which are reviewed for INCOMPETENCY issues. The questions which beg an answer are, "How did the less than competent teachers get their jobs in the first place?" and "Why aren't administrators taking steps already in place to remove them from the classroom?"

[Mz Pip]

49. When I received my teaching credential

the state of CA had done away with lifetime credentials. I had to do 150 hours of classes/workshops/professional development that had to be signed off and evaluated every 5 years by the commission for teacher credentialing. That was not always the case. Lots of teachers before me had lifetime credentials and they were not required to do anything to keep their skills and knowledge updated.

The worst of the teachers I came in contact with were teachers who had those lifetime credentials and were stuck in the past in terms of classroom management and effectiveness and didn't want to take the time or effort to build on anything they had learned 20 years before. Every school I worked at there were always a handful of teachers like that. FOr whatever reasons, they just didn't seem to care.

When my son got his CA teaching credential transferring from NY he had to do some additional classwork, have a mentor and be part of a new teacher support system that included observations and conferences to help him be successful.

[LWolf]

82. +1,000

[smalll]

25. Fair question. Here's my take --

I had a similar experience - the vast majority of my teachers were good teachers. A couple of them weren't. But you get past those few. In some ways, the occasional "bad teacher" is his or her own learning experience. When people go out into the real world, they will have some bad bosses as well. Dealing with the less-than-stellar who are over us in authority is a life skill too: keep your head down, keep plugging away, and you'll get out of there eventually.

Also, it is undeniable that the quality of learning going on in schools is lower than it used to be. But I don't think there's any evidence that the percentage of teachers who are "bad teachers" has increased. So even if somehow we COULD "root out" all the bad ones, how much if anything would that do?

Why is learning down? What's causing the decline?

1) Good old American anti-intellectualism, which is getting stronger, not weaker.

2) Bad parenting skills (and the precious snowflake phenomenon.)

3) Children warped by too much technology -- constantly stimulated and plugged in from an early age to mind-numbing, lowest-common-denominator media.

4) The Fear and continuing suburbanization mean that kids DON'T get to just play outside anymore -- no wonder they're jumpy in classrooms! They never get to properly work out their physical energy, so they become antsy and/or disruptive in class.

5) Less respect by youth for age in general, so students don't come to school with even a base-line respect for their teachers.

Can things be done to improve the situation? Maybe. Or maybe the best we can do educationally is to "manage the decline." Either way, bashing teachers, or more specifically blaming teachers for students' increasing failure to learn won't help the situation.

[KansasVoter]

27. I agree. And the parents are a huge issue!

[Hannah Bell]

29. The closest correlation with poor academic performance = INCOME.

Neoliberal economic systems = inequality = poor academic performance.

[Starry Messenger]

35. It's so simple people just can't believe it, I guess.

We've had this punishing economic system for decades now. What did people think was going to happen to the poor communities?

[leftofcool]

31. Excellent answer and spot in! Nice to see a DUer not being snide

but rather giving an honest answer.

[pitohui]

30. i really didn't have any good teachers in high school, maybe one really

even the ones who took an interest in me were creepy and seemed to have something badly wrong w. them, esp. this one creepy old man

elementary school was worse, of course, since in those days, hitting kids were completely standard, every teacher i had would be fired/arrested as a child abuser today and SHOULD HAVE BEEN back then -- hopefully that type is gone from the system now

maybe times has changed, but even with open proud physical abusers removed, there must be lots of bad teachers, there are bad employees who suck in every type of job, why would teachers suddenly be all special?

we all admit that there are bad cops and that's a job where you're talking abt people's freedom and safety, yet still "bad" cops get hired that screw it up and ruin people's lives forever

teachers, yeah, of course there would be teachers who screw you up, they can't help to wrongly convict you of a crime but they can screw you up pretty bad...and nobody, absolutely nobody, will ever care

i was a victim of sexual harassment from a teacher, so i guess i have a v. neg. attitude but i earned it

[KansasVoter]

33. Nice post. Thanks for sharing it.

[HughBeaumont]

38. HAH!

You want bad teachers? Come to 70s-80s small town Ohio. I seem to have won the lottery on them.

[cbdo2007]

40. all I know is that the teachers I hated the most in high school....

now in retrospect were probably the best teachers I had.

My favorite teachers would probably be the ones kicked out today because they didn't give a rats ass, just like me.

