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I'm not a teacher, but my wife is and I've been able to see how dysfunctional the school district is. - teachers across subjects get paid at the same rate tabl

• kenjackson 16y ago
  What you've described, almost across the board is the problem of teacher's unions. Their mission is to help teachers. And in some cases, this also helps students, e.g., teacher's unions do a great job of ensuring teachers have safe working conditions. But in many instances it hurts students. Probably the best thing they can do is move away from a seniority based system. Give the principal a lot more leeway in how teachers get assigned/paid. And make the school extremely accountable for performance. Of course, the teacher's unions, which are run by senior teachers, won't go for this. I think we're kind of stuck with the situation we have, for better or wose.
  • idoh 16y ago
    I agree that unions can be blamed for a lot of the issues. I'd add that a lot of the issues are caused by conflicts between the administration and the teachers. If you remove the unions then you'd have to reform the administration as well. What I mean is that in a normal environment you'd start off as a teacher, and if you were capable you'd get more management responsibility, and could conceivably smoothly transition from junior teacher to senior teacher to department head to assistant principal to principal. The way it works now is that they are two tracks - basically the workers (the teachers) and the management (the administrators), and the two don't mix. Teachers will organize staff parties, and it is controversial if administrators dare show up. In the past administrators would also teach a class or two - that practice is really frowned upon now. So the above is a long-winded way of saying that there is a bizarre structure between the union and the administrators, and the whole thing would need to be untangled, not just the union side of things.
    • ktsmith 16y ago
      Sounds like your wifes district is severely dysfunctional. My wife is also a teacher and her experiences aren't like this. There are bad teachers that are still around because of tenure but I've yet to hear of anything as extreme as sleeping in class. That's not to say it doesn't happen, just that every district has different problems. Administration vs teachers. This can vary school by school from what I've seen/experienced. At the school my wife just finished four years at staff parties were staff parties, even administrators came. The teachers and administrators had close bonds and when half the staff and 100% of the administration at the school were fucked due to district level bureaucracy and the requirements of a federal grant this year there was very clear solidarity between the two groups. The principal that will be taking over the school for the next year however immediately alienated all of the staff members and replaced a bunch of them with people from his previous school. The mans reputation preceded him of course and it wasn't a good one, regardless of his reputation his actions were very discouraging and in many cases poor judgement. As far as tracks for progression and salary for teachers I don't think a traditional corporate structure would work just as it doesn't often work for engineers or programmers. I know plenty of programmers that never ever want to enter management and struggle to find companies that will pay them according to their experience and not their position on an org chart. Additionally with teachers many teachers, my wife for example, there may be zero desire to become an administrator. As such we should be willing to pay teachers that are good, and have experience accordingly regardless of their moves into administration. This may not be the case where you are located, but here the teachers union represents the teachers who have one type of contract, and there is no body that represents the administrators. Administrators have individual contracts and can be terminated quite easily by the district. Teachers are on standardized contracts created by the teachers union and so it is harder to remove them. Unfortunately you don't see many administrators removed because there's a good old boy system in place. The people at the district level overseeing administration all know each other and have been around forever. People owe each other favors or their kids play ball together and other bull shit. A new superintendent was hired a year ago from another state and the first thing he did was eliminate a lot of positions that were filled by unqualified individuals or that shouldn't have even existed. Some times a little fresh blood at the top is necessary to clear out administrative problems. I don't envy him though, he'll probably be tossed out on his ass in another year or two due to problems beyond his control. The school districts budget shortfall for next year is over 50%.
• ams6110 16y ago
  Everyone knows who the bad teachers are, but it is a bureaucratic nightmare to do anything about it. This is one where parents can have an impact. As in most areas, the local school system here has a school that's in a "white collar" area and the students do well on standardized tests. Another school in the same system is in a more rural area and the students overall do not do as well on the standardized tests. Talking to some teachers who know, one big difference is that in the white collar area, the parents pay attention to what's going on in the classroom. If they think a teacher is slacking, they are calling the principal, the school board, and the superintendent until something is done. In the more rural school, few parents really challenge the administration to address issues in the classroom.