Ignorant Billionaires

somehow get all kinds of free publicity spewing things they really know nothing about. Bill Gates gets all kinds of media support for his efforts to destroy public education, even though it is obvious he knows nothing about the structure, politics, or theories behind teaching and public schools.

Diane Ravitch does, and she had some good retorts to this billionaire's idiotic beliefs. Unfortunately, Gates and Eli Broad are basically driving the Obama administration's ruinous education policies.

A bit of Ravitch. She's right about the theory of "due process" and the importance of union representation for teachers, despite the many flaws with the unions:

Gates: "Does she really like 400-page [union] contracts?"
Ravitch: "Does Bill Gates realize that every contract is signed by two parties: management and labor? Why does management agree to 400-page contracts? I don't know how many pages should be in a union contract, but I do believe that teachers should be evaluated by competent supervisors before they receive tenure (i.e., the right to due process).

"Once they have due process rights, they have the right to a hearing when someone wants to fire them. The reason for due process rights is that teachers in the past have been fired because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or because they did not make a political contribution to the right campaign, or for some other reason not related to their competence.

"Gates probably doesn't know this, but 50% of all those who enter teaching leave within the first five years. Our biggest problem is not getting rid of deadbeats, but recruiting, retaining, and supporting teachers. We have to replace 300,000 teachers (of nearly 4 million) every single year. What are his ideas about how to do this?"

Many of those teachers are pushed out, and they aren't necessarily young chicks, either. What teachers find out is the unions more often than not betray them and do anything to help the administrators who fire or force them out. "Due process" is what SHOULD happen in public education but all too often does not. The hearings more often than not are kangaroo courts. Certainly teachers' unions are better than nothing at all, which is what Gates would want, but they are highly corruptible. We need REAL unions in public education, not expensive social clubs as the WEA and NSEA are in Nevada.