The only problem with deciding which teachers are "bad" vs "good" is that who is going to make that judgement? The students are always going to have ones they like or didn't like for whatever unexplainable reason (like the poster above who just felt her older male teachers were "creepy") and you're going to have parents who choose which teachers they do or don't like based on THEIR view of how they treat their own kids, so just more mindless judging on a subject they probably know very little about.

[B Calm]

42. Spot ON!

[LWolf]

57. I have a good working relationship with the vast majority of my students.

In all my years of teaching, there are maybe 3 students I struggled to maintain a positive working relationship with; all 3 in middle school.

There are others who will say that "I'm not their favorite teacher." That's okay. I don't have to be. These are the same students who come back after a year in high school and say, "Thank you."

[cbdo2007]

67. That's good to hear!

And it's not that I really "hated" any of my teachers, because I'm a good kid for the most part, but I was completely detached from anything productive from middle school through high school while dealing with my parents divorce and the fallout and remarriage...so even the teachers I didn't like, or did like it wasn't their fault, I was dealing with some major sh*t the whole time.

I can't think of one teacher in all of my years that I really think should be removed for any reason...sure, many people have their own goofy reasons they don't like whoever, but people rarely know what's best for them at the time.

[LWolf]

75. It's an unhappy reality that many of our students have way too many

outside stresses happening to invest themselves in school and learning. It's Maslow's hierarchy.

I ran into a former student at the grocery store this afternoon. She shrieked my name, charged down the aisle to give me a big hug, and spent 20 minutes telling me all about her freshman year last year, her new schedule for this year, and her worries about possibly having to pull up roots and move; both her parents have been laid off.

This is a type-A student who worried obsessively over her grades and worked her tail off to achieve. Now she's trying to figure out what the best scenario for her family is, and how she'll handle moving away from the community she's grown up in, her church, and her social life, and starting all over.

[EFerrari]

41. If someone was saying there are no bad teachers

wouldn't you be able to simply point to that post?

[Malikshah]

43. Are people saying there are no bad PARENTS???

Can we fire them? Please?

[Riftaxe]

45. Apparently there are only bad students...

ooh and charter schools were invented by the anti-Christ, home schooled students are uneducated social misfits. I learn so much about education on these boards!

(if I was to actually believe the education zealots for a minute, thankfully they tend to make that rather hard)

[LWolf]

58. You've obviously learned nothing.

It's time to go back to school.

Charter schools are a tool of the movement to privatize public education and bust teachers' unions. Whether or not that makes them the "anti-christ" depends on your perspective, and, of course, on whether or not you believe in an "anti-christ." Generally speaking, traditional Democratic values do not include privatizing and union-busting.

Home-schooled students are sometimes well-educated, sometimes not. There is a much wider range of achievement for home-schooled students, because there is a much wider range in the ability of those doing the schooling to do it effectively. They don't have to have a license, or any training. When we get home-schooled students in public schools, they are generally behind other students. That's probably because those who are successful stay at home.

It's a shame that you think supporters of education, and particularly public education, are "zealots."

[last_texas_dem]

46. My take

Yes, there are "bad" teachers, and I think there are very, very few people who actually think there are NO bad teachers.

Some may object to the "good" and "bad" terminology, and I would tend to agree with them- especially since it's often based on things like, "She was mean to me one day when I had her in eighth grade. She's a bad teacher." Back in early high school, I was going through some rough times, and it was reflected for a couple of years in my grades. There were some teachers I would work much more for and others I wouldn't, and they generally weren't the ones the other kids felt similarly about. I remember in particular one teacher whom a particularly loud contingent of students loved- she was loud, busy, and catered her class to extroverted students. I couldn't stand her class, and preferred the more low-key approach of a teacher that many other students didn't care for. Different teachers' methods work differently for different students.

A number of people on here seem very hung up on the idea of applying uniform, "objective" standards to assessing teachers, and come out in support of everything from students assessing teachers to students' test scores being tied to teachers' pay/retention at their job. What's funny is these are often the same people who sound like they never left seventh grade when assessing whether a teacher is good or bad. ("There are definitely bad teachers. I had one. She was sooo booorrrring!!", etc.)

And yes, teachers can most definitely be fired for things that don't involve lawbreaking. I'm related to several teachers and administrators and know the stories. People (even here on DU- which is a fucking shame) blame the unions for protecting teachers' jobs "too much." I wonder if these same folks would prefer the system in Texas. We have low teacher pay, weak unions, and it is relatively easy for administrators to let teachers go. Anyone who thinks those policies lead to great improvements is fooling themselves. Have you looked at where Texas's educational system is ranked lately?

