Problems:
Seniority: Layoffs, Rewards etc.
Pick from the Best
Seniority:
I completely agree with everything Klein had to say on this topic. It is a huge problem that seniority overrules pretty much everything. If a teacher is not willing to change to help the student learn, or if they may not be a very good teacher they should not be able to have immunity based on how many years they taught. For example, I graduated from a school in Long Beach, Ca, and the school district was unfortunately doing layoffs due to budget cuts. One of my and the school's favorite teacher was given a pink slip because she was a new teacher; she had only been teaching for 2 years. She was an algebra and geometry teacher and everyone loved the way she taught, she made math understandable, but another teacher who had been teacher for 20+ years wasn't fired because he had been teaching for so long but his teaching methods were not effective. I also agree with proposed solution.Pick from the Best:
I agree with Klein on this idea as well.It is very true that teachers are hired on degree alone and not on their set of skills. I agree with Klein, it would be a very good thing for teachers to be chosen from the top third of their class.
This article has opened my eyes to the teaching field and has made me think back to realize what I read is often true. These are major problems with fairly easy solutions. I think the main thing that needs to be done is for individuals in the field of education to think of whats best for the students.
I thought that the article the Dr. Strange assigned to us was very good. I think that Joel Klein had a lot of good solutions to his problems. The only one that I did not agree with was teacher recruitment. He said that only the top one third of the graduates should actually become teachers. I did not agree with this because just because you were not in the top third of your class does not mean that you will not make a great teacher. Other than that solution I agreed with them all. This was a great blog post. I like to see how others felt about his solutions.
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