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I'll gladly concede that getting rid of incompetent teachers (or otherwise having some ability with which to help those who want to improve improve), or at leas

I'll gladly concede that getting rid of incompetent teachers (or otherwise having some ability with which to help those who want to improve improve), or at least securing the ability to do so, is an extremely necessary start. Particularly with teachers who are committing actual crimes, though in fairness, I think that difficulty is overstated (point of note: I'm in the midwest, where the unions are not as strong, so that colours my perceptions a bit). That said, though, I don't think we have any way of determing who is/isn't a good teacher if we haven't yet determined what good teaching looks like (in turn, we can't determine that until we figure out what we actually want out of school). As a teacher, I've been on all sides of this; while working in a large public school, I've had lots of freedom and leeway (so long as I could justify it to my administrators, who were either down with it or completely and totally indifferent). I've also worked in a small school where the "system" I was expected to carry out was complete and utter rubbish ("Students should not write at all until at least their junior year. They should spend the time prior to this diagramming sentences and memorizing the parts of speech, so that they understand what good sentences look like. They may only begin writing AFTER they have mastered identifying these patterns.") When you couple that with an authoritarian administration, I was a "bad teacher" in the latter system, and had I not resigned I'd have likely been the first to go when budget cuts rolled around the summer after I left (as it was, my successor was let go instead). I agree that incompentent teachers are a problem, but there's more to it than just that. Frankly, so many things have been screwy for so long (William Pinar, out of the U of British Columbia, places it at about 4 decades) that I'm amazed that anything gets done.

stretchwithme 16y ago
I can tell when someone knows how to teach me something and if they care. I can't believe somehow most parents aren't just as able to determine when someone is capable of teaching their kids. They just aren't given a chance. You may not be able to tell whether someone is a good mechanic but you may know bs when you hear it. And you may recognize very smart people who care about their kids whose opinion's you respect. And we have all kinds of ways of rating things and we tell which ones work well over the long haul. We make these murky decions all the time. Its the fact that we do not use these resources when our decisions are turned over to the state that is the problem.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
The first comment in the OP also tries to make the point that it's impossible to tell just how good a teacher is. I claim this is all crap. The same problem exists in almost any non-manufacturing job; certainly in the field of software development. We've got piles of bad metrics, like KLOCs (about which, the less said the better). We could count bugs, but different systems are prone to different levels of bugginess, and when we're all teaming up, it's not necessarily practical (let alone advisable) to "blame" someone. Yet by and large, we do a pretty good job of determining who are really good, and who aren't. You mention that the standards themselves are, in some cases, bad. That may be true, but you should be trying to get out of such a district ASAP. The fact that they can't get good teachers, and the fact that the parents are hammering on the door because the kids aren't learning, should force change -- but for the fact that the system now gives parents no alternative. It seems like the teachers' unions are hanging onto a fig leaf of rationalizating, but it's really a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. We could do a lot better than we are, but we're not allowed to go that far because it may fall somewhat short of perfect. But look at the bigger picture. What's a more serious failure: (a) not giving a teach a raise quite commensurate with what he/she deserves; or (b) not educating a whole classroom full of kids because they're stuck with a lousy teacher?
- jamii 16y ago
  The feedback cycle in software is much shorter. A bad coder will be obvious after a couple of weeks because his code doesn't perform its function correctly. With a teacher it might be years beofre they have noticeable effect on their student's and even then noone can agree what the students should have learnt and how to test them.

stretchwithme 16y ago

I can tell when someone knows how to teach me something and if they care. I can't believe somehow most parents aren't just as able to determine when someone is capable of teaching their kids. They just aren't given a chance. You may not be able to tell whether someone is a good mechanic but you may know bs when you hear it. And you may recognize very smart people who care about their kids whose opinion's you respect. And we have all kinds of ways of rating things and we tell which ones work well over the long haul. We make these murky decions all the time. Its the fact that we do not use these resources when our decisions are turned over to the state that is the problem.

CWuestefeld 16y ago

The first comment in the OP also tries to make the point that it's impossible to tell just how good a teacher is. I claim this is all crap. The same problem exists in almost any non-manufacturing job; certainly in the field of software development. We've got piles of bad metrics, like KLOCs (about which, the less said the better). We could count bugs, but different systems are prone to different levels of bugginess, and when we're all teaming up, it's not necessarily practical (let alone advisable) to "blame" someone. Yet by and large, we do a pretty good job of determining who are really good, and who aren't. You mention that the standards themselves are, in some cases, bad. That may be true, but you should be trying to get out of such a district ASAP. The fact that they can't get good teachers, and the fact that the parents are hammering on the door because the kids aren't learning, should force change -- but for the fact that the system now gives parents no alternative. It seems like the teachers' unions are hanging onto a fig leaf of rationalizating, but it's really a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. We could do a lot better than we are, but we're not allowed to go that far because it may fall somewhat short of perfect. But look at the bigger picture. What's a more serious failure: (a) not giving a teach a raise quite commensurate with what he/she deserves; or (b) not educating a whole classroom full of kids because they're stuck with a lousy teacher?

jamii 16y ago
The feedback cycle in software is much shorter. A bad coder will be obvious after a couple of weeks because his code doesn't perform its function correctly. With a teacher it might be years beofre they have noticeable effect on their student's and even then noone can agree what the students should have learnt and how to test them.