Blog Post #14

Problem: Anyone can be a teacher.
Solutions: Academic training, pick from the top 1/3 of graduates, and change how teachers are rewarded.

Problem: Seniority distraction.
Solutions: Seniority dictates the way that the school is run. Albert Shanker demands a "knowledge base" as well as a "formal set of . . . peer relations." Shanker also called for a "national teacher examination" a test that would be like one doctors and lawyers take. In addition, Shanker would require a "supervised internship of from one to three years" to evaluate prospective teachers.

Problem: Radical Change
Solutions: Shanker proposed that teachers come up with their own board to police the profession, establishing standards and providing mechanisms for removing incompetent teachers. Teachers would also be subjected to merit-based career ladders and would be promoted based on specialized exams. Some teachers who have demonstrated true mastery would be aided by collage graduates serving as teaching assistants.

Anyone can be a teacher, this is a true thing. Some people are in it for the weekends and summers. Some people so they can be close to their children. It's also true that there are more education majors than there are jobs. Just at the University of South Alabama, there are hundreds of people competing for the same thing. Multiply that by the number of schools with education programs, a lot of the schools being bigger than South is as well. Taking one third of the teachers with the highest rankings would be a good idea, only if they are as good in real life as they are on paper. There needs to be a system. Something that picks the good ones from the bad. What that system is though, is still a mystery to me. 

Seniority dictates the way the school is run. While I hate to admit it, I think that's true. The longer some people have been there, the less they care, but they have a huge amount of pull because of the time they've put in there. I feel like if you don't continue to be the best you can be and that you're just there because you can be, that you should be removed from the job. Just because one person has been doing the same thing for 20 years does not mean they should be allowed to slack off and rob children of proper education. 

The radical change Shanker proposed has yet to come to play. No internship or severe testing is required. People seem to look down on education majors, like we're not smart enough to do anything else. Shanker's solutions seem to me like they would be effective. They would weed out the people who are in the profession for the weekends, holidays, and summers. 

There are some changes I believe that need to be made in the education system. Teachers should be more into their profession than some of them are, and we should have a way for taking incompetent teachers out of the system. There are so many education majors anymore and so many people in it for the wrong reasons that something needs to be done. Hopefully one day there is a perfect way to get rid of those people.