Weekly News Archive

September 19 (’04) – September 25 (’04)

Old is Fine – Not Better

Richard White, a sorta-ex BHS physics teacher (he keeps disappearing for greener pastures, but then coming back – shifty fellow), currently teaching at a much nicer school in SoCal, made a particularly interesting observation on his online journal recently. Commenting on how his current school just seems to “work,” compared to the disfunctionality of BHS:

Now I haven’t been there long, but it seems to be that there are four reasons these things are possible: the school has lots of money (from donations and tuition fees), the school administration is respectfully responsive to parent input (see first item), and the school—because teachers are not unionized—is able to not rehire teachers who aren’t performing as expected. Teachers are compensated based on merit, and not on years of service, which strikes me as an eminently good idea. And of course, the school population is selected based on kids (and parents) who want to be active in the learning process. Slackers generally don’t make it past the admissions process, and those that do get active intervention. Students that have repeated difficulty participating in the learning game don’t get asked back. It’s rare, but it happens.

Most of this is either outside of my understanding or obvious, but one of these assertions really interests me, mostly since it’s something that I’ve wondered about myself.

The teachers at Berkeley High are a very broad range. I mean this in all ways, from age to competence (merely my opinion, of course, but that’s all you’ll get here anyway), but one of the things you’ll notice most about them is that your 1st period teacher might be brand-spanking new to education, with a year or two of high school teaching under her belt, and she’s young and sparky and full of vim – while your 6th period teacher is about 251 years old and looks like Ozymandias, acts like his last happy moment ended with the Great Depression, and just shows videos while he reads the paper and occasionally throws things at you. The thing is, that first teacher is on such shakey ground that she’s virtually probationary, whereas the last one could literally be the last staff member to lose his job.

Long story told short is that BHS teachers are unionized, but whatever the reason, the effect is the above: tenure is equated with qualification, and ability is essentially ignored. A teacher who has been at the school for 10 years can be (and often is) an idiot and an asshole, whereas the newly-hired one can be (and often is) passionate and talented – and the first will be treasured goods, the second fairly unimportant.

Tenure is a concept created for the good of teachers and staff, not for the good of students. But my point isn’t really that tenure is a bad thing; my point is that using nothing more than seniority as a basis for “ranking” means that there is no evaluation of, or value placed, on actual ability to teach.

A carpenter may be valued by how well he builds, an actor on how well he acts. A tutor is valued on how well he tutors – but a teacher, at least here, is not even judged on his ability to teach; it isn’t even considered.

The result is… well, this place. Just like the students, the teachers aren’t all bad; but just like the students, alongside those who are bright and interested are a multitude of the burnt-out, the bored, the simply dull.

And there’s neither anything that can be done, nor any interest in doing it.

— Brandon