We have to find a way to keep good teachers
When economic times get tough, businesses sometimes have to make tough choices about whom or what to cut. You'd think that for a job as important as teaching kids, teacher quality would be the deciding important factor, but it's not even close in the Philadelphia public schools.
A recent visit to Gratz High by Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools and now head of Students First, brought a sobering example of this to light. Kristen Brown, a former Philadelphia public-school math teacher, told me and the audience that the math department in her school had to cut a job, and she and the math teacher she carpooled with had the least tenure. A reasonable person might assume that some type of fair and equitable evaluation would drive this tough decision.
But the quality of their teaching versus other teachers or each other wasn't considered. What was the deciding factor? The other teacher had signed in on the attendance sheet a second