Approximately 75 percent of the teaching force has tenure. Tenured teachers may not be dismissed for poor performance unless the administration can prove to a hearing officer, a commission on professional competence, or a judge that the teacher is incompetent.
The lack of clear-cut standards, along with the extensive legal protections afforded tenured teachers, means that proving incompetence is a highly problematical, time-consuming, and costly undertaking for school administrators. The most common methods, I discovered, are supervisor ratings and observations, complaints from parents or students, complaints from other teachers, and student test results.
Parental complaints play an extremely important role. Parental complaints also exert pressure on the administrator to deal with the poor performer. Without parent complaints, we leave the teacher alone. Most proposals for school reform assume that teacher incompetence is due to a lack of skill or motivation. But the roots of incompetence are much more complex, my research suggests, than reformers have assumed.
More commonly, unsatisfactory performance stems from other sources as well, such as emotional distress, poor health, marital problems, or inadequate supervision. Under these conditions, improving the performance of an incompetent teacher is a formidable challenge.
It is unlikely that something akin to a miracle drug will ever suffice as a cure for teacher incompetence. In the first stage, the administrator concentrates on trying to salvage the teacher. My analysis of these salvage attempts indicates that they are seldom successful, especially with a veteran teacher.
The teacher rarely becomes anything better than low average. If the teacher fails to demonstrate sufficient improvement during the salvage stage, the administrator begins to concentrate on the next stage: getting rid of the teacher. Teachers without tenure are dismissed; those with tenure are generally induced to resign or to retire early.
In California, for example, temporary teachers may be dismissed at the expiration of their contracts without cause and without due process. Regardless of the termination method used, few tenured teachers are being weeded out of the profession for incompetence in our most populous state--less than 1 percent of the total tenured force in two years. But it can be done--as I found in a case study of a school district that restored public confidence by inducing 20 percent of its teaching staff to leave during a period of declining enrollments and shrinking resources.
These teachers, all tenured, were the weakest ones working in the district. The single most important personnel decision a school district makes is the decision to grant a teacher tenure. The tenure decision is the last opportunity a district has to enforce high performance standards. Once teachers acquire tenure, they have to be unmistakable failures before the district can get rid of them.
Every time a district makes a mistake in granting tenure, it creates scores of problems. Teacher-evaluation systems should be redesigned to reflect the importance of the tenure decision.
Resources--time, energy, people, money--are limited, and districts should allocate these resources where they are likely to receive the greatest return. With nearly one million new teachers expected to enter the profession over the next five years, districts should concentrate their scarce resources on the selection, evaluation, and development of probationary teachers.
Better yet, districts should make it as difficult for teachers to obtain tenure as to lose tenure once it has been granted. By adopting more stringent standards for awarding tenure, districts would be able to retain institutional flexibility in dealing with future fluctuations in enrollments and funding.
He would awaken before the last afternoon bell and order us to remain until it rang. He would fly out of the classroom and out of the school faster than the PT master could. The Headmaster was well aware of it but he was allowed to do this year in and year out as he had a PhD and was reckoned as an asset to the staff roll. Nowadays, society has changed and teaching is arguably the very hardest job to do properly because it is much more than just facing classes or preparing lessons.
Deference and discipline are often too poor to allow teachers to succeed. The reasons for a teacher's incompetence often lie with parents and weak Heads. They should be treated the same way as any incompetent worker in the private sector STOP wasting public money on these people. Oh, and when the unions get up in arms about it tell them to go soak their heads.
I think a more worthwhile question would be: "What should be done about parents who do not bring up their children to be anything other than self-centred, inattentive, disruptive, time-wasting, unteachable little cretins? It is the conduct of the progeny of such parents that seems to me to be the greatest menace to the eductation of well-behaved and diligent children. The small number of inadequate teachers does not help but the effects are probably less significant. As far as I can see most of the fathers in much of the country only speak to their sons about football, and the mothers to the daughters about clothes, hair, make-up and gossip TV.
How we change this anticulture is not clear to me. Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In the public sector, the unions basically decide whether someone is sacked or not. As a teacher, I'm aware that some colleagues are better than others.
I have seen incompetent teachers, but it's VERY rare. You tend to find that people who aren't competent don't like it and therefore leave within years of joining the profession. The PGCE year is difficult and has a very high drop out rate, thus weeding out those who are willing to try.
