I agree terminating poor performing teachers is nearly impossible. I am witness to this in the past. With that said, however, I don’t believe we can terminate a teacher based on the poor test results due to some standardized test conceived by a group of professors, attorneys, or business people who have never been in the classroom with students whose parents are not involved in their child’s education.
As I see it, we are leaving many children behind because teachers, through no fault of their own, are required to maintain a pacing schedule set up by sources outside the classroom. Poor performing students are left behind because teachers cannot stop to see that students are really understanding the lesson being taught. These students then feel inadequate and lose interest in education. You have to ask yourself how would you feel if you did not experience any success but watched the rest of your peers continue to succeed and leave you behind. Stress is not just an adult symptom—it affects just as many, if not more, adolescents. We need to allow local control over our educational systems. Education needs to respond to business needs and the needs of the demographics it serves.
—Doyle J. Potter, faculty/advisor, Master of Arts in Educational Technology and Learning
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As a teacher, it never occurred to me that I may do my job better with more pay. I know this argument rages too often, but I can’t stress enough just how much pay does not factor into my happiness and willingness to do more. Only an idiot would go into education for the pay. Patronizing us about our “low” pay will not keep the good ones teaching; listening to my concerns about student learning, getting me great [professional development], and helping me with classroom discipline will keep me. I don’t need another dime.
—Jessica Reeves
Read more from Jessica on her blog.
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I have to agree that there must be a way to rid [schools] of poor performing teachers. I also have to add that it is possible to consider that some of the poor performing teachers wouldn’t be so terrible if the parental support and student cooperation was improved.
We must start to hold parents responsible for their actions and their children’s actions within the education environment. Students have been given a pass to behave however they want, with little to no repercussions. Instead, student behavior or non-performance is said be a result of their culture, socioeconomic circumstance, and even race. On top of that, teachers are inundated with conferences, paperwork, discipline, lesson planning, testing, and trying to meet the needs of individual students to an extent that they can not possibly focus on teaching.
The pay scales simply do not match what is being expected of the hard-working, dedicated teachers that continuously strive to do the best they can. Additionally, it is my opinion that many teachers [who] are considered poor performing might not be if they were not so disenfranchised by the end of their first year in the classroom. On the other hand, teachers [who] would be dynamite in the classroom, but exited the profession because of the lack of respect and authority for the job they have to do, might stick around if the field of education were not so chaotic and stressful.
What many do not realize is that teachers spend tens of thousands of dollars on their education to become educators, to help our youth cope with this ever-changing world, to become community leaders even after they are in the classroom—and what they receive in return is the brunt of society’s anger and frustration. Teachers get blamed for everything from a student who is not reading, [to] a lack of services, little or no time for physical activities, failing grades, and even social issues in and out of the classroom.
It is time that legislators, school administrators, courts, and government take a hard look at how we can bring parents into the process of educating their children. Free public education is guaranteed by the Constitution—though disruptive behavior, laziness, and abuse (both verbal and physical) towards educators is not part of that guarantee.
—mears619
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