Please answer the following questions regarding your feeling towards teacher dismissal?
Please do not use your real name or school name on this blog to respond to these questions.
1. What are the risks and rewards of dismissing ineffective and problematic teachers?
2. Do you believe dismissal is generally used properly in the public schools? Why?
3. What are the biggest obstacles to effective dissmal practices and what are ways to overcome these obstacles?
4. How do you feel about marginal or average teachers that are up for career status? What is your process for considering career status?
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1. Risks - if documentation is not thorough, there is a risk of a lawsuit. Rewards - effective teaching, more learning, better climate.
ReplyDelete2. Dismissal is not used nearly enough in public education because of fear of lawsuits. Problem employees tend to be passed from school to school or from district to district.
3. Support in the tough cases from HR.
4. All decisions should be based on what is best for children. If a teacher is marginal, they should receive heavy coaching or a direction into another career. Career status should consist of performance measures and not just years of experience.
1. What are the risks and rewards of dismissing ineffective and problematic teachers?
ReplyDeleteWhen you dismiss an ineffective and/or problematic teacher, you risk legal action. It is important to document the following:
• teacher’s actions
• conferences that were held with the teacher
• Professional developments that were given to teacher.
• Teacher Evaluations
Having an ineffective teacher will affect the student’s progress for the following school year, so it is important to have effective teachers. It is important to dismiss an ineffective teacher before they become tenure. The procedure for dismissing a tenure teacher is difficult. The rewards of dismissing an ineffective and problematic teacher outweigh any risk.
2. Do you believe dismissal is generally used properly in the public schools? Why?
I don’t believe dismissal is used properly in public schools for fear of lawsuits. Teachers are often given a lot of chances and professional developments in order to correct their ineffectiveness. Some teachers are placed on action plans several times. I think there needs to be a more effective way of dismissing ineffective teachers.
2. What are the biggest obstacles to effective dissmal practices and what are ways to overcome these obstacles?
Often, teachers have to go before a board before they are dismissed. In my opinion, at times, it’s very political. If those particular teachers have the support of the school board members, dismissal may not occur regardless of documentation. It is important that we have rules and procedures that everyone follows and supports.
4. How do you feel about marginal or average teachers that are up for career status? What is your process for considering career status?
It is hard to dismiss a tenure teacher. If the teacher is marginal or average and can be developed, then I would consider placing the teacher on career status, with professional developments that will help the teacher develop. However, if the teacher continues to be ineffective for students, then it’s important not to give them career status.
Questions #3.
ReplyDeleteCareer status should be revised with more rigorous requirements for developing into and maintaining best practices for this status. For example, develop multiple measures for determining effective teaching, be specific; required continuous, rigorous learning by the profession that will improve classroom instruction and student engagement. Train our leaders (the teacher evaluators and givers of career status) in how to determine what effective teaching is and how to determine if all students in that person's care are learning and engaged. Provide peer teacher training to define and determine if their students are learning. Lawyers, dentists, CPA, Doctors must receive high level of continuous training in order to maintain a valid license. Value and respect the educational field with the pay that is deserved for the accomplished and distinguished ones that give their all.
2. Do you believe dismissal is generally used properly in the public schools? Why?
ReplyDeleteI do not feel that dismissal is used enough. I have witnessed several occassions in which a teacher has performed so horribly that in my mind there was absolutely no reason to keep the teacher on staff. However, at the end of the year, that teacher was simply moved to another school where the same behaviors continued the following year. I call it "pass the trash."
Granted, I do not know all of the details for this particular teacher, but her issues included abuse of prescription drugs, chronic absences from work, failure to show up for work with no notification to the school that she would not be at work, failing to keep proper student records, poor communication with parents, and the list goes on and on. Where is the line?
Imagine if your family doctor exhibited these behaviors... how long would he/she remain in practice?
In response to #3 about obstacles of dismissing teachers. Teaching is the only profession where the job is protected. There are teachers that are ineffective and are just not good teachers and went into the wrong profession, yet they seem to be protected. If you worked in any other position, you could not be late for your job more than a few time before you would be terminated. But I see the same teachers come in late everyday and the ones of us that take our job seriously have to be treated as if we were the ones coming in late. There are guidelines for a reason yet they so often they do not seem to apply to all teachers. How does these actions continue happening in the field of education?
ReplyDelete3. The main obstacle is that of legal ramifications. Administrators need to justify through documentation the termination of an employee. The other obstacle is the impact on the students, parents, and the other teachers in the school. In regards to the parents and the students environment is the key. The focus needs to be on student growth. Teachers may begin to worry that they will be the next one dismissed. They need to be assured that if they are effective they don't need to be afraid of losing their job. Teachers need to also realize that student growth is the focus.
ReplyDeleteHC
ReplyDelete1. What are the risks and rewards of dismissing ineffective and problematic teachers?
-Filling that position with a quality educator depending on the time of year. Possibly having to break a class apart and increase the class size of your other classes.
-Students will benefit from instruction that is on point and receive effective instruction. The big picture is that regardless we cannot afford to have student loose any time when it comes to instruction. It can take months if not years to regain on level grade performance when student have had an ineffective teacher.
2. Do you believe dismissal is generally used properly in the public schools? Why?
-I do not believe that it is used properly. Generally administrators do not want to put in the work as it relates to documentation. They would rather pass the trash than either try and develop that teacher or document them out of their job.
3. What are the biggest obstacles to effective dismal practices and what are ways to overcome these obstacles?
-The largest obstacles is time as it relates to the written documentation. Whether you call it an action plan or a plan of support the time that it takes is enormous. In my experience it takes a very strong leadership team that is committed to change to get the documentation completed in a timely manner because the plan is time sensitive and there is a large amount of coaching that needs to take place during that time.
4. How do you feel about marginal or average teachers that are up for career status? What is your process for considering career status?
-If they have the capacity and skill set to be developed then it is our job to coach them into being super stars because the work we do as educators is heroic. ---Career status is based on their performance and the overall question to ask is have I done all that I should do as an executive leader when it comes to instruction.