The Perimeter Primate: Grannan: Is firing bad teachers really the solution?

The Perimeter Primate: Grannan: Is firing bad teachers really the solution?

Grannan: Is firing bad teachers really the solution?

by The Perimeter Primate

Guest post by Caroline Grannan

Education historian/commentator Diane Ravitch points out that the states with non-union teachers (who thus have little or no job security) tend to have lower academic achievement than the states with strong teachers' unions.
That should put to rest the myth that bad teachers with ironclad job security are the cause of the challenges facing public education.
As Ravitch adds, the state reported to have the consistently highest academic achievement is Massachusetts -- a strong union state. (It’s also widely called "Taxachusetts" by the right -- could there be a connection?) Ravitch emphasizes that she's not necessarily saying that unionization and job security LEAD TO higher academic achievement, but the facts show that unionization and job security clearly don't work AGAINST higher academic achievement. They are correlated.
I thought it was worth looking for some data. But not officially being a statistician, I wasn’t really