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Nice observation! Yes, you're right. To double check, http://teaching.about.com/od/Information-For-Teachers/a/Bad-Teachers.htm http://teaching.about.com/od/Info

by dalke 11y ago

Nice observation! Yes, you're right. To double check, http://teaching.about.com/od/Information-For-Teachers/a/Bad-Teachers.htm http://teaching.about.com/od/Information-For-Teachers/a/Bad-... says (in the US context) "A major part of a principal’s job is to identify which teachers are effective, which teachers need to improve, and which ones are ineffective and need to be dismissed." Though it's not the complete truth. In the US, some school districts have policies that a teacher can be fired for having a bad score based on a 'value added model', where the scores of the students are compared to a model of what the scores "should" have been, and used to assign an effectiveness score to teachers (including, say, the score for an biology teacher when the tests have nothing to do with biology - https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/15/lawsuit-stop-evaluating-teachers-on-test-scores-of-students-they-never-taught/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04...) and even the custodial staff (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/16/d-c-custodial-staff-were-evaluated-by-student-test-scores-really/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04... ). The principals have little say in the results of these decisions.

ptaipale 11y ago
Interesting - that you can actually dismiss a teacher for simply bad performance. In Finland, that does not happen. Teachers are removed only for gross misconduct. One way to do that is violence against pupils, but that is rare. Somewhat more common is repeatedly missing work or coming to work while clearly intoxicated. The first time, employer must direct the employee to get help and treatment, but being repeatedly drunk at work will get a teacher dismissed.
- dalke 11y ago
  It's worse than that - "simply bad performance" using methods that are highly unreliable and have not been validated. The philosophy seems to be that teachers are independent, heroic, commodities. That is: "independent" - any problems can be attributed solely to the teachers (after some normalization based on the socioeconomic class of the students), and not to the school system or other large scale system; "heroic" - the teachers are the biggest factor in education, and it's up to the teachers to individually supply everything; "commodities" - a teacher can easily be replaced with another teacher, with no effect on learning, the teaching work culture, or long-term community stability. The reason for this philosophy seems to be that it's well-aligned with certain view of a free market. By casting education in this framework it encourages the idea of replacing a socialized public school system, whose goal are the long-term needs of the students and the culture, with a state subsidized for-profit system with less local democratic control that is able to transfer more money to private owners.

by dalke 11y ago

ptaipale 11y ago

Interesting - that you can actually dismiss a teacher for simply bad performance. In Finland, that does not happen. Teachers are removed only for gross misconduct. One way to do that is violence against pupils, but that is rare. Somewhat more common is repeatedly missing work or coming to work while clearly intoxicated. The first time, employer must direct the employee to get help and treatment, but being repeatedly drunk at work will get a teacher dismissed.

dalke 11y ago
It's worse than that - "simply bad performance" using methods that are highly unreliable and have not been validated. The philosophy seems to be that teachers are independent, heroic, commodities. That is: "independent" - any problems can be attributed solely to the teachers (after some normalization based on the socioeconomic class of the students), and not to the school system or other large scale system; "heroic" - the teachers are the biggest factor in education, and it's up to the teachers to individually supply everything; "commodities" - a teacher can easily be replaced with another teacher, with no effect on learning, the teaching work culture, or long-term community stability. The reason for this philosophy seems to be that it's well-aligned with certain view of a free market. By casting education in this framework it encourages the idea of replacing a socialized public school system, whose goal are the long-term needs of the students and the culture, with a state subsidized for-profit system with less local democratic control that is able to transfer more money to private owners.