Just the right amount of firing

10-26-2010

Blog by Justin Baeder/Education Week

I'm convinced that we need a little bit of firing in public education. Some principals, teachers, and other educators simply aren't cutting it, and are harming kids as a result. Some of us need to be fired. Not too many - just some. But what role should firing play in improving education, and how should we go about it? Results Now...Or Else. A popular, yet still entirely theoretical, strategy for improving public education in America is to simply make it clear what results people are to achieve, and fire them if they fail to achieve said results. This appears to be the way head coaches in collegiate and professional sports are hired and fired. If the team wins, you stay, and can demand a higher salary. If the team loses, you'd better update your résumé. The current push for value-added assessment data is a clear example - we want to know which educators are effective and which aren't, in order to reward the former and eliminate the latter. But firing - like merit pay - does not address the systemic factors that contribute to low performance, nor even require that anyone identify the individual dimensions of performance that were lacking (to say nothing of the challenges of measuring educator performance meaningfully and fairly). (more…)

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