<p>Yes, that is how markets work. In fact, it is <em>why</em> markets work. Lousy employees = lost sales = failed business.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is because there is no market. The government holds the monopoly.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is no incentive because the unions have blocked all attempts at market reform of K-12 education.</p>
<p>Most people wouldn’t be pleased to let the government tell them what kind of car to drive, where to live or–heaven forbid–which college to send their children to, but they accept stringent restrictions on K-12 school choice because…I don’t know, just because that’s how it’s been done for a long time.</p>
<p>I will never understand why good teachers think they have anything to lose from school reform.</p>
<p>Heard it at a school board meeting last night from a board member looking at a budget in the red. “Can’t we just lay off the expensive teachers and keep the young (cheap) ones. Seems we could save more money that way”</p>
<p>The ideal of only laying off the poor performing teachers in tough times won’t be what happens in the real world. They will lay off the experienced teachers whether they are master teachers or not. </p>
<p>Unions have real issues and have dug a hole for themselves but there is a reason they came into being. I doubt the new law has any criteria in it for laying off teachers by performance. </p>
<p>Sorry that is a joke without a policy in place ranking teachers by performance. What a smokescreen</p>
<p>midmo most teachers I know have little problem with school reform. What they have seen is reform like no child left behind and they do oppose that. Or they see not so thinly veiled moves to simply move money from public to private schools due to political power. Thus they will have less to do more. Define school reform that isn’t about something as poorly constructed as NCLB or some of the current voucher plans and then they will talk</p>
<p>Potential school reform measures such as removal or modification of the ‘barriers to entry’ to the profession, alterations to the unitary pay scale (same pay for all subjects, without regard for shortages/surpluses in different subjects), modifications of pension plans to alleviate the front-loading scheme that makes it difficult for new teachers to relocate and logical for good teachers to retire early, establishment of charter schools, voucher plans, and numerous other suggestions, are consistently and expensively fought by unions, and they have nothing to do with test scores.</p>
<p>Unions are about protecting unions. They are not about protecting the interests of good teachers. They are not about protecting the interests of students. And they are not about protecting the interests of parents of the students. They do a good job at what they are intended for: they promote and defend unions.</p>
<p>drizzit, I know that many teachers do not oppose various reform proposals. I am not the one taking the position that teacher unions and teachers hold the same positions or have the same interests.</p>
<p>I am in favor of true voucher programs and school choice. If the result is that poorly performing schools lose some students, well, that is the idea: the schools will improve, or they will close.</p>
<p>EDIT: I held completely different opinions about these matters before I had children. It was a shock to discover that I had virtually no say over the education of my own children. I take education very seriously, and I take parenting very seriously. The whole K-12 experience was quite an eye-opener, for me.</p>
<p>This type of remarks underscores why dialogue about school reform is almost impossible. School reform should be about developing a better system for --oh surprise-- the students, and developing a system that is financially sustainable. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, for the past 50 years, the entire focus has been on the service providers and not the recipients. While finding common grounds IS feasible, it will never be as long as 99% of the energy is devoted to issues of collective bargaining, right to strike, protection of tenure, resistance to increase working hours, and a complete refusal to accept that there is nothing left to extort further. </p>
<p>However, the light at the end of the tunnel is that common sense and market forces will ultimately prevail and lead to an entire overhaul of the system. If the cynical “adoption” of charter schools delayed the inevitable path to open competition, it will nonetheless happen. The days of unabated increases in budgets are over; property taxes have long reached their natural limits; bonds issues will be almost impossible to pass without deep concessions; taxpayers and families will slowly but surely regain of a system as they realize how profound the problems truly are. </p>
<p>Oops, I forgot that we really are leading the world in students’ performance and that it is important that 800 persons told Gallup they were satisfied or somehow satisfied with the education system.</p>
<p>The lack of choice in our public school system disproportionately impacts minorities and poor people who live in the inner cities, because most of those school systems are a nightmare. Washington D.C. had a wonderful voucher system that the Democratic Congress terminated at the behest of the unions. It is a pity that Michelle Rhee, who was doing an incredible job turning around the District, was forced out. The kids who were given the opportunity to attend private schools had much better outcomes. If parents could vote with their feet and choose the best schools for their children, it would do more than any govt program to improve school performance. There is nothing like going out of business to focus the mind. Monopolies in either the public or private sector are generally inefficient, bureaucratic and complacent. Without competition, it is not surprising that our public schools are a national disgrace. If anyone wants to dispute this assertion, please look up the drop-out rates in many of our urban schools.</p>
<p>It is amusing to hear all the excuses why teachers need unions. None of it is credible. The poster, who indicated that a school board member wanted to dismiss the experienced teachers regardless of performance to save money, is reverting to the same scare tactics all union supporters rely upon. A school board that engaged in such tactics would be discredited by the community. Nevertheless, it is another good reason to unshackle schools from govt control, which ultimately would lessen the influence of boards and administrators. All the excuses are self-serving and any discerning person will not be fooled by the endless rationalizations.</p>
<p>A very hopeful sign is that the minority communities, a very important Democratic constituency, are seeing the light and becoming increasingly critical of the unions. They are recognizing that they are the sacrificial lambs who are the most victimized by the unions’ abuses The Hispanic mayor of Los Angeles, an ex-union organizer, has become an opponent of the unions, as he battles them for control of the schools. This is happening in other cities around the country as well. Unions may not recognize it, but their time has come and gone.</p>
<p>So what was the cause of the sinking?