>>Is it possible to have a civil discussion on the DU about this topic?>>

Probably not. But is it possible to have a civil discussion on DU about *any* topic?! I would think we could at least all reach common ground on the undeniable fact that Arne Duncan is a shitstain, but that doesn't even seem to be possible... haha

[bvar22]

47. The most ridiculous Strawman I have seen in quite a while,

and THAT is a high Bar for DU these days.


Just a note for future reference:
Almost every time someone begins with "So what you are saying is...",
they are building a Strawman.

[LanternWaste]

48. I would imagine there are just as many people saying...

I would imagine there are just as many people saying there are no bad students.

I also would imagine that were a teacher to reverse your fourth paragraph and apply that statement to students, just as many people would be calling for their positions.

Certainly Vegas odds tells us there are ineffective teachers, but one can hardly blame me for distrusting the subjective opinions of precisely how they are ineffective and how their effectiveness may be objectively reviewed by some lay person (that pesky yet trendy cynicism).

edited for poor grammar (if I accept responsibility for my bad grammar, I guess that must mean I believe there are "no bad teachers" as I've seen implied elsewhere...)

[QC]

50. No. People are not saying that.

[seabeyond]

51. reality, my kids have maybe had two bad teachers. adn still, so what. THEIR job to make sure

they understand the course and pass. i dont give a flying crap if they have a bad teacher.

the thought that the kids education is indicative of a teacher when there are so many more powerful influences to a child educational failure is amazing.

[DatManFromNawlins]

53. Of course there are bad teachers

On the flip side, when you've never had any metric applied to your job performance before, and you have a union to back you up on that, why would you want to mess a good thing up?

[Starry Messenger]

56. .

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=teacher+evaluations+

[LWolf]

54. Of course there are. And they ARE fired.

Despite the prevailing propaganda, bad teachers are fired, and they have been for the entire 27 years I've been in public education.

The current controversy is that some don't think teachers deserve due process. It pisses them off. Which begs the question: what kind of Democrat/liberal/progressive is opposed to due process?

Some others want to change the process. They want to use test scores to evaluate and fire teachers. Which is a corrupt use of test scores, and an unjust way to evaluate teachers.

The umbrella over-arching the whole thing is a political movement to privatize and to bust teachers' unions. One of the tools in that movement is anti-teacher and anti-public education propaganda which falsely proclaims teachers to be the blame for poor performance on standardized test scores.

That opens the door for mass firings and closings, for opening privately run, non-union schools with public money, and for further eroding of the teaching profession.

Whose holding that umbrella? Barack Obama. Who's standing with him? Arne Duncan. Michelle Rhee. Eli Broad. Bill Gates. Just to start with.

[Name removed]

62. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LWolf]

65. It's not in my "perfect world." It's in the real world.

Having worked in public schools for 27 years, I've had ample opportunity to see real teachers really fired.

Those who are physically or verbally abusive are removed from the classroom while due process is followed. The only time I haven't seen this happen is when the charges are all hearsay: one person's word against another without any proof. I've seen some of those cases. In some, I thought the student was the truth-teller; in some I thought the teacher was the truth-teller; for most, I thought they both told some of the truth and embellished where it made their case better. Human nature. It is frustrating, it's true, to not have definitive evidence, but in this country we are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Those who were incompetent were first counseled, assigned a mentor, observed more frequently, and, if their practice didn't improve, their contract was not renewed. That's not exactly the same as "firing," but the end result is the same.

If you had terrible teachers "hanging around for years," that could be an administrative problem. Administrators not following due process. Or it could be that they couldn't find a teacher to fill that spot. In areas where there is a teacher shortage, the classroom has to be staffed. The law says the person has to have a license. If they can't find anyone else, a district will keep weak teachers.

Please do not use personal attacks to make your point; that's against DU rules. It's also dishonest. I did not say "ALL" bad teachers get fired. I just gave you two different scenarios where they don't: lack of proof, and admins not doing their job. Don't try to spin my statements into something they are not.

[Name removed]

69. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Catshrink]

70. Actually, the experience LWolf recounted is accurate.

There is no need to label her account "babbling" or to call it bullshit. This is the way it is done in most districts.

