How do I get this job?

[IrishJayhawk]

I'm not teaching yet, but...
1) Does not seem common at all, but it likely depends location and other factors.
2) Tenure.

90,000 is very high. It's very uncommon. New Jersey has one of the highest average teacher salaries in the country and it varies by district (I don't know much about New Brunswick, NJ...anyone help out here?).

Tenure is not what people think is. Tenure is due process. It means there has to be cause for me to get fired. I can't be let go on a whim. This teacher, as I understand, was not given due process, which includes (as others have pointed out) notice, improvement plans, etc.

Bad teachers can be fired. They should be fired. They make the rest of us look bad. But administration has to go through that process. We also continue to disincentivize teaching as a profession, which is the opposite of how you draw top people to a very difficult profession.

These kinds of articles are akin to the "welfare queen." They aren't that common, but they rile people up and make us think that there are systemic problems. The VAST majority of teachers are hard working, selfless, wonderful people who just want to help kids learn. They are generally also underpaid for their experience and education levels. I work with these people every day. But their stories aren't that interesting.

 

[Buster Bluth]

The discussion has been about those two things... his level of compensation, and the difficulty of firing a teach. Personally, I've heard of well-paid teachers in my area. And I've heard about how hard it can be to fire a teacher. But I've never heard of someone being that well paid and objectively deficient in their job and difficult to fire.

Usually when I've heard about someone being hard to fire it's because of the subjective "they're a bad teacher." The well compensated teachers I know (like my uncle) are usually very intelligent "go the extra mile" types with a documented career of scholastic accomplishment. This guy seems like a unicorn making $90k and behaving how he does.

My mother is in her last year of teaching before retirement, and is in charge of monitoring the state tests for the elementary school (in addition to her usual role). She discovered that four teachers cheated on the tests by allowing their students to retake it (to boost their median score), or having select student retake it, and two even sat there with these select students while they retook it (and, shockingly, did light-years better...).

Anywho, not only did the two blatant cheaters not get canned, they were promoted within the union which then pressured the school to back off.

I try to be a man who supports labor and unions, but I swear they do it to themselves sometimes.

 

[wizards8507]

My mother is in her last year of teaching before retirement, and is in charge of monitoring the state tests for the elementary school (in addition to her usual role). She discovered that four teachers cheated on the tests by allowing their students to retake it (to boost their median score), or having select student retake it, and two even sat there with these select students while they retook it (and, shockingly, did light-years better...).

Anywho, not only did the two blatant cheaters not get canned, they were promoted within the union which then pressured the school to back off.

I try to be a man who supports labor and unions, but I swear they do it to themselves sometimes.

The biggest problem with the teachers' unions in particular is that it's not a fair negotiation. When you talk about auto workers, they're negotiating against Ford and GM. Both parties have to come to some kind of mutually acceptable agreement, so it usually works out. Teachers unions are negotiating against the taxpayer, represented in most towns by the local school committee. The school committees are made up of... more teachers and former teachers. School committees make huge concessions to the teachers and then town councils are pinned down to budgets they can't afford.

 

[Emcee77]

My mother is in her last year of teaching before retirement, and is in charge of monitoring the state tests for the elementary school (in addition to her usual role). She discovered that four teachers cheated on the tests by allowing their students to retake it (to boost their median score), or having select student retake it, and two even sat there with these select students while they retook it (and, shockingly, did light-years better...).

Anywho, not only did the two blatant cheaters not get canned, they were promoted within the union which then pressured the school to back off.

I try to be a man who supports labor and unions, but I swear they do it to themselves sometimes.

Yes, same for me. I am 100% pro-union in theory, but every day I get a little more frustrated with the way unions actually behave in this country. A union doesn't and can't benefit from the organization (the entire organization, I mean, i.e. union and management combined; not just the labor organization) becoming less productive and less successful; if union members are making the organization less productive or less successful, it benefits everyone, labor and management, to take corrective action toward those members. When unions get in the way of that, it infuriates me. You are doing it to yourselves, guys. I want to like you. Stop making it hard for me.

 

[kmoose]

Start here, I would suggest:

Educational job opportunities throughout the state of New Jersey. NJ School Jobs

 

[Crazy Balki]

New Jersey teacher who was late for work 111 times keeps job

$90k salary and can't bother to show up on time 180 days a year?

"Anderson was late 46 times in the most recent school year through March 20 and 65 times in the previous school year, the arbitrator said."

Hey, at least he's making progress. By that trend, he'll be on time within the next 3 years.