Reply to incompetent teacher -- what can parents do?

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm a teacher.

Sorry, I don't know what you can do.  Every school where I've worked has had incompetent teachers, each of whom was protected or retained for varying reasons.  In fact, I haven't ever known a teacher to be fired.

Right now we have a Math teacher who has no background or degree in Math, and who tells students that, "I'm a coach, not a Math teacher."  He shows them clips on youtube and Khan Academy in class (Algebra 2!), and the kids all know he doesn't know what he's doing.  However, he has really beefed up the sport program, and the director loves him.  Yes, the director knows he is incompetent: the Math Department showed him the average end of year assessment scores from all of the Algebra 2 classes, and this guy's kids were at the bottom.  This year, some of the students he had last year have already been counseled out of Calculus because they don't have the Algebra  base they need.  And the "Math teacher"?  He's not even pretending to spend time on learning how to do Math: he's now steamrolling through another sport program, and is actually holding meetings for the rest of staff to let us know the updates on the program.  Yes, I am bitter.

I also once worked with a teacher who stopped giving back student tests/papers in October.  When seniors went to complain, the director told them that he "knows Mr. X is really lazy, but he can't do anything about it."  Mr. X's wife just happened to be BFFs with the director's wife.  (and before you say that I don't know he stopped giving back student work at all, my own son was in his class, so I had access to the electronic database that displays grades...plus I was the guy's colleague).

So, the lesson is that incompetent teachers may very well flourish.  I wish this were not the case.[/quote]

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