I'm not questioning that it might be helpful to equalize teaching ability. What I'm questioning is whether it might have unintended consequences. The Minneapolis district has no intrinsic advantage in attracting gifted teachers. It might even be at something of a disadvantage, if the parent population is less supportive than competing districts. Add to that the possibility of being assigned to the worst schools, and you could have those teachers simply looking elsewhere. You could end up lowering the overall quality of the teaching staff. It seems like a catch-22. Because of Pawlenty and Sviggum, you no longer have the financial equality to pull in teachers with better pay. Now, are we to add to that handicap an assignment system that penalizes teaching excellence? This, of course, is why I think the local district might be obsolete. You can see how those boundaries that separate districts create a competition that makes some students suffer. Why should any district answer to the state or federal government when those governments are pulling the rug out from under them? If they want to call the tune, let them pay the bill. The whole argument for a LOCAL district is local control. But now we see local control is an illusion.
In reality, assignments should be by lottery. They should be limited in tenure. And the pay scale should be according to the difficulty of the work involved. Teaching gifted students shouldn't somehow be considered the justification for higher pay. You need the incentive system aligned with the challenges to the school system. Right now I think they are inversely aligned, and the results are predictable.
I notice again the wedge tactics from the usual suspects. Everyone has got to know that the likely pay of people in tough schools is WAY less that what is quoted here. And the people who would use the word "union" as a bloody shirt will not be enrolling tomorrow in the school of education and borrowing money to get a teaching certificate. And that tells me, eloquently, what they REALLY think about this "great deal" that teachers have. Lucky thing for me I can read between the lines and apply a reality filter to the distorted invformation that the critics of public employees provide. It is very poor information. And it lowers the credibility of the source to provide information that way.
Enforcement Bias
A quote on a new study of drug use:
"In 2002, an estimated 2 million persons were current cocaine users," the report adds. Of these, 567,000 used crack. Hallucinogens such as Ecstasy were used by 1.2 million. "
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030905/us_nm/health_drugs_dc_2
Look at the numbers. THREE out of four users do NOT use crack! Which means the focus on crack as THE drug problem is way out of whack. It is racially-focused, not result-focused. And the whites who support it don't really care about the REAL "drug problem". They care about appearances.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
Try lighting a few candles. The world is all stocked up with cursers of the darkness.
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