Human Resources

I've gotten into twitter. I am sure I will become bored of it, but I enjoy following folks. In some cases, such as this week(end) it is useful as people will tweet the results from sporting events (such as the NCAA Track Champs). But I read an interesting tweet (or two) from a teacher. He had a conversation with a business woman about scripted curricula. Long story short, her response was one of turning an HR problem into a curriculum and instruction problem.

I hadn't really thought about it exactly that way. I guess I had resigned myself to the issues that education has in human resources, namely that you can't get rid of "bad teachers." What "bad" means is open to interpretation, but I take it to mean those that aren't steeped in "good" pedagogy, and aren't helping students grow as learners. They lack the knowledge of instructional strategies to help their students grow.

Why do we have these HR problems? I am not saying run schools as businesses or corporations, as they are different entities. While you can say schools "produce a product," not all of our "products" are the same. But that doesn't absolve us of letting bad teachers, poor providers of instruction, continue to educate kids.