Doctors, lawyers and almost all other professionals could lose their license to practice, if they are involved in any form of malpractice or if there exists evidence of unethical behaviours..
CEOs are fired if they fail to deliver or to live up to expectations.However, in the education sector, firing a bad teacher is sometimes, all but impossible.
In the United States, Tenure is a practice that guarantees a teacher their job. Originally, this was a due process guarantee, something intended to work as a check against administrators capriciously firing teachers and replacing them with friends or family members. It was also designed to protect teachers who took political stands the community might disagree with". But, over the years, it has become a protective wall for poor performing teachers. Irrespective of how bad a teacher is, if he or she has Tenure, trying to fire him or her could result in a big court case that could cost the unimaginable in terms of time, money and other resources.
In most cases, building a case for dismissing a teacher could be so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don't make the effort except in the most egregious cases. And, even when teachers are fired, the vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse, other immoral or illegal behavior, insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as showing up on time. There are hardly any known instances where a teacher was fired for the sole reason of being incompetent in the classroom.
A few years ago in the UK, the General Teaching Council’s chief executive Keith Bartley said there could be as many as 17,000 ‘substandard’ teachers among the 500,000 registered teachers in the UK. Yet, after making this affirmation, which a lot people agree is true, there was no attempt to fire any of them.
In some countries, Teachers' Union is the obstacle in firing a teacher who is, in the very least, mediocre in his or her job.
It should be pointed out that sometimes, the problem of incompetent teachers goes far deeper than a flawed regulatory structure or self-interested unions. It also involved the education sector's implacable desire to protect not just poorly performing employees but an entire way of thinking about education itself.
Looking back on my years as a student, I still remember my teachers. Both the really good ones and the really crappy ones. I bet you do too. We all tend to remember the extremes, and we all tend to be moulded by these extremes.
Our lives and career choices are usually mostly influenced by the people who directly impacted on us and inspired us in different ways.
My high school principal was an amazing woman who taught me resilience and determination and self preservation. And, when I decided to get involved in education, she was the example I remembered and the role model I wanted to impress. She still is.
In most cases, building a case for dismissing a teacher could be so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don't make the effort except in the most egregious cases. And, even when teachers are fired, the vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse, other immoral or illegal behavior, insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as showing up on time. There are hardly any known instances where a teacher was fired for the sole reason of being incompetent in the classroom.
A few years ago in the UK, the General Teaching Council’s chief executive Keith Bartley said there could be as many as 17,000 ‘substandard’ teachers among the 500,000 registered teachers in the UK. Yet, after making this affirmation, which a lot people agree is true, there was no attempt to fire any of them.
In some countries, Teachers' Union is the obstacle in firing a teacher who is, in the very least, mediocre in his or her job.
It should be pointed out that sometimes, the problem of incompetent teachers goes far deeper than a flawed regulatory structure or self-interested unions. It also involved the education sector's implacable desire to protect not just poorly performing employees but an entire way of thinking about education itself.
Looking back on my years as a student, I still remember my teachers. Both the really good ones and the really crappy ones. I bet you do too. We all tend to remember the extremes, and we all tend to be moulded by these extremes.
Our lives and career choices are usually mostly influenced by the people who directly impacted on us and inspired us in different ways.
My high school principal was an amazing woman who taught me resilience and determination and self preservation. And, when I decided to get involved in education, she was the example I remembered and the role model I wanted to impress. She still is.
My Physics teacher on the other hand, made me doubt myself on more than one occasion. She was crappy at her job and she made sure she blamed her students or the school for her ineptitude. Needless to say, I hated Physics and (even though, I was good at all the other science subjects), I chose not to pursue a career in Medicine like many people thought I would, and to this day, some people in my family still blame my Physics teacher for this.
I am proud of what I have achieved and where my life is headed, but there are times when I have wondered about all the bad teachers I have encountered and how their actions or lack of them might have affected my choices.
Working as an instructional coach, I have also come across lots of teachers, some of them great educators and some of them downright terrible at their jobs. And, I wonder why they are still teaching.
It is true that there are no fixed parameters to gauge how good or bad a teacher is. I know that there are many variables and teaching usually occurs in complex environments and most times teaching quality itself is affected by contextual factors.But, when a learner is stuck with an uninspired teacher who hates his or her job, everyone loses, especially the learner. A kid who in his most mouldable and impressionable years, encounters a really bad teacher is set on difficult course. It has been observed that about 6 percent of students of ineffective teachers actually see their abilities drop. Learners get so turned off by a particular teacher and begin hating a subject so much that they actually will score lower on tests than at the beginning of the year.
The effect of a bad teacher on a student would shock you. One expert testified in a court that a single year in a classroom with a bad teacher costs pupils $1.4 million in lifetime earnings per classroom, as could be seen in this study. And, it doesn't end there, research has found that if a student has an ineffective teacher, a learning deficit can almost always be measured four years later – even if they have had several highly effective teachers afterwards,” said June Rivers, an education researcher at the software firm SAS.
Bristol University professor Simon Burgess, who has researched the impact of bad teachers on pupil performance, says that if all the poor teachers were replaced by even just average ones achievement per pupil would rise by as much as half a grade.
Learners may not be exposed to physical threat from ineffective teachers, but their entire life chances are certainly imperilled by them.
And, in spite of all the evidences of the effects of incompetence of educators on the learner, there has been reluctance among legislators and lawmakers, school administrators and union officials to hold underperforming teachers accountable.
So, we are stuck with bad teachers.
Why do we still put up with and make excuses for them?
Why is it that instead of removing them from the profession, dud teachers are merely being recycled or being transferred to alternative schools which means that other unfortunate children will get a lousy education.
Why can't we just fire the bad teachers and give the opportunity to someone else who will do a better job.
I am an optimist and I strongly believe in the power of second chances, even third ones. I am also an ardent supporter of continuous professional and personal development, (I am a Coach after all), but when a teacher is bad at his job, it shows.
I think it is high time professional educators are left to design educational policy, measure its effectiveness, and make the necessary changes. Now, if the person fails to seek ways to do things better and does not take any definite measure to correct lapses in practice, I am of the opinion that they should go, they just might excel in another profession.
Please, join the debate. Tell us what you think and share your experiences...
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