It can be simultaneously true that 5% of educators are great, 20% very good, 60% are good, 13% are adequate, and 2% should have fired 5 years or more ago.

If you’re in the first three groups, it can be hard to understand the disrespect and vitriol which is overwhelmingly directed at experiences parents have with that last group.

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cjs_ac 2 days ago | parent [-]

Prestigious boarding schools - the schools that I’ve been writing about - need not bother with teachers outside that top 25%.

Non-selective government schools, like all public services, have inevitably become largely concerned with social work; teachers in those schools, regardless of their ability, have to respond to parents immediately.

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sokoloff 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> teachers in those schools, regardless of their ability, have to respond to parents immediately.

Or else what? Their union will hold them to account? Their colleagues? Their administration?

I have two kids in such public schools and I can’t think of anything I’d ask of a teacher that would require a same-day response let alone an immediate one.

If I need an immediate response, it’s not likely a topic I should be taking to a teacher in the first place. Their job is to teach, not to monitor for inbound comms from parents.

	▲	cjs_ac 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		By 'immediate', I meant same day. But you sound like a reasonable parent; you're writing in the hypothetical. It's the small minority of parents who are constantly in contact with teachers (because most legitimate concerns should be triaged by the school receptionist) and consequently cause the problems - it's no different to any other customer-facing role.

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waterhouse 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> need not bother with teachers outside that top 25%.

To simply "not bother" with lower-quality teachers sounds like you find it easy, as an institution, to determine teachers' quality. That seems far from a solved problem, for teachers and indeed most employees in general. You can pick a particular metric, of course, but then people will try to game it, and in teaching, there seems to be a lot of room for gaming metrics...

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rvba 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes nothing bad has never happened in a prestigious boarding school, just because they charge more money, especially to kids of rich people.

After all rich people and their rich kids never do anything wrong /s

	▲	cjs_ac 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I’m talking about institutions and their internal processes, not some tedious nonsense about how money is intrinsically evil. Rich people have all sorts of problems. Part of the package in an elite education is that the school has a better capacity to sort those out by itself. Constant communication with parents undermines that. It’s a question of values and understanding what you’re buying into. These schools don’t suit all parenting styles.