[mandysullivan2002]

YES.Read this book:Unsatisfactory Performance: How California’s K-12 Education System Protects Mediocrity and How Teacher Quality Can Be Improved, by Thomas C. Dawson and K. Lloyd Billingsley, It examines the problems that affect teacher quality throughout the country. Teachers lack incentives to perform in the classroom and are not held individually accountable for the academic progress their students make. Teacher compensation is determined not by classroom performance but rigid salary schedules, based on credentials and seniority. Across-the-board pay increases boost the salaries of good and bad teachers alike. Teachers automatically receive tenure after just two years, without even having to pass a test. Tenured teacher are virtually impossible to fire, however devastating their impact on children. Procedures for firing a tenured teacher make it practically impossible. With costs of $300,000, administrators do not attempt to dismiss a failing teacher.If improving teacher quality is a goal then streamlining the dismissal system to fire incompetent teachers is imperative. Teachers resist common-sense reforms like performance pay, replacing tenure with renewable contracts, and differential pay depending on subject.