Comments on: April 28 roundup http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/april-28-roundup/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=april-28-roundup Chronicling the high cost of our legal system Sun, 27 May 2012 16:39:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: George http://overlawyered.com/2009/04/april-28-roundup/comment-page-1/#comment-47626 George Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:11:37 +0000 http://overlawyered.com/?p=10836#comment-47626 In theory I agree with the idea of firing teachers who don't do their jobs well. In practice however, what metrics should you use to measure whether a teacher is doing a good or a bad job? Grades and test scores both have serious issues. The most likely standard will be how their principle thinks of them. The principle's opinion is not necessarily a bad metric: that's essentially how employee performance at corporations is measured as well. The problem is how can you tell if the principle/boss is incompetent and is firing/not rewarding the right people? For a corporation, eventually the market will take care of issue of a corporation run by incompetent people. For school administrators, it's not clear to me that there's any such force that will expose the bad ones and reward the good ones. In theory I agree with the idea of firing teachers who don’t do their jobs well. In practice however, what metrics should you use to measure whether a teacher is doing a good or a bad job? Grades and test scores both have serious issues. The most likely standard will be how their principle thinks of them.

The principle’s opinion is not necessarily a bad metric: that’s essentially how employee performance at corporations is measured as well. The problem is how can you tell if the principle/boss is incompetent and is firing/not rewarding the right people? For a corporation, eventually the market will take care of issue of a corporation run by incompetent people. For school administrators, it’s not clear to me that there’s any such force that will expose the bad ones and reward the good ones.

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