What Can Be Done To Help Stop Incompetent Teaching?

Question

There are growing concerns within our educational system where one must question. How competant are our teachers in the school systems? Do you think that the problem with incompetant teaching stems more from:

1.) Ineptness in subject matter
2.) Lack of personality
3.) Student Favoritsm
4.) Seniority
5.) Burn Out

The growing trend that I observed in my school district was that many teachers were often rewarded on the basis of seniority. The more years that you put into the system, the greater likelyhood that your school will keep you on the faculty. But how knowledgable are the teachers who have been on the payroll for 20-30 years at a high school or college? Why is it that college science professors all look to be about 80 years old and like to create exams that are almost impossible for students to pass? I think students should have the right to use teacher evaluation forms and that teachers should be given competancy tests to see how well they know their stuff.

Answer 1

Oh Boy I am sort of glad you brought this up. I know how difficult teaching is but I still do not forget how tough teachers can be.
I have 5 children and mainly I do not listen to the excuses from them. When I hear this on a daily bases it is very upsetting
"I couldnt go to the nurse (my son has migraines) because my teacher yelled at me to sit down."
"I couldnt eat lunch today because my teacher wouldnt let me go get my lunch ticket."
I do think they play fovorites but at the same time my kids are very aware of the teachers that make a difference. For instance the one who stays twice a week to help my child with Math. Or the teacher who makes a phone call just to let me know how my son is doing. There are still good teachers out there. Sometimes it just took ME to make a difference by letting the teacher know (respectfully) how I feel.

Answer 2

First, you have to have consensus on what "competency" is, then design an evaluation system to test this competency. As with any profession, competency various from individual to individual, with incompetency being an aribitrary line drawn along the spectrum, much like the evaluation of students. Where does the problem originate?

1) Ineptness in subject matter; this would be an administrative issue, the administrator is the one who hires the teacher and determines the subject they teach. How competent are the administrators? How are they evaluated?

2) Lack of personality; doesn't exist. Everyone has personality. Do you mean lack of charm? or appeal? Different teachers connect with different students on different levels. How do you propose evaluating "personality" objectively? Should teachers be required to entertain students?

3) Student favoritism; it happens. Just as students have favorite teachers. Teachers have favorite students. As long as each student is evaluated fairly with the same criterium, I don't think there is much that can or should be done about this.

4) Seniority; What makes an older teacher less qualified? You have to support your implication that young=more qualified. Experience has a place in all professions, including teaching.

5) Burn out: How do you measure this? It is easy to see why teachers would burn out if you consider that most teachers spend several hours of each day beyond their work day planning lessons, grading papers, dealing with parents on behavior issues, faculty meetings ... etc., then throw in overcrowded classrooms, apathetic students who fail to turn in homework, student behaving poorly.

Again, you fail to support your implication that teachers with seniority are not worthy of the reward and discount the significance experience (with continued update of their curriculum) can play in improving teacher competence. College is a different subject altogether. By college, the student should be fully responsible for their own education. The failure of student to pass exams should rest squarely on their shoulders. Evaluations of the teachers by students could become popularity contest, and nothing is more popular with many students than to receive a high mark for the least amount of work. Now, if you throw in competency tests on top of the issues in burn out without making time concession in the form of sabbaticals or such, it would only take away precious time from lesson plans and grading, lowering the quality of education in general.

Although I agree that competency is a relevant and important issue in education and should be addressed, one should not presume that it will address all the shortcomings of our education system. Evaluation and competency tests would have to be examined, meaning that someone would have to be in charge of examining and interpreting the results; who would this be? How do we measure their competence? This would also require hiring new personnel or paying a consultant, which requires more money.

Answer 3

First, we have to agree on a definition for what is a 'competant 'vs an 'incompetant' teacher. You have suggested a list of underlying factors which make sense - but is it complete. For example, what about poor government funding. Schools are expected to do more and more with less and less resources. So to your list we could add more factors such as 'funding' and what about 'morale of teaching staff' ? A serious study is required here so that we can measure, reliably and accurately, what indeed these factors are and how we can address them.

