In this article "Senate Oks Teacher Evaluations," Andrew Weber talks about a bill the Senate passed that will insure all public school teachers to be evaluated. The bill was issued by Sen. Florence Shapiro and it has a very controversial segment that basically states that school board can pull the trigger and fire teachers who have poor "turn outs." They also can fire these teachers without informing of the reason. Sen. Gallegos feels that teachers, who go to school and pay good money for that degree, are not completely being treated fairly. Sen. Gallegos also believes that the teachers need to be evaluated and given the chance to better themselves. Nevertheless, the teachers who have been "pinked slipped," should get an opportunity to have their job back. Shapiro retaliates by saying that issues that Gallegos states should be addressed to work out the flaws and kinks in the evaluation system. Regardless, the bill still needs to pass in the Senate to actually be final.
In my opinion, this bill has the potential to be a stepping stone for a lot of future lawsuits. I have a strong feeling that a lot of teachers who are young and new to a certain areas, will have to deal with the "good ol' boys" situation. Hypothetically, if the other teachers do not like the new teacher due to any reason, they can influence the school board to fire that person for a "poor" performance. The board would not have to disclose the reason as well, allowing the real reason for firing that person to go undisclosed. Another problem I see with this bill is what is going to be the "measure" for performance. Texas already has an epidemic with its k-12 education tests that forces a teacher to prepare their students for the tests, rather than actually giving a good quality education. The teachers have no choice due to the fact that their job is on the line. This bill seems to pose a possible "clone" problem. In the end, I do not really like this bill, unless more specific elaborations are brought to my attention, I might change my mind.
On a post titled, “The Evaluation of Evaluations” written by one of my classmates, Jake Gossman. He talks about a bill the senate passed that will have public school teachers evaluated on their performance. The bill states that after a teacher is evaluated they may be fired immediately and with no reason given. Mr. Gossman feels that this may lead to a lot of future lawsuits. A problem that Mr. Gossman found with the bill is what is going to be the “measure” for performance. He is not in favor of this bill passing at all.
ReplyDeleteI think that I would like the bill to be passed due to fact that it would improve the way our teachers teach and present information for their students to learn. I think that a lot of teachers today take it very easy with their students when teaching their material. I have a friend who will soon get her degree in teaching and she actually cares about her the work she turns into to her own teachers and I know she will be a great teacher. A lot of people getting their degrees in teaching don’t care enough about teaching children material they will actually learn and like what they have learned. They just teach to get paid. Mr. Gossman may be right in that a lot of lawsuits may come out of this but at least new teachers know what to expect and will give 100% on all material they teach their students. I think senator Shapiro is doing a good thing by trying to get this bill passed.