Hiring Superman
November 7, 2010
Regarding whether or not to hire Michelle Rhee, I would probably not hire her. While I agree with the need to reform the current tenure system and promote a form of student achievement reward system, her attitude is very confrontational and promotes animosity. Yes, she is not concerned about “being liked”, but labeling teachers as the primary source of student performance problems is overly simplifying a larger problem. Surely, some individuals need to be laid off, yet including rather than excluding the teacher’s union in those decisions would be helpful. She seems like a bulldozer rather than a compromising or charismatic figure.
While Chapman et al (2000) concluded that only minor changes resulted from China’s pre-service teacher training program, it is difficult from those results to conclude that pre-service teacher training would also have marginal results elsewhere. Chapman’s (2000) article mentioned that a previous study had concluded that pre-service teacher training “was positively related to student learning in only 12 of the 26 studies that included amount of teacher schooling as a variable.” (p 302). As such, previous results do show that training can improve the quality of education. Both pre-service and in-service will increase the likelihood that the teacher will obtain the tools that will allow him to be an effective teacher. Providing teachers with more planning time during their first year as well as partnering a new teacher with a successful teacher mentor will help him / her develop some valuable classrooms management and teaching skills.