I have heard students tell me a teacher is bad, the worst, etc., while other students say the same teacher is the best they've ever had. Whom would you believe? Maybe the former didn't like the work load or expectations, perhaps the latter liked that teacher's style.

Very few administrators will take the word of students alone - a good administrator will investigate as LWolf described.

Trust those who are on the front lines in education. Sitting in a classroom is not the front lines - students are consumers and do not see all that goes into preparing a class, the administrative duties, etc.

[LWolf]

76. Thanks.

Every time I've seen a bad teacher fired, that teacher was fired with the support of the teaching staff. None of us want to work with incompetent or abusive colleagues.

You make a good point about the difference in students' perspectives. Some students like a teacher, other thinks he or she is "bad." That doesn't make a bad teacher.

[kwassa]

77. I think not.

My school district also has an effective system for getting rid of bad teachers, and it is a huge system with over 11,000 teachers and 140,000 students.

You are taking your singular experience as a student in one specific school system and projecting it onto all other systems as a norm, nation-wide. Sorry, but that doesn't work.

[lumberjack_jeff]

74. I only know of one teacher who was fired.

She held an autistic child so another student could hit him.

"bad" and "bad enough to get fired" are a venn diagram with the latter group a tiny little circle in the center of a huge mass of the former.

[LWolf]

97. I've never tried to count the number I've seen.

Not as many as some would like; most of the "bad" don't make it through the licensing process and the first few years of teaching. Half of the ranks of new teachers quit the profession within 5 years.

Of course, those that are left are not all perfect; we're human beings. Still, there are not that many truly "bad" teachers in the ranks. "Bad," to me, means causing harm. It doesn't mean inadequate.

If you want to talk about the quality of teaching, you need to frame it differently, and use different words.

Many of the inadequate or incompetent, as opposed to "bad" are not fired. Their contracts are simply not renewed. In the teaching profession, jobs are filled before school starts. Last minute jobs are filled by "temporary" employees. They are hired for the year. Full time employees have contracts. At the end of each year, we get a letter saying that our contract is being renewed for the following year...or not. If our contract is renewed, we sign a document accepting that contract. If we don't plan to return, we don't accept the renewal. Or we renew the contract, interview over the summer, and resign if we find one we like better.

Most of our contracts are automatically renewed. We have to prove ourselves first, though. In most districts, a teacher is "probationary" for at least 3 years, with the contract renewed after a performance review each spring. That gives the district 3 years to determine the competence of the teacher, and decide whether that teacher gets "tenure;" an automatic renewal of contract.

That gives a district plenty of time to non-renew incompetent teachers. That doesn't mean that those who get "tenure" aren't evaluated and can't be fired. Since they've already proven their professional competence to the district, the district has to bring evidence to the table at that point, and go through due process.

Unless there is crime or blatant abuse involved, a district will usually choose to leave a teacher in the classroom for the duration of the year, and then not renew the contract for the following year. They do this because it's hard to find good teachers to step into that role mid-year. They're already working under contract in other classrooms. Filling rooms with long-term subs, or a string of subs, can be worse than leaving a weak teacher in place.

I've also seen teachers (and admins) transferred when they simply weren't a good fit for the particular position or school. This can be problematic if they are truly unredeemable, since they are still somewhere in the system. It's convenient at the site level for removing a problem, but doesn't solve the larger problem. In some cases, the person is fine in the next position. In some, not.

Here are a couple of the firings I've seen over the years:

My union president was fired, with the full support of the entire union. He got busted for a crime against a minor. Not a student.

A fellow teacher was removed mid-year, with the full support of his colleagues. He was verbally abusive.

Here's one of the MANY whose contracts were not renewed:

A fellow teacher's contract was not renewed after her probationary period. She was a weak teacher. She was not only weak, she was lazy. Her first graders spent too much time filling in blanks on worksheets and very little time interacting with her. She spent too much time at her desk away from students. She was resistant to intervention and suggestions for improvement, so she was gone.

Here are a few transfers:

A principal transferred to a position at the district office, no longer working directly with teachers or students. He had several years, and more than one school, in which he offended his teachers and his families, and the district was tired of putting out his fires, so they moved him up the ladder. This is one of the problems with the system; those who CAN'T are often moved up into positions that dictate to those who CAN.

Another principal, much the same as the one above, who lasted years longer on school sites because his dad had been a career teacher, then administrator in the district. He didn't get a transfer to the D.O., though. After 3 school transfers, he was fired.

