The real problem with Education in OKC

Funk got off topic here a little bit in his article about quality of life and sports, but I think he made a good point about the education system in this city: ""The (educational) system is broke is what the challenge is, not the amount of money we have or have not put into the program," he said. "Every teacher gets paid exactly the same, whether they do a good, bad or indifferent job."

Throwing money at the educational system isn't the answer, although it can help some. We need a major overhaul of the system. We need to let go teachers that aren't performing, and we need to reward teachers who are performing. IMO, the whole tenure system needs to be scrapped. Once a teacher obtains tenure, the district can't fire them, regardless of the job they're doing. This is absurd, and one of the biggest problems with our educational system.

What do you think?

[Shake2005]

Let’s see, so, we need to stop giving teachers raises unless they are top performers, that along with firing teachers that don’t perform. Money isn’t needed and tenure should be tossed. That’s going to fix the schools.

Sounds great, but we already are not getting enough qualified teachers coming into the system. Let me toss in a thought, by making the job less stable by removing tenure and then trading regular cost of living raises for bonuses that any one teacher may or may not get you are making the job even less desirable for college students than it was before. This “fix” of not providing cost of living raises and firing “bad” teachers is not going to help the quality and volume of applicants, it’s going to hurt it. And, if we don’t get enough qualified applicants already today what is going to happen with your plan? The plan is going to make good new teachers even harder to find and then we are going to need even more good new teachers than we do today to replace all the teachers that have just been fired.

Bonuses are not a bad idea, but they should be given in addition to regular raises, tenure should not be done away with , but can be adjusted with rules for poor performers. We do need better teachers, and these ideas might help to get rid of bad teachers and to reward and keep the very best but to help the entire pool of teachers we need more money. Pay has to be much higher than it is now. In business if the people you are able to recruit for a position are not meeting your needs the answer is not to make pay and benefits worse, you have to make pay and benefits better. So to get more and better teachers into the system, have to got pay better and that is going to cost more money. Period.

[BDP]

In business if the people you are able to recruit for a position are not meeting your needs the answer is not to make pay and benefits worse, you have to make pay and benefits better.

Exactly. Anyone who says we don't need more money for our schools doesn't understand what we are competing against. The problem hasn't been getting rid of the bad teachers, it's getting good ones in the first place.

[okcpulse]

I remember several teachers in the Edmond Public School system that were horrible. I didn't do very well in those classes, but I luckily eeked by. Some of those teachers are still there today. Yipes.

There is so much that needs to be done about our education system. I have taught for 15years. Putting more money into the system is great, but it doesn't do any good if you don't get rid of the programs that do not work that drain more dollars. Awhile back when schools were in a big money crunch, and afraid some would have to shut their doors that was the time to do a major overhaul. Look for things that don't work. Fund what does. When money gets tight around our house we look at the over all picture. We stop spending money on things we don't need.
On the subject of tenure. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but in the corporate world does tenure exist? Don't you have to prove yourself everyday? If you are not up to performance aren't you let go? I know it is harder to prove whether a teacher is performing her job. Your judging how well the children have learned that year. It depends on the children you are teaching as well. Kids who have to worry more about survival and other issues or don't have parental support are preoccupied with this while trying to get an education. It is harder for teachers to reach those kids. It can be done, but if you are rating the teacher's performance they may not see much growth with those students. What if where you teach has a majority of students have struggles to overcome? My hat is off to teachers who teach in the rougher schools. I would want to take all the kids home with me. I wouldn't want someone to keep me on as a teacher because I have tenure. Keep me because I do my job well. I love my students. I treat them as I would my own.
I didn't go into teaching for the pay. I did it because that was my calling. I remember being 4 years old and telling people I am going to be a teacher. I graduated from college in 3 1/2 years because I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to get out there and get started. When you are thinking about teacher's salaries think about this. We work 10 months out of the year. I have lots of holiday time with my own kids. I have the summers to do what I want to do. Yes, there have been summers where I did get a part time job. What other jobs offer this much time off, and you still have your job waiting for you the next year? Yes, I spend a lot of my summer gearing up for the school year. I am always looking for ways to do things better. Yes, I have spent nights walking the floor worrying about a student.
I love what I do. This school year I am working on my National Board Certification. When my children leave home I will probably work on my masters. Right now I don't want to miss what they are doing.

(Sorry to jump in late, I know this ended a few days ago, just had a couple of quick points to throw in)

Tenure doesn't mean you can't fire a bad teacher. It simply means there is a process one has to go through to dismiss a teacher...a teacher can't be fired because the principal dislikes her or she's teaching controversial material and the board is tired of the hassle.

As for placing pay, hiring, retention, ect. on "performance," how do you measure that? Because the answer for now seems to be on the performance of students on standardized tests, and that's a HORRIBLE way to judge teacher's performance. We test far too much, and it teaches the kids nothing and takes time away from the teaching.
Also, it's already hard enough to get teachers to give time and attention to kids with disabilities, and if they took a pay cut if test scores went down, what teacher is going to want a disabled kid in their room? None will, I promise you.

We need to focus a lot more on supporting teachers, on doing good things that improve thier ability to teach and their work environment, not on punishing them because Johnny's brother had a game or Susie was sick all night so and they bombed the C-A-T test one day.