Timeout for a little common sense: A few words in defense of teachers [View all]

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/11749969-418/phil-kadner-a-few-words-in-defense-of-teachers.html

Phil Kadner: A few words in defense of teachers

Phil Kadner [e-mail] April 6, 2012 8:12PM

Let me say a few words in defense of teachers: They don’t get much help.

It is popular these days to criticize teachers, and there’s a lot of data that demonstrate that too many of our schools are failing to educate children.

But most of the criticisms I hear people spouting are garbage.

Let’s take the merit pay argument, for example: If only good teachers were given raises, this argument goes, there would be more of them. I usually respond to this by asking these folks if they’ve ever worked in the private sector and if they thought all pay raises were distributed fairly in their workplace.

About 90 percent of my random sample responds, “No.”