Why Are Public Schools Bad At Hiring Good Teachers?

• July 20, 2008

Ray Fisman asks that question over at Slate.
My answer is that the problem has less to do with hiring good teachers and more to do with difficulty (thanks to teacher’s unions) with firing bad teachers.
Anyone who has ever done any significant amount of hiring can tell you that every hire is a roll of the dice. Sometimes you’ll hire someone with an impressive resume, great interview skills and positive references and they’ll turn out to be a dud. Other times you’ll hire someone with a checkered employment history and a less-than-stellar resume and they turn out to be one of your best employees.
What is most important to developing a good work force is not hiring decisions (though that’s a big part of it) but rather the ability to weed out employees who aren’t working so they can be replaced with someone better. It’s a trial-and-error process. Sometimes good employees can let their performance slip. Sometimes bad employees can improve their performance.
Either way, management has got to be able to effectively remove those who aren’t working well and replace them with those who will. If management can’t do that they can’t get rid of bad employees, and good employees have little incentive to keep performing.
Teacher unions have for years been throwing roadblocks in the way of school administrator’s ability to fire bad teachers. Which is why many of America’s schools routinely perform below par.
Want better teachers? Make it easier to fire bad teachers.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Education, Politics

http://Array 2Hotel9

“Why Are Public Schools Bad At Hiring Good Teachers?”

Because Union contracts forbid them to hire on merit, instead requiring that the least competent be hired on an equal basis with the most competent?

Or perhaps it has to do with Union contracts which forbid schools from firing incompetent teachers?

6 of one, half dozen,,,,,,,,
RebTex

2 words define the problem:
Affirmative Action
.
It caused a general dumbing down of America.
General requirement levels were dropped across the board to allow everyone to qualify.
Even at the grocery store!
Remember back when the cashier would actually count your change back to you?
She did it without the register telling her how much to give back.
Very rarely do I see this happen now.
Anyway, the education system was hit hard in the late 70′s to get more kids through school instead of getting more kids educated.
THose kids are now “teachers”, cashiers,city council members, store managers & the like.
Hoss

Wouldn’t hurt either if most of the teachers weren’t culled from the bottoms of the class.
docdave

Either way, management has got to be able to effectively remove those who aren’t working well and replace them with those who will. If management can’t do that they can’t get rid of bad employees, and good employees have little incentive to keep performing.

Granted that the unions aren’t helping the situation, the first line of opposition is the government agencies like EEOC that make it impossible to get rid of a non-preforming employee without documented cause showing perversive activity on the part of the employee something that is very difficult to get. I know this from my many days of management in the private sector. This has gotten so bad that private industry almost exclusively uses down-sizing and other revenue related measures to weed out non-productive employees, something that is not available to the education system.
pparets

Imagine: I paid careful attention to what you wrote but chose not to respond because much of what you said is simply not true on a national scale.

Example:

I have seen educators removed in minutes.

Well, yes, and so have I; but not for incompetence. Momentary removal is almost always connected to felonious behavior: violence against a student or co-worker, sexual misconduct or other criminal matter.

The rest of your post is applicable only in firm right-to-work states- there are not many of those – and then only under local contract agreement.
fishdweeb

how fast should the process be? Who should decide when a teacher needs to “clean out their desk”?

One of the significant problems is in teacher evaluations. Find a terrible teacher and there is a very good chance that there are years and years of favorable evaluations in the file. Rarely is a teacher put on an “action plan” (different states use different words..basically a “these things need to be improved” list)

So then the teachers association steps in and says “show me your data on the teacher in question”….
and all the paperwork says the teacher is doing an acceptable job (or in some cases the paperwork says the teacher is ‘outstanding’) Then when the union/association protects the teacher we get angry at the association? doesn’t make sense!

. I do a self-evaluation once a year. Every other year a principal sits in my room for 20-40 minutes and this is how they decide if I am doing a good job.

A “Board of Peers” review would be much more significant and would have more impact. Poor teachers would be weeded out much more effectively.

I am a teacher. I am not a ‘fan’ of NEA. I am a member. I do not believe for one second that the national or the local want to protect poor teachers.
2Hotel9

Administrators, on the whole, are Union mandarins, protecting Union members. They do not give a shit about students. Whiny assed children come and go, Union pay scale is eternal.
pparets

The operative word which everyone has missed here is tenure. Once a teacher has it – and in most states it comes automatically after three years – it is extremely difficult to remove an incompetent teacher.

There are three vital stages for every teacher where this could have or can be avoided.

1. At every college and university, an education major must show mastery of their subject area and serve an internship during which they are observed and evaluated on the job. Few, very few are weeded out at this critical first step.

2. Almost every state has enacted a “Teacher Tenure” law protecting teachers from “arbitrary dismissal” after serving a trial period in the classroom, ranging from two to three years. The best opportunity to nail an incompetent teacher is during this non-tenured time. Few are dismissed.

3. One by one, locally-elected school boards across the nation caved in to the NEA and the AFT on the issues of firing and merit more than 35 years ago. Any school board with enough backbone can undo these errors anytime they want to. Few have done so.

For the best understanding of this frustrating situation, read the ‘education’ chapter in THE PETER PRINCIPLE.
pparets

2hotel9: Yes and no. The NEA is not a ‘union’ in the sense that the UAW or Teamster’s are. The NEA is more like the Bar for lawyers.

Teachers do not shut down a school over a disciplined or fired teacher. Instead they win this battle at the negotiating table by strong-arming local school boards into agreement on topics like No Merit Pay, no merit advancement, ‘alternatives’ to firing and closed shops where teachers must pay NEA dues whether they join or not.

Local elected school boards are the lawful governing agencies for school operations. Most turn their authority over to a superintendent – almost always a former classroom teacher – and the rest is history.

Like I said, any school board with some backbone could undo many of these practices any time they want to. Most won’t.
imagine

There are always, always, always ways to remove teachers. There is a process to follow, it requires administration to be “on the ball” and “on their game” which, sad to say, does not happen as often as it should. So we blame the teachers. A bad teacher taints all teachers. Why would we want to protect them?

Merit pay is a great idea. The implementation of merit pay is the difficulty.

Most administrators are not former classroom teachers. Most administrators are ex-coaches with 3 or more loosing seasons
2Hotel9

So Union protectionism has nothing to do with it. Right.
imagine

fyi
it is not that difficult to get rid of poor teachers. Proper steps must be followed at the administrative levels. The teachers union (or rather teachers association, as ND is a ‘right to work state’) has no desire to support poor educators. The association is there to make sure administration follows procedure.

It is far more difficult to remove poor administration than it is to remove poor teachers.

In my 25 years of teaching experience I have seen educators removed in minutes, I have seen them removed in years, and I have seen them remain in the classroom for an entire career. The difference in the scenarios is proactive administration. Not protective union/association.
pparets

Imagine: Somehow you manage to keep talking right around the comments of others on this thread.

NO ONE is blaming teachers here.

You keep saying that on-the-ball administrators can get rid of bad teachers, but you ignore the fact that the process is slow, frustrating, burdensome and contentious; not to mention that few building administrators have much time to pursue the process.

Some administrators may well be former coaches with three or more losing seasons, but most have been classroom teachers as well.

Districts are not governed by teachers, administrators or the NEA. They are governed by their locally elected school boards in whose hands rests the final authority for agreeing to contracts which protects or eliminates bad teachers. You know that already, if you are an educator.
imagine

unreal, another “say anything topic”….where not one listens.

once agan “Say anything” posts what they want, but no one pays attention….

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