Word: teacher
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...some much advertised union reforms remain cosmetic. Leaders of both unions have embraced "peer review" of teachers, where a new teacher's performance is judged for an entire year by a "consultant teacher." Peer review also seeks to identify and weed out veteran teachers who aren't performing. Feldman calls it "the best kind of teacher evaluation out there," but others call it a sham, designed to give unions even more control over personnel decisions. A handful of districts, taking their cue from the national union leaders, have successfully instituted peer review. But more often, local unions have ignored...
Union leaders, education experts and even some politicians agree on one thing: teachers' salaries need a big boost to attract and retain high-achieving candidates. (On average, first-year teachers make $25,000 a year.) In response to his state's teacher-testing debacle, Massachusetts senate president Thomas Birmingham last week proposed spending $100 million toward giving top college graduates a $20,000 bonus to lure them into teaching. Senator Kerry too called for "raising teacher salaries and paying [them] like professionals." Given the scope of the teaching crisis and the priority voters make of education, politicians of both parties...
...urging his young nation to refrain "from oppressing the minority," he was talking about "other sects," not other sexes. Shannon Ware, an engineer from St. Louis, Mo., who began life as Craig Ware but now lives as a woman, would grant that much. But since a high school civics teacher inspired her, she has clung to the belief that social change is possible, that America is elastic enough to accommodate all minority groups--even when the minority is as caricatured and misunderstood as hers...
...does it take so long to fire bad teachers? Each state is different, but most award educators lifetime job protection after just three years on the job. Tenure gives teachers faced with termination a host of stalling tactics--principals seeking to dismiss them must usually file several written reports, wait a year for improvement, file additional poor evaluations, appear at a hearing and perhaps even show up in court to defend the firing. In the meantime, the teacher still gets paid, as does a substitute. And of course the district must spend thousands to pay the lawyers. Not surprisingly, very...
...itself, tenure isn't an awful idea. Most judges and university professors have it. Its noble purpose is to protect teachers from being fired unjustly because, say, they won't teach creationism. And teacher unions point out that tenure confers basic due process...