The article entitled "Wanted: A few bad teachers" is a quick report about a campaign lead by Rick Berman from the Center for Union Facts. This particular campaign intends to pay "bad" teachers $10k to leave the profession...
Now, a few essential questions come to mind when I think about this particular issue:
- What makes a "bad" teacher?
- Who judges whether or not a teacher is "bad"?
- Are the teachers being forced out of their positions, or will they just be "encouraged" with the $10k and asked by their district to leave (surely the bad publicity will also be encouragement but, I don't know if they are "outting" teachers with this or not)?
- Will this really improve education? Is this the big problem?
Now, to explore each of these questions would probably require at least 1 post each. So I encourage you to respond to my comments, although a big fragmented right now, so that we can start a dialogue about this issue.
1. What makes a "bad" teacher?
This question is hard to answer. According to what I gathered from the Blog from the Center for Union Facts called Labor Pains, and some of their other statements, it seems that a bad teacher is judged by their student performance on standardized tests.
I think most educators are in education because they want to do good. They want to positively impact education. Since everyone is working towards a common goal then why not support the goal and use unions as a tool to expand your goal? If what you really care about is education, as Mr. Berman claims then why not put the funds towards a teacher enrichment program or educational development?
Oh, I know why. Because it is the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset that we are dealing with here. A fixed mindset assumes that "smart" people or "good workers" are that way because they are already that way. They will always and forever to continue to be that way because they are "smart" or "good" (whatever each of those words means...). But a growth mindset (which is what we base all of our educational system on) says that a person can grow to have the attributes they want to have, such as being "smart" or "good".
So, although education says that students can learn their multiplication tables and people can grow to understand history and the rules of the English language, if a person is a bad teacher then they will continue to be a bad teacher and should leave the profession.
I get it, make education cut-throat like industry and maybe we will attract better teachers because if you are a "bad" teacher then you don't belong there.
I will admit that there are some people who have a magic touch. There are those individuals who really bring a subject to life with their enthusiasm and there are those who can really explain things to everyone. But, not everyone in a classroom is like that. Not everyone who is effective is like that.
I asked a friend of mine what he thought about this article and I asked him why he thought Mr. Berman did not put the $100,000 towards teacher development. He told me that teacher development is already attended by the good teachers. But don't all teachers have to log in a certain amount of hours of in-service and professional development? I was always under the impression that they did.
Mathematically speaking, the number of teachers in the world is a finite set indexed by the natural numbers. By the Well-Ordering Principle there must be a least element, often named the "bad" teachers. Yes, students in the US are not competing in the global market the way they should be but if you take out the "bad" teachers and don't have new people to fill those spots because everyone is afraid of being labeled a "bad" teacher (because new people make mistakes more often since they are still learning what to do and what not to do in a classroom) then that increases class sizes. Increased class sizes certainly do not help students (which wasn't classroom size one of the main issues that teacher unions protect which Mr. Berman's agency is against?) because they do not get as much individual attention.
I could go on, but I really want to know what you (the readers) think about this. More posts on this issue will come later. For now, I have to study for my last comprehensive examination (Algebra). Have a great day and post lots of comments so the dialogue can commence!
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