Sacking Teachers

Caught a little bit of a programme today on Fox News dedicated, in theory at least, to discussing ways of improving schools - American schools, that is. (Curiously, if one were to judge from the entirely inward-looking nature of the discussion, these were clearly considered to be the only schools that exist.) It turned out that sacking incompetent teachers, lots of them, was the way forward. This was proved by the fact that a lady who had done this in one school district was being interviewed, in very friendly fashion, and spoke smiling sense, whilst a teachers' union chappie featured in two or three clips answering some pretty nasty questions with obvious discomfort.

Now I've got nothing against making spokesmen or women for any vested-interest group extremely uncomfortable. In fact, I think it's a very good idea. But it cuts in all directions, and the lady who had sacked all those teachers was being offered nothing but easy lobs over the net to smash into the face of the viewer. The obvious simple question for her was to inquire what exactly it was that gave her such absolute certainty that she was sacking the right folks. I'd love to have the assessment instrument used made open to analysis. It wasn't - and it was never going to be given the sound-bite quality of the entire discussion.

The whole thing reminded me of a brief discussion I had once (at a Christmas party of all places) with a deputy headmaster back in England in the middle-eighties. For some reason I can't recall he was telling me, or someone else, that you couldn't sack bad teachers simply because there was no way you could devise an assessment of teachers that could fairly identify who was bad enough to be sacked. I think he thought I was a friendly audience. I wasn't. I pointed out to him that if we were really going to be painfully honest that he could identify at least two teachers on his staff who were manifestly incompetent, quite beyond redemption, and should be shown the door. I knew this because the same was true of my own school and any other in our education authority. What bothered outsiders, I pointed out, was that they knew we knew about such teachers and knew we weren't going to do anything about them. I must admit I spoke vigorously, but I don't think that that was the reason he agreed with me within a minute or so. It was simply that I was saying what everyone knew to be true.

So does this mean I agree with Fox News's hatchet-lady? No, not at all. The worrying thing about her was that she was clearly enjoying being interviewed and striking her righteous poses - a sure sign of someone to distrust. She wasn't going to admit for a moment how difficult it was to honestly and accurately monitor the performance of teachers. (Just as a matter of interest: don't trust anyone in the world of education who makes such assessment sound easy.) That's why I trusted the guy I browbeat all those years ago. He saw the very real problems involved, but was grounded enough to recognise a pragmatic case for getting something done nonetheless.

So where is all my circling around going? Not too far, really. Except this: you can't generalise about all systems and you need to ground what you do in the reality of what you've got. For example, hardly any of the above discussion has any real application to the system in which I now earn a living. But if what you have got throws up manifest idiocies in terms of what happens in the real world of the classroom find ways of dealing with that and get reasonable people on board. There are plenty of them, and that even includes viewers of Fox News.

And a final point: never ever trust anybody who gets on the goggle-box pontificating about education and looks like they're enjoying it.