Sometimes firing bad teachers is a bad plan

News Flash, good teachers are better than bad teachers,

This is the latest making the rounds and it comes from a few economists at Harvard and Columbia and inexplicably it is garnering more than a duh from people including the editors at the Times Union. Lets ignore that there are lots of problems with the methodology of the study (different tests, different eras, the boom of the nineties, the recent resection, only third and eighth grade math and language teachers included in the study, they often used extrapolated, data not actual data) the message of the study is a dangerous one and that’s to fire bad teachers sooner than later, and where that might initially sound good, the truth is the notion is fraught with peril, especialy when good or bad is determined by a test.

First year teachers where enthusiastic and eager often fall on the low end of effectiveness, no veteran teacher thinks they were a better teacher when they first started. If we go on a firing spree all we will have is a few veterans who somehow make it through, a couple wunderkind kids and a constant turnover of young teachers and that’s bad for education. Teachers need to grow, and develop if we want them to reach their potential.

Furthermore once you get past the early grades teaching is a team game and it is impossible to blame or credit just one individual teacher with a kid’s success or failure even if they are the math or English teacher, well it should be impossible anyways.

Also what makes a good teacher? Somebody that drills to the test and gets a few percentage points more, or somebody that connects and inspires and teaches kids how to think and ask questions. Who is more important the teacher that might average a few more points or the teacher that makes school worth going to be cause they give their time mentoring and running clubs?

In addition since all the measurements are value added, this means mistakes will be made and one of the authors, Professor Chetty as much as admits it when he told the New York Times, “Of course there are going to be mistakes — teachers who get fired who do not deserve to get fired.” Wouldn’t you hate to be that great teacher who was fired? What is an acceptable amount of mistakes?

Teaching is also a coalition of the willing. A few years ago before the economic downturn Florida was recruiting in India, Canada and in the business world because it couldn’t find enough teachers. Times have changed and there are plenty of applicants now but what is going to happen when the economy turns around? The Florida legislature has severely damaged the teaching profession with its anti-teacher/privatization measures and people don’t become teachers just so they can teach to the test.

The study says replacing a poor teacher with an average one would raise a single classroom’s lifetime earnings by about $266,000, (it says classroom not individual student) but let’s break that down. In Jacksonville that would be about 25 kids, 266 thousand divided by 25 is 10,640, divided by 45 years of employment is 236 additonal bucks a year. I know every little bit helps but are these pennies daily worth the soul of education? This to me seems like another example of figures lie and liars figure.

When we break education down to just a test we lose so much more than we gain.

So yes good teachers are better than average teachers and average teachers are better than bad ones but teaching overall is a lot more complicated and nuanced than pay the best, fire the rest. If society listened to teachers, not economists more people would know that.

Speaking of studies, a study by the Albert Shanker Institute came to the conclusion that money does matter when determining education outcomes (http://www.shankerinstitute.org/publications/does-money-matter/), I hope the Times Union adds that one to its editorial page in the upcoming days.