When a New York Times reporter and opinion columnist speaks up for American children and against Democrat and Union resistance to improving education - you know know our kids' education is in very bad shape.
A few of the devastating comments are listed below:
Democrats and Schools
"Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools."
"The effort to remove a [NYC] teacher is expected to cost about $400,000, and the outcome is uncertain. In New York City, with its 80,000 teachers, arbiters have removed only two for incompetence alone in the last couple of years. We tolerate failed teachers — and failed arbiters — as long as it’s not our own kids who suffer."
"In another case cited by Mr. Brill, the union hailed its defense of a high-school teacher — who had passed out in front of her class, allegedly smelling of alcohol, with even the principal unable to rouse her. The union fought to secure her return to teaching, Mr. Brill wrote, until she passed out again, and her “water bottle” turned out to contain alcohol."
"A Los Angeles Times article this year recounted how a teacher rebuked an eighth grader who had been hospitalized for slashing his wrists in a suicide attempt. “Carve deeper next time,” the teacher allegedly advised. He was even said to have added: “You can’t even kill yourself.” A review board blocked the termination of that teacher.
Research has underscored that what matters most in education — more than class size or spending or anything — is access to good teachers. A Brookings study found that if black students had four straight years of teachers from the top 25 percent of most effective teachers, the black-white testing gap would vanish in four years. Download Brookings Institution Study
Holy S&&T!
Posted by: Suresh | October 19, 2009 at 09:16 AM