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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (194932)	7/19/2004 8:42:53 AM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572616

ok, but you will still have the bad. Just like bad doctors, Walmart employees, McDonalds employees, etc... What do we do with the bad teachers now? The unions will not let you touch them. "tenure" Are you against teacher testing or forms of performance measurement?

To: SilentZ who wrote (194932)	7/22/2004 1:07:00 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572616

There's some data you'll have to explain: mwhodges.home.att.net Here's a picture you may not have seen. It demonstrates the 71% decline in the education quality productivity index for the 34-year period up until SAT tests were revised in scoring methods and made less rigorous. This index shows the relationship between education quality (SAT scores) and education spending per student is worse than 34 years ago - 71% worse. Despite rapidly rising inflation-adjusted spending per student over this period SAT scores declined. As a result, education productivity fell 71% - - as seen in the chart. (quality continued to deteriorate in the years following this chart, covered down the page). (Note: Some say if one wants SAT scores in the future that cannot be compared to higher scores in past decades, without improving student learning, simply make the test less rigorous and change scoring as has been done - - just as if the distance to the left field baseball stadium fence was reduced to produce more 'home runs'). This chart confirms: 'The quality of schooling is far worse today than it was in 1955,'' Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate. And, this decline in output quality occurred despite more spending per student and smaller class sizes, and despite more non-teaching employees per student, than before. This chart further confirms the statement of another well-known economist: "There is an inverse relationship between spending and quality." Additionally, National Review reported, "students in the top 5 states in per-pupil expenditure fare worse on the SAT than students in the bottom five spending states." Steve is on to something: Pouring more money into a broken system won't fix it as long as that is all you do. You won't get better teachers by increasing their paychecks. You CAN get better teachers by rewarding the better ones and weeding out the bad ones- -an idea the teachers unions have fought tooth and nail for decades. One of the keys to improvement has to be breaking those unions and throwing them away.