I agree with you when you say that teachers should undergo evaluation. However, this evaluation should be fair and constructive. Teachers should be evaluated by their peers - i.e. other teachers, (i.e. senior and well qualified to do that job.) But evaluation on it's own is meaningless unless it is the first step to professional development. Reliable and accurate measures of 'teacher performance' should be constructed. Teachers would be expected and be given the opportunity to improve on areas of 'low performance'. Tenure, salary and advancement would be based on results of this professional development.

I believe that students also should be allowed feedback because they are as much part of the system as the teachers. But again we have to be careful what we are measuring. For example, the unpopularity of a teacher does not necessarily mean that teacher is incompetant, For example, one teacher may be popular because they never set homework and have low work expectations from their students- a popular teacher but a poor one.

You raised a very good question. I can only hope that the same sense of responsibility could be shown by some educational authorities.

Answer 4

I think the key to good teaching is not necessarily knowledge of the subject matter. The core issue is how to present information, model and shape skills, and sequence tasks. If we are going to test teachers on anything, it should be on teaching methods and theories of sequencing and the like.

Most teachers know the subject matter. They lack methods of instruction. Or, they have no pedagogical theory that serves as a guide. They simply piece lessons together in a haphazard way.

One of my biggest complaints as a student was how arbitrary the lessons felt, how disjointed it all seemed, and how my teachers did not synthesize the totality of the information that they simply dumped on us. Teachers need to impose and provide a paradigm or "umbrella" over a body of knowledge so students can see the "whole picture." This allows information to be digested and integrated into memory--as new information and new learning is added (hopefully, systematically) with each lesson. The subject matter doesn't matter.

In the end, it is a bit political. I am a teacher too, and I see many of my colleagues who simply go through the motions or who don't really push themselves to improve. The older teachers get very comfortable and complacent. They hardly have any new ideas about teaching. To do something new would require more effect than they want to give.

Answer 5

Well, I agree with you completely. The school system is winding down in its ability to provide highly competent teachers and to insure that they stay in peak form.

Unfortunately, teachers belong to a teacher's union, which negotiates the contracts by which the teachers work. The union is not concerned at all about the quality of education students receive. The unions are ONLY concerned with benefits and those things which have a direct impact on teachers. To try to untangle the spider web of work rules and rules that protect the incompetent in order to change the system is a task so huge as to be almost insurmountable. The teacher's union is entrenched in all aspects of school life. Most union rules all deal with seniority. It is a shame and tragedy that within the US we have allowed this to happen. Our children are suffering, the nation is suffering, and the world is suffering because we have not stopped this nonsense before it became legally binding.

To compound this, you have the situation where laws have been passed at the federal and state and local levels that prohibit teachers from taking charge of their classroom without the chance of significant negative results for the individual teacher. As a result, teacher burnout is occurring in many core schools because of hard-to-serve students who challenge the teacher at every step of the way, who are openly defiant, who curse and threaten and insult the teachers. They disrupt the classes and influence others to misbehave also. How long can you live in fear or take the inordinate pressure heaped upon you by those who act like hoodlums.

If you want to solve the situation, you have to deal first with the union rules, and then with the laws. Give the principal the right to fire those teachers who are unsatisfactory. Give the principal and the good teachers back the right to enforce their rules. Give them support to provide a quality education without the fear of being hurt or hounded by the hoodlums.

And of course, if you untangle the knots further, you find yourself pointing directly at the family. It has fallen apart compared to what it once was. Children have children, there are few role models in the household, boyfriends pass through every week, drugs, alcohol, abuse, and everything that is foul and bad about society is rampant. And the products of these families… children… are sent to school and the teachers are instructed to babysit them and even if these children cannot read or write, they are expected to pass them along to the next class or grade. What a mess… what a mess.

Answer 6

I am a sign language interpreter and I work in the school system and all of your answers are correct...but they are all wrong too!

I have a different insight because I am constantly working in different classrooms and have the oppertunity to silently observe teachers in action with the added fact that I am not biased. I am not a student that is being treated unfairly nor am I another teacher that feels similarly to the one I am working with!

I want to start by stating that 90+% of the teachers that I have worked with are awesome. They truely care about the students! They have thier off days but all in all the students learn and they are appreciated!

