"Toward Better Teachers," is an article from The New York Times. The article is written by a columnist named Frank Bruni. Frank is writing this article based on a book by the chancellor of New York Citys Public schools, Joel Klein. In the book Joel talks about what he calls the biggest factor in the education equation. He talks about how its not the simple things like classroom size or school choice. The biggest factor is teacher quality, Joel says in his book that a great teacher can rescue a child from a life of struggle. In the article, Frank says that as a way of trying to better the education for children, the quality of the teachers is always gaining more and more observation. Because Joel has been a chancellor for longer than most, people dont ignore what he has to say because he knows what hes talking about. In the article, Frank talks about what Joel observes about teachers and teaching. He talks about how expensive and time consuming it is to fire a teacher. Along with that, he says it is virtually impossible to remove a teacher charged with incompetence. This means that even if a teacher isnt doing their job and not teaching the children what they need to know, it is still almost impossible to fire that teacher. The article also talks about how right from the beginning, not enough good teachers were being hired in elementary schools. Many of the students, who were hired, had less than 1000 points which is almost half of the total possible points of 1600. The journalist finished reading Joels book and later interviewed him. During the interview he asked him about ways to improve the teacher quality and Joel talked about how it would have to be done over the years. Joel believes that if you make the criteria for becoming a teacher higher, you will then get a better selection of teachers. Another issue that causes the teaching to be a problem is that the teachers are familiar with what the children need to learn. He believes tha