High Standard School

We recently read an article in class about the superintendent of a school in Washington DC. Her plan is totally revamp the system by getting rid of the ineffective teachers. Filtering them out, essentially. Then the teachers who are doing extremely well will be offered 6 digit salaries if they give up their union rights. Seems like a good idea.

I agree, there are a ton of teachers that are ineffective and don't exactly know what they're doing. I think there's a better way to handle it than putting a bunch of people out of a job. I've noticed that in all my classes there are a large number of students learning to be teachers that I know will be very effective. Maybe this is one of the good things about NCLB, it produces a higher level of teachers.

Offering teachers a higher salary for the loss of union rights, in my opinion, is rediculous. If I was looking for a good salary, I wouldn't be a teacher so that's not much of an incentive. I want to be a teacher because I want to do what I love and hopefully inspire that in my students. I also don't want at risk of losing my job because I do one thing the superintendent doesn't like. I'd rather have the superintendent talk to me about I could do differently and then I can change.

One solution could be to have more guidance after student teaching and into the first few year of teaching in the real world. Most beginning teachers freak out because they don't have a mentor anymore and don't know who to go to or have anyone to go to for help. If there was more guidance, beginning teachers would have someone to go to with their questions and problems and thus, become better teachers.