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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (3587)	7/22/2003 12:13:07 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793551

Thanks, Karen. Been traveling. More to come. As for teachers, the members of almost any profession, forget the unions issue, will say something like that when outsiders try to get them to police themselves. The line is usually some version of "what we do is so esoteric, it's not possible to evaluate," "rely on the credentialing process," etc. The list is long. It's as true of doctors and lawyers as of teachers. Nothing to do with unions. I'm making a point in the context of the Atlantic Monthly article, which is fascinating, highly recommended. The basic thesis is to pay teachers a great deal more and, in return, get agreements to wead out the weak ones. The writer of the article notes that some members of the teachers union have shown genuine interest. My point in that context is that it's relatively easy, from within the profession, and now I speak of the university level but I suspect it applies in k-12 as well, to see who teaches very well and who teaches very poorly. The criteria to help "objectify" the judgments are reasonably clear. So, I conclude that if the issue is getting rid of the genuinely bad teachers and to recruit in a new generation of very good teachers, the article is right on target. If, however, the point is to introduce merit pay, that's different and more difficult. And a different set of arguments. It assumes certain things about the motives of folk who go into teaching, about the ability to make fine distinctions between teaching skills, different disciplines, etc., and a review process that doesn't simply enourage suckup behavior rather than peg itself to good teaching. Not easy. But worth working on. As for Bill's arguments, I think his problem is with unions per se. And there we have disagreements. But that, in my view is a different issue, from what to do about "inner city" k-12 education.