I’ve got a guess about who would lose Survivor if the teachers were the ones voting at my school, and as much as part of me wants the teacher to leave, I’m not sure it helps the students to increase turnover. (Between 27 and 45 percent of our core teachers will not be returning next year.)

Though if students included were included in the vote I might be just as likely on the chopping board. (The difficulty of being the teacher who most enforces standards in the school. I’m mean enough to grade on what you know. The other teacher makes grades up based on what he thinks the students have done.)

Regardless, I do wish there were more of the atmosphere Jack Welch describes at my school. Make me feel loved or help me be better.

I just think that if we’re only going after teachers who are “going through the motions” then having all those people vote is overkill. Administrators can identify them and should be able to fire them. That’s why admins make the big bucks. To carry out the Survivor analogy, not all the people voted off that show were the “weakest link.” Remember, that show was a game. People voted off competitors. This could be an unintended consequence.

The people who are very good at politics are the survivors.

Office politics on steroids doesn’t sound like it would be a very supportive place to work for the people you want to stay. I would want my staff working their tails off on their subject and delivery, not building alliances.

As to the Survivor method of weeding out the “bad” teachers – while I have definitely wanted to vote people off the island over the years I have also had enough years of association work to know that administrators DO have ways of terminating ineffective teachers if they are willing to do the legwork.

What’s worse is that many of them are at the top of the pay scale, so they’re a drag on the resources and responsiveness of a school, too!

Here’s where I’m a bit concerned, though: Does this proposal make the faulty assumption that there is an inexhaustible supply of great teachers to fill the places of the bottom 10 percent?

Would “the replacements” automatically be better than those that we can?

In my suburban school in a vibrant community outside Raleigh, the answer’s probably yes. In the poor, rural Eastern part of our state—-places where there are only a handful of schools and teachers to begin with—-I’m doubtful.

Then again, is holding on to incompetence because we’re afraid of hiring more incompetence a responsible decision?

This one’s got my mind brewing…
Bill

Maybe the key is to build community and then develop better programs to help struggling teachers improve, before they find themselves on the chopping block.

Which is more important: a strong sense of community or a strong group of qualified educators?

In the business world, 360 degree feedback for employee evaluations is common. Customer feedback surveys are even more common. Yet in K-12 schools, we never ask the students what they think of their teachers. Are we too afraid to hear what kids and parents might really think?