What was the reason for the T hitting the iceberg?
Did the crew perform?
Did the designers make the correct assumptions?
Was the design the state-of-art?
What contribution did the iceberg play?
Who chose the course?
What warnings were present?
Would a change in course prevent the disaster?
Would a change in course place the T in another situation given the same assumptions?</p>
<p>We are zoned for a high school whose average ACT score is 16. Three miles south, I have friends who are zoned for a high school whose average ACT score is 27.</p>
<p>Now both schools are represented by the same teachers union, both grant tenure, both privilege senior teachers, etc. So it isn’t necessarily something like tenure for teachers that leads to poor performance. </p>
<p>81% of the students on the high school I am zoned for qualify for free lunch. And at my friend’s school, 0% of the students qualify for free lunch.</p>
<p>For all those who advocate getting rid of tenure, how much of the performance difference between my school and my friend’s school is attributable to tenure policies for teachers and how much of the difference is attributable to poverty?</p>
<p>That’s rich coming from the king of dialogue put downs and shut downs. Do you dispute that many of the reform measures on the table right now do not tie teacher evaluations and student success to test scores? Of course, the focus has to be on the kids but increased reliance on testing, IMO, is not what serves them best. The entity best served by the “test it” mentality is College Board. Obviously, people are hungry for reform or they would not so easily worship at the clay feet of Michelle Rhee.</p>
<p>As far as vouchers go, those might be fine for large districts, but they don’t make any sense out in the smaller areas. The district I work in has a total of 1600 students. It covers 3 townships and has kids in 2 different counties. Ten percent of the kids live on farms. There is one primary school, one elementary, one middle and one high school. The district also has one very small, very conservative K-8 Catholic school. So if the quality in this district decreases, where are the kids going to go? A lot of parents are not able to transport their kids to other districts. Home or virtual schooling is not an option for many families. It is all well and good to talk about choice being the answer and letting the market decide, but the market only works when their are choices. For many students choice is not an option. That means that local schools need to be kept strong for the students that need to attend them.</p>
<p>If a community doesn’t want a system where parents are able to send their children to a school of their choice, so be it. Just don’t prohibit it in communities and cities that do want it. Also, if vouchers and choice were allowed in your rural community, you might have some enterprising people start their own schools.</p>
<p>Yes, this is the reasoning behind voucher/tuition credit suggestions. I know more than a few educators who would love to start schools. Of course, shennie is right that rural, sparsely populated areas pose a different set of problems than the urban nightmares we (those of us who read a lot of urban newspapers) read about.</p>
<p>Off topic here, but I look forward to improved internet connectivity in rural areas and on-line supplemental educational materials to address some of the rural issues. There is some interesting work being done by coalitions of cognitive psychologists, educators and computer scientists (AI types) to develop good, individualized, teaching/learning programs.</p>
<p>Gotta applaud the R’s and W for believing NCLB was going to reform education for the disadvantage, truely a Democratic initiative started by Willie but pushed by W and reformers. </p>
<p>Ends up the disadvantaged is still lagging and the advantaged is shorted. </p>
<p>Think, Who would take a professional job, without any idea for job security? - Only those (CEO’s) who have a very good compensation package and written contract AND a small number of Elected Politicans. If that is so, can we say, what is good for the CEO is also good for the masses?</p>
My guess is one could exchange the teachers in those schools and the outcome would be identical. As for vouchers, the voucher experiment in Milwaukee has been a failure. The voucher schools underperform the public system. The problems are complex and vouchers, charter schools, merit pay tied to test scores, setting teachers free to teach, authentic asssessment, eliminating standardized testing, requiring standardized testing, decreasing class size, paying teachers more, holding principals accountable, etc. all will have little or no effect. The teaching practices are the key and most are horrible, especially for kids from lower SES communities. Further, the colleges of education are equally as bad. The sad thing is our educational system isn’t really getting worse, the requirements to be educated have changed, and few know what to do about it.</p>
<p>I agree that teaching practices are bad for kids from lower SES communities and of course the colleges of education are responsible. But, I can’t agree that the ‘system’ isn’t getting worse. Public flagship universities have large numbers of incoming students who are placed in remedial reading, writing and arithmetic. Some will argue that is because there are more first generation college students, more kids from poor families, and so on. Sure, that is a factor, but my parents only went to school to the 8th grade, and both were literate and numerate, and all of my siblings and I were college-ready despite attending public schools in low to moderate income areas and having parents with little formal education. </p>
<p>I was a very regular volunteer in elementary classrooms and I can’t believe how much time is wasted on crap.</p>
<p>“Student participants in the Milwaukee school voucher program have graduation rates that are 18 percent higher than those of students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), according to a new report released by John Robert Warren, an education expert and professor at the University of Minnesota.”</p>