241 D.C. teachers fired over low student test scores | Hacker News Reader

241 D.C. teachers fired over low student test scores

online.wsj.com

19 pointsgrellas16 comments

This is a much bigger deal than it might appear at first glance. To understand why, see my post that collects the many recent, detailed articles about how difficult it is to fire teachers: http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get and why so much of K-12 education is so bad.

The short version: it's almost impossible to fire teachers in most districts, even for egregious incompetence; unions reinforce those rules by protecting bad teachers; some change is afoot because so many studies now demonstrate the importance of teacher effectiveness on student learning, and that effectiveness can't be predicted by factors like educational attainment or test scores in college.

241 teachers were not fired over low test scores. 76 were fired for not having proper credentials. 165 were fired for poor performance which takes into account factors in addition to test scores such as classroom evaluations.

I would hope that the 76 who didn't have proper credentials were at least evaluated on performance before their dismissal. If any of those 76 were actually excellent teachers, firing them on credentials alone without offering the opportunity to earn their credentials while working is a tragic loss, and smells of union-inspired member protection.

Disclaimer: both of my parents are teachers.

I know nothing about the quality of these teachers, but I can say based on my experience and insight that the quality of the students matters most, followed closely by the quality of the parents and the home life and family culture they provide. Teachers are a bit down the list. Because a student can always learn outside school -- and really, will be or should, both before and after the primary school years. There's only a narrow window in a person's lifetime where there is forced public schooling, and that's the only period, at least for most people, where the teacher quality is going to matter.

Glad to see this go through. The Unions are going to fight it all the way, but IMO it needs to happen. The current public school teaching system is pretty broken, someone had to at least start to make a stand. Props to Rhee for being willing to deal go through with it.

I love when PC goes too far. Teachers who have students with low iqs will have low-testing students, by the very definition of iq and the fact that most standardized tests are at least weakly correlated with iq tests. Vice versa. Intelligence, especially as operationalized by standardized testing, is as biological as height and athleticism. If I were a teacher in DC and the majority of my students were not from middle+ class families, I would quit ahead of time and save the district some trouble.

Honestly, what do people think "education" is? By lecturing at children cooped up in classrooms for 6 hours a day and then shoving scantrons down their throats everybody will magically become doctors and lawyers? All socioeconomic class distinctions will be eliminated? There is no reason to make working teachers suffer because of this unscientific bullshit.

Could just take the first derivative. A teacher's job isn't to make kids smart, it's to make them smarter.

Not smarter, just better-informed.

I use "smart" to mean "rationally applying knowledge and avoiding bias." It requires you to have knowledge, as source material—so teachers are responsible for that—but it also requires that you transform and synthesize that knowledge in useful ways, which requires more than information, and is something schools are supposed to teach ("learning how to learn.")

And those kids with greater IQs will become smarter with less effort on the part of the teacher.

I would think that if you took into account whether a class was regular or accelerated and weighted the required improvement based on that, you would be able to accurately assess teachers. But maybe the sample size is too small to eliminate random biases. Perhaps by taking a teacher's performance over multiple years into account that issue could be eliminated as well.

Frankly, being allowed to fire people is the right direction.

If you can't fire anybody, even for gross incompetence, then it's going to make it far more difficult to move your organization in the right direction. It's also going to make it easier for organizations to move in the wrong direction. However, that's a risk you're going to have to take if you want to move out of your mediocrity.

The article states that student testing accounts for 50% of the teacher rank. If a teacher wants to avoid being ranked near the bottom they can offset bad test scores by doing well on the other criteria. I agree the teachers don't deserve all the blame but I also believe too much job security makes people lazy and apathetic. If it doesn't work we can try something else.

Not so fast.

It seems you haven't even taken the time to follow your own proposition (Intelligence, especially as operationalized by standardized testing, is as biological as height and athleticism.) to its logical conclusion; for if you had, you wouldn't have followed it with the statement, If I were a teacher in DC and the majority of my students were not from middle+ class families, I would quit ahead of time...

Last I checked, "middle+ class" wasn't a genetic trait. So either you misunderstand what 'biological' means (dubious), or you yourself cannot separate intellect/scholastic achievement from environment/socio-economic class.

If it is the latter, then you directly contradict your proposition about the biological immutability of intelligence. If it is the former, perhaps you can clarify what you really meant when you wrote biological.

Education is a team sport. The parents ought to be held equally if not MORE accountable.

It's easier to blame the teachers.

The reality is that the home you come from is hugely important, but there isn't a lot they can _do_ about that -- and certainly not in the short term. Firing the teachers may be only modestly effective, but it's achievable.

> Education is a team sport. The parents ought to be held equally if not MORE accountable.

Ah yes, we shouldn't settle for anything less than perfection.

For any set of students+parents, some teachers will do better than others. Why should kids with lousy parents have to settle for lousy teachers as well?

Part of being a good teacher is managing mediocre parents. Why should kids with mediocre parents have to settle for lousy teachers?

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