Teaching Can Be a Profession by Joel Klein

Joel Klein is an American lawyer and school superintendent. He also served more than 1 million students as the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. He also wrote a book called Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools. It's about the eight years he spent trying to improve the education system. On Nov. 17th, USA Today published an article about how teaching should become more of a profession. It talks about a few of the problems that schools are facing with teachers and solutions to how they can be fixed.




Problems Identified by Joel Klein

• Not everyone should become a teacher
• Seniority Distraction

Pick From the Best
The first  solution is to choose teachers by recruiting from the top third of graduates. I agree with this because I think that it is important that students receive the best education that they possibly can. Someone that has worked hard to make good grades should always be hired before someone that barely made it to graduation. I think that it would also motivate a lot of college students to work harder in school. It would also weed out a lot of people who aren't really dedicated or passionate about teaching.

Seniority distraction
I've never really agreed with teachers staying hired because of their seniority. We had a problem with this at my high school during my senior and junior year. All of the teachers that were the most effective in teaching were laid off because they were newer than the teachers that only relied on textbooks and handouts. I think teachers should be employed based only on their performance in the classroom.
I'm not really sure how I feel about teachers being paid the same. I think that more effective teachers should be paid more but I don't think there is a fair way to judge who is more effective. Every teacher has different goals and strategies that they use in their classrooms. Teachers are also constantly changing their teaching methods.