SOME THOUGHTS ON THE IDIOCY OF TEACHER BASHING
Recently, Teresa Ghilarducci wrote an interesting article concerning teacher bashing in which she made the cogent observation that “Attacking your workforce is not an effective way to improve quality, produce a better product, and attract top talent—a bright young replacement would notice the disrespect. So why do people think attacking teachers is a route to education reform” (http://chronicle.com/blogAuthor/Brainstorm/3/Teresa-Ghilarducci/85/)?
She was responding to Stephen Brill’s article attacking teacher unions and the tenure system for ruining America’s public education system while glorifying the virtues of charter schools and claiming, in essence, that the only thing that matters in education is good teachers. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html)
After reading Ms Ghilarducci’s article, I realized that while she attained her goal of very effectively demolishing Brill’s argument concerning the effectiveness of charter schools, there was much more that should be noted.
Like Ms Ghilarducci, I, too, agree that teacher quality matters. That is axiomatic. The real problems lie with attracting and retaining high quality teachers. Charter schools have not succeeded any better than have the public schools in attracting and retaining high quality teachers as demonstrated by their failure to out perform the public schools in significantly improved student achievements as compared to those obtained by the traditional public schools.
I tried to add to Ms Ghilarducci’s analysis when I discussed this with my correspondents on e-mail.
This is what I wrote. I am adding a few extra comments and some editorial changes.
For more years than I care to remember, the far right developed a mantra that seems to have permeated our society which refuses to take responsibility for its
