How about NO tenure for teachers? I noticed in high school and college that the tenured teachers were the ones who didn't really try because their jobs were secure. How about work on contracts like athletes? Make them earn new contracts based on performance. It could probably help them earn higher salaries with schools giving offers like free agents! And think of the fun!

Agreed 100%.

agreed... what is exactly is up with tenure for for k-12 teachers? doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever. the union will eventually have to back down once the state starts sending out IOU's, because if it goes bankrupt they lose everything.

Good thinking. With the entrenched teacher's union, no way it's going to happen.

I'm not a teacher, but i feel for them. Society is terrible to teachers today. Are doctors paid based on the number of healthy patients they have?

Well considering the overall quality of the teachers the union represents, as well as the perpetual issue of state level corruption heavily influenced by said union, I find it very hard to feel sympathy for a NYC teacher.

As one of NYC's teachers of dubious quality, may I suggest you visit a classroom or familiarize yourself with the average reading/writing capabilities of this city's middle and high school students before placing the onus entirely on the educator? The union is appalling, true, but the real travesty in this city is how low functioning these kids are, how they lack the most basic of skills (excluding those in specialized schools), and how little many of them care about their education. Couple that with the fact that I could earn more as a bus driver with the MTA, tenure's a small recompense for being one of the many working in a field that is neither supported nor respected by the general society in which it hopes to improve.

Besides, do you really think such standardized tests can measure quality of instruction? The crappy teachers will just do what they have to to get the kids to pass the test (which will be written by some mindless bureaucrat of the state), and the blame game of why Americans are dumb will continue to play out until we can force the individual to accept responsibility for themselves. But since that's impossible, I alternately propose that we hold the PARENTS' jobs over their heads for every dumb, ignorant and/or unconcerned offspring they produce...

In truth, I revere teachers, and think they have the most important job in society. But there is something wrong with this argument:

"The union is appalling, true, but the real travesty in this city is how low functioning these kids are, how they lack the most basic of skills (excluding those in specialized schools), and how little many of them care about their education."

How can we argue that teachers should be respected, and that said respect should be reflected in their salaries, when we have a whole generation of students who are low functioning, lack basic skills, and care not about their education? What are teachers doing with these student every day? Have we forgotten how to teach? Paulo Freire once said "if students can't learn the way you teach, teach the way they learn", or something to that effect. If teachers want the respect of society, they need to improve the product of their work.

Ok, so its not just the responsibility of teachers to make this work. Principals, school districts and the organization of schools are seriously implicated in the performance of our students. But teachers are our front line in this effort...

Cry me a river. Why do you think those middle school and high school students have such poor skills? Because YOUR COLLEAGUES at the elementary school level have not done their jobs. Why do you think they don't care about their education? Because they have endured years of teachers who obviously don't give a crap about them.

Your job is to teach. You are with those kids six hours a day, and if they don't have basic skills after that, it's a reflection on YOU. Given the low regard many of us have for teachers, I would think that you and your colleagues would be the first in line to advocate for accountability and better quality educators.

Yes, standardized testing measures quality of education. Where are those kids supposed to learn the basic reading comprehension and mathematics questions on the tests, or the subject matter for their Regents exams? In you classroom. If they fail the tests en masse? Obviously you didn't do your job and teach them the material.



BTW--I was one of the "lucky" kids who was in a magnet program and a specialized high school in NYC. After spending way too many years dealing with bad teachers, NO, I don't have a lot of sympathy.

Teachers might just be a cog in the broken educational system, but they are an important cog. If things are as bad as you describe (and I'm not suggesting they aren't), why don't we see more teachers push for accountability in the system? Teachers should be leading the way to push for accountability; stop tenure for bad teachers, stop union from protecting bad teachers, stop advancing bad students, etc. Tenure is small recompense... please. Try working in the private sector, where tenure = whatever you have in your 401k when you retire or get laid off.

WORD.