Marc Tucker has an interesting blog today in Education Week
(http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2012/05/teacher_quality_and_teacher_accountability.html) about teachers. He recounts his many encounters with incompetent, drunk-on-the-job teachers. But he uses this beginning to say that we really need to give more thought to helping teachers, encouraging the best teachers, and improving the conditions of teachers so as to attract excellent candidates in the future.
I thought and thought but I couldn’t remember a single teacher in my own experience, or that of my children or grandchildren, who was a drunk-on-the-job teacher. I went to ordinary public schools in Houston, and I had my share of ordinary teachers. I remember someone told me once that if you have even one great teacher in your lifetime, you are blessed. I was doubly blessed, as I had at least two.
But I must say, I never came across any of the horrible men or women who seem to give the reformers sleepless nights.
If they exist, and I suppose they must, then they should be fired in their first year on the job. If not, then their principal is not doing his or her job.
From all I have seen of the research, the multiple-choice standardized tests that are now in common use will not reveal who those “bad” teachers are. Who knows, the “bad” teachers might be extra good at drilling kids on test questions. And we might end up giving bonuses to “bad” teachers.
When I spoke in Missouri a couple of years ago, I met hundreds of teachers after the event, as I usually do. So many told me that their father or mother had been a teacher before them. I realized that these are the teachers we have now, in the towns, villages, and cities of America. And in the future we will have their sons and daughters in the classrooms. We owe them a good start. We owe them respect for the hard work they do for all of us. We owe them good leadership. We owe them the autonomy to make decisions in their classrooms, rather than to be treated as automatons or robots. And we owe it to them and their colleagues to treat teaching as a true profession, not as a temp job meant for young college graduates who will be gone in two or three years.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Having started in a new content area only last year (from English lit to technology), I am of a mind to say that maybe the new teachers need some sort of modified schedule and a lot of mentoring for at least a year and maybe two. Because I have found (mother of three here) that starting a teaching position is much like having a baby. It is all-consuming, exhausting, and your husband gets ignored for at least a year.
I have never had or seen a drunk teacher. One must remember that those who are out to destroy our public schools streatch the truth. Statements like Tuckers are part of the propoganda to achieve their goal.
I’ve also never met nor had a drunk teacher. Would that I could say the same about principals.
I had one alcoholic teacher in my high school — and it was a private school without tenure for teachers, yet he stayed on for years and years, slurring his readings of Shakespeare and forgetting his students’ names. I have taught in public schools for 38 years. I have heard about only one alcoholic teacher who was first helped and then eased out of the school where I presently teach. In those 38 years, I’ve been embarrassed by the mediocrity or indifference of just a few colleagues, and most of these were lamented by administrators who also failed to take action against them. In each of those cases, we teachers wished that something was being done; and in each school, the union insisted on due process but never insisted on keeping a bad teacher.
I have been a teacher now for 22 years, and my mom is still teaching. I have aunts and uncles in the education field, as well, from first grade teachers to retired college professors. During the last 5 years, I have come to the conclusion that I will discourage my own daughters from entering the profession.
Seems to me that the underlying issue is competing visions of how to make things better. Do you punish failure, presuming that failure represents a lack of effort, or do you provide assistance and resources for those who are struggling? This applies to students, teachers, schools and districts. When I was young, “accountability” had a clear meaning: the obligation of those with authority to be responsible as well, acting in the interest of those they serve. Now, the meaning has been distorted, so that the word implies punishment for failure to meet arbitrary quantitative goals. We want our public schools to be truly accountable to the community, and they can do that in part by ensuring that our children’s teachers receive the support and resources they need.
They probably drank because he was such a horrid student. ;-> heehee
Agreed! If administrators were on the job (assuming they actually could be), they would be observing and providing feedback to new teachers right away. Then, before they come up for tenure, they could either be removed as ineffective and un-remediable or hailed as effective and improving. In this way, new teachers get the feedback they need along with support before they become tenured and impossible-to-fire bad teachers.
Forget any political bias at this point. We must preserve our democratic public eductional system.
Marc Tucker sent a very long letter to Hillary Clinton when her husband was elected president. He laid out the plan we are seeing now. This letter was entered in the Congressional Record and may be obtained by anyone who is interested. It is apparent than none had any experience in education, but the Clinton’s used this as a stepping-stone so he could be reelected as governor in AR and eventually president.
The same political patterns may be seen coming from both major political parties today. The corporations are interested in showing a profit, and the foundations are run by vested interest. Take a look at Bill and Milinda Gate’s Foundation. This foundation is funding the core standards, state by state. Follow the money trail!
ALEC and its affeliates the Council for National Policy and the Heritage Foundation, appear to have no concept, nor do they care, about representative government. Now we see the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) has joined hand in hand with the neo right wing.
Diane, feel honored if they call you bad names and continue to try to descredit you and other. I have been there for 35 years, and could care less. My advise is to smile and say “thank you” because if you agreed with me, then I would know I was wrong. Take care, dear lady.
In all my years of schooling, I can’t say I encountered oa single bad teacher. By bad, I mean someone who prevented me from learning. “The teacher doesn’t like me,” or “my teacher isn’t good” didn’t cut the ice with my parents.
Not much mention is made of the fundamental message we’re telling students: you are not responsible for your own success or failure.
I’m a veteran teacher of 21 years, and I also serve on the school board of the largest district in our county, I’m at the end of my first term. I have seen incompetent teachers over the years, and I admit to having been one on occasion; but I have never seen a drunk teacher. As a board member, we had one teacher who obviously had alcohol problems, and got two DUIs (after which she voluntarily left the profession). A fellow teacher at the same school wrote to say she had reason to believe this woman had been drinking while at school, and I guess a few kids were gossiping about it as well. However, this teacher didn’t report her suspicions to the principal, and if the principal had heard the gossip, she never looked into it.
If I had any reason to believe that a fellow staff member was drunk, or drinking on the job, you better believe I’d let the principal and the superintendent know.
In a similar vein, the district on which I serve on the board has an issue with principals giving quality evaluations. The superintendent actually said that the union prevented the principals from giving less than stellar evaluations. I shut down that absurdity quickly.
I’d also like to add that I bet many parents have different ideas of what a “bad teacher” is, so I’m hesitant to always use that as a yardstick. I’ve had many parents get on me over the years for coming down on students who obviously plagiarized. I, OTOH, feel that I would be a *bad teacher* if I let kids get away with that. This year I was accused of favoring Latino students because I sometimes play music in Spanish in class, but I’ve played lots of other stuff as background music over the years, and none of *that* engendered any complaints.