Thanks for cleaning up the posts.
Let's put this into perspective. If you privatize the entire education system you end up destroying the very foundation that this nation was built upon. Jefferson understood that an educated populace was essential to the very freedoms and liberty this nation holds most dear.
That's great, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this requires public education. In fact, I have no problem with public education at all. The problem is when the public education has a government granted monopoly and the employees (teachers) are unionised, which doesn't help anyone. There essential is no incentive for improvement, as the great teachers are lumped together with the average and below average teachers.
Do you know why teachers became unionized in the first place? Here is a high level synopsis. In order to save costs school districts hired women at lower salaries during the 1900's because they were paid less than their male counterparts. Since they couldn't vote they formed unions to protect themselves. They were instrumental in women's suffrage too so the right of women to cast a vote is in part due to unions. Secondly teachers are paid less than people with equivalent degrees in the private sector.
Modern teachers of today have different goals than their predecessors. It may have started due to lower pay and less suffrage, but things have changed. In many places where the monopoly is stronger (New York, California, Chicago, etc) as opposed to teachers in South Dakota, North Carolina, Florida, etc.
Thirdly there are incentives for improvement within the teaching profession itself. Another factor that is very often ignored is class size. Trying to maintain order and teach in a class of 20 children is far easier than it is with 40.
I don't think this is true. We often hear that smaller class sizes are better, as they provide for a more personal learning environment, but other nations have perform better with much larger class sizes. I don't believe it has much to do with the class size, although sometimes it does.
Even the very best teacher becomes a baby sitter when they have to spend half the period just taking attendance and collecting homework assignments. So when evaluating the performance of a teacher it is not as simple as just looking at how many kids passed vs failed. Would your own job performance suffer if you were expected to do 4 or 5 times the work for the same pay? Note: the number of interactions is an exponential factor of the number of children.
So you don't believe there should be some sort of set standard? If no, how do you determine whether or not your students are doing well or doing poorly?
Bingo! So let's deal with that problem rather than demonizing the entire teachers union.
But this is the problem. The teachers union oppose school choice and vouchers. Charter schools are simply the same as public schools, but are not forced to abide by the same rules and contracts as normal public schools. You have claimed that privatised education will only result in an educated ruling elite, but this isn't any different from how Public Schools operate. You go where you are zoned, and that is final. The ones who can afford to move for the education of their children will be better off. The ones who will be stuck are the poor among us. The only escape for them is a small chance in winning a lottery for a Charter School.
If they children have a choice to attend the school of their choice, the unions doesn't have a government granted monopoly.
The charter school model has proven to be no more successful than the public schools in terms of results achieved. This is because the problem is not the teachers or their union.
Most charter schools already do outperform those of their public school counter-parts. Many parents even lie about their addresses to get their children to attend these schools.
Benefits like vacation pay, hours worked and sick time were only mandated into law because of unions.
They're not mandated into law. Plenty of employers already don't offer these things. But the point is they shouldn't have to. If you want these benefits, you should have to prove it with the work you have provided.
Compete for what exactly? Where is the competition in education? Can you teach more facts in a given time? Can you teach children how to learn faster? Is there a better way to focus their attention and make them concentrate on the subject matter? Children are individuals and while most are well behaved there is always a joker in every classroom and they will jump at any opportunity to "change the channel" in a manner of speaking. So let's have some concrete suggestions on what constitutes competition is a classroom.
I'm not talking about competition in the classroom, but a school competing with another school in the basis of the quality of education, type of learning environment, extra-curricular activities, safety, etc. It's not just for just how well you learn.
Now that we agree that the current system is broken what are our alternatives? This thread is about unions so let's start there. Should all unions be outlawed here in the USA? Do you believe that will solve all of our present economic woes?
You are approaching this from the point of view that teachers would improve if there was competition. Well there is and it is called charter schools. The problem is that while they pay their teachers less they don't get any better results. What does this tell us?
They often do get better results from what I usually read. The only sources I have read which claims Carter Schools are usually no better are the sources which supports public education. But this has to be looked at by a state by state, or individual, basis as Carter Schools are able to run their school however they want. There are good Carter Schools and there are Bad Carter Schools, but the general key is to offer a choice. Public Schools can become better if they didn't have a monopoly, just as any other entity in the marketplace. Not because they want to, but because they have to in order to keep market-share.
Seriously, you need to look at the specific trends and allegiances, and the relations there with doing just, both failures and successes.
