That, and blame-shifting. Blaming the principle means we can avoid blaming poverty, racism, crime and other social problems. Firing the principle is a lot easier and cheaper than trying to solve those problems after all. And it means we can avoid any solution smacking of the ultimate of evils: socialism.
Principal. Can’t believe I did that.
It can get much worse than the problems you’ve listed. Substandard living conditions (think 10 people living in a one bedroom apartment), abusive parents, violence in schools, drug addictions, and malnourishment are a few other things I can think of.
It’s ludicrous to expect every teacher hired for $50,000 per year will be able to deal with this. For every Joe Escalante there are thousands of decent teachers in poor districts who cannot handle these problems. And it’s absolutely not their fault that they cannot solve gang violence in order to improve grades in their class. No Principal is going to change this.
Have any principals been fired in this way, or is this a forecast?
Never mind
What do fired school administrators who lost their jobs over test scores typically do with the rest of their career? Are they considered academic pariahs and more or less forced to find another career or can they find another school or district and work their way up again?
Considering your background, I imagine you have a lot of insight on this issue - I’m curios about what you think about it.
I dont think either high or low achievement levels on standardized tests are necessarily the fault of the principal. Alot depends upon the kids.
Now there are other times when principals do need to be fired but that is over failure to work effectively with staff and being unsupportive when teachers need help.
You say that as if socialism would improve things.
It takes work, yes, but it also takes time, something rarely afforded to teachers (and Principals), andsomething not depicted in the movie:
I recommend you read the entire Reason article I quoted to get a better idea of the real story behind the movie.
Why not take your own advice and check the wiki:
Let’s continue this thought experiment about economic/social/academic background and scholastic success. How many well-off well-funded suburban schools have performed poorly as calculated by the various systems put in place by NCLB? (This may be intended as a rhetorical question, but there certainly is an answer out there somewhere.). If it’s reasonable to expect success from everyone, is it not equally reasonable to expect failure from everyone?
I did read the article. I admit I missed the part where he taught in Bolivia. However, he was the originator of his method. Just because it took him 10 years to get there doesn’t mean it can’t be done faster, once the method is streamlined. Not that it matters, I’m just pointing out what’s at least possible.
Just wondering where teachers are hired at $50K - my daughter is in her 7th year of teaching and I don’t think she’s even paid in the low $40s yet. Not that the money is her motivation - she’s a really good teacher (no, that’s not just from a bragging mother) and she really loves to teach, when she’s allowed to do so. She loses so much time every year due to crap - whether it’s disciplinary issues, apathetic parents, over-the-top helicopter parents, assemblies for non-academic rah-rah sessions that take away from teaching hours, and the “social experiment” stuff she has to do instead of her lesson plan. She had students who were all excited because Daddy was finally being released from jail. She had 10-y/o students missing school because they had to stay home and care for younger sibs. She had students who flat out didn’t do the work whose parents obviously didn’t see the point. How does a principal fix that?
Oh yeah, and while dealing with all that crap, she still managed to teach her 5th graders enough science that they scored the highest in the county on their standardized test - even higher than the “best” school in the county. Her secret? She taught the material, she didn’t teach the test. Gee, perhaps that might be an answer?
Do principals have the authority to fire bad teachers? If not, I don’t see how fitting the principal is going to help.
I am still thinking!
That’s the estimate I got when I was looking into becoming a teacher in NYC.
2 of the 3 best teachers I had in school had trouble with the same administrator. Coincidence? No. His incompetence and pointless dickishness was renowned in our small school system. He should have been replaced.
I feel a little bad saying that. He really liked me, and his son was a good friend.
Now that’s just crazy talk. Imagine the chaos and anarchy that would ensue if teachers actually taught the material they were supposed to teach.
All kidding aside, this is exactly what needs to happen. And as a corollary, teachers need to teach, not load the kids down with hours of homework and expect them to teach themselves.
With great responsibility should come great power. Principals shouldn’t be fired for the way their schools were run unless they had been given general authority over policy. If they set the policy and it failed, you might be able to justify replacing them. But if they’re just carrying out the policy set by other people (a school board, the parents, the government) then they shouldn’t be held personally responsible for whether or not it works.
We can all agree that profit produces the best quality and abundance of products, but we are loathe as a society to apply that logic to education.
I believe the charter school experiment should be expanded, and that, when run in a non-corrupt fashion, charter schools probably do perform better than your standard public school. At the least, cutting out the bureaucracy leaves more resources for actual teaching.
What I don’t get is those who either completely believe the current system is fine (i.e. there are no bad teachers, just throw even more money into the system), and those who completely believe education should be privatized. Every child deserves a quality education; how to best achieve that is an ambition we must continue to follow regardless of ideological predisposition. All I know is, we spend much more than other countries are receiving less. Clearly, there is room for improvement.