I knew it would happen. Yet another committee has decided that teachers are the ones to blame when students don't do well. After all, they can't do anything about the parents or living situations that some of these children might have, so according to dallasnews.com a new report stresses the improvement of teacher quality.
Texas needs to expand incentive pay in schools, beef up teacher evaluations and make it easier for school districts to get rid of bad teachers, according to a report released Wednesday by the Governor's Business Council.
The report, which outlined a series of recommendations to the Legislature, focused mainly on teacher quality as the best way to improve public schools. The group says 82 percent of Texas graduates are not prepared for college or a good job in the workforce.
One of the business council's more prominent recommendations is new authority for school districts to terminate teachers who receive poor performance evaluations for three consecutive years. "If that teacher receives a third ineffective evaluation, the principal would be required to remove such a teacher, and the teacher would bear the burden of proof in any dismissal hearing," the proposal read.
Of course, the principal is supposed to work with the teacher after the first ineffective evaluation to improve that teacher's skills. If improvement does not occur by the third evaluation, the teacher is expected to be fired.
The report also wants to expand the use of incentive pay and the use of students' test scores when evaluating teachers.
What about teachers teaching gifted classes? Those students always do well on standardized tests. What about music, theater, physical education, and art teachers? Will they face the same problems as classroom teachers? How can this be fair to teachers responsible for teaching math, reading, social studies and science who have an entire class of struggling, unmotivated students? They might be excellent teachers, but their students' test scores won't be as high as those of teachers teaching AP or gifted classes.
Discipline problems are another issue. It is not easy to teach or be evaluated when students are misbehaving. Some students act out on purpose when the principal is in the room.
My concern about this report is that it does not address all of the issues. How many of the people on this council have been in charge of a typical classroom in the last few years? Also, principals conduct subjective evaluations. If they don't like a teacher, this gives them an easy way to just fire that person.
Every professional needs to be held accountable for doing a quality job. Obviously, not everyone who enters the teaching profession is suited for teaching. Most districts hire teachers with a two year probation period. Each teacher should be evaluated on an individual basis. However, the idea of a tougher evaluation system punishes all teachers. There are excellent teachers who will be so stressed out over the possibility of receiving a bad evaluation that it will be difficult for them to teach.
It seems like everyone is playing the "blame game" for public schools. There are just as many qualified teachers in public schools as there are private schools. One big difference is that private schools are allowed to hold their students (and parents) accountable. Students must complete all assignments, do quality work, and follow all rules of the school, or they can be asked to leave. Parents are also expected to support their children and respect the teachers and rules of the school.