The NQT year first year of teaching also supports and trains and you have to pass this in a school setting. I've seen people who didn't pass this as well. By the time you're fully qualified, you have a VERY good idea of what is expected of you professionally and personally within the profession.
Anyone deemed incompetent is observed and given feedback. That's very common. I think the current system of trying to support incompetent teachers and keep them in the profession is good. If they're that bad, the end up quitting anyway. Incompetent teachers teachers should be handled in the same way as:- Incompetent politicians, incompetent journalists and incompetent editors, incompetent lawyers, incompetent doctors, incompetent footballers First off all you have to define what makes a competent teacher, you can then have something to judge competence against to deicide if a teacher is incompetent.
One thing is for sure league tables should have nothing to do with it. As a head teacher who has taken a teacher down competency recently At this stage the competency procedure is placed on hold until their return.
A teacher can then go 'sick' on full pay for up to 6 months before going to half pay. If they then return for a full day within the 6 months and then go sick again their salary remains at full pay. Eventually county council personnel departments recommend a 'compromise agreement' to pay them off in order to reduce the serious effects on a school budget. Incompetent teachers should be sacked like any other profession.
Unfortunately in the public sector incompetence seems to be the norm! Is it just to make up the numbers? What is incompetence in teaching anyway? Is it the teachers fault that some children don't want to learn? At am on 04 Jul , scrapthebbc2 wrote: Any bad teachers should be offered training to overcome any problems they may have,if this does not improve them they should not be allowed to continue teaching. Your post has changed my mind.
Whoever taught you English should have been sacked! Your spelling, punctuation AND grammar are shocking. Plus you have no idea of what you're talking about. Before you start slamming public sector jobs, take a look at what educational skills and qualifications your teachers, nurses, doctors, policemen and women have to go through. I'm guessing they can spell better than you can and know where to put a comma and a full stop! However, was it your teacher who was incompetent or did you just not try hard enough?
Teachers can only do so much in the circumstances they find themselves in. Whilst Chris Woodhead has always struck me as an odd parochial little man with a particular axe to grind, I have met teachers who I am surprised manage to find their way to work each morning let alone transfer any skills or knowledge to people's children.
They should be shipped out to the colonies and forced to eat small bits of the rocks they have to break all day long. In searing heat. And in the nack. At am on 04 Jul , SJF wrote: Anyone in any other job would if they was incompetent be sacked, so why doesn't it happen in schools and other civil service jobs?
BA Management? Council officials? Wiser than you? The list is endless. What is an incompetent teacher? A teacher who cannot teach effectively in a class with rowdy students is NOT incompetent in my opinion. I have always thought that manners are instilled at home, and teachers teach what parents cannot not do not have time for. You may disagree with me. Then, OK, sack all those teachers who are incompetent in your book.
But with teaching salaries and working conditions and disdain attached to the profession from the rest of the society, don't expect to find many "competent" people. For a teacher to be struck off usually requires a serious disciplinary breach. That doesn't mean that no other incompetent teachers have stopped teaching - far from it. Every year, teachers are dismissed from their job following capability proceedings.
That doesn't mean they are struck off the GTC, but it does mean they are sacked for incompetence, and would be extremely unlikely to get another teaching job. Far more numerous are those who quit their jobs - sometimes with a little pressure from above it's easier all round if a teacher quits than has to be sacked - because they know they are not up to it.
Years ago, that's exactly what I did. I jumped before I was pushed, because I knew that a I didn't want to stay, and b even if I did, I would have been sacked. As for Prof Burgess saying " If you took all these people out, stopped them from teaching the children and replaced them even with just average teachers, that would be something like half a grade per pupil ", what an idiot.
If there were enough 'just average' teachers, schools wouldn't employ inadequate ones. The only reason that inadequate teachers get jobs is because schools are desperate particularly in certain subjects and certain parts of the country , and sometimes have to take on teachers who they wouldn't choose to, because it's a choice between a weak teacher or no teacher at all.
The first thing must be to remove an incompetent teacher from the classroom, so that children's education is not compromised. There are probably two broad categories of incompetence. The first is where the teacher is likely to acquire or re-acquire the necessary competence through re-training, and could be guaranteed a training place - though not on full pay.
The second category would be teachers who are considered beyond help through training or do not improve with re-training. For them it should be the sack, I'm afraid - it's a hard world and soon to become harder. It's all very well to call for incompetent teachers to be sacked as so many are doing here, but what about attracting in the good teachers too?
