Vouchers, Merit Pay, and Teachers’ Union Howling

6Mar/1137

Vouchers, Merit Pay, and Teachers’ Union Howling

As teachers agitate, let's recall what their unions did when confronted with a couple of new ideas for improving children's education: school vouchers and merit pay. In response to these ideas, did they say, "Your children's education is very important to us, you pay the salaries of our members, we know that there are critical problems in public education and we're willing to try whatever we have to to improve things"? Like fun they did.

Teachers' unions have insisted for decades that the troubles in public education come about because we haven't thrown enough money at it. Now I'll give you a minute to go look at your property tax bill. (You may also have a school district tax referendum you might want to look at.) Now look at the news. On a nearly daily basis we're being told that American students are stupid and lazy and perform worse than Japanese students, or European students, or [insert the country du jour which isn't the United States] students. Go back to that tax bill once again. Something's not adding up.

I'm not opposed to throwing money at public education and I think decades of taxes paid by Americans proves that my position is not unusual. We've thrown gobs of money at public education; the return on that investment has been marginal at best. When we tell public educators what we want done to improve that return and fix achievement gaps, they fight us tooth-and-nail and condescendingly explaining to us that we don't know what we're talking about.

Maybe we don't know what we're talking about. Maybe school vouchers and merit pay are bad ideas. Then again, we are the ones footing the bill. And maybe if teachers' unions had given those ideas more than a grudging, limp-wristed try instead of reflexively crapping on any idea which puts some control back into the hands of taxpayers, I might feel some sympathy for protesters in Wisconsin and the teachers there who will be laid off.

P.S. If you were planning to go to Madison any time soon, keep in mind that since Michael Moore's visit, don't count on finding a bratwurst within a fifteen mile radius.

starless

Tagged as: Madison, Merit Pay, Michael Moore is a fatty fat-fat, Teachers' Union, Vouchers Leave a comment

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Mike
March 6th, 2011 - 09:36

Dammit…and I love Bratwurst too.

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Vegas Art Guy
March 7th, 2011 - 01:09

Here is the one problem with merit pay. How do you measure progress by students? Standardized tests? Writing proficiencies? There is enough ‘teaching to the test’ as it is now with NCLB, and that will only get worse if we go the easy route when it comes to figuring out who can teach. I got to meet last week with some of the 8th grade English teachers at our feeder schools to see what they did and to start regular communications with them. The one thing that shocked me was that in 8th grade the students do very little reading because they spend most of the school year preparing for the 8th grade writing proficiencies. Their jobs depend on how well the kids do on that test. For 9th grade teachers we have the interim assessments twice a year. Let’s go with the idea that those tests judge the progress made from the first to the second test. How many teachers would do no prep for the first test and then prep like hell for the second one, especially if your pay raise and job depend on it?

Just something to think about…

PS I like vouchers and school choice though and getting rid of the crappy (aka June, July and August) teachers as well.

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- Dan Collins
  March 7th, 2011 - 06:28
  
  Agreed, that is a problem. However, when the unions try to make their points via reference to standardized tests (such as the SAT, which less than 10% of self-selected Wisconsin students take), they certainly invite the practice.
  
  If teaching in public schools were the profession that it professes to be, teachers (for instance of English) would note when incoming students have not been adequately prepared for their classes by teachers they have had previously, and that would become part of the record. Since it’s all about the children, though, that would be too much like squealing on a colleague.
  
  Must have solidarity, at all costs, even if it means letting incompetent jackwagons with degrees in “Education” continuing to pretend to teach.
  
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- Enoch_Root
  March 7th, 2011 - 09:20
  
  I am sorry – but all other lines of work are measurable except teaching? Come on. It comes down to quality product. And, in this case, the students and their performance are the product. Parents and peers (and employers and bosses) are perfectly capable of informing whether or not a teacher is performing at a high level or not.
  
  For years, the argument has been made by the Teachers’ Unions that one cannot measure whether or not a teacher is a good teacher. That is so much BS. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to be both subjective and objective. And if need be it can be largely anecdotal. It is something all good managers and certainly all customers are capable of having an opinion on. The only ones who ought be afraid of such merit based rankings are piss-poor teachers.
  
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  - Dan Collins
    March 7th, 2011 - 09:52
    
    Teachers somehow measure student performance.
    