Those 2 examples are not teachers, of course. They are admins. It's on point, though, because principals in most states and districts, unlike Arne Duncan, are expected to have been teachers for a few years first. I worked in one district that abolished planning periods for elementary teachers, added PE to their academic duties, and placed all those displaced PE teachers into administrative positions. For several years, every principal I worked for and was evaluated by had never taught in a classroom, just in the gym. If you want valid evaluations, you need someone who knows the job to do the evaluating. A particularly important point considering the "effectiveness rating" just conducted and published by the L.A. Times and Richard Buddin.

Which brings me to another transfer: One of the teachers was a screamer. That was his classroom management plan: when someone did something he didn't like, he screamed at them, much like a drill sargeant in boot camp. His words were not abusive; just the way he delivered them. His instruction was sound. He was warned, advised, and counseled about the screaming. When our principal started spending more and more time in his room, and documenting things for his personnel file, he transferred. He repeated that pattern for a few years, finished an administrative credential, and became a principal in another district. I never heard what happened to his career when he left our district. If I were to predict, it would be that he transferred to a few schools and was moved to a position at the D.O., out of direct contact with teachers and families.

The most recent transfer I observed was of one of my teaching partners, 2 years ago. I agreed with the transfer. I liked the teacher and recognized his strengths...there were many. He's highly gifted. That was a strength, but also an obstacle. He's a type-A personality, a perfectionist, and lacks patience. I recognize those qualities, because I have each of them to some degree myself. He was also very, er...alpha male. He wasn't sexist; he supported his strong girls, and worried about weak girls. He did seem to prefer the alpha males in his class, those extroverted, athletic jock types, and he was impatient with the quiet, more introverted, even those who were gifted themselves. He was a math teacher, and didn't really relate to those who were more creative, more "out of the box," more imaginative.

None of that made him a "bad" teacher. He was an excellent teacher. As far as test scores go, our students had the top math scores in our district, every year, despite our low SES population. His personality, and style, were just a better fit for some students than others. That's true for all teachers. I was a good team member for him, because while I work well with all students, my strength has always been with those introverted, out-of-the box students that he was impatient with. So, like all students, while they had one class each day that they tolerated, they had another that they looked forward to.

The incident that earned the transfer was with one of those non-traditional students. A huge young man who dwarfed us all, he was highly gifted and incredibly lazy. His grades were always teetering on the brink because he simply did very little. That didn't mean he wasn't learning; he learned faster than the rest. He just couldn't be bothered to demonstrate that learning. That drove his math teacher crazy, and one day he yelled at him. Something along the lines of "If you're not going to do anything, just get out. Go to the office." The student stood up and said something along the lines of "You can't kick me out of class. I didn't do anything wrong." This was the point that my former partner made the wrong choice. At this point, it was two males facing each other down. The teacher wasn't going to lose status or respect by having this young man "win." So he told him again to leave, the student refused, and as this went on, the teacher moved closer and closer, until he grabbed the young man and moved him towards the door. The student didn't like being touched, and pushed the teacher. The teacher manhandled him out of the room and then called the office.

He handled it wrong. He should NEVER have laid hands on a student that wasn't causing immediate harm. He was in the wrong. He had to face legal action by the students' parents, and he was transferred into a newly opened position working with teachers analyzing assessment data, using that data to create goals and lessons to meet those goals. A good position for him, playing to his strengths. He finished out the 6 weeks left of that year first, with the full support of all parents except the parents of the young man. That young man was put on independent study for math; he spent that time in my room, working independently, and I sent his work to his math teacher periodically.

I agreed with that transfer. He's a good man, and a good teacher. He used poor judgment in one instance, allowing himself to be ruled by testosterone instead of his usual good sense. The grant that funded his non-classroom position is coming to an end. He's expressed a desire to be back in the classroom. I think that would be fine. A good man, a good teacher, can learn from that mistake. I think he has, and it would be a waste of his talents to destroy his career.

Sometimes teachers who should be let go aren't, because there's not enough evidence to make the case. In our country, there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. If a teacher is bad enough to be fired or let go, it's the admin's job to gather that evidence. If it's not happening, the focus should be on the admin for not doing their jobs.

