I suppose the corollary that follows the Teacher's Union's assertion that they are working to provide "
Great Public Schools for Every Student" is that most politicians, school boards, superintendents, administrative staffs, principals, etc are not striving for "Great Public Schools for Every Student"...
I mean, repeatedly I hear that:
- WE need tenure or THEY will fire the good teachers to save money.
- WE need to strike or THEY will not pay enough to attract and retain good teachers.
- WE need to overcome NCLB or ... (Oops, that is their stated goal)
Wouldn't their needing to bravely fight for it, mean that these School Boards and Superintendents want something else? Maybe these educated minded people that run these Public schools actually want their districts to fail??? Since I have watched the RAS Supt and Board for a few years, I find this very had to believe.
And maybe the politicians are saying to themselves, I really want my State to be known for its poor education system. Hard to believe...
Thoughts?
5 comments:
Not so much that they want our schools to fail, as it is the chattering classes don't understand how schools succeed. Our schools have become reduced even, to a political cudgel each side uses to beat on the other, to the detriment of all.
--Hiram
I wonder who will drop the cudgel first?
Chicago Trib Cartoon 1
Chicago Trib cartoon 2
Toby Tunes Cartoon
CTU cartoon (ironic since they are striking...)
Blogspot cartoon
More fun...
Wordpress cartoon
Adam Zyglis cartoon
Cagle cartoon
Imgick Nola cartoon
The Onion
I like the Onion piece, to which I would only add: Test scores are improving rapidly! I said long ago that, against international competition, US students do well in 4th grade, below average in 8th, and next to last in 12th. So, the longer they stay in US public schools the less they know. Seems to me that we ought to just make the Chicago teachers strike a permanent situation by firing them all and starting over. It would be hard to do worse for more money.
J. Ewing
The answer to your question is that nobody wants the students to fail, but that is the unavoidable outcome of the system in which they all work. School boards are established in such a way that they take tremendous heat for telling people they cannot have this or that class or perk in the school, or a big raise or plush benefits, but they take hardly no heat at all for raising taxes to pay for these things and even less for gross inefficiencies that naturally get built into a system with no accountability for results and essentially no competition.
In other words, everybody is doing the very best they know how, but they really haven't a clue as to how to do the very best.
J. Ewing
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