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- starless
  March 7th, 2011 - 09:56
  
  GWB really set back any sort of real public education reform when he instituted NCLB and, if you think about it, it’s the sort of federally-mandated command economy-style program that was made for teachers’ unions. The only reason teachers’ unions resent it so much is that they don’t get credit for it. Teachers, OTOH, resent it for practical reasons.
  
  I don’t know how you measure teacher merit, but it certainly is measurable and I don’t think a teachers’ union would have a problem with it as long as they set the standard. The real trouble is that teachers’ unions, particularly because of the immense army and war chest they’ve amassed, have engendered a groupthink and circle-the-wagons culture. Once you’ve paid some dues (literal and figurative) to the union, you’re safe and they will protect you at the cost of your students. Yes, you can be fired (as the NEA repeats ad nauseam) but only according to rules set by the union.
  
  The key thing that unions have accomplished is to cut parents and local voters out of the equation (short of referenda votes). Unions are right that WI is a key battleground for them because if they lose, then the jig’s up and they have to start to listening to parents and local voters and they really, really don’t want that.
  
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Vegas Art Guy
March 7th, 2011 - 23:15

@Enoch, the one difference between teaching and other careers is that you have control over the raw material. When I worked at Xerox if I got in bad toner I could send it back. I can’t do that with 9th graders who read at the 5th grade level. Especially since after a certain age 8th graders MUST attend HS due to safety reasons. I’m not opposed to merit pay, but people need to understand the trap they are setting with it.

@Dan we do measure performance with tests and simply by walking around the room to see what they are actually doing. The problem with that is that my tests work well for my classes but not for others. If you go to standard assessments like the math teachers then you end up with the district planning everything out for you. Our math teachers are told what to teach, when to teach it, how many days to spend teaching it and how to teach it. They can’t (without getting into trouble) slow down and reteach the things the students don’t get, because the tests the HAVE to give are based on the central planning of the district. And they wonder why our test scores are bad?

Anyway I have tests to grade.

I hope the unions go the way of the Hindenburg…

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- enoch_root
  March 8th, 2011 - 09:03
  
  Vegas. In my line of work, we don’t get to choose our clients either. I guess the biggest difference is that they can fire us at any time.
  
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- starless
  March 8th, 2011 - 09:37
  
  The funny thing about the Johnny Can’t Read problem is that the Education Industrial Complex’s inevitable response is to come up with excuses and new ways to teach kids. IOW, after millennia of human literacy, we have yet to figure out a sure-fire method of teaching kids how to read. Are you f*cking kidding me?
  
  I’m not trying to dismiss the problem of dealing with the uniqueness of each child, but for as along as I can recall, the excuse that there are too many variables to guarantee positive results in public education has been been just that: an excuse. And a CYA excuse at that. Just as curricula experimentation has been a CYA exercise. As long as there is an intractable problem, there will always be a job, so then we hear crap about home environment, the intrusion of popular culture, self-esteem, ADD, and whatever else is popular at the time. Conclusion: merit pay, particularly outcome-based merit pay, is unfair.
  
  Teaching is sausage making. Yes, it’s messy, but there are ways to do it and ways to not do it in order to get the product you want.
  
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  - Dan
    March 9th, 2011 - 17:21
    
    Come on now. We HAVE figured out sure fire ways to teach kids to read and to do math. A dillion students who have gone through our schools do both, some very well. The fact is that in a class of 30 or so students, all given the same instruction, some will walk away competent and some won’t. For the most part, the kids that don’t learn are the ones that don’t engage with whatever method is put in front of them. There are of course many reasons why that may be. But no one wants to admit anymore that the kids have some role to play in their own success. I find it amusing that people who harp about “personal responsibility” in society don’t think it applies when it comes to children in a classroom.
    
    This has a become a country full of teacher haters. Whenever a student fails it is the teacher’s fault. We don’t want to blame the victims! Most teacher bashers wouldn’t last a day teaching in an underfunded, inner city high school. I’ve been there.
    
    Teacher unions exist to keep fend off ill-conceived ideas like merit pay and vouchers. Merit pay because of the reason’s I just described about variability among students. School vouchers because it drains money from an already underfunded public school system.
    
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    - starless
      March 10th, 2011 - 09:05
      
      Ah, but children can’t be held to the same standards of personal responsibility as adults because they’re, you know, children. If you have children who aren’t engaging with the material, then it’s part of your job to make them engage, but I’m sure you have a long list of excuses and “root causes” as to why you can’t or won’t do that. This is because union-infused public teachers’ culture has become a victim culture. “Teacher’s fault”? No, teacher’s responsibility.
      
