Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's agenda seems designed to alienate middle-class teachers and parents who depend on public schools. His school reform proposals lack a well-grounded sense of why schools fail. His agenda includes the following:
* abolishing elected school boards in more cities and replacing them with superintendents and boards chosen by mayors.
* increasing the number of charter schools to compete with existing neighborhood public and magnet schools.
* linking teacher pay and job security with student test scores regardless of the kids' socioeconomic background or behavior.
* creating a national technology system of tracking student test scores from year to year.
* employing federal grants to pressure school district to adopt the policies he thinks will improve schools.
That first suggestion would make school districts even MORE corrupt than they already are. The problem in education isn't academic but structural, with administrators having unlimited power to do whatever the hell they want, and never mind if it is ethical or legal.
NYC's school system, run by a mayor, is arguably the worst school system in the entire country. Innocent teachers by the hundreds are put into "rubber rooms" waiting for their hearings, which are almost always ruled in favor of the district. Abuse of teachers is rampant by these rogue principals and higher-level administrators. Duncan's "reforms" would do nothing to solve the problem since he obviously believes, as do these "reformers," these mentally- and ethically-challenged administrators are just what school districts need.
Gerald Bracey also takes a dim view of mayoral control of schools.
Note this:
A June 2009 Chicago Tribune article noted that two thirds of all new Chicago teachers leave within 5 years and that half of the teachers in high poverty areas disappear after only three. Hard to have a turnaround with that kind of turnover.
One doesn't get really good at teaching until he or she does it for at least four or five years--it takes time to get good at it, but more and more school districts aren't giving new teachers a chance, unless, of course, they have political connections to the district via nepotism. Note also that few of these teachers stay five years--five years, of course, is when teachers (unless they work in jobs elsewhere in the state) become vested in retirement. The study doesn't mention how many of these teachers who leave do so because they are harassed by uncaring principals although Bracey does mention more than a few were likely pushed out of their jobs.
Illinois, like Nevada and several other states, doesn't pay into Social Security for their teachers. They save money there, and then they never have to pay the retirement for teachers who don't become vested. My district was paying over $500 a month for me in PERS contributions, so think of all of the money they saved in contributions by throwing out a teacher it deemed "too old" to work for them. And then the state pays out less in monthly pensions, maybe just a third or fifth as much (depending on when I collect) than if I worked there until I was 65.
School districts abuse the tenure system by firing teachers for stupid reasons when the truth is they do it to save money once they reach tenure, or they simply deny it to younger, less experienced teachers for the same reason.
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