Effects of Teacher’s Tenure on Students Success at MiraCosta College Essay Example

facilities, services and leadership.

At MiraCosta, the system favors experience of teachers and therefore, the college aims at retaining its teachers. But then, RAND Education has revealed that effective teachers are not identified by their experience or background; they are identified best by their performance. The best way to identify the best teachers is by evaluating their job performance which includes what they do in classrooms and also the progress their students have made on the tests. Despite the common perceptions, MiraCosta should stop identifying teachers based on where they went to school, and the period of time they have taught. Students’ success should be the main criteria for employing and retaining teachers.

Effective teachers possess a passion for the subject they teach. They don’t just teach because they have to teach. They inspire us students to play around with ideas, take on more challenging work, think more deeply about the subject matter and even make the decision on which field of career to pursue. Some teachers even achieve a celebrity status. This is the kind of teachers that MiraCosta should aim at keeping; teachers that can have a positive impact on the students’ success and their lifelong career aspirations. Effective teachers do not only make students love learning, their work also results in the increased student performance. A whole range of professional and personal qualities are associated with higher student success.

Like Maya Angelou once said effective teachers are those teachers who look at a face and say to themselves, “there is something behind that face and I want to reach that person”. An effective teacher is a teacher who will aim to influence, encourage, and enrich

the students. An effective teacher has the ability to push a student into doing something helpful and challenging that seemed impossible at first.

Bill Sanders, a former professor at University of Tennessee conducted a research on the importance of teachers on the student learning. Sanders focused on the cumulative or additive effects of teacher effectiveness on the overall performance of the students. He gave focus on what happened to those students whose teachers could produce high achievement verses the students whose teachers had produced low achievement. The results of the study revealed that those students who had been placed with high performing teachers in a row from the 3rd grade scored an average at the 96 percentile while their counterparts who had been placed with low performing teachers scored at the 44th percentile at the end of the 5th grade. This is a huge 52-percentile difference for students who had presumably comparable skills and abilities. The research concluded that, “the most important factor affecting student learning is the teacher”. Perhaps MiraCosta needs to take an interest in this research.

We can imagine what the students and parents go through when they have nonperforming teachers. The students always experience a sense of failure and hopelessness. Students begin to wonder what is wrong with them and feel lost, when in the reality, it is the teacher or instructor who is the problem. A common misconception has been that the student can catch up the following year if they get a performing instructor. Research proves otherwise. According to research by the Dallas Public Schools' Accountability System, “the negative effects of a poor-performing teacher on student achievement persist through three years

of high-performing teachers”. Three years is time that students don’t have in a four-year program at MiraCosta. On the bright side, if a student is exposed to a high performing teacher for a year, the student will enjoy this advantage for the future years to come. On the other hand, if students are exposed to ineffective teachers, they will not be able to outgrow the negative effects of such teachers for years to come.

Now that it is clear that the teacher tenure has had a very negative impact on the student success at MiraCosta College, the institution needs to step up and change the system. The system should not aim at protecting the job of the teachers so much that it makes them complaisant. Teachers need to be aware that the interest of the students come first and that they have to perform. Of course it is possible to improve teachers’ performance through evaluation. Teachers should be evaluated and given feedback on the basis of student success. They should be made aware that the students’ success comes before their job security. This will motivate them to improve in their teaching. As we have seen, this will leave a long lasting effect on the students’ success for years to come. Therefore, the MiraCosta needs to now.

Works Cited

1. Hamilton, Laura S. "Teachers Matter: Understanding Teachers' Impact On Student Achievement
   | RAND". Rand.org. 2016. Web. 7 May 2016.
2. Rockoff, Jonah E. “The Impact of Individual Teachers on Student Achievement: Evidence from
   Panel Data”. The American Economic Review 94.2. 2004: 247–252.
3. Sanders, William L., and June C. Rivers. "Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future
   student academic achievement." 1996.
4. Tucker, Pamela
   

D, and James H. Stronge. Linking Teacher Evaluation and Student Learning.
Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005.