      I think you are 100% wrong that we’ve become a “country full of teacher haters”. Though I do think that we’ve been moving more and more toward a country of parents and taxpayers who are fed up with hearing the decades-long, never-ending excuse from extremely powerful unions about how student achievement is always falling because schools are “underfunded”. Strangely, though, we’re continually on the brink of being taxed to death.
      
      We’ve gone along with teachers’ unions’ extortion scheme for decades now, given money through the nose, and we’re not buying it anymore because it’s plain that there can never, ever be enough money.
      
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    - starless
      March 10th, 2011 - 10:01
      
      BTW, if you bothered to read my original post, you’ll have seen that I conceded that vouchers and merit pay may be bad ideas but that that is neither here nor there. The trouble is that teachers’ unions fought the ideas tooth-and-nail.
      
      It’s funny, teachers always emphasize how critical it is for parents to be active and participate in their children’s education. That is, they want them to be active and participate but only if their participation doesn’t infringe on their union-protected turf.
      
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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 10:06

So you know, teachers find it laughable when the unions are described as “powerful” when they sometimes go years without even a cost of living adjustments in pay. It’s not a union’s job to fire teachers. That’s the job of administration. Unions negotiate contracts to make sure that someone is fired “with cause”. That’s it.

I love how you consider having to pay for schools to be “extortion.” My guess is you don’t like paying for anything. You have no sense about what it costs to educate kids, but you resent having to pay any of it. Teachers know that money is sometimes mismanaged. But it’s not mismanaged by us. I taught 165 students a day in the last public high school I where I worked. With classes of 35+, a teacher is severely limited in the kinds of instruction they can employ. Its pretty much lecture driven. Some kids wouldn’t show up consistently. Some couldn’t speak English. Many wouldn’t do the work put in front of them. (Does a school really “fail” if the kids won’t do what the school prescribes?) With numbers like that, you can barely get to know the kid’s names much less intervene before they “fall through the cracks.” Some kids just aren’t motivated by lecture. Yeh, its my job to engage every kid, every day. Through hard work, and determination, I had a of success. But not 100% success. Kids aren’t cogs in a machine. Some just don’t want what is being offered to them. It’s not an excuse to say that some aspects of my job are out of my control. If your kid can’t or won’t show up and work hard, then don’t expect him to learn anything, especially when he’s sent to classes in herds.

My post-public school retirement gig is teaching at a posh private school (the same one Bill Gates attended). The parents are willing to pay $25k a year to send their kids there. Why? Because we boast class sizes of 16 and select our kids, no riff-raff allowed. You are whining about a few hundred bucks a year on your property taxes to pay for schools bursting at the seems. You expect miracles on the cheap and complain when you don’t get them. You know nothing about what teachers actually do every day, but decide they aren’t worth what you pay them. (Teachers are all in in for the money you know.) It’s because of people like you that unions exist. Since you’d have us teaching 300 kids a day for minimum wage (and you’d still complain…”It’s sooo much money!”) we need someone to negotiate our working conditions.

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- starless
  March 10th, 2011 - 12:00
  
  OIC, so when Bob Chanin announced that, “NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power,” was he delusional or was he just lying?
  
  The thing about an organization which has come to rely on a position of victimhood is that even after they’ve gained power, it’s imperative that they perpetuate their members’ status as victims. They do that by continually telling themselves, each other, and anyone else who will listen that they are victims. It is, after all, one of their main sources of power.
  
  AFA what I think and what I do or do not know, don’t make assumptions beyond what I’ve actually written, but FTR, I did write, “I’m not opposed to throwing money at public education,” and I never said that I thought teaching was a cakewalk.
  
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Enoch_Root
March 10th, 2011 - 10:13

FAIL: “With numbers like that, you can barely get to know the kid’s names much less intervene before they “fall through the cracks.” Some kids just aren’t motivated by lecture. Yeh, its my job to engage every kid, every day.”

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- Dan
  March 10th, 2011 - 11:22
  
  Hello Enoch Root. Nice to talk to you again. Your response to my overly long statement perfectly illustrates why teachers need their unions. You clearly have no clue when it comes to the complexities and difficulties many teachers face in their jobs. In fact, your comment about teachers and college degrees makes it doubly clear. Virtually all teachers have Master’s degrees along with many credits beyond. Teachers need an organized response to demands made by people who don’t know about (or in your case, don’t care about) what teachers do for a living.
  
