Quote:
Originally Posted by stomachmonkey
Simple question, where do you propose to send the children of the failing school that you have shut down?
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They will most likely be absorbed by the surviving schools which will increase the strain on those schools, require expensive construction/renovations to house them, and result in re-hiring the original teachers to teach them because of the teaching shortage.
Or, perhaps, the failing schools will be cleared out of faculty/staff and the schools will have to hire new teachers. The only question is "from where?" because, again, there is a shortage of qualified teachers.
The reality is that many of the new legislation (NCLB, for example) that requires more and more training/certification is discouraging many people from pursuing careers in education. I'm not trying to say that these laws are inherently bad because I do agree that teachers should know what they are talking about and be experts in their field. Unfortunately, the reality is that many people who are interested in teaching decide that the salaries don't justify amount of money/work needed to become a teacher. I know that for me, were it not for the fact that I really want to teach (and, quite frankly, I'm in a good financial position) I'd have thrown in the towel on becoming a teacher a long time ago.
Of course, I'm not saying that paying us more will solve all of our problems because it won't. I still see issues with bad parenting and unmotivated students, along with "grade inflation" for the sake of passing the problem student on to someone else. But I figure that as long as we're discussing the capitalistic business model approach to teaching, I should throw another spin on it.
BB.