Judge rules California has right to fire incompetent teachers

Again, if the administrators are a bunch of pussies who won't tell the parents to STFU, they're the ones that need to be fired.

 

Better for whom?

We know the former robs poor kids of their constitutional right to an education. The lack of job security for teachers compares somehow to that?

 

Are we lacking in programs like this?

We've had a war on poverty for 50 years now. How's that going?

 

Job security for teachers could, in some circumstances, enhance kids' education and, in others, hinder it. It's likely not as monotonic an influence as you or anyone else might think.

 

We know nothing of the sort. Poverty and unequal funding deny poor kids an equal education, not due process for teachers.

 

We know bad teachers will ruin a child's educational progress.

I'm still not sure why a turnover of <5% would be a bad thing for kids.

Kids get new teachers every year anyway. They would barely notice if a teacher or two was let go.

 

How do you determine which 5% are bad enough to get fired, test scores?

 

How does any manager determine who their worst performing employees are?

Do you know who your underperforming colleagues are?

Why do we thing administrators are going to try and run out their best teachers? Aren't they looking out for the kids?

 

Here are a few things we don't know:

1) The degree to which the security of a teaching career degrades or enhances the quality of the pool of potential teachers

2) The degree to which said security degrades or enhances the quality of teachers actually encountered by students in their educations.

3) The degree to which a given teacher's being at the 5th percentile (however measured) is indicative of that teacher's being a bad teacher.

Is the current turnover rate, whatever it is, too low? I don't know ... For all anyone knows it might be too high. Simply saying, "The turnover rate ought to be about that of the private sector" is just nonsense. It's akin to saying that health insurance companies should spend at least 80% of their revenues on benefits, because that'll be a better deal for health insurance consumers. Ridiculous.

I agree with you that teachers' job security really shouldn't be a primary consideration when administering schools. To the degree that job security has trumped other, more important, concerns, this California decision is a welcome development. However, the confidence you have in your conclusion that "Such-and-such a turnover rate would be better for teacher quality, and doing away with tenure would get us that turnover rate" is wildly over-inflated.

 

Yes, of course they are loking out for the kids and not the budget.

 

I think we've all worked at places where higher-ups had this fantasy that if you got rid of somebody, there would be 200 highly qualified, superstar applicants rushing to fill the spot (at whatever you wanted to pay). Amazingly, this never seems to be the case.

 

That's not what OOP told us in regards to teachers.

Besides, if there were more openings, there might be more people coming into teaching.