

Confessions of a Bad Teacher - jhull
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/opinion/sunday/confessions-of-a-bad-teacher.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

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_delirium
A key problem of many of the school-reform/accountability/etc. initiatives
lately seems to be that they're cumulative: a new way of assessing teachers or
schools or curricula is added _in addition_ to existing methods, with no real
effort to make sure that they're consistent with each other or mutually
satisfiable. Hence you can get someone who's simultaneously too assertive in
the classroom, not assertive enough, a bad teacher, and a teaching-award
nominee.

Special-ed classes often seem to fit awkwardly into the schemes as well.

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timwoj
My wife just went through a lot of this. She's been teaching for 8 years, the
first 7 of those at one school. A few years ago that school got a new
principal. She went from being one of the top performing teachers based on
evaluations to the bottom of the list. This isn't because she's a bad teacher,
but because she and the principal didn't get along. At the end of last year,
she quit that job and got a new position in a new district. First evaluation
this year? Right back to the top again.

On top of that, the new district has a completely different outlook on how to
deal with parents amongst other things. The old school and district would bend
over backward for parents even if they were completely in the wrong. The new
district will at least try to take an objective view of any issues, including
input from the teacher.

What does that do for a teacher's morale? I know a number of teachers from
that old school who were great teachers, but quit to do other things because
they didn't want to deal with the BS anymore. My wife was nearly one of those,
but she knew that it wasn't her that was the problem.

