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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (14967)	3/24/2006 1:27:30 PM
From: mph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541124

Market forces do tend to weed out the mediocre in terms of relative degrees of success. For example, professionals who don't do good work or who continually lose, tend not to be hired or referred. Sometimes mediocre people just get lucky. Obviously there is a broad range of ability across the board among the American workforce. Of course, an inept Walmart worker might be a transitory annoyance to a customer, but will not have any real impact on that customer's life, unlike the effect on children of inept teachers. My point was that, in the education system, the rules of tenure and all the other protections afforded public servants effectively prevent the discharge of the mediocre and marginal teachers. What other professions have that level of protection? Children attending public schools also have no choice as to the teachers to whom they are assigned. Your overall position seems to be that Prop 13 and/or lack of funding has caused the death of CA schools. My point is that there are myriad causes and that throwing money at problems is not necessarily the answer. I think that tenure and the general resistance to proficiency exams for teachers constitute part of the problem. I guess you're saying that since all professions have mediocre workers, why should teachers be any different? Assuming that's your stance, why should they have tenure and/or why should their mediocrity not be considered as at least part of the reason for the decline in CA schools? btw, if you want to engage in brittle laughter, you can do it directly. I always consider the source of those types of comments.