So the bad-teacher problem hasn’t gone away

Nishat987

Before proceeding further, it's worth pausing to ponder whether bad teachers really are a problem. The unions would certainly argue that the vast majority of teachers are committed professionals who chose a public-spirited but poorly-paid career because of their interest in helping kids. I agree entirely! But any field is going to have high performers and low performers, probably in the rough shape of a bell curve. Any decent organization frets about how to move that curve to the right, including by asking the lowest-performers to find another line of work.
It's hardly teacher-bashing to try to do so in K–12  Laos Phone Number Data  education. Not that it's easy in any sector. Few managers enjoy firing people, especially people they work alongside and have come to know well. In the for-profit world, there are strong organizational incentives not to let bad performance fester. But even then, managers need structures and nudges to get them to pull the trigger or an economic downturn to force the issue. Firing people is hard. Yet it's really important that we do so, especially in schools.








Partly that's because of the evidence demonstrating that our lowest-performing teachers cause significant deterioration for the students unlucky enough to be assigned to them. Especially since such students are more likely to be low-income kids and kids of color, given the inequitable distribution of effective teachers in many of our schools.