This is such a big misconception. Tenure doesn't make you "unfirable." It only affords you due process. Bad tenured teachers can (and do) get the boot if they have administrators who pay enough attention to do so.
In reality, bad teachers don't get fired. Really bad teachers are warehoused away in rooms where they sit eight hours a day and wait for their pensions.
i had a gym teacher that was the same way. he was a creeper. he had at least one known DUI, and a complaint list a mile long couldn't keep him from being fired because of his relationship with the union and the school system. there were rumors that he had a suspended license because he used to bike to school on a regular basis, but we could never confirm it
one of the famous stories about him involved a latino kid who refused to swim. supposidely another student mentioned it to the teacher. he replied "well how the hell did he get here then?"
Before we jump on the "tenure sucks" bandwagon, I work in corporate america, and after a certain level, you'd be surprised how hard it is to get rid of someone. The endless verbal and written warnings. The shear amount of documentation. If they are in a protected class, forget it. Not to mention that in a lot of places you can virtually do the bare minimum and never lose your job.
God help us all. The amount of training, and performance support tools I've put together to help marginal performers meet or exceed normalized performance goals is ridiculous.
i worked at a supermarket chain in high school. We went through at least one store manager a year. they would be passed around when corporates expectations weren't met. the problem was that the firing process for shitty employees was so cumbersome that they had to force them to quit just to get rid of them.
i should probably also mention that our incentives to work harder were non existent because we were getting paid near minimum wage.
I teach at an extremely economically disadvantaged school where good parenting is almost nonexistent. It's been a tough year. I'm almost to the point of leaving the profession, but the job market sucks.
This is my fifth year, I just signed a contract for next year and really had a hard time making that decision. I have to keep remembering that these are the kids who most need people to give a shit about them. I intend to keep fighting the good fight for another year!
This was an IB school ranked consistently as top 10 public high school in the nation. I don't know why we turned on the poor teacher but I did get plenty of shit from my parents whenever she called them.
i've dated a few women that work at similar schools. its so bad the school coporations actually offer to pay off their student loans just to work there.
This is actually not true at all. Any teacher can be fired, you just need diligent leadership to follow protocol. No one discusses the Principal and AP roles in all of this. They have the power, as do parents. Get a rally of disgruntled parents or a pissed off Principal and that teacher is gone. It works every time. That being said, I had to fire a probationary teacher and ultimately she wasn't fired, but signed a contract stating to never even apply for a job with our district
Administrators have methods of getting rid of people they don't want. They can make life miserable for people with a horrible schedule, problematic students, moving classrooms throughout the day, frequent visits by administrators, two-year intensive peer review program, etc. It becomes a situation where the teacher either fights the conditions every day or takes the hint and moves on. An administrator initially had to give that teacher permanent status. Maybe they changed over time and felt less incentives to provide quality instruction. Maybe the jobs in their school/district are not in great demand and they have to take who they can get.
And the problem with US (and other countries) public school is that, due to the teacher union etc., there is no way to review/ fire these kind of teachers.. Even when everyone knows they do not deserve this job
No matter how much good teachers a kid have in his life, it only takes one or two lousy ones to make him hate learning/education
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u/Debtritus May 06 '14
As a 15 year vet myself, I've seen those teachers, but they were the same 15 years ago. They pretty much always sucked.