Teachers who do not want to be held accountable, instead holding on to that union bellwhether of seniority.
The tripe is in this post. Bad teachers are hard to get rid of--but no more difficult than your average government employee. The way Houston schools deal with the problem is by reassigning bad teachers to non-essential positions, a not-so-secret message to get it together or get lost. And many of those are the older, more difficult senior teachers.
People think that because teachers have unions that the unions must be the root of all evil. In fact the unions, at least in Texas, have very little impact on school policy or employment decisions. The only reason to be a member of one is for lawsuit insurance.
The "lessening influence" of math and science is NOT the fault of teachers, but politicians and bureaucrats who have undermined teachers' efforts to bring real accountability to the system. There is a high school here in Houston with a particularly bad reputation for handing out diplomas to seniors who have not passed their classes and other schools guilty of social promotions. In both instances, teachers have expressed their outrage; if one of my students earned an F, the last thing I want is for the principal to approve a credit appeal giving him a passing grade that he didn't earn. But it happens all the time.
