Waiting for "Superman"

As we discussed our first documentary, Waiting for “Superman”, several fellow students rose their concerns about how in the film teachers seemed to be held fully responsible for their students’ academic failure. This said, everybody in the class agreed that there were evident flaws in tenure laws. I later reflected on this matter and wondered, if tenure was stopped in the secondary education system, would there even be enough teachers to replace the “Lemons” that would be discharged as a result? 

Here is a graph from a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the unemployment rate for Elementary, Middle and Secondary school teachers compared to the national average rate as well as the total number of unemployed teachers in those grades.

In the film, expert Eric Hanushek asserts that if the lower performing 6 to 10 percent of US teachers were replaced with “average teachers”, the American educational system could compete with the Finish one (said to be the world’s best).

Studying the unemployment graph, you discover that the unemployment rate for teachers from elementary to the end of middle school reached a high of 4.1% in 2012. So if you consider that the proportion of “lemons” are the same among new teachers replacing those who retire each year, only about half of the 6 to 10 percent of lower performing teachers could be replaced if tenure was turned down this year.

To conclude, it seems as if there simply would not be enough teachers available to counterbalance the theoretical discharge of even 6 percent of today’s teachers. It would also be interesting to know whether teachers obtaining their licensures today are better equipped to make their students succeed than teachers now reaching retirement. Would a more comprehensive education help tomorrow’s teachers improve their own students’ academic achievements?