A few days ago syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts swung by the Editorial Department offices for a chat. (Good guy; seems weary.) Among many other things, he talked about his series on “What Works,” charter schools, and public education. One of the things that has impressed him, he said, is the degree to which strong principals make a difference—and how hard it is to get rid of bad teachers.

Comes now this story that underscores the latter point:

In New York City, it often costs taxpayers $250,000 just to fire one incompetent teacher. Some teachers remain on the payroll even after being convicted of serious felonies, requiring districts to hold disciplinary hearings behind prison walls.

“Protecting jobs of adults without regard to how well their students perform almost certainly will lead to greater costs, stagnant academic achievement, and greater dysfunction of our public education system,” says tenure foe B. Jason Brooks of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability.

Roger,

Funny how people tend to accuse others of their own failings. Obnoxious ?  Is there anyone at all on this blog as obnoxious as yourself ?

Don’t even get me started on “smart”. I don’t think you should be going in that direction.

Like many bloggers you are a fierce partisan. Practically a waste of time to argue the fine points of Obama, or anything else political, to one such as you.

You are what you are but it ain’t pretty. Do you think you are convincing folks to vote McCain with your hate and vitriol ? 

All that does is preach to the choir. If anything, it chases the Independents in the opposite direction.

With a friend like you, McCain has a good enemy.

OK. Point to the part of my post where I said, or even insinuated, that Obama is a muslim terrorist.

Money where your mouth is time....yawn...again.

As for Obama paying lip service to accountability....that’s what it is. Lip service. Obama has said many things to many people. He’s for gun control until he’s against it. He’s for public financing until he’s against it. He’s against Nafta until he’s for it. He scorns the flag pin until he loves the flag pin. He’s against FISA until he’s for FISA.

He says what a particular crowd wants to hear.

And I’ve not heard of the “fist bump” being a terrorist thing..or even that Obama did it. Then again, I don’t get my news from Comedy Central.

I had previously assumed you were just contrary for the sake of being obnoxious. I’m now starting to think that you’re just not very smart.

If Democrats like Pitt value unions but feel they obstruct accountibility for teachers they can still reform the union or push back on the union by siding with the Republicans on that issue and talking out on education issues.

I believe Obama has said as much (Pitt may be one of his mouthpieces to the black community), that he favors charter schools and accountibility.

Only a Republican would say it is necessary to denounce and repudiate teacher unions altogether. Why ? Because Republicans don’t count them as a constituency and don’t get support from unions. To a Republican, the only good union is a dead union, not a reformed union.

Still, if Republicans were the first to suggest teacher’s unions were obstructionist and if that theory holds up (not a given), then Republicans like Mr. Smith can pat themselves on the back that they had it right (a watershed event no doubt).  That is no excuse to take cheap shots at the Democrats, but then when has politics been any different ?

I still believe the Muslim scarf incident is R. Smith adding up 2 plus 2 and getting 50 million.  If others agree with you, Mr. Smith, more power to you, but I find it a bit extreme to suggest Obama is some kind of Muslim terrorist, just a wee bit insane.

They showed George Bush doing the fist bump with a kid on TV. I think that is his subtle way of acknowledging all the “terrorist fist bump” talk is unseemly and crosses the line.

First, the reference to Pitt’s blaming republicans for the removal of obviously muslim women from an Obama propaganda photo op says what? It says that Pitts is willing to ignore the obvious and reflexivly attack. The obvious is that Obama’s closeness to people like Farrakhan and Wright is far more responsible for his religious image problem than a few obscure bloggers. In short, Pitts can’t resist defending the democrat, no matter how thin his argument.

Second, teacher competence is directly related to union refusal to allow bad teachers to be fired. Which party does the teachers union shovel millions of dollars to? Which party stands in the way of accountability? The democrats.

Yet who does Pitts routinely attack in his column? The evil republicans. If he cared as much about charter schools and teacher competence as he claims, he would save some of his scorn for the unions and their democrat collaboraters instead of wasting ink making excuses for them when they do something like exclude muslim women from propaganda photos because his candidate has a well deserved image problem concerning his long association with radical freakniks and race baiters.

