I follow several blogs, mainly economics-related. I don't have time every day to read them all, so I use Google Reader to show me the title of each. If one catches my attention, I will open it and read more. Today my curiosity was aroused by the heading "Interesting Fact/Trivia of the Day".It came from a New York Times movie review, which stated: "In Illinois, where one in 57 doctors loses his medical license and one in 97 lawyers loses his law license, only one in 2,500 teachers loses his credentials, because of union rules."
Unless there's something rather unique about Illinois, I suppose this statistic would be fairly applicable in the United States in general.
I learned that the movie being reviewed was for Waiting for "Superman". The tagline of the documentary is "The fate of our country won't be decided on a battlefield, it will be determined in a classroom." The film analyzes the failures of American public education by following several students through the educational system.
I think that whether a child's education comes from public or private schools, the responsibility of educating a child resides with the parents. The teachers in the classroom need to be pretty good as well, but I view them as secondary. And I never really understood the concept of tenure. There are very, very few jobs that are secured for life. I don't see how being a teacher should be one of them. Losing your job because you are not performing as good or better than your peers is a huge incentive to perform well. I want the best teachers teaching our kids. Not just the ones who have been there the longest.
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