They’d be a lot worse than teachers with passion and wit and experience and knowledge.

But they’d be a lot better than a lot of people.

Plus, you can bet they’d read up pretty fast.

But the “labor pool” argument in the Calder link really misses the point, which affects then the ideas in this post.

It’s pretty simplistic and unrealistic to assume that if “better” people decided to be teachers, things would get better. Isn’t there a big piece here in the education of teachers that should be addressed? What if all the struggling teacher were given high-quality teacher education? Would student outcomes improve? We can’t say because we don’t do that at the moment.

Suppose all the students in medical school, or architecture school, or law school were tossed into the job market tomorrow and told to start practicing. Would you expect that these “better” people would do a good job? Of course not. What makes them competent professionals is not necessarily the resources they bring to their professional training, but the knowledge of professional practice they gain while in school.

Given the great demand for teachers, the idea that we can somehow improve the labor pool seems like a long shot at best. How about we do a better job preparing the teachers we have? What if policymakers turned their attention to improving teacher education?

Meanwhile, we want those same people to say “Look, with teachers, we give them a few chances, but if they persist in sucking, then their cost to kids is too high, and we need to fire them — not ‘coach’ them forever with no progress.”

So 4 variations on this 2 belief set.

Top LEFT quadrant. Kipp. So called “Bad kids” get almost infinite chances; “bad teachers” get few.

Bottom left quadrant: Typical school. “Bad kids” get almost infinite chances; “bad teachers” get almost infinite chances.

Bottom right quadrant: Tough elite public school like Boston Latin. “Bad kids” get few chances; “bad teachers” get almost infinite chances.

Top right quadrant: Some private schools where “Bad kids” get few chances; “bad teachers” get few chances.

* * *

But giving leaders autonomy assumes GOOD LEADERS. Which the teachers union and others correctly point out — often a bad assumption.

So 4 quadrants here, too.

Top Left: Competent leader (good judgment at least), lax with teachers.

Top right: Competent leader, holds teachers accountable.

Bottom left: Crappy leader, lax with teachers.

Bottom right: Crappy leader, holds teachers accountable on whether they kiss his ass or not — thereby getting rid of the wrong teachers!

This last quadrant definitely exists.

This comment is way too long.

More broadly, there’s another issue here: teachers’ confronting coworkers and principals’ confronting teachers is a skill, and it’s not an easy one. Where is the professional development for principals not only in instructional and legal issues but in the thorny area of helping teachers either improve or leave?