Posted on 02/15/2006 9:04:43 AM PST by upchuck
February 15, 2006
Teacher Unions Are Killing the Public Schools
By John Stossel
Bosses, have I got an idea for you: Don't pay your best employees more, don't ease out your least productive workers, and for crying out loud, never fire anyone, not even for the most blatant misconduct on the job.It works for the public schools, doesn't it?
Actually, it doesn't, but since they're government monopolies, they don't care. They never go out of business. They just keep doing what they're doing, year after year, churning out class after class of students handicapped by a poor education.
Don't get me wrong -- not all public school teachers are bad. Many are talented and passionate, even heroic. Many turn down better-paying jobs because they want to help kids learn. But working hard for public-school students has to be its own reward, because a lazy teacher is paid just as much as a good one -- more if he has seniority.
What is the result? When we asked students about their teachers, some said things like this:
"Most of the teachers they're like -- they don't really care."
"One of my teachers tells me he does this for the health benefits."
"I've seen teachers come to school intoxicated."
Joel Klein once won fame as a fighter of monopolies. He worked for the federal government, and his most famous foe was Microsoft. Now he runs a monopoly of his own: the New York City public schools. It's even more arrogant than Microsoft, because its customers have even less choice.
Joel Klein now presides over a calcified monopoly where it's hard to fire anyone for anything.
One New York teacher decided that one of his 16-year-old students was hot. So he sat down at a computer and sent a sexual e-mail to Cutee101.
"He admits this," said Klein. "We had the e-mail."
"You can't fire him?"
"It's almost impossible."
It's almost impossible because of the rules in the New York schools' 200-page contract with their teachers. There are so many rules that principals rarely even try to jump through all the hoops to fire a bad teacher. It took six years of expensive litigation before the teacher who wrote Cutee101 was fired. During those six years, he received more than $300,000 in salary.
"Up, down, around, we've paid him," said the chancellor. "He hasn't taught, but we've had to pay him, because that is what is required under the contract."
Hundreds of teachers the city calls incompetent, racist, or dangerous have been paid millions.
And what do they do while they get paid? They sit in rubber rooms.
They're not really made of rubber, of course. They are big, empty rooms where they store the teachers they are afraid to let near the kids. The teachers go there and sit, hang around, read magazines, and waste time. The city pays $20 million a year to house teachers in rubber rooms.
A new union contract is supposed to make it easier to fire teachers for sexual infractions, but the Byzantine rules for other offenses remain. Insane as most are, some teachers told me they support the firing rules. "You prove I'm a bad teacher!" said one. "And if you can't prove it, don't try it!"
The restrictions on firing teachers are defended as a means of protecting teachers from favoritism. But if schools and principals had to compete, good teachers would be protected by competition itself: If a principal's job depends on having good people working for him, he won't sacrifice it to give a favored incompetent a job he can't do.
Taking six years to fire a teacher doesn't do anyone any good -- except bad teachers. So why do it? The short answer is unions. The long answer is next week's column.
I'm dashing out the door right now but will check later this afternoon, if no one else has found one I will look.
"Bastion of Capitalism" ping.
amen brother!
Couldn't you find a nice conservative girl?
ANOTHER REDUNDANT HEADLINE.
she is a great human being, just clueless when it comes to politics.
Actually, it was quite a long time ago.
... now he's a flaming conservative.
He is not a conservative. He is a libertarian.
It is perfectly logical for liberals to maintain their total control over access to the minds of children.
It has worked incredibly well for them for a very long time.
In fact, it is one plank of the communist manifesto.
Well, then just don't let her vote! LOL
I remember that woman, I believe she was the head of South Carolina's schools which were last, or near last, compared to the rest of the country. You're right, she was a hoot!
"He is not a conservative. He is a libertarian."
Actually, he is a real journalist. He believes that the only thing that matters is the truth. Reporting of the facts, in a context which promotes the truth and nothing else, is what a journalist does.
The rot is even deeper. There is another monopoly that has to be broken before the public schools can be fixed: colleges of education.
Most of the several states have granted monopolies on school teaching (sometimes even in private schools) to the products of these specialized schools. Remember 'ed majors'? For every dedicated, smart, committed young person who choses to major in education because of a yearning to teach, there are twenty who are either math-phobic airheads who 'love children', or who picked the major because it was the easiest, most content-free way to get a bachelor's degree available.
The states have given a monopoly to these folk. Bizarrely, I'm not 'qualified' to teach calculus to high school students in a high school, with a Ph.D. in mathematics and twenty-five plus years of classroom experience, but I'm qualified to teach it to college freshmen (often of the same age thanks to different state school-entry age cutoff dates) or to high schoolers who get permission to take university courses, in which case, my course counts toward high school graduation.
Break the colleges-of-ed monopoly, break the teachers' union, and then, and only then, raise teacher salaries to attract good people to the profession.
That's the thing about NYC. If you don't like the public schools, there are lots of private schools lining up to cash your check for $20,000 to $30,000 a year tuition. School choice.
18 years ago I was in your situation, single and determined to stay so. Many of the nicest gals I dated were liberal. I never discussed politics because it stressed the relationship and lost me time with some lovely young ladies.
Save your ammunition for when it really counts. Or, find a gal who's a good conservative.
I have this belief that you can't change a person's political beliefs through debate. It comes about more slowly, as truth seeps into their consciousness. Especially for liberals, and especially liberal women, who do not analyze but vote by their feelings.
Dennis Prager and Rush have both discussed this. It's easy to be a liberal. It's not risky and you can feel morally superior. But if you ponder things more deeply, or "Think a Second Time" (the title of Prager's book), then the truth becomes more clear.
Save your breath. Enjoy your girlfriend. Tantalize her with the facts of your conservatism, but don't debate her. She'll explore and figure it out on her own.
P.S.: juvenile punctuation on Free Republic is not cool. Capitalize the first words of your sentences. Save the jive for your instant messages.
Yeah...but...as long as there are federal dollars involved in the public education system there would need to be an audit commitee. Lessen the Federal Beaucracy sure..but still keep a some form of oversight group, smaller more pragmatic goverment involvement, which was my point.
Bingo...you nailed it! I sat in on one of these classes once at East Tennessee State University during a video-conference (just walked right in and sat down...nobody paid a lick of attention to me). The students reminded me of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. The professor was spewing about how the Bible had to be driven from the classroom, in the name of religious tolerance toward those who weren't Christians. The airheads were lapping it up. These bimbos are now teaching YOUR children.
i appreciate the advice. i rarely debate politics with her for the very reasons you describe.
i think you make a good point about not being able to change ones politics through debate. i like dennis prager and i think ill check out the book.
i cant change the punctuation now, been doing it for too long. doesnt help my work clients write emails the same way too.
One's vocation does not preclude them from a world view or philosophy.
Stossel is a libertarian. He has described himself that way. He is not a Libertarian however.
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