There's another reasons a teacher who should be let go retains his position: if there is a teacher shortage, the district may not be able to find a better teacher to take that position. Every classroom has to be staffed. In areas with shortages, districts will fill classrooms with any warm body who has a license, because there is no one else. This isn't likely to be the case currently, when teachers are being cut all over the nation because of budget cuts. It's usually the result of fast growth, adding more classrooms than the pool of teachers in that area can support.

While my examples are also anecdotal, my time working in public education provides concrete proof that teachers are fired and "let go" when warranted in most cases. They also help to put real faces and real situations on the debate. These ARE real people we're talking about. There's no such thing as a "perfect" teacher, just as there is no such thing as a perfect human being. In the current climate, even the best teachers could be fired because some teacher hater found an imperfection.

That doesn't "improve" public education. It just makes witch hunts legitimate.

[proud2BlibKansan]

66. Yes I am saying there are no bad teachers in my classroom

:evilgrin:

[LWolf]

86. None in mine, either.

:rofl:

[bluestateguy]

79. Only a few

but it can be next to impossible to fire them, especially if they have powerful friends in the Administration or if they know how to game the system by dragging the proceedings out for years and years with appeals and hearings.

The thing is, one bad teacher can actually do considerable damage to a child's education in ways that have consequences for years.

[hayu_lol]

87. Can only think of a very few 'bad' teachers from my experience...

that includes my own experience as well as my children. Some were boring. Some were not a well-read as they might have been...but most did a more than adequate job of presenting the material that needed to be covered. I was expected to add to what the kids received in school. I did that.

Only one teacher was what I call bad. I requested(and defended that request in teacher/student/principal conference)that my child be removed from that particular classroom. He was. Problem solved. Principal, after the hearing and in her office, asked what I wanted to do with the teacher: I said that that was HER problem to deal with.

Teachers today are faced with a class of kids, some of whom refuse to complete assignments, are unruly in class and are disruptive to the entire school in some cases. Back in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, we had what we called reform schools for these students...they certainly did not remain in regular schools to continue their foolishness. They were immediately removed from the classroom.

Teachers have to put up with these students who refuse to cooperate.

Duncan and his dreams need to be terminated immediately.

Most teachers do what they can to actually teach. They, overall, need our support at this time...more than they have ever needed our support.

[Catshrink]

93. Thank you.

It's good to hear support at DU.

[Umbral]

85. No, are you saying the problem with US education is a few 'bad' teachers?

And no, a civil discussion is impossible when the intent of the opposition is to scapegoat educators.

[knitter4democracy]

90. Of course, teachers can be fired and are.

The reality is, there's a process for it, and most administrators don't want to go through the process. Instead, they often go the "soft" route: make the teacher's life a living hell until s/he takes an early buy-out and retires early or screws up so badly they can jump a few levels in the process. I've seen both of those happen frequently. The reality is, most of that is behind the scenes where the students and parents can't see.

If we really want better teachers, it's going to take a multi-pronged approach. We need to raise the requirements in education colleges/departments around the country, raise state requirements, and raise salaries. If you get someone with a master's degree in math or science and ten years of teaching, in many districts, the salary is half what they could get somewhere else, and that disparity gets worse as you go up the scale in experience and education level. After awhile, the good ones get burned out and take an early buy-out or just leave for better money elsewhere and easier hours, etc., and that can mean (but not always) that the ones left in the classroom are the newbies who don't stay long (we lose over half of all teachers in the first five years of teaching) and the old curmudgeons who refuse to update, change, or do anything innovative or interesting.

[Ramulux]

91. 95% of my teachers were horrible

I went to public school and pretty much all my teachers were terrible. However, even at a young age it was very obvious why it was like this. Its because they get paid shit to do one of the most stressful, important jobs in the country.

So what ends up happening is you have a handful of amazing people who basically sacrifice any chance of financial well being to dedicate their lives to education and then you have a bunch of angry people who failed at whatever it is they attempted to do with their lives and then gave up and became a teacher where they take out their failures on the students.

There obviously need to be huge education reforms to develop some kind of system where being a teacher becomes a competitive job with decent benefits and pay so that it can attract a wider variety of people.

[Name removed]

92. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seabeyond]

94. or were you just a horrible student that refused to do the work or be accountable

that is ridiculous to say you had 95% horrible teacher. the absurdity of the claim makes you post unbelievable.

[Ramulux]

98. Why?

Listen I dont know how to break this to you, but the vast majority of the teachers I had throughout elementary, middle, and high school were terrible. I am not really sure why that is such an unbelievable thing to understand. They were mostly older people who were just sick of life and upset that they were teachers and they took out their anger on the students. You dont want to believe me, whatever dude, its my life and I have no reason to lie about it.

