

Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task - edw519
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,5765040,full.story

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tokenadult
A remarkable finding of studies of teacher competency

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSD/is_5_52/ai_77196...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSD/is_5_52/ai_77196075/)

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_32_17/ai_7781...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_32_17/ai_77812352/)

is that incompetent teachers are the least likely to resign from their
teaching jobs over time. They may or may not know they are incompetent
teachers, but they can sense that they wouldn't be able to find any better job
at their level of ability elsewhere in the job market. So schools tend to
accumulate a larger percentage of incompetent teachers over time, as competent
teachers seek work in other occupations while incompetent teachers hang on for
dear life. I was fortunate to have some very experienced and very competent
veteran teachers when I was young (in an era when women had fewer employment
opportunities outside schoolteaching, which seems to be an important issue)

<http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/Teacher%20Quality.pdf>

but these days it seems harder than ever to find a teacher who has both high
competence and long experience.

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joetrumpet
Something I find simply disgusting is when I see teacher's unions claiming
they represent the needs of students. I believe this lie is part of what gives
them so much unfounded clout. They represent the desires of teachers: the
needs of students are secondary and subordinate to that, if even a
consideration. The worse the teachers, the more corrupted the union becomes to
defend them.

What I hope people come to realize, especially with articles such as this one
in the news, is this: not only do the desires of teachers rarely align with
the needs of students, they quite often stand in direct opposition. Teacher's
unions are self-seeking entities that are to always be examined with a
cautious eye.

