Amen to this!!!
America’s assembly line public school system is hurting kids’ education and causing us to slip further behind globally. Last year, McKinsey & Co. reported American students were 25th globally in math scores and 24th in science, behind countries like Iceland and Hungary.
Many of our public schools are controlled by collective bargaining agreements, tying the hands of effective, hard-working teachers and administrators who are seeking to reform the education process.
Employee contracts create a one-size-fits-all compensation method for teachers, regardless of effectiveness, which penalizes hard work and innovation.
And worse yet, we continue to spend more and more each year but get the same or worse results.
Unions need to be held accountable for the damage they have done to our public education system. The adult priorities – pay, benefits and other perks – have created dropout factories, broken budgets and systems where students actually graduate without being able to read the diploma he or she receives.
Something needs to change.
How do we fix public schools?
- Put the needs of students first. What do students need in order to be successful? A quality teacher in every classroom. Up-to-date teaching methods and supplies. “Quality-blind” layoff rules, particularly those tied to seniority, are an insult to effective teachers.
- Put the needs of adults second. During contract time, the fight is invariably about pay, benefits and retirement, not “what policies need to change in order to increase student achievement.”
- Empower parents to choose the school option that best meets the needs of their children.
- State governments should enact reforms to give schools more control over their budgets and personnel decisions.