Also you wanna call me names and shit and claim I was a bad student, whatever you can go to hell.

[seabeyond]

99. there are people that like to blame, oh, 95% of the rest of the world for a 100% of their problems

no, i dont believe you had 95% bad teachers.

[saltpoint]

95. The Pukes want to dismantle public education. They have

wanted to dismantle it for years.

The key here, IMO, is to oppose their wish that public education be subverted.

Most of us had some great teachers back in grade school and high school. They taught us. We learned. The process generally worked and deserves support.

[DailyGrind51]

96. Of course, there are bad teachers, the good teachers know who they are too!

[cynatnite]

100. I know two teachers who brought their religious insanity into the classroom...

One said cabbage patch dolls were of the devil. The other one told a little girl she would go ot hell if she didn't do her school work.

Most teachers other teachers I knew were fine. These two should have been fired on the spot.

[butterfly77]

101. That's what some..

want us to believe but,I can tell you as a mother who has virtually lived at schools and seen the performance of some I know damn well there are some..

[Taverner]

102. I have a problem with such a binary description

Bad v Good is just unrealistic

Some teachers are good with some students, and horrible with others

Some teachers are bad with all students

Some teachers are good with all students

But, the majority fall into the first category

[Orsino]

103. I'm saying we can't know how many there are until we fund them.

Cutting staff and spending on more fancy-ass tests sold by politician's brothers-in-law isn't teaching.

Let's fund some real education in sanely-sized classes...and then we might begin to rate teachers' performance intelligently--just as it's impossible to measure our troops' worth as a fighting force when we wear them down in ill-defined, interminable pseudo-wars.

As it is, we are trying to measure teaching as though it were day-care, and letting the TV tell us to hate the teachers who fail in the charade.

[montanto]

104. Of course there are bad teachers.

I could walk down the hall and pick out a few right now. Problem is, standardized test scores don't really tell us whether the teachers are bad or not. Further, teacher evaluations don't really tell us whether the teacher is bad or not. Further still, all teachers are responsible for education, but only the core teachers (English, Math, History, Science) are getting shot at for systemic failure.

Evaluation reform is a must, as many teachers, good teachers, will freely admit. First, we need to agree on what a good teacher is, which is difficult, because "good teaching" is not universal. We need to have impartial observers with teaching experience. Some teachers are friendly with the principal or A.P., some get a pass for nothing while others are disliked, perhaps on non-teaching grounds. Some principals and A.P.s have no teaching experience whatsoever, and are only checking off boxes on a form. We need to have dedicated professional development for teachers who need to improve their art. Further, there needs to be some consideration of what the teachers teach and to what students. A college prep student is not the same as an ESL student is not the same as a gangster who is legally forced to go to school or go to jail. Evaluations should happen quickly, a preliminary finding released to the teacher so that his/her methods can be modified. If the problem persists into a second evaluation (the same year) the teacher needs to receive professional development designed to improve the lacking skills. If the problem stretches into the next year, there should be disciplinary action, a warning, a writeup. If the problem doesn't go away by the end of the second year, the teacher may need to look for other employment (or become a principal). Tenure needs to be reconsidered as well. Here, a teacher may receive tenure after only two years, only two observations, and those may not even be real evaluations at all, but "walk-by's," or "fire checks" (if the teacher is in the room, if he has all of his clothes on, if nothing in the room is actually on fire, he gets a pass). No doubt there are other considerations, but these would be change for the better.

Good teachers are not afraid of honest evaluation. Most teachers have their heart in the right place as far as their students are concerned too, and would happily perform better if they knew how. Most teachers who have at least some experience dealing with challenging students and their backgrounds, however, are afraid of being judged by standardized tests. I, who have been an outspoken proponent of changing these and other programs for the benefit of students have become obnoxious to the administration and am concerned with being "evaluated" with an eye on the fact that I have been a boat rocker for years, not by my classroom performance. As liberal as teachers and administrators might be in their politics, they are intensely conservative of practices, and people who speak up get different treatment according to the noise that they make.

[KamaAina]

105. No, any more than anyone is saying that there are NO bad doctors or bad auto mechanics or whatever

the edumacation reform* machine has been pushing the meme that ALL (unionized) teachers are bad, and we're trying to counteract that.