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  - Enoch_Root
    March 10th, 2011 - 11:26
    
    Hello Dan – cry me a river. Also, please supply citations re credentials of the vast majority of teachers. In addition, I do not have a womb… should I not be afforded an opinion on abortion? Is that your argument? Or is it that if only I would listen to the nuances of the argument… I would suddenly suffer an epiphany and see the truf of the matter? Typical. Teacher.
    
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    - Dan
      March 10th, 2011 - 11:47
      
      Virtually all salary schedules for public school teachers are public. Go to any district website and look at the columns. The data about the percentage of employees anywhere on the schedule is freely available. Teachers get paid based upon degrees earned and credits outside of degrees. In the district I worked in over half the teachers were at “the top” of the schedule, meaning they had 45 credits (minimum) beyond Master’s degrees as well as 15+ years of experience.
      
      You can have an opinion about anything you want. Of course it’s nice to have an informed one if you are going to argue about something. I’m not crying about anything. I don’t expect you to understand or give a damn about what I do every day. But I’m not the kind of person who sit’s back and listens to teacher bashing, particularly when it is done by people who don’t understand the basics of my job, much less the nuances.
      
      And by the way, you can have an opinion about abortion as well. Just don’t try to tell people who have wombs what to do with them.
      
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    - Enoch_Root
      March 10th, 2011 - 12:09
      
      FAILx2:”But I’m not the kind of person who sit’s back and listens to teacher bashing, particularly when it is done by people who don’t understand the basics of my job, much less the nuances.”
      
      FAILx3:”In 2007–08, some 76 percent of public school teachers were female, 44 percent were under age 40, and 52 percent had a master’s or higher degree. Compared with public school teachers, a lower percentage of private school teachers were female (74 percent), were under age 40 (39 percent), and had a master’s or higher degree (38 percent).”
      
      SOURCE: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28
      
      You don’t get paid to impart knowledge, do you? Is that a vast majority?
      
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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 10:16

Starless, I did read your original post. Unions are simply a collection of teachers. Bad ideas get fought tooth and nail. They should. Some ideas that look good on paper to people who don’t understand how the teaching business actually works need to be rejected. It’s not protecting “union turf”, whatever that is. It’s not agreeing to ideas that don’t work. So many people think they know about teaching and education because they went to school. I see my doctor once in a while, but I don’t tell him what to do. And BTW, I pay lots of money for my doctor.

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- Enoch_Root
  March 10th, 2011 - 10:26
  
  As you should… doctors have more than an undergrad degree and can get sued if their clients fail… even if their clients smoke and drink an entire lifetime.
  
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  - Buelldawg
    March 10th, 2011 - 13:58
    
    Your comment section should be like Facebook where I get to “like” or “<3" comments! Double bonus points to Enoch for this comment! Perfect example of why teachers should be paid based on merit and not automatic pay for degrees. I have a MBA & I didn't get any more $$ a year once I graduated.
    
    So, if it is difficult to teach 35+ high schoolers, then how the hell did teachers in the 1950s teach 50+ 1st graders (most never attended kindergarten) & at the end of the year they were reading at higher levels than today's private school student…forget public school. High schoolers should have no issue learning lecture style. Good prep for college. You also shouldn't pass students who do not earn it. The 8th grader who reads at a 5th grade level should never have left 6th grade. And, while we are at it, let's go back to Phonics! Whole language and new math are not helping our children learn. And, other point try a couple thousand dollars a year go to the schools. Other states have higher contributions.
    
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- starless
  March 10th, 2011 - 12:09
  
  Once again, you seem to miss the whole point: whether merit pay and vouchers are a good idea and whether parents and taxpayers know what they’re talking about is irrelevant. How teachers’ unions dealt with those issues (dismissively, condescendingly, and eventually rabidly) is. Wisconsin is proving that. After all, elections have consequences, right?
  
  I always enjoy the teacher/doctor analogy. It’s an oldie but a goody.
  
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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 13:06

In Wisconsin it’s clear that the spoils have gone to the winners. But make no mistake about it, organized labor has been enlivened. The pendulum will swing back. Tens of thousands of union members will jump back into politics and their presence will be felt. You and I both know that the Wisconsin debacle had nothing to do with the budget. As you eluded, it was about retaliation for pac money going to Dems.

I wasn’t making the oldie but goody analogy between doctors and teachers. I was simply pointing out how absurd it is for people who know nothing about my business to tell me how to do my job.

