The Governor's message is wrong, but the path is right: why Wisconsin needs to force teachers unions to change

The discussion about Wisconsin and Ohio has become a bitter argument about whether public school teachers are paid enough, who pays for their benefits, and the right to unionize.

I don’t think those are the core issues at all, even though Walker himself is promoting his measures as a way to save money.

So what is the real issue? I found a post today which sums up the matter nicely: 

Take a look at schools in Singapore, Finland, South Korea and Japan. Students there are the highest testing in the world. 100% of the teachers come from the top third of collegiate graduating classes. They are talented, and compensated according to performance.

In the United States, only 23% of educators come from the top third of their graduating class. In schools where the majority of students are below the poverty line, that number gets lower - 14%.

So perhaps the problem we’re facing is that the teachers we have aren’t of the same caliber the international community is seeing.

….if you interview most college graduates, most of them don’t seriously consider becoming educators in the United States. Why? ….They cited “limited economic and personal growth” as the key deciding factors.

But the answer is NOT to just raise teacher pay. Read on:

Why isn’t our system competitive? Unions. Unions have set a low, fixed rate of pay for teachers. There is no incentive to succeed or do an amazing job, because you won’t get paid any higher.

Unions prevent the best teachers from being rewarded. But, it also gets worse. The worst teachers hold onto their jobs when they shouldn’t. On February 24th, The American Federation of Teachers, the largest educators union in the United States, issued a new proposal: If a teacher has an unsatisfactory performance, they have one year to improve, or they’ll be fired in 100 days. Yes, you read that right. If you suck at your job, you’ll be fired… in 465 days. That was their version of a “fast track”.

via californiacornbread

EDIT: Even Bill Gates (unwittingly?) supports this notion:

The value of measuring effectiveness is clear when you compare teachers to members of other professions - farmers, engineers, computer programmers, even athletes. These professionals are more advanced than their predecessors - because they have clear indicators of excellence, their success depends on performance and they eagerly learn from the best.

The same advances haven’t been made in teaching because we haven’t built a system to measure and promote excellence.

From How teacher development could revolutionize our schools - The Washington Post