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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

RheeFirst! » Former Mayor of San Francisco rejects Rhee’s ideas

RheeFirst! » Former Mayor of San Francisco rejects Rhee’s ideas:

Former Mayor of San Francisco rejects Rhee’s ideas

By Gene Mullin is a former member of the California Assembly, the former mayor of South San Francisco and a former teacher. Read the entire article here.

“[H]er credentials as an agent of change are somewhat slender, and her tactics subject to scrutiny. Some of her worthy ideas are submerged by her tendency to use an anecdotal evidence approach rather than verifiable results.

… She bemoans the “last hired, first fired” status in most school districts throughout the country. The assumption is, apparently, that newer teachers are better (and cheaper) and that it’s preferred to retain them. My experience has been that veteran teachers, while more expensive to retain, are not automatically inferior to younger and newer teachers. In fact, on the whole, experience is an asset not a liability to the teaching