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- starless
  March 10th, 2011 - 14:12
  
  You and I both know that the Wisconsin debacle had nothing to do with the budget.
  
  No, I don’t.
  
  As you eluded, it was about retaliation for pac money going to Dems.
  
  I didn’t allude to any such thing. I used the word “consequences”–IOW, you had an opportunity to acknowledge and deal with solutions which taxpayers plopped in front of your faces and instead of taking them seriously, your unions did everything they could to put them down and avoid them, and unsurprisingly voters finally got fed up and elected people who would take them seriously. As I clearly stated in my original post, you might’ve found more sympathy if you and your unions had behaved otherwise.
  
  But please, continue with your condescendingly arrogant outrage, you’re helping to reinforce my point.
  
  RE: doctor/teacher analogy. All my life I’ve heard from teachers, “What we do is as important as [doctors, lawyers, pick your private sector professional] and we deserve to be paid the same,” so don’t try to tell me it isn’t a moldy oldy.
  
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  - Dan
    March 10th, 2011 - 14:57
    
    I don’t know any teachers who have said that they should be paid like doctors. But they should be paid a living wage. And what they do is important.
    
    When my daughter was young she built a plane out of cardboard boxes. She cried when it wouldn’t fly. When the public makes unreasonable demands about subjects they know nothing about, then they must be ignored or fought. I know how teacher evaluations are performed. I know how hard it is to determine what is actually working in a classroom and what isn’t. I know how hard it is to look at the myriad of variables involved in teaching to determine who needs to be rewarded (or punished). Debates have raged for years about tests and what they show and don’t show. Teachers have argued about how to evaluate themselves fairly for decades. If there was an clear, fair, and honest way to assign pay for performance it wouldn’t be rejected by teachers.
    Many merit pay schemes have been tried. They don’t work. As I’ve said, too many variables (just because you dismiss this argument doesn’t mean it’s not valid). Teachers have a right to defend themselves against schemes that don’t work. You view this as intransigence. So be it. Just because you want to pay less in taxes doesn’t mean I can do more for less. Just because you think merit pay should work doesn’t change the facts. You want a cardboard plane to fly and you get angry when someone tells you it can’t. And because I’m telling you so, I must be arrogant. I get the feeling that when anyone tells you something you don’t know that you think they are speaking condescendingly.
    
    Like every public employee in the country, I’ve watched the events in Wisconsin unfold. Concessions in pay and benefits were offered. It became clear that it was about busting the unions. I don’t know how you can see it otherwise.
    
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    - Enoch_Root
      March 10th, 2011 - 15:15
      
      Producing quality is the only measurement. Why is it Catholic and Lutheran schools can do it better and cheaper?
      
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    - starless
      March 10th, 2011 - 15:55
      
      I don’t know any teachers who have said that they should be paid like doctors.
      
      Either you’ve been living under the proverbial rock or your lying. I’m betting on the latter.
      
      Teachers have argued about how to evaluate themselves fairly for decades.
      
      And as such, the argument will last for many more decades, and in perpetuity if it’s left up to teachers and their unions. That has become clear.
      
      As I’ve said, too many variables (just because you dismiss this argument doesn’t mean it’s not valid).
      
      I don’t dismiss it, but I do say that you’re using it as an excuse to maintain the status quo.
      
      Just because you want to pay less in taxes doesn’t mean I can do more for less.
      
      Stop attributing things to me that I never said or even alluded to. I never said anything close to, “Teachers should be paid less because I want to pay less in taxes.” FTR, I’m actually in favor of decent teacher compensation (and stop crying this “living wage” nonsense) and I have yet to decide whether teachers’ unions are good or bad in and of themselves.
      
      And because I’m telling you so, I must be arrogant. I get the feeling that when anyone tells you something you don’t know that you think they are speaking condescendingly.
      
      I gotta say, I’ve really enjoyed your Appeal to Authority style, particularly because you use yourself as the authority. I’ll repeat this: you don’t know what I do and do not know beyond what I’ve written here. The fact that you’ve been a teacher, frankly, doesn’t impress me. It certainly doesn’t make you an authority on what I do or do not know about teaching, teacher compensation, or teacher evaluations.
      
      It became clear that it was about busting the unions.
      
      Bullshit. It’s about easing the stranglehold public unions have on state coffers.
      
      None of the above matters though, because you have once again completely, utterly, and wholly missed the point of the post.
      
