From Teachers.net is This Excellent Post

about corrupt hiring practices. It's a response to a post of mine which states public education jobs are not hereditary titles and should not be treated as such. I just had to share this response:

Anon, you hit the nail on the head, as always.
I've often wondered why teaching jobs are not treated like Civil Service jobs. Why is it so
wrong to hand jobs to relatives at the post office (for example) but OK in a public school
setting? In my town, most of the teachers come from a few families. I'm not kidding. You'd
get the same names all the time (and they were not Smith and Jones, but unusual last names,
which I won't mention here.) Most of them weren't bad teachers, but still.

I'm not related, I never could get a job in this district. Every single one of the children from
these families studied to be teachers. There was no upward mobility--it wasn't like, my
parents are teachers, I want to make more than them and go to law school. They knew there
was a job waiting for them, so they just got the required certificate.

At the district I taught at for a year, there was a cult of personality for the mayor. He was like
a minor-league Kim Jong-Il. He wasn't evil, but people just worshiped him and went on and
on about him. If you didn't contribute to his campaign your contract wouldn't be renewed. I
wasn't asked to give the contribution and was afraid to approach anyone. My contract wasn't
renewed. Coincidence?