Replacing the teacher replacements

[tonysam]

Good piece from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Let's get rid of the teachers. That's the phrase that seems to underlie the glossy magazine stories and even President Obama's Race to the Top campaign, which ties teacher performance to test scores. Get rid of the bad teachers, the critics whisper, the old, lazy, balky, stubborn ones who aren't performing, and utopia will be but an arm's length away.

The only problem is, replacing teachers is trickier than it looks. If you need any proof, consider what happened last week when more than 2,300 Oakland classroom teachers went on strike. At issue was a no-raise three-year contract imposed on teachers by the Oakland Unified School District after two years of negotiation.

Of the district's 38,826 students, "a very large number" did not attend school, district spokesman Troy Flint said. He estimated the number of absentees at 85 percent. About 600 students went to a double feature at the Grand Lake Theater. Two elementary schools - Hillcrest and Kaiser - had no students at all.

At Oakland High, Amanda Ashe, a sophomore who showed up early Thursday to walk the picket line, said no more than 15 students out of more than 1,800 enrolled there passed through the blue steel gates to class. Without teachers inside, "there is no point in coming," said Rodney Kirkland, 15, also a sophomore.

[AwakeAtLast]

1. "Without teachers inside, there is no point in coming,"

Couldn't have said it better myself - and that was a 15 y/o who said it!

Thank you for posting this and another K & R!

:kick:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. This also kills the school district financially since they are paid per pupil per day by the state

Unlike some of the other states, the state covers a lot of the costs of local school districts. This is due to court decisions about unequal funding, not Prop 4 or 13.