That being said...burn out is a biggie! I have worked with 2 teachers that are just angry! Let's face it kids are a mess these days, and that starts at home! When you have a class of 1st graders that do things like throw shoes at you, never turn in their homework, get in fights, refuse to work in class......you loose hope! You feel like you are working for nothing! Add on to that parents that do not take responsibility for the children and you have a big mess! Now if that is not enough...in my area teachers make 20,000 less than 55% of the population! That means they can recieve HUD housing!!!

Seniority...contributes to more burnout!

Student favoritism...ok I am going to be real on this one! We all have it and anyone who argues with me is lying!!! We are human! We are going to like those that work hard, are not pains in the but, do not complain constantly, have nice parents, are clean and do not smell, are respectful and obiedient!

As for #1and 2 on you list, I have not experienced these but it is possible! I have had a college professor that although brilliant in her subject matter....she just could not teach! However as adults we must learn, in spite of that!

I have departed my soapbox!

Answer 7

I agree. I think there should be more money dedicated to professional development in school districts as well, and that teachers should be required to take a certain amount of classes a year. That's the only way to keep them fresh, current and motivated. I also believe in encouraging successful teachers with financial incentives. In most states teachers need to take basic competency tests in order to be certified in the first place. Finally, more pressure should be put on administrators to actually do something about bad or mediocre teachers. If the administrators have nothing to share or offer teachers, then they aren't really good leaders. Many of them spent little time in the classroom, or hated it so much that they wanted out so they have little expertise to offer their teachers. Poor leadership really stunts growth as well.

Answer 8

There is usually so much unfair criticism of teachers because the average public school student is a lazy, uninterested, anti-intellectual person. How did he or she get that way? From the society that we live in. We believe, in America, unlike in other countries, that education is not important for its own sake; it is important only to get a job. It is important to find someone to blame for our own failures. Who is first in line to receive the blame? The teacher, of course. From what I have read in some of the answers, if the teacher does not make math interesting, he should be fired and not allowed to belong to his union, and not be granted tenure. Anyone who aspires to be a teacher in this "whipping boy" society needs his head examined. Do you suppose that this situation attracts "the best and the brightest"? Why should math be interesting? Who said that any learning should be easy and fun? When you go to work, is work always interesting and fun? Much of learning is pure drudgery. Learning a foreign language takes almost a lifetime; why should students and parents expect that to be easy and attainable in one hour a day, with 35 in a classroom, with constant classroom interruptions, such as the football team being excused to go to a game, or student discipline problems, which the administration hardly ever seems to punish because of the permissive law in this country. The school system in the U.S. is tied to politics. The electorate elects board members who are politicians, many of whom are aspiring to higher office. They tell the school administrators how to run the schools according to what anti-intellectual parents want. Administrators and teachers have no choice but to run the school and the classes that way. That is not always the best way to cause learning. The school is bogged down with fun activities: sports rallies; extra-curricular clubs; even before class, prayer at the flag pole. How can students come to a class, in a frame of mind to learn and to actively do work, in the face of all these distractions, knowing that most of society blames teachers, yet does not hold the learner responsible to do his part? In other countries, students are sent to school, taught by their parents and society to respect the teachers and the school authorities. That is not the case in what USED TO BE the greatest country in the world. We have changed that because we now have become the most uneducated country in the civilized world, caused by our attitude. There is always a price to pay.

Answer 9

It is very easy to be a bad teacher.
It is very difficult to be a good teacher.

I think that the sheer number of teachers required might be more than the number of people who have the combination of energy, personality, knowledge, and "It" (whatever "It" is) to be great teachers.

In the meantime, the best solution to increasing the number of great teachers is to raise the status of teachers, so that more people with the potential to be great teachers will choose to devote themselves to that purpose. As long as the conventional wisdom is that a person is "just" a teacher, many potentially great teachers will choose not to pursue the profession. Money is part of that status, but it will take much more than increased pay to change the status of the teaching profession. What those things are exactly, and how we achieve them, I wish I knew.

Answer 10

Mostly because these are the people that have been willing to devote themselves to furthering their education. (without complaining how hard it is, if it were easy we could all do it)

They could easily be working on degrees until they are forty. People have to work to pay for school, you know. So they work at what they are educated in.

Are you 18 or what?? Wait till you actually get through school and become and adult an you will understand life.

College Professors generally are not going to be 80. Having to deal with students like you they would be DEAD BY THAT AGE.

STOP COMPLAINING AND DO YOUR ASSIGNMENTS.