Education in America

What's your motivation?  As we've discussed before, the incentive concept is what I believe drives our lives.  For teachers' unions the motivation is the best hand for the teacher.  Teachers provide members, money, clout.  For the politician who takes union money, who needs union support to keep his job, the motivation is essentially the same.  He needs the union who needs the teachers, so it is the teacher who comes out ahead.  Who represents the students?

A former head of the United Federation of Teachers once famously said "When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."  Albert Shanker wasn't far off the mark there. 

Reforming how teachers are hired and fired is an essential part of reforming education.  You can't fix a system using the same faulty parts.  People much smarter than I have tried and some have succeeeded in adding better parts to fix the whole, but unless you reform the HOW the parts work, you can't fix the system.  Consider this op-ed from the New York Post by Joel Klein, who oversaw one of the greatest increases in public school performance in this country. 

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/keeping_great_teachers_tXMzZhQwLz3rfNVOma4xAO

More recommended reading of Mr. Klein was in the May 9, 2011 Wall Street Journal.

Bottom line on this aspect of this topic is this:

If we don't represent the interests of our students, if we don't hire and fire based on merit alone, if we continue to put the needs of the worthless above the needs of those we serve then our educational system will continue to decline.  As that decline spreads, so does the decline of this nation of ours.