Washington – President Barack Obama brought forward a new administration effort Monday to place quality teachers in schools that need them the most.
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Obama said the U.S. education system has “a problem” in that students who would benefit the most from having skilled or experienced teachers in their classrooms are least likely to get them, including black and Hispanic students.
Obama credits education and good teachers for helping him get to the White House. He said he wants to make sure that every child has the same access to good teachers that he had.
“The one ingredient that we know makes an enormous difference is a great teacher,” Obama said before discussing the issue over lunch in the Blue Room of the White House with Education Secretary Arne Duncan and four teachers from Springdale, Arkansas; Washington, D.C.; Greensboro, North Carolina, and Philadelphia.
Duncan also planned to participate in a round-table discussion later Monday with teachers and principals.
Under the initiative, the Education Department will ask states to develop plans to make sure very student has an effective teacher. It’s also investing $4.2 million to help states and districts create the plans and put them into place.
Black and American Indian students are four times as likely as their white peers to go to a school where more than 20 percent of teachers are in their first year, according to Education Department statistics. The same data show that Latino students are three times as likely.
“When a school or a school district or a set of schools in a disadvantaged community has disproportionate numbers of inexperienced teachers, that is not a good thing,” Duncan said. “You want a balance on any team. And what we are looking for is to increase effectiveness in disadvantaged communities.”
That’s a catch 22, because a good teacher has more choices and wants to be in a better school , which usually means more educated and affluent parents. It’s easier to teach those kids, in general.
Mr President, The unions policy of seniority allows the more senior teachers to pick the better slots for the same pay rate. Therefore bad schools will get first year teachers. Now if the union would allow merit based pay and the senior teachers would be offered more money for raising the average grades in under performing schools…….
Will never happen because you won’t cross the teachers union.
As long as the poor student returns home in the afternoon to an environment filled with crime, dysfunction, drugs, immorality, and violence, no teacher, regardless of expertise, can have a positive affect.
In a perfect world everybody would get what they deserve. It’s just not possible and people have to make their own choices to better themselves. No amount of money will make children want to learn. Walk through any inner city high school and you will see teenagers sleeping, not handing in homework, acting out in class while there is a very competent and able teacher standing in the front of the class.
I’m sure many yeshiva students have had a bad teacher, morah, or rebbe but still learned and grew despite it!