I do like Lewis too, though, and this is his latest stuff.

That's a long and interesting article.

It appears that the shortfalls are the result of public-safety obligations (Cops and Fire). So it doesn't really support the notion that teachers are overpaid.

Mayors, city councils and the public are loathe to tell Cops and Firemen "NO". Teachers are another matter. You even saw this phenomenon in Wisconsin during Walker's union bashing. Public-safety was exempt iirc.

The argument that you can't review or rate teachers to measure job performance is complete garbage. There are millions of people who work in jobs in both the private and public sectors who don't have constant supervision or easily quantifiable outputs, but somehow managers are able to do performance reviews. Get over yourselves.

Teachers already do get performance reviews.

And if the math class is made up entirely of kids with Down Syndrome, how do you measure it then?

The argument is about the effectiveness of test grades as an indicator of teaching ability, not whether or not it's possible to grade teachers at all. I don't think test test grades should be thrown out entirely as indicators but they absolutely can't be used as an excuse to cut teacher salaries in general.

If a particular teacher is doing terribly at a particular school I wouldn't have a problem seeing that teacher fired. The idea that the union is protecting them from this happening seems largely imaginary. How often is there a strike to protect one idiot teacher? If an entire school or even school system is failing I find it extremely hard to believe that all the teachers in that system just randomly happen to be terrible. It's much more likely it's due to deep cultural and economic problems which are what we should really be focused on.

Testing standards should grade by relative performance not absolute performance. Are your Down Syndrome kids doing better than their Down Syndrome kids?

It has nothing to do with a strike in response, it has to do with a legal contract that has a procedure for firing, and if it is violated, the unions can sue the schools for mirrions. The process for firing a bad teacher can be quite extensive and cost prohibitive. There are literally rubber rooms for teachers who cannot be fired where they just go in and play crossword puzzles.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local...-90804024.html

You can't sure for "mirrions" lol

Unless it was a wrongful term under definition of law arbitrators can only award back pay.

Stopped reading here. Education creates an externality that the market will not account for. I can't be bothered to read the rest of that if the author doesn't understand that.

The only leverage in attaining such a contract is a strike.

How often does that happen.

Rubber rooms cost tax payers 30 million a year according to your link. That's really not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

But thats not the USA, overall the USA seems in the middle field.
According PISA the USA rank nowhere in the TOP 10, canada at sample is in the TOP 10.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program...ent_Assessment

Education is important and will everytime be important. I believe in great qualified teachers and well paid ones that make great jobs.

Maybee in the US teachers are paid to bad so the good and qualified people prefer other jobs ??

..or maybe good and qualified people feel intellectually dishonest about being paid to sit in a 'rubber room'. lol. I'd never heard of that. Pretty crazy stuff.

I'm not going to argue in favor of the rubber rooms but the fraction of teachers actually in them is so small it's stupid to make any conclusions about overall teacher performance using them.

A lot.

But his point is, it doesnt have to ever reach lawsuit status. The threat or possibility of a lawsuit is just as effective at making termination "quite extensive and cost prohibitive."

Why can't schools promote or fire teachers based on performance like any other business? Why do promotions tend to be almost always tenure-based, and firings for performance effectively impossible in many districts?

Can you at least see how this would upset the average American worker, who lives under the threat of being canned any day, while doing a job that is probably much less mission-critical to the future of this country?

I work for a union, non teachers, but we still advocate for seniority based pay scales. That's not something unique to teachers at all. How many districts do you think have things like rubber rooms?

This post shows you have no clue what you are talking about. Any court in the land will throw a suit out until it goes through arbitration and even then you have to have an issue covered by law. You don't sue to overturn an arbitrator because judges will almost always toss the suit or just agree with the arbitrator or administrative law judge.

Pretty much the only time you would sue would be for injunctive relief or to compel arbitration.

And even assuming you would win one of these cases you only win back pay, minus what they made while out of work if they got another job or unemployment. You don't get damages for contract violations outside of that.

How many public districts (especially large urban districts) do you think it's next to impossible to fire teachers for bad performance? I honestly don't know but I'd bet it's the majority of them. I know LA Unified and Kansas City, MO count. I will concede that Houston at least used to have a good reputation when I went there in the 80s. Not sure about now.

Do you have any metrics on that to disprove me? I can start researching if not.

Also seniority-based pay scales suck. I realize you don't see anything wrong with them because it's all you know. But the main complaint with communism was that the guy working next to you got the same pay for barely doing anything, so why should you work hard? Can UCY seniority-based pay scales would create the same disincentive to working hard?

public employees + unionization = disaster

See I can be reasonable on this. Now why can't you guys be reasonable on natural monopolies, or social safety nets, or infrastructure?

Does anyone else think it is odd that an organization that is vehemently pro-free market would claim that public teachers shouldn't be paid more than market value?

Does it not occur to them that, perhaps, the public sector is artificially low, causing the market rate to also be low? Why are there no studies about that? Seems like it would be pretty in line with their economic theory.

Plus, the fact that teachers are potentially overpaid based on their education and testing scores isn't relavent if the people we actually want teaching (good teachers who graduate near the top of their class, have high achievement, etc.) would be underpaid at those rates.

Essentially calling people stupid is being reasonable?

So you're right about X, ergo someone else must be wrong about Y?

wut

Explain to me please how teachers get "promotions" exactly.

It's about nuance. I has it. You don't.