sufficient

a brief rant

This is my blog, so occasionally, I get to rant. And you can join me: If you feel like getting really angry, then you should read this article on the "rubber room" from The New Yorker. I listened to an episode of This American Life on the same subject a few years ago. Aside from the day in and day out aspects of teaching in an urban public high school that made me want to pursue teacher reform at a policy level, the level of outrage I felt after listening to that show played a significant part as well.

I was just assigned the article as reading for my teacher policy seminar and from what I remember from This American Life, you should listen to/read both- they offer rather different and together a more rounded perspective on the whole concept of rubber rooms. Both made me spitting mad at the ludicrous difficulty of getting rid of poor teachers.

The article does, however, do an excellent job of delineating the most basic of reasons I would like to take a sledgehammer to both tenure and teachers' unions. This crazy concept that some old men in white wigs put into play a few hundred years ago comes to mind: balance of power, anyone? The list of things related to teacher pay and tenure from this article that just don't make any rational sense are myriad and all go back to that union contract protecting incompetent teachers.

And if this sparks your interest at all, the Widget Effect study the article mentions can provide some good info. Meanwhile, I'm off to scream for a little while in an attempt to ease my ire.

Labels: education, teaching

posted by CP @ 10:32 PM 3 thoughts