#1. -- has nothing to do with public schools. How does any educated person read this article and not gag on the first obviously hyper-partisan point.
# 2. -- The writer forgets that fired teachers need to be replaced as firing a bad teacher doesn't magically vanish her class full of children. AND if you are going to pay the 'good' teachers more, where will the money come from?? Raise taxes?
#3. Teachers are a relatively small part of public employee's pensions. They are lower salary workers and rarely do they get the same type of pension as most everybody else working for state governments. Consider employees in the state court system and police departments, many getting six-figure salaries -- all will get 2/3 - 1/2 of their salary at time of retirement FOR LIFE. Teachers get a retirement plan like a 401k. Unless they married a wealthy spouse, they will be on welfare and be forced to work retail jobs until they drop dead. That's how we treat our teachers.
#4. I think school districts should be able to fire bad teachers. So do most good teachers. As far as 'freedoms' -- they still have to convince qualified people to work for less money. They are still accountable to their community for turning out students who can read and think for themselves--and must do this on a very limited budget.
#5 Now the writer contradicts herself. She wants to fire all the bad teachers, then hire good ones (no logical explanation as to how to raise salaries) then she wants principals to micro-manage classrooms in manner that any working teacher would say is unproductive and totally unrealistic. -- Also, seems like this writer is more concerned with controlling what kids learn--specifically in biology and history classes, I'm assuming. It's funny, they think they left is brainwashing their kids, but when they dictate the curriculum it's what, brain-rinsing? No double standards, sweetie.
#6 Now she wants the teachers to run the schools themselves. Make up your mind, dopey.
This writer probably should have studied harder in school and then her article would make more sense. She was probably home schooled.
