Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog had a range of reactions to a new federal study that found a greater proportion of teachers in Georgia’s highest-poverty schools are first-year teachers, compared to the lowest-poverty schools. As a possible solution, some systems are offering bonuses to top teachers to transfer to low-performing schools. Here is a sampling of reader comments:
Milton: What decent teacher would want to teach at a dump of a school where kids are under-performing and their lame parents could care less about their education?
Teacher: Given the choice between good and bad conditions, most workers (in any field) will choose good. In order to get a foot in the door and gain experience, many teachers have to start in the more difficult environments. Once they have enough experience to move on, they do, if they last long enough. I'm not sure why it's so puzzling. I can work with kids who are already far behind when they enter kindergarten, who behave disrespectfully, whose parents are difficult to contact and combative when I do reach them, all while having my feet put to the fire over test scores that don't reflect the effort I put into my job every day. Or I can teach in a community with kids who come to school with basic skills, respect their teachers, are invested in learning and whose parents support me, and my students' test scores reflect my effort. Which would most people choose?
Duke: Few things demonstrate the idiocy of socialist redistribution more clearly than the idea you can make the bottom students smarter by making the top students dumber.
Eagle: Don't forget that our lowest-achieving students in any school are also getting the least experienced teachers, while the teachers with the most experience and knowledge to pass on are teaching the honors and AP classes.
New: With many teachers in my family in different school systems, I can tell you with certainty: There are good teachers in poor schools, and there are terrible teachers in affluent schools. It's not cut and dried. Honors classes in our high school have very young teachers. Is this always good? Is this always bad? I say it depends on the individual teacher. Experience doesn't always ensure a teacher is good, and inexperience doesn't always mean a teacher is ineffective.
Ivg: One more reason this state is slipping backwards: highest unemployment in the country; terrible transportation in metro areas; separate but unequal schools for minorities (how many white children attend majority black schools?); severe cutbacks in the education budget; new limitations on voting rights; gerrymandering of minority districts into GOP-controlled districts with single candidates in many of them; and now the AJC reports people thrown in the street as rural hospitals close and one of the the highest rates of uninsured. And the voters re-elect the person responsible for this fiasco.
Hey: My concern, having started my career in a struggling school, is the highly paid teachers being recruited to come to low-performing schools will not be well received by the current staff. Teaching is a team sport, not an individual one. If teachers are unwilling to work together to improve a school, it will be a rough road no matter how much the new teachers are being paid.
