Obviously, there have to be high standards for hiring teachers. And I'm sure that many bureaucrats who stick to rigid requirements are acting in good faith. It's the same mentality that is behind the vogue for standardized testing. But too often in public school teaching, mediocrity wins out over talent. And this mediocrity is enforced by administrators, a number of whom brandish their doctorates from schools of education but have trouble writing clear letters home to parents and murder the English language in public speeches.
Many innovative teachers do stay, of course.
But we have to work hard to counter the natural attrition. In the last two years I've watched a number of excellent T.C. teachers retire, some true superstars like Rebecca Buckbee in English and Jack Esformes in social studies. This year, counselor Tony Derigge, a key player in our guidance department, is retiring. Talented people like these are going to be harder than ever to replace, with the constantly widening gap between the starting salaries of college graduates who go into teaching and those who go into business, the dot-com world or any number of other fields. Individual high schools should be given the power to advertise positions and do their own recruiting.