by Brian
Our students just finished taking the renamed high stakes state tests. The High School Proficiency Exam (HSPE) has replaced the WASL. Not quite what the kids were hoping when Randy Dorn said he was getting rid of the WASL. This week it was Reading and Writing; next month will be Math and Science. It looks increasingly likely that the scores our students achieve on these tests will be used in our yearly evaluation. In Florida it's possible that teachers' salaries will also be tied to test results. Half of their salaries may be tied to their state comprehensive and end-of-course exams. Which sounds not so much like merit pay, but de-merit pay. Instead of paying good teachers more, they'll pay teachers whose students underachieve less. And the drum beat to fire bad teachers goes on. (See Tom's post.)The cover of the March 15 Newsweek is a blackboard covered with the sentence: We must fire bad teachers.
So I was reading an article by George Packer on President Obama's first year in office in the March 15 edition of The New Yorker and I came upon an amazing anecdote. Packer was writing about Obama's frustration at being unable to hold the banks fully to account for the financial collapse. Apparently Obama would have been happy if Timothy Geithner, his Treasury Secretary, had recommended the top bank officials be held accountable by forcing entire management teams out of their jobs. Packer writes: Geithner felt that firing the leadership of the bailed-out banks would ultimately cost taxpayers money, owing to the loss of expertise, and would inevitably punish executives who were not to blame. The President reluctantly agreed. "You always admire someone willing to do the responsible thing, even when it is terrible politics," Sperling (a counsellor to Geithner) said. "But you could see how frustrated he was."
Too bad Arne Duncan and Geithner can't trade jobs. Duncan likes firing people, and he doesn't mind losing expertise or punishing teachers who are not to blame.
It's starting to get to me. Fire the teachers, but give the bankers another bonus.
I really like the title of the post! This is very interesting to read and does teach us many things.
Great post, Brian. As you know, I’m in favor of anyone who can’t or won’t do her job being fired. Actually, I’m more in favor of them not being hired in the first place, but that’s not what your post is about.
I think we should all remember that what happened at Central Falls is an extreme exception. There WERE probably (most certainly) teachers at that school who should not be teaching, as there are in every building I’ve taught in. Very few incompetent teachers are fired. In fact, very few teachers are ever fired. If your one-year contract isn’t renewed, it’s not even considered a firing.
I’d hazard a guess that more tax money has been spent on incompetent teachers and ineffective schools than was spent bailing out the financial sector.
Unfortunately, Geithner was probably right; it would have cost us more money to fire the greedy bankers and replace them with unexperienced stand-ins.
Which points out how ludicrous it is to fire teachers at high-needs schools. It might feel good and it might sound good when they talk about it on FOX News, but ultimately it’s a stupid, wasteful idea.
Yeah, but the bankers had to earn degrees and they work more than 40 hours a week to do their job…oh, wait.