I agree, in principle (principal?
) about the quality of teachers. But how can one measure how "good" a teacher is?
What makes a "good" teacher?
What makes a "bad" teacher?
Good and bad teachers are a lot like good and bad art. We all know it when we see it, but different people have different perceptions. Just as it is hard to come up with a universally acceptable definition of "good" art, I fear it will be even more difficult trying to come up with a universally accepted definition of a "good" teacher.
I wish I had a solution to this question. I totally agree that we need to keep "good" teachers, dump "bad" teachers, and attract "good" people to become "good" teachers. I think that we can all agree upon.
Now if we can only define "good".
This is not a trivial question as we are talking about teacher's livelihoods.
In my larval stages, I went through the California School System in the 70's. I had multiple teachers who were one chapter ahead of me in the text book. If you asked them any question not in the lesson plan, they were clueless. Were these "bad" teachers?
Well back in the 70's there was a shortage of teachers and an abundance of students. Classrooms of 50 kids was not unusual in my Highschool.
Teachers were drafted to teach subjects they were not prepared for. I had shop teachers teaching Lit and PE teachers teaching math. Often the teacher did not know what subject they were going to teach until the first day of school. I think the teachers did the best they could in a crappy system. So were they "good" teachers in a crappy system or "bad" teachers in a crappy system?
Which ones should be fired. And if you did fire them, would you then stick 60 students in the same classroom (if there was physical room)?
If I had the answer to these questions, I sure would not be working for the company I am at now.
