The world does not need more good teachers. We have as many good teachers as there are going to be under the limitations and restrictions of a system which does not pay teachers enough. It would be wrong to attract those who have chosen better-paying jobs to the teaching profession.

We need administrators who can distinguish between good teachers and bad.

A good administrator can help a teacher improve. if a teacher is egregiously unsatisfactory, he can help him transfer out in an equitable manner. In that way the school will be filled with good teachers.

However, today's administrators are not taught how to distinguish between good and bad teachers. They use their native judgment, but they do not use the right objective criteria. As a result, many teachers are not good – but the administrators don't know why.

Many teachers remains in schools because of factors that are irrelevant to classroom performance.

A chevraman who gets along with his principal and with other teachers, or who cracks jokes in the teachers' room, is likely to remain. Another may be assigned to a school, irrelevant of its objective needs.

On the other hand, another teacher who devotes herself to the students rather than to her own PR may or may not remain.

Granted, principals do observe teachers in the classroom, but apparently their criteria is irrelevant.

That does not mean distinguishing between those who give him more or less of an administrative burden. It means fostering those teachers who are or who have the potential to be more effective in the classroom.

It means that the teachers who give him more work are not necessarily problematic. After all, the teacher has to demonstrate effectiveness among the students, not among the administration, staff, supervisory personnel, sanitation crew, or others.

Principals should be given the tools to make these judgments. This ability should be one of the basic requirements for the position.

Supervisors

This problem, of course, reaches higher levels as well. The supervisory staff, the boards of Jewish education, and the departments or ministries of education apparently do not have an objective basis for selecting principals.

Supervisors should be taught how to select principals (and in some cases, teachers) who will do the best job in the schools. A principal who gets along with a senior supervisor may be given an administrative position, but his skills are not necessarily those required in order to succeed and to show the requisite leadership.

There are all too many political appointments, buddy systems, beneficiaries of protektzia, or others who succeed because of a good impression, rather than because of their abilities. No number teacher in-service training courses can possibly help a teacher who should not be in that position in the first place.