No Margin for Error: Saving Our Schools from Borderline Teachers

School Administrator, June, 1996 by Donna M. Schmitt

From the opening lines of No Margin for Error: Saving Our Schools from Borderline Teachers, author Don Fuhr makes clear his purpose. To improve the quality of teachers, administrators must shoulder greater responsibility for working with the 10 to 15 percent of teachers he classifies as "borderline."

Fuhr, a professor at Clemson University, pulls no punches. Administrators fail, he says, when they allow marginal performers in the classroom to continue without being checked on their subpar performance. Citing a ripple effect, he notes that students suffer, parents are shortchanged, and good teachers are demoralized when marginal teachers are ignored.

Fuhr describes three categories of marginal teachers: the helpless, the hurt, and the hardheaded. Though the classroom results are often the same, the problems for each have different origins. The book offers a concise step-by-step approach for administrative intervention with each type, beginning with an understanding of the nature of the problems, intervening with appropriate strategies, and culminating with a process for followup and evaluation.

(No Margin for Error: Saving Our Schools from Borderline Teachers, by Don Fuhr, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 4050 Westmark Drive, Dubuque, Iowa 52002, 1996, 80 pp., $14.95 softcover)