Quote Originally Posted by slikstiks99:
Suppose a doctor tells a patient what to do in order to be cured. The patient doesn't follow through and remains sick. Is it the fault of the doctor that the patient is still sick? The doctor expressed the importance of treatment as best he could. Does the doctor need to be fired? Does the doctor need more training or "professional development?"
The appeal of teaching, financial and otherwise, is already pretty meager. It is clear that the best talent chooses other careers almost indefinitely. So now, you are suggesting that teachers need to be on the chopping block every time they have a class that underperforms? There are difficult classes and easier classes due to the make-up of the students. A few students can destroy the productivity of a classroom. If you frequently send students to the principle to address the issue, then you look like a bad teacher.
Would you choose a career with that kind of job security? Would you like to be in a situation where you did the best you could, given the student/parent's appreciation and respect for education, but it wasn't good enough? Would you like it if your career was at the mercy of a few disruptive students with no respect for education?
Secondly, do standardized tests really address the skills sets that are necessary in the 21st century? They do not. Factual/procedural knowledge are not what employers seek today. They need active problem solvers, something that is being totally neglected.
Now, teachers are only concerned about teaching the relatively unimportant skills that will be found on standardized tests. That is success? That is what is going to help our kids succeed in today's society? Teaching is not a manufacturing process, which is assumed by those that aren't aware of the real issues.
First off, I take issue with your assumption that teachers are not paid well. Let's take one of the worst cities for education (one that I'm familiar with), Chicago. The average salary is $71,000 and they also get the benefit of taxpayer funded pensions. To be fair I will point out that Chicago is ranked 1 or 2 for teacher salaries, but to say teachers do not get paid decently for 9 months of work is not true.
I realize that teaching is not an easy job and as I said before there are many really good teachers out there. But at the same time there are some absolutely horrible teachers that simply don't care, are not good at their job and who are just putting in their time until they can get their taxpayer funded pension for life. The biggest issue I have with this system is that it is almost impossible to fire a bad teacher because of the union's power. Knowing you cannot get fired can most certainly make someone lazy at their job and just shuffle the kids along.
Your claim of a teacher's job at the mercy of a few students is laughable. Teachers do not get in trouble for sending disruptive kids out of class, there is no fear of getting fired due to their union protection.
You are correct on the standardized tests. Teachers are reduced to "teaching to the test", which is horrible. At the same time, how is a student's progress supposed to be measured other than testing? There needs to be a balance and something better than we have now. I think you can evaluate teachers by a lot more than just test scores and that is what Rhee did in DC.
My opinion is that kids are getting cheated on education in this country. I'd scrap the whole system and start over. The powerful unions - gone. Slash the number of administrators. It's ridiculous that we have more admins than teachers. There is a lot of money spent on education but it's not getting to the classroom. Give the teachers a good salary with comparable benefits to private sector jobs, but they fund their own retirement just like the majority of us have to do. Give teachers a pay premium to teach in some of the more troubled areas. Limit student enrollment to US citizens and legal residents only. There needs to be a focus on the basics - reading, writing, math and science. Other countries are killing us in these areas. Give parents the choice to send their kids to a school of choice. It is up to the parent and student to arrange transport to get to a school outside their area, but it can be done in most cases, not all of course.
If there isn't enough money to fund extra things like band, sports, and even some non essential classes, cut them because without the core classes and skills these kids are doomed. We don't need well rounded kids coming out of HS, we need kids that can read, do math and have some critical thinking skills, being able to sing, paint or shoot a basket are not important if the other skills are not there.. Heck, they don't even teach kids how to balance a check book or bank account.
We need to stop being afraid of hurting someone's feelings when it comes to education. The education machine has people brainwashed into thinking that if you don't go to college (and rack up $50k+ in debt) then you'll never make it. Totally false. Why should some kid go to college and spend/borrow all that money if realistically all they will do is end up working at a fast food place? I'd rather these kids go right from HS into a management training program at McDonalds. Learn on the job and work your way up to a management level after some time. After 4-5 years instead of coming out of college with liberal arts degree (or something equally as useless) and major debt, they could be well established in a real job with a decent future.
Sorry for the long rant but it ticks me off to see what is happening to these kids and all that money being wasted on union benefits for all these do nothing admins. Pensions for life paid by the taxpayer is draining the system of money that should be going directly to teaching these kids and giving them the tools/books/equipment they need to succeed.