In my view, reducing teacher's job security and making employment fairly competitive should also mean that we pay the best more. A teacher should come into the profession on a low starting salary and provided that they are good at their job, as measured by the appraisal system, they go up the scale in annual increments.
This should go on until they reach a point where they can't achieve the target set for their next level and stop and if the quality drops then their pay should too. Reward success. SJF - teachers are not civil servants. In principle, a good idea, but let's not create more costs, bureaucracy and big-brotherism by hiring outside 'assessors'.
What you're suggesting should surely be the job of the Head teacher. More important than all the bureaucratic bumf that Heads have to deal with - so let's stop asking them to be office managers and give them time to look after teaching standards!
At am on 04 Jul , Mad Max and Satan Dog Paddy wrote: When I was at school in , within the 40 years of the Panorama review, One teacher was a frightening Alcoholic, who used to drink whisky from a Hip flask in the stock room. Seems like your teachers were incompetent as well. They should be sacked, as any other incompetent worker would be. Instead, they are coddled, protected or passed around failing schools like a bad smell.
As part of my job, I provide "structured support" for teachers who are strugging. If this support does not work, most teachers recognise the benefits of "jumping" voluntarily before it goes on record that they were "pushed".
To sack more teachers you would have to get in early,intervening at the first sign of any problem - and how many teachers never had a problem at some point? Kids are one things, their parents are worse. Still worse is the scornful comments for teachers coming from people with half the education a teacher has. And the worst is people telling that teaching is not a real job. This coming from people such as mortgage consultants, cab drivers, insurance salesmen, hairdressers, etc.
Having such a varied i am surprised that teachers can be considered incompetent because if the are rubbish in 1 field then they can quickly be moved to a filed that they excel. I think this really does shine some light on the teaching profession. I am 19, and just going into my second year of University education.
Many times i have had to be schooled by teachers who i know, the class knows, and the senior management knows are incompetent and as a result they are completely walked over by all in sundry throughout their profession. Not only this, but it begs an important question when your teacher is mis-spelling words and you have to put your hand up to correct them.
So often, the teacher's incompetence would be masked by using the children as scapegoats. I had one such case whgere my teacher considered herself a disciplinarian; she had so little respect for the pupils she was teaching that they would play her at her own game and treat her with the same level of respect.
Every lesson she had, she would endure mayhem, and she can't have felt good at the end of the day. I was once called into a meeting with my parents over this, and it is very difficult to say in front of your parents and the head of the department and the teacher in question, that she simply cannot teach.
Come parents evening, tens of parents complained about her. In the end she left, but no doubt to another school after reading this article. This country has a long history of incompetence. I think the problem is that people are too afraid to say to something to someone which may cause offence.
Honesty to others as well as yourself is the only way you can identify any weak areas which ned to be improved, so just sack them and give them a full de briefing on their short comings. The other part of this problem is the ridiculous recruitment process in this country. Common sense has all but left this country.
Ministers are another part of the problem. Government is, and never has been, in touch with what is happening on the front lines of the different departments. If the education system is failing is failing then so is the minister leading that department.
Mp's are just too involved, the teachers should have the biggest say as they are the experts. As for the bankers who ruined the world wide economy?
Banned from ever working in the industry again. I think you will find the private sector is much better a rewarding incompetence than the public sector. I am in the Police Force and we have the same capability procedures for dismissal of incompetent staff as the Education system and as a result dealing with someone who is not performing properly is a complete nightmare.
The whole ethos is to give them chance after chance after chance and even at the end of that dismissal is very unlikely and a 'developmenal move' as it is called is the usual result; just moving the problem elsewhere.
The whole system is a joke and poorly perfomring and incompetent staff are paid good wages out of the tax payers pocket to be carried along with other very hard working, good people would love their job.
This wouldn't happen in the private sector. The process usually takes a couple of years with the end result being just a move. The Police Force, like education, is so scared of tribunals they let poor staff stay in and dictate how they perform rather than getting rid of them and putting good people in their place. Well judging from past practise they should move onwards and upwards until they control all society.
Excuse my bitterness but the literally long haired, sandal wearing unionisters who "taught" me during the early Seventies have done just that! Perhaps the ones who like to critice teachers, call them incompetent etc. I can assure you that far more damage to education results from political dogma and the classroom mayhem that results from it. If you really want to correctly apportion blame to our failing education system, start with the politicians who have removed every vehicle of control from classroom teachers.
