Bad teachers or the system

[UGAalum94]

Let me try to explain this point:


"Would you set up a system that prevented administrators from telling teachers how to resolve the issues that parents had complained about?"

I agree that it was pretty unclear. Every once and a while, my state will try to pass a law allowing teachers to do something as basic as refuse to change a grade at the direction of the administration, but oftentimes, by the time the law is actually passed, it keeps the original language, but allows administrators just to go in and changed the grade themselves. This seems terrible to me. On some level teachers need protection from being undermined by administrators. (It happens with discipline too. Although there may be guidelines about how teachers handle issues, administrators often kick the issues back to the teachers to address. Or if the parent complains, the administrators will elect to tell the teacher just to let it go completely.)

Viewed from another angle though, isn't it the natural order of organizations that those higher up can review and change the decisions of people lower than they are? So restrictions about what administrators can do are contrary to most understandings of management.

But unlike the private sector where those higher up still remain accountable for the success of projects or work, success in education isn't as easy to define. (A teacher might say academic quality is success; a parent might say
a passage grade, earned or not, is success.)

And in a way particular, it seems to me to education, the damage that bad administrative decisions create is rarely visited back on the administrator in any way. Teachers and students have to live with the results. Administrators, although they may have more people to account to informally, are probably held even less accountable for student results than teachers are.

On some level, and I think it often comes with unions, teachers need a way to say no to bad decisions and directions if they ultimately will be "accountable" for the students learning. And yet, unions do as much to hinder educational improvement as any force in the equation.