I must tell this story (while we are talking about education reform)

There was a teacher in my high school who I was fortunate enough not to ever have who was a complete incompetent boob. He sometimes came to school drunk, failed to show up for work at all on many more occasions, rarely prepared lessons, verbally abused students and basically the kids didn't learn much of anything on his watch. He was encouraged to consider retiring by the Administration, but he blew them off. As a tenured teacher with 25 years of experience, he was rather well paid with good benefits, and didn't want to give that up. Now I support teacher tenure and understand why it is necessary, but this was just flagrant abuse of the system.

My junior year the school started the process to dismiss him, and it got bogged down in a thick muck of red tape, appeals, periods of discovery, hearings, meetings and general paper pushing. It was a full three years before he was actually fired (I kept on following the case through friends of mine after I left for college). He spent another year filing subsequent appeals and lawsuits that went nowhere. The union made excuses for him at every step of the process. Amazing how intensely he fought to keep his job. Had he invested that kind of intensity on actually teaching, then things would have been different.

and the system could have dealt with it... transfer the guy away from kids

That is what I have at times seen... and also some school systems have mandatory retirement ages

I mean, you work the same job for 25 years and it often losses its challenge, while at the same time you become less and less willing to take risks, and more and more dependent on the income from the job that is boring you to tears. I've seen it happen, and I can feel the temptation in my own career. Certainly, in my fifties, I'm not as active a scholar as I once was, although I still keep my mind engaged, thankfully.

But I've seen folks like the teacher you described. That's a sad situation for everyone concerned.

Simply because teaching, unlike a lot of other professions, is vastly more populated with well-meaning, very hard-working people as opposed to not. Malign examples such as yours are the extreme minority in the case of teaching - thankfully.

My gripe is simply that teachers aren't bright.

There are plenty of other problems also crying out for solution, both on the parental side and on the government side. But on the teacher side, their collective lack of intellect is helping kill that of America's kids.

The fact that this doesn't bother teachers exacerbates things, as well.

Neither are the students. :eyes:

There goes your theory! LOL

:P

:eyes:

and bad teachers should get fired. dont know what standard you are going to use though.

:sarcasm:

Get real, dude.