Get Rid of the Good, Keep the Bad - Makes It All Ugly

I follow the local blogs on the discussion of how teachers try to gain respect and be called "professionals". For every anecdotal story one has about how great teachers are, I can provide an anecdotal story that happened to me that demonstrates how some teachers and administrators are not great. Some lie. Some falsify records. Some abuse their power to overcome legitimate criticism.

What was interesting to me is how this can go on without other school employees stopping it. I also have this vision that when people retire from the system, they will come out and publicly denounce what they tolerated for so many years.

"The Gradebook" provides a link (March 17 - Unions ruining our schools) to a story about teachers and unions. I once may a statement that there is no bigger business than public education and unions. The word business is still being defined.

Here is the story from the "The Examiner"

I frankly have no grudge against unions. But I do have a grudge against the public education system. It is fraught with deceit. Like boxing, it really doesn't matter the integrity of the individual boxer, it is the overall organization that is defective.

A signing student once needed a signing adult to help the student in a non-signing class. It was written into the IEP. The principal hired someone who did not sign, was in their last year of employment and up front said they would not learn to sign. My argument that this person did not meet the spirit of the IEP contract for service fell on deaf ears. The principal stated he had to hire from a pool. The fact that the kid's needs were not being met, as required by federal law, was blown off by local SP&P's. So, if you want to talk about professional actions with me, be prepared for me to be sceptical.

To illustrate that point, if the following statements are true, then it shows there is disregard for individual teacher performance.


"Though she was named Minnesota's Teacher of the Year, Cathy Nelson was laid off when her school's enrollment declined -- because of her union's contract, which required the most junior teachers to be canned first, regardless of ability.

Sarah Gustafson was laid off from her teaching job the day after she was named to the Florida Educator Hall of Fame - again, because her union contract valued seniority over talent.

Union blindness also protects some truly unfit teachers whom no one would want in a classroom. In most schools few teachers need to be replaced, but tenure laws keep the numbers down to very, very few indeed.

In Illinois, a recent study found that only two out of the 95, 500 union-protected, tenured teachers outside of Chicago are dismissed annually for poor teaching. Of the 21 school districts investigated by the Center for Union Facts, not a single one - including Boston, Columbus, Houston, Minneapolis, and Newark - had a tenured-teacher firing rate in excess of 0.5percent a year. Surely they can't all be that good, in light of our kids' demonstrated skill levels"