And remember, the recent charter school proposal here was broadly supported with the exception of who? The teachers union and the NAACP. I’m certain you’ll find the same across the country. Both have Obama firmly under their control.

Which brings me back to my point. If Pitts wants teacher accountability then Pitts needs to start by re examining his own knee jerk loyalties and stop making excuses for the very people causing the problem.

So, if Mr. Pitts really cares about teacher accountability then, maybe he needs to reflect on his own reflexive support for the very people who are often the cause of the problem.

The article was about holding teachers accountible, not about muslims wearing scarves or how liberals love teacher’s unions.

If they are trying to weaken the unions to allow more accountibility for teachers they must not love them TOO much, because that proposal does not sound union friendly.

And today the brilliant Mr. Pitts has found a way to blame republicans for Obama’s refusal to let scarf sporting muslims into his carefully staged and racially orchestrated propaganda photos.

...because a handful of bloggers accuse him of being a stealth muslim.

I wish he were a muslim. At least then you’d know he had a moral core. As it stands, he has nothing. He’s a racist black seperatist when it suits him, he’s a determined leftist when it suits him (FISA? I laugh at his dumb ass supporters!)he’s a bible thumping evangelical when it suits him (Faith based initiat’n too!)he’s a hick hatin, gun lovin’ Nafta nix’in free trader who’s for Israel AND the pali’s with a little Iranian nut job schmoozin thrown in too!

but it’s all the republicans fault. yeah...right.

If Mr. Pitts is so concerned about bad teachers then maybe he should start at the source....which would be people like Mr. Pitts.

I’ve read enough of his columns to know that he is a staunch liberal and it’s liberals who have destroyed the education system in America...from the politization of the universities who teach the teachers to the union thugacracy that continues to bleed the system financially from behind the cover of a slick PR image that claims they actually care about the children their members teach.

If people like Pitts want reform then they should go after those responsible, the teachers unions and the politicians the unions pay for protection...the race baiters of revenge mongers that slither out whenever someone points out the obvious and most importantly, the media who covers for these people because it meshes perfectly with their ideological programming.

But Pitts isn’t going to do that...at least not in any serious way. He won’t get another Pulitzer if he rocks the boat too much. If he did he’d find himself exiled like Buckley. Highly respected but with no trinkets on his mantle.

As long as the teacher is a damn good teacher, who cares what the heck is on their past record (ok, with some limits...)?

Yes, Bart, its important for as many adults as possible to be employed! You want to support their being unemployed with your cherished tax dollars?

HELLO!!!

Does it enter your mind that the Teachers are sometimes wrongfully accused or that their dismissal is sought on grounds of political correctness or some other “thought crime” invented by the Democrat-laden school administration?

While none of us want the jobs of incompetent teachers to be protected, the public should not be fooled when people who are pushing a political agenda toss out an isolated figure, then ask us to use the logical fallacy of arguing from the specific to the general, to reach some broad reaching change in policy.

Teachers in the public schools today are catching flak from all sides. One wonders why we still are able to convince people to join such an embattled “profession.”

The Press has been able to incite alarm about our “under performing schools” when it is not the school, but the students who are failing to meet standards. Why have so few articles revealed the fact that White and Asian students at these same schools continue to do just fine, while African Americans and Latino students are dragging the school performance figures down? We need to address the different learning abilities and interests of these later two minority groups. Some school districts are making headway in this area, but overall, America needs to stop trying a one size fits all approach. We cannot “inspect-in” quality to our education process, nor just blame the teachers and fire them with the hope that performance figures will improve. What we will get are teachers who cheat in order to show fake improvement.

While I am steadfast in opposition to the rules of political correctness imposed by schools in the last few decades, such as promoting fake contrivances like kwanzaa while pretending that Christmas is, “Winter break” or banning the display of our beloved Battle Flag; an act that promotes a mis-reading of our history and the sullying of our Confederate Veteran ancestors, I support the premise that any teacher who is reviewed for dismissal be given the full range of steps for review that is afforded similar professional employees in the public sector.

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