| I think any parent who has dealt at all with their school system has run into not only competent but incomptent teachers. The problem is that the unions protect the incompetent at the expense of students, parents and taxpayers. A simple example: in our district, we had a particularly gifted, but small, cohort of math kids (they actually taught themselves pretty much all of their 8th grade year because they knew more than the math teacher did...). By the time they reached 10th grade, the class they would have taken in 12th grade was under budget pressure. We parents thought (naively, it turned out) that we could sit down with the school administration, the teachers and the district administration and find a solution. And believe me when I tell you that we came up with some very creative and workable solutions that would have satisfied everyone - except for the teacher's union rep, who unilateratelly rejected every suggestion, because he had determined he could hold us hostage for some demand. And note that the teacher who eventually taught the class was very supportive of our efforts all the way through.
We eventually did find a solution, and the kids and their teacher had a fabulous year - more than half the kids ended up at ivies and virtually all got merit scholarships.
It would have been a lot easier if the union rep had been constructive.
And I'd feel a lot better about their motives if they actively worked to rid the system of incompetent teachers... |