OUR VIEW: Better standards are needed for teachers, but how?

Editorials

December 16, 2009

Anonymous The Tonawanda News Wed Dec 16, 2009, 12:45 AM EST

The Board of Regents has a proposal on the table that would encourage school reform and earn grants from the federal government. Because of the higher standards to which the proposal would hold teachers, the state teachers union and Legislature have balked at the plan.

The plan calls for teacher performance to be determined by student performance.

We believe higher standards for teachers are necessary, and first and foremost, tenure needs to be investigated, but we don’t think it should be tied to student performance.

Teachers can make a difference. They can turn students around in and out of the classroom. We all have heard great success stories of students doing a 180 because of a great teacher.

But on the flip side are students who will never be good or score well on tests. Now we’re saying that their teacher should be judged on that student’s actions, or inaction?

Plus, the composition of a teacher’s class changes from year to year. Some years, a teacher will say they have a really good class; others, not so much. That depends on the quality of the student and their willingness to learn.

You could have a really good teacher, who is dedicated in every sense of the word, with a really bad class that just doesn’t care.

Should that teacher lose his or her job because of those students?

Teaching is a profession in which it’s difficult to gauge performance when there are so many variables.

Plus, if a policy was set in motion that said teachers will be judged on the performance of their students, no one would take jobs in under-performing districts.

We also think tenure shouldn’t be granted after such a short time. Three years seems quick for job security. No other business or profession offers such guarantees.

Maybe tenure shouldn’t exist at all. It creates complacency and breeds teachers who get into the profession for all the wrong reasons.

Teachers should be held to a very high standard, no doubt about it. They should be judged on their performance in hybrid fashion — melding student performance, observation, dedication, participation and anything tangible that shows the work a teacher is or isn’t putting in.

If it’s all there, then there should be no reason to let that teacher go, tenure or not.

Let performance speak for itself and that should be the only standard and job security any teacher should need.

Text Only

Editorials

Give chicken plan free range
May 3, 2012
Scale back Canal Fest hours
A decision Tuesday by the Tonawanda Common Council to require daily Canal Fest operations on the south side of the canal to conclude by 10 p.m., rather than 11, apparently isn’t sitting well with Canal Fest organizers, who have yet to agree to the change.

April 5, 2012
OUR VIEW: Kudos to Slaughter on STOCK Act
Rep. Louise Slaughter and a small band of colleagues in the House of Representatives deserve praise for their determination in putting a stop to a long-standing dirty secret in politics — that members of Congress have been making a boatload of cash by parlaying their official knowledge of the nation’s affairs into private fortunes on the stock market.

March 28, 2012
OUR VIEW: Time to fundamentally rethink education
In the three school districts primarily composing the Tonawandas we are seeing, in varying degrees, the beginning of the end of education here as we know it.

March 21, 2012
OUR VIEW: Super job by Bills on signing Williams
More than the Xs and Os of a football playbook, the Mario Williams signing is a generation-in-the-waiting signal that this franchise is finally on the right track.

March 17, 2012
OUR VIEW: WNY must build on success at ECC
In reading Sunday’s cover story by reporter Jill Keppeler, readers probably shared our shock in the success story that is the Erie Community College industrial technology program.

March 6, 2012
OUR VIEW: ‘Mailing it in’ is not good enough
The U.S. Postal Service has been mailing it in for years.

March 1, 2012
KEPPELER: Daydream believer
I felt sorry for Whitney Houston. But this week, the world lost two people whose departure makes me truly nostalgic.

March 1, 2012 1 Photo
OUR VIEW: Slisz v. Beyer exposes flaws in election system
Though voters in the city who have waited for nearly four months to find out who won might find this welcome news, the problems with our election system this razor-thin race uncovered are anything but comforting.

February 25, 2012
OUR VIEW: Officials need to take walk
The tumult and excitement over approving Nik Wallenda’s request to walk across the Niagara Gorge has at times been deafening.

February 23, 2012
More Editorials Headlines

Editorials

Search Results

OUR VIEW: Better standards are needed for teachers, but how?

Site Map

Contact Us