A Modest Proposal for Education Reform
Abolish tenure? Merit pay? End seniority as the primary basis for pay raises? Annual performance reviews that could result in dismissal? These are just some of the ideas emanating from Washington, DC - home of the nation’s most expensive and under performing public school system.
While an excellent idea, I don’t think it will work. Why? Teachers remaining in the old system will soon be screaming that they are underpaid and unappreciated. Expect them to call for pay raises for all, responsibility for none.
These are precisely the types of reforms that are needed in D.C., here in Wicomico County, and elsewhere. The problem is that teachers’ unions may agree to a plan only as a means to raise members’ pay; but will then want to keep the money and dismantle the reforms.
Until we have boards of educations with the political and moral courage to serve students and the community rather than special interests our public education will continue to be less than first rate.
I can hear the teachers and bureaucrats now. “We’re doing it all for the children!” If this were so, why do we always hear about the need for higher salaries. When merit pay is advocated, the usual response is, “I don’t trust my principal to decide whether I get a raise.”
Government employees, whether in public education or out, do not deserve private sector wages if they refuse to accept private sector job security. In the private sector it is almost always your supervisor who conducts your performance review. Why do civil servants, teachers in particular, who are so opposed to having their supervisors evaluate them in a meaningful way?
Could it be that the truth hurts?
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