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Comment by beefman | Hacker News Reader

In U.S. public schools, this will not be allowed. Schools already do everything they can to discourage and deny teacher switching requests. Why? Because there is a large difference in quality between teachers, and everyone knows which teachers are best, but administrators aren't allowed to fire a teacher with low enrollment because of switching requests, and face class size limits in the case of the good teachers.

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When my kids were in public elementary school there was a teacher that was so bad that most families who had children assigned to that teacher simply left the school. The administration was going through the procedure to get the teacher removed but it was going to take more than one year. They finally came up with the solution of having the terrible teacher become a "social studies specialist" and have her teach a few hours weekly to every single classroom in the school, thereby diluting her awfulness among the maximum number of students.

> diluting her awfulness among the maximum number of students

*polluting with her awfulness the maximum number of students

I live in the US. My daughter switched classes last year. We transferred to the school system before the start of the school year (a much better one than the previous one which mostly catered to children from lower class families) and as a result, she was behind her classmates for her grade and age group.

The teacher was openly derogatory towards her when she didn't understand a concept and refused to help her during open study periods. The child was flat out depressed when having to do anything with the class. We had enough and had a conference call with the principal, her assistant, and the teacher. Our kid was in a new class the next day.

There are also the sorts of teachers I hated having as a teenager, but am deeply grateful in terms of what they taught us, after all.

Many of those were pretty much universally disliked often mainly due to the amount of work we'd have to do compared to others.

But when our class would get merged and we'd get one of the more 'popular' teachers, we were often kinda surprised how little the other half knew/had learned.

According to the teachers' union, the quality of instruction is dependent on only two factors: 1) the degree 2) the years spent teaching.

It's necessary to deny any other factors, such as allowing choice by the students/parents.

U.S. public schools are locally run and any sweeping statements regarding them is going to be incorrect. For example my daughter is now in 10th grade. Over the years we have requested to switch teachers 3 times. Once in elementary, once in middle school and just last week. In each case there has been no push back from the schools involved and the change has taken place quickly. Last Monday I contacted my daughter's counselor at 10am regarding changing one of her teachers and by 1pm the change had been made.

People have been commenting on the early start especially for high school students and claiming it won't change because of sports. Our school district starts elementary schools at 7:30am or 8am, middle schools at 8:30am or 8:50am and all high schools start at 9:30am. The varying start times for elementary and middle schools is due to bus scheduling. Some of our neighboring districts have similar schedules and others still have HS kids starting early again showing that sweeping statements regarding U.S. schools aren't accurate.

My experience is that they make exceptions to this when a teacher loops, for exactly the reason parent describes.

My elementary school did this in the 80s. I had the same teacher from I think 1st through 4th grade (in the US).

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