.1 Lack of Teacher Accountability

Preview Question
Can you think of any disadvantages to having accountability in education?

Today we want to talk about accountability as a barrier to effective education. Currently we lack accountability. Today all teachers are promoted one step on the salary schedule every year. If you are an excellent teacher your reward is you go up one notch on the salary scale. If you are a lousy teacher, what is your penalty? None. You go up one notch on the salary scale each year. What kind of nonsense is it when good teachers and bad teachers both go up one notch on the salary scale every year? What kind of incentive is there for people to do a really outstanding job if they know that the results are the same, whatever good or bad job they do, so long as they don't get fired. And the only way you get fired is to commit rape in the public square at high noon. Teaching is one of the most stable professions around. And in that stable profession there is little accountability and I resent that. I think that is wrong.

	How does the current system make it difficult to reward teachers for excellence?	Answer Here
	Mrs. Johnson is a high school mathematics teacher whose students always go to other teachers for assistance after they leave her classroom each day. Mrs. Luster is the mathematics department head at the high school and usually ends up teaching most of Mrs. Johnson's students as well as her own, and always stays after school whenever help is needed. Ideally speaking, how should Mrs. Luster's pay increase compare to that of Mrs. Johnson's at the end of the school term?	Answer Here