WAB: Why not evaluate teachers individually?
It was suggested by Mrs. Murrey that instead of voting on tenure for teachers as a group, they should be considered and voted on individually. This was met with much resistance from Mr. Jackson and was defeated by a six to one vote, after he spoke against it. But why? Why would evaluating teachers individually be such a threat? -- Allen Barrett
posted by J. Kendrick McPeters | 11:05 PM
8 Comments:
I can't believe I'm doing this, since I was the person who posted a few weeks ago that I mostly just read this thing to get a kick out of everyone arguing in the comments section. However, I think I might have an answer to your question.
I'm a former Giles County High School student and while I attended GCHS many things were incredibly obvious to me and to others. For one, people just aren't clamoring to teach in Giles County -or Tennessee in general. Therefore, they take what they can get. If they start having to hold teachers accountable for *gasp* not teaching and those teachers are then fired, who will take the jobs? Unless they find a way to offer considerable pay increases, there's just not going to be an influx of job applications.
So WHY may Jackson be afraid of holding teachers accountable when they *should* be doing an alright job. I don't know if you ever attended GCHS or if you have children who do or have, but a great many of those teachers are sub par at best. Do the words "coach class" mean anything to you? In four years of high school and four years of math, I had one teacher who really attempted to control the classroom and teach her subject. In my second year of math (geometry) the teacher was one who would let everyone earn homework passes so that we could get out of doing assignments (and presumably so that she wouldn't have to grade them). Therefore, she would give us tests with questions about herself (where she went to college, children's names, etc.)and based on the number of answers we got right, those were the homework passes we got. I honestly wish now that I'd just done the work. I might know where she went to college, but now that I'm in college I know next to nothing about geometry. Other clases, one foreign language class in particular, has been a joke for years. I have no idea if the teacher is still there, but everyone knew that to take that class was to not have to learn a foreign language, but to instead have a glorified study hall that you were graded for.
Of course not all the teachers were so flawed. The English and History departments in particular had teachers who were incredibly dedicated and did their best not to let anyone get away with any crap. We actually learned and they made sure that class was interesting. It wasn't always easy (hello, Ms. Childers, if you're out there)but we learned.
So why might Mr. Jackson not want the teachers evaluated individually? Duh. He it would expose everyone to how truly rotten so many of them are as teachers and then they'd have to be fired and again, there's not a rush to teach here. I'm not saying they're not good people -and a lot of them really are great people. It's just that it's blatantly obvious who's there just to pick up a paycheck.
I really don't have any sort of agenda in this, and I don't want to offend anyone -the only name I mentioned was Jackson's since he's in the original post. I just wanted to get my viewpoint, as a former student, across. There's a lot more I could go on about, but people are probably already tired from reading the above as it is...
I thought ALL teachers were evaluated individually in Giles County? Is that no longer the case? I am certain that it used to be. A teacher gained tenure and continued to hold a teaching position based solely on his or her own merits.
My main reason for objecting to give tenure was so many of our educators have retired from Ala. school systems. After 25 years they can come to Giles or any other county in TN and retire again in 5 years with 30 years experience. I have had numerous people come to me and say they wish they could get a job back in Giles County, but can't find a job. This being the case I just wanted to let the non-tenured out-of-state teachers reapply to give a local a chance to come back. So many of the teachers from ALA. are friends of the high school principal and Jackson.
Another reason is to let teachers be able to transfer into other positions if they one comes available that a tenured teahcer would like to have.
There were soon to be teachers there that night that thanked me for wanting to hold a place for OUR OWN to come back to.
Bev Murrey
Parade on Beverly!
Bev, you can't retire in Tennessee with your Alabama experience. The only thing your Alabama experience counts for is your pay scale. You have to have another 30 in Tennessee to get full Tennessee retirement. Not too many people are going to put in 25 AL and 30 Tennessee. You get vested in retirement after 5 years but the years are only based on your time in Tennessee.
The answer is obvious - We can't have individuals singled out just because they do a better job. We can't give anyone an incentive for saving money. The village would "feel uncomfortable" because someone would get "left behind". What would happen if a teacher got a promotion and raise for "cutting waste"? Ahhh, but who would be left to give the raise when the most obvious fat is trimmed? Doesn't matter, just write a check! It would be good to see the NEA, TEA, ACLU, & CCCP busy defending their indefensible lives instead of raising taxes!
This is a right to work state. A "manager" should write a notice and offer a 10% reward of first year savings to any employee who can eliminate waste, unnecessary work (mountains of paper), eliminate jobs, - whatever, based on out of pocket $ saved. Stop giving raises to those who interfere. Talk about political pressure - it would take a complete imbicile openly fight it! Correction - there is layer of them that covers the abundance of intelligent teachers who would find themselves doing productive things they couldn't possibly imagine today! Why not? ans: It wouldn't be corruptable.
Is it because we are a village of 1?
Proof positive as a hiring condition is giving them tests from each chapter of the teachers editions that they will be using.
Post a Comment
<< Home