Ignoring the Lessons Learned

Minnesota Senator Terri Bonoff greatly disappointed me with her bill to strip seniority from the teacher's ranks.  It's mind boggling a Democrat would author a bill like this.  Senator, you do know that there are already methods in place to remove bad teachers, don't you?

I know Senator, "I'm not saying we throw out all experienced teachers."  In turn, yes you are.  We have already seen an education system ripped apart by the mythical weeding out of "bad teachers," but in state after state where they have gotten rid of seniority protections, the quality of education has fallen dramatically.  Why?  Because conservatives then introduce a test structure which actually hurts experienced teachers and rewards inexperienced teachers.  Then the good teachers are thrown under the bus, accused of being a bad teacher even though they had a 99% graduation rate before the new testing structure.  They are labeled as a bad teacher even though they had all passing grades on their tests but the overall scores weren't as high as a brand new teacher who only taught the test for an entire year.

What other industry is it good to throw out all of your most experienced professionals? Tell me.  Who would hire an architect or law firm, or a medical group who routinely threw out a third of their most experienced professionals just because they didn't preform well enough on an arbitrary test?  Maybe if the House and Senate got rid of their seniority rules and got rid of their bad legislators first, then maybe you could lead by example, giving your argument more validity.  And trust me, there are a lot of bad legislators, Senator Bonoff.

The tests used to get rid of teachers with seniority are not designed to educate kids, but to punish experienced teachers, validating the erosion of our education system under this modern red herring.  Then there is the desire to label our schools as under performing and insufficient so private businesses can get their hand on the money pile which is tax dollars set aside for public education.  You do know this, don't you Senator?

Senator Bonoff, this bill has to be about one of three things, 1) killing the teacher's union, 2) pandering to the charter school crowd (many of whom also hate the teacher's union), or 3) a misguided attempt at cutting costs (even though the tests in effect today point to properly funded schools preforming far better than under funded schools).  Regardless, it's disturbing.  Maybe you introduced this bill early in this session because you hope the Democrats will forget about your true feelings when primary season comes up.  Good luck with that.