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.
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.I did all three when I was in business, some more than once.
Absolutely necessary!
Liberals have been killing schools since the 1960s.
Looking forward to next weeks column :)
School district administrations and teacher's unions are a joke.
The people managing these organizations are ex-Teachers that never wanted to teach in the first place...and found themselves a position that pays more while they do less.
School districts need to be dissolved (in my old po-dunk town the Superindendent is paid 200K plus benis, for what?)Just have an overall Federal oversight system (audit committee) and let individual schools stand on their own accord.
You mean you did pay your best employees more and you did fire people for misconduct?
JOhn Stossel had an awesome segment on 20/20 last week. One in which he had Jesse Jackson Jr. It was about hypocites who refuse to vote for school vouchers, yet attended private schools themselves and send their own kids to private schools as well. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s answer to Stossel's question? "I send my kids to private schools because I can afford it."
Stossel didn't let up either, he really stuck it to him. It was great. John Stossel and Brit Hume may be the only "media men" I can trust at all.
The sooner, the better.
Close them all down.
There are graphs showing the growth of the teachers union from the late sixties compared with the dropping of scores, they match almost perfectly.
And just think - Stossel used to be a flaming liberal until not so long ago ... now he's a flaming conservative.
Yes, we need school choice desperately. The public schools have become a disaster, where 70% of the budget goes into administration and bureaucracies of support staffers and lawyers. The public schools are a complete mess in many states, esp. New York and the state where I grew up, the once great state of California. There's no possible logical argument for maintaining the public school monopoly. This is totally political and democRAT politicians are selling out our kids and out future for political benefits for themselves.
I believe John Stossel is a libertarian
Including the use of tense.
Corrected, it should read:
Well, at best a flaming Libertarian. However, I'll take a Libertarian over a liberal any day of the week. The sad thing is, he has said that because of his change of heart he has been shunned by many in the MSM that used to be "friends".
And yet, they keep telling us the media is not liberally biased.
The prospect of taking education courses deters the best students from becoming teachers. Many of these courses teach nonsense and the only way to get through them is to turn off your brain and regurgitate what the teacher wants to hear. Ironically, only those who demonstrate the capacity to absorb and parrot nonsense are considered qualified to teach.
John shouldn't worry about being shunned by those media clowns. They weren't actually his friends. He can show up here any time and make a bunch of new FRiends.
i would love to see some of these graphs. it would be great ammunition to show my clueless liberal girlfriend. any links?
Dude, clueless liberal girlfriends will never admit they are (wrong or without a clue)...best thing to do...is give them something else they can put their hands around.
In Hoc.
He is a smart guy. And it's nice to have him in our corner for a small limited government.
After studying the education system for a college class, I became a full fledged supporter of a privatized system. I can't think of any sane person who wouldn't support paying a business money for a better education. That was one of my main motivations in going backl to college. I want to get a better job so I can afford to send my children to a private school.
I think sooner or later the public education system will crumble. And I hope more sooner than later.
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