We have a serious problem in this country. The quality of our education is falling like a rock. When we compare our qualitative measures against other countries we keep losing ground. Yet, we spend the most per pupil in the world.
We have tried to make changes: Bush with No Child Left Behind and Obama with Race to the Top. Bush wanted to measure teachers’ performances and address those who did not make improvements. None have worked because there is not the courage nor the method to rid the system of bad performers. If the educational system were a corporation, the bankruptcy would have happened by now.
Here comes the newest Obama idea. Throw $5 billion at teachers to get them to teach. We all know how this works. Those who are doing well take most of the money off the table and nothing changes. The bad teachers stay and don’t teach. The good teachers keep doing what they have always done and get paid a lot more to do the same job. Now Obama has created class warfare in the teaching ranks and the union won’t tolerate that.
So, the union will job the system. Find a way to close the wage gap between the good performers and the non-performers. Won’t that be fun to watch?
Nothing works without accountability. The Educational system has none. Throwing your tax dollars at a broken system is a waste or your tax dollars. The union does not want accountability. Obama wants union support. He can’t demand accountability.
If you want this mess fixed, you will need to install a Republican president who is not owned by the NEA. That president will need to weed out a large number of non-performing teachers by setting accountability standards and forcing the unions to accept them.
Or, just decide this is not something he can’t fix, shut down the Department of Education and let the states deal with the problem and return several billion to the federal coffers and watch. One or two states will get it right and the rest will follow.