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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 13:07

Oh, and enoch root, I said “vast majority”, when I should have said “majority”. OMG!

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- Enoch_Root
  March 10th, 2011 - 14:27
  
  Thank you for ceding the point. Open. Honest. Debate.
  
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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 15:18

Private schools don’t unless they are subsidized by the Catholic church. My school costs $25k a year (and it has a $160 million endowment). The bottom line is they select their students.

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- Enoch_Root
  March 10th, 2011 - 16:14
  
  In 2008, public schools (K-12) spent $583 billion on 49,623,000 students, or $11,750 per student.
  
  In 2008, private schools (K-12) spent $48 billion on 6,115,000 student, or about $7,850 per student.
  
  http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/all_levels_of_education.html
  
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cost+per+student+private+vs+public
  
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  - Dan
    March 10th, 2011 - 16:48
    
    Again, private schools don’t take all comers. They don’t take many of the “special needs” kids, certainly not the kids with the worst problems. They are not constrained by the layers of bureaucratic rules and regulations imposed upon the public schools. You are comparing apples and oranges. Parochial schools and many private schools also spend much less on salaries. I’m not sure what your point is other than to, once again, disparage public school teachers. What lesson would you have public school teachers learn from their private school counterparts?
    
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    - Enoch_Root
      March 10th, 2011 - 17:32
      
      My point is this: they do more for less… and, in general, do it better.
      
      And it is not the case that they do not take the “undesirables” – they do. And further, they very often, in the case of Catholic schools, eat all of the cost – and, btw, regardless of the person’s faith.
      
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    - Dan
      March 10th, 2011 - 17:54
      
      I will be the first to agree that a lot of money is mismanaged in the public school system. Most school districts are top heavy with administration. There is a great deal of money spent on bureaucratic red tape. When I taught at the elementary level I watched kids who had trouble in my school get pulled out and sent to the parochial school down the road only to be returned a few months later. There are some pieces of the public school bureaucracy that are enormously expensive that don’t exist in the parochial schools. But, quite honestly, I haven’t looked into this for a long time. But I think I will. I appreciate the push.
      
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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 16:38

Look,I’ve been a teacher for 38 years. I’ve taught math in public and private schools in grades 4 through 12. I’ve negotiated teacher contracts and been president of our union (in a district with 24,000)students. I’m not saying this to impress anybody. I’m certain I’m not going to impress you. But I do know what I’m talking about. I should. It’s been my life’s work. In your original post, you claimed that we must be putting enough money into our schools. Your justification? Your tax bill. That’s quite an extrapolation. As I said before, when class sizes hover at 30 kids a class, it’s hard to believe that enough money is being spent. When you see photos of classrooms with ceiling tiles falling down and 20 year old textbooks, it’s hard believe that the “gobs” of money is being spent wisely. You may think that your kid doesn’t learn any better in a class of 16 than in a class of 30. You’d be wrong. You say that you’ve “told” educators that you want the achievement gap fixed (damn it) and they haven’t done it. Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe these problems are harder to fix and more expensive to fix than you think. I’m here to tell you that teachers have given more than a “grudging, limp-wristed try” at solving problems in education. Much more. In your last remarks you insinuate that we are just idiots blathering about these topics endlessly with no hope of ever getting it right left to our own devices. (I know, you didn’t say that directly, but that’s what you meant.) So we should let people who don’t understand our business dictate simple-minded solutions to our complicated problems? Right?

Finally, I just have to reiterate, that teacher unions are not separate and distinct from the teachers who belong to them. Union leaders are elected. Union positions are those taken by teachers after exhaustive internal debate. If you hate the unions, you hate the workers. I think teachers and other workers have a right to fight for their working conditions whether it pisses people off or not.

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Dan
March 10th, 2011 - 19:35

Starless and Enoch Root. I realize that I have overstayed my welcome just like the last time I visited this blog. I also realize that I sound preachy and defensive. That’s what happens when I think someone is attacking my profession. I’m not making this up, it happens a lot. Teachers, and by extension, their unions are constantly being blamed for all manner of societal ills. Most of it is simply unwarranted. Most of us are working as hard as we can under sometimes very difficult circumstances. I’m probably oversensitive in my response to this kind of blog entry. And I admit that I might have read more into this post than was intended.

You both have a right to your opinion and I’m not going to change any minds. I want to say that I enjoy talking with smart people even if we don’t agree. I have to stop commenting now. I have too much to do. Take care.

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