Bad Vs. Good Teachers

There should be an easier way to get rid of bad teachers in our children’s schools. The union protects teachers in a huge way, letting go of new teachers first, opposed to letting go of teacher based on their teaching and how students are affected by them. When it comes to budget cuts, the first to go all the recently hired teachers. These new teachers, right out of college have an abundance of information and new teaching styles that could directly benefit anybody they teach. The older teachers, the ones that have been teaching for a long period of time get to stay teaching, despite the fact that they should have retired years before.

Some teachers stay in the teaching profession after they are supposed to retire and this doesn’t benefit the students. Students need fresh, new perspectives that lean more towards this new age. Bad teachers that do not benefit the students or teach them much of anything are being kept in schools based on seniority. The longer the teachers have taught at that school, despite what the students have learned from their classes, they get passed over when schools need to fire teachers because of budget cuts. Unfortunately the union protects the teachers that have been there longest. Is it better to protect the teachers that have been there the longest teaching the students no useful information or a new teacher with new and fresh ideas challenging the student’s everyday?

The schools have been trying to create an effective method of firing teacher because of the budget cuts. Schools don’t want to lose their good teacher and be forced to keep their bad one, They want their schools to do good on test scores and have good ratings among the schools districts. The schools tried implementing something where they would give the students a standardized test and based on their results the teachers would be graded on what the students learned. The student that had learned the least from that teacher, that teacher would be on the list for being let go when budget cuts would arise. Unfortunately the union did not approve this stating that standardized tests are not enough to tell whether or not the teacher is actually a good teacher. If that isn’t, then what is?

Fifty present of people think that a teacher’s salary should be based on how much the students are learning in their class. Almost like an education commission. We all know how hard commissioned salespeople work, why not apply this to things that are so important in our children’s life? If a teacher knew their salary would be based on how much their students were learning, don’t you think they would add extra lesson plans, take extra schooling to better prepare themselves to teach students effectively and add in technology in their classroom to keeps the kids focused?

It’s sad to think that all teachers in the United States have a bad reputation. This is not because all teachers are flawed, but because the school system fires good teachers due to budget cuts and keeps the bad ones that are protected by the union.

By: Patricia Hawke

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Patricia Hawke is a staff writer for Schools K-12, providing free, in-depth reports on all U.S. public and private K-12 schools. For more information please visit Public High School Rankings California and Public High School Rankings by State