What protections do you think that “all other jobs” have?

The vast majority of employment in the US is “at will”, which means that folks can be fired for almost any reason, with no notice or recourse. (The exceptions have to do with prohibited discrimination, such as on the basis of race.)

Yes, there are exceptions to that rule, but they’re mostly union jobs, which are a shrinking minority. Those “protections” are contracts, not law. And, when GM goes under, those jobs go away no matter what the contract says.

However, thanks for demonstrating once again that teachers don’t know how employment in the real world works.

Is someone attempting to predict teacher effectiveness? What an odd pursuit since it’s hardly settled that it’s a good idea to determine whether a practicing teacher’s effective.

If this is true, then we need to lower the barriers to entry. It simply costs too much and takes too long to get to that first teaching job.

We should also look at how teachers are trained. One summer of education theory followed by a year of closely supervised apprenticeship should be enough to determine if a person would be an effective teacher. The second summer would be devoted to reflection on the past year and more practical aspects of teaching in particular school settings.

So what comes next for an elementary student who is expelled?

In fact, before I had tenure, when I lost jobs the union did absolutely nothing whatsoever for me. However the union, in NYC at least, provides benefits for dental, prescription and eyeglass coverage, which can be pretty valuable.

Really, it’s on the city to enforce existing tenure laws, and to decline to hire or retain teachers who can’t teach, teachers who can’t control kids, teachers who can’t speak any discernible language, teachers who don’t bathe, teachers who sit in front of their classes eating breakfast cereal and reading the boxes to see what neat stuff they can send away for, etc. and so forth.

The problem in the city is, unlike surrounding suburbs, they’ve refrained from enforcing existing laws for 30+ years. Suburbs here get rid of clunkers well before there’s any talk of tenure. The city is subject to the very same laws.

You’re absolutely right that credentials and MA degrees don’t predict quality. Every dismissed Long Island teacher I’ve met had both. But failure to pass basic competency tests, IMO, is an excellent predictor for failure, and NYC has hired thousands of such teachers. In fact, one of the very first things Joel Klein did as Chancellor was go to Albany and procure the right to hire and retain about 14,000 such teachers.

Now he and Mr. Fisman are shocked that failure to follow existing regulations for decades have consequences.

It’s ironic, because as a high school teacher (and a parent), I’m perpetually trying to show kids their actions have consequences.

Fisman doesn’t know much about unions, apparently, and I’m surprised you repeated the basic error: union membership doesn’t change the rights an employee has under a collective bargaining agreement.

Needless to say, pay should be different than for the higher grades and the hard-to-find subjects (math/science). Also, no pay for a master’s degree unless the job REALLY requires one – ridiculous to pay a third-grade teacher for a master’s degree (or better – some districts give doctorate pay to any teacher who has 60 course hours beyond the master’s). Put the money only where needed.

I don’t think getting el ed teachers would be a problem if the schools were made safe and problem students appropriately disciplined/expelled and a strong DI/core knowledge curriculum, with homogeneous classes, was in place.

There’s an unexamined assumption there that’s about as big as the broad side of a barn.

Does it really take a bachelor’s degree to learn enough about teaching to teach *at*all? Not some specialty like spec ed or high school AP physics/math but just to get certified? It doesn’t matter does it? No certification? No job. No degree? No certification.

The other way to look at the situation is that the requirements of certification have nothing to do with the demands of the job so the cost of entry is high enough to keep people out, especially people who are capable of acquiring a degree that prepares them for a higher-paying job.