Then move on to the parents who have raised their selfish kids to have no respect for others, to have no notion as to what discipline is and to enter class hell bent on making the teacher's life as difficult as possible.
It is no wonder we have "incompetent teachers": the job is approaching undoable. If you think I am wrong, as I said at the start, give it a go. Incidently, Continuous Professional Development, involving regular appraisal and compulsory training has been in place for years. AmericanGirl UK - "Anyone deemed incompetent is observed and given feedback. Be competent or get observed. I think not only are a number of teachers incompetent, but head teacherss and senior management teams are severly lacking: My views Firstly - Teaching is not a profession - evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of teachers fail to conduct themselves in even a reasonably professional manner.
Their qualification involves a certiificate in education - not a set of professional exams. Further evidenced by having no appraisal for teachers even on an annual basis. Further evidenced by the fact as reported in yesterdays BBC news that assistants are teaching classes! Further evidenced by the standards of childrens intellect and employability which are coming through the system. Teachers will routinely comment that it is the system which is wrong but they still, do not attempt to change it.
Professionals do not get paid by the hour unless under temporary contract. In my eyes, Teachers generally, are of as much importance as our Troops, Firemen, Medical staff, Police officers etc. If incompetence is apparent, these 'Teachers' should be offered the option of 'brushing-up' or similar 're-training' - at a cost to themselves.
But of course, we have to wonder if these people were actually 'adequate' - from the start I'm not too conversant with the training of Teachers, but I hope they also have some kind of 'periodical' examinations throughout their career. An incompetent Teacher, has the potential to ruin so many lives - in total ignorance. We can waste all the money we want to improve our Education-system, but without competent Teachers - our Children AND our Country - will continue to decline I have little or no respect for the profession.
I was failed by qualified and unqualified teachers during the whole of my school life, dyslexia wasn't recognised, you were put down as 'thick and stupid in all academic subjects' but I excelled at practical subjects, all sports, sewing and cooking. It was amazing how little praise I got when I won the trophy cups for the school.
Now we have the aid of correcting spelling on the computer my life has been made a lot easier, I will never forget one teacher when I asked her how to spell the word 'physician' was told look it up in the dictionary, when out of frustration, I told her 'if I knew how to spell it I wouldn't need a dictionary' I got a detention and a lines to write saying - I must learn how to use a dictionary - and spent the entire lesson trying to find physician in the Fs.
To cap it all was rewarded with the sarcastic comments 'a very poor attempt, should had done more in the time' - these words will be etched on my memory for ever. Most dismissal cases of tenured teachers involve multiple sources of failure in addition to other legal grounds for dismissal, such as neglect of duty, unbecoming conduct, and other good and just cause.
Dismissal rarely stems from a single egregious error; rather, termination is most often based on a persistent pattern of mistakes and failures. Regardless of the nature of the teacher's failure, the success of a school board that attempts to dismiss a tenured teacher is by no means assured. The frequency with which dismissal decisions are upheld by an impartial third party partly depends on the type of adjudicator--commission on professional competence, court judge, or hearing officer.
In , a California Commission on Professional Competence upheld seven out of nine dismissal cases. Court judges are less supportive, upholding roughly two-thirds of the cases brought before them. Hearing officers render the least favorable decisions, sustaining school board actions in only 37 percent of their judgments. The key to successfully dismissing a teacher is to provide thorough documentation of the teacher's shortcomings.
Principals should put everything in writing: full, detailed records of a teacher's performance; evidence of the specific times and dates of key incidents; and direct, eyewitness reports from outside observers.
A first step is for administrators to adopt and publish reasonable criteria for teacher performance. Not only do these criteria encourage teachers to excel, but failure to meet such criteria may provide a legal basis for dismissal.
The second step is for administrators to develop a process for determining whether a teacher has adequately satisfied the criteria. After defining a teacher's problems according to specific standards of acceptable performance, principals should work with the teacher to establish objectives and strategies for improving the teacher's performance.
Future teaching behavior should be monitored carefully and measured against these objectives using observation, regularly scheduled evaluations, and continuing feedback to the teacher. Success in dismissing incompetent teachers then depends entirely on adequate preparation for hearings and scrupulous respect for due process.
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