Hacker News Reader

Comment by DangitBobby | Hacker News Reader

I'm gonna need to see some evidence that teachers unions are what's wrong with public schools. I didn't find an answer to "why", just a claim that it "is" without support.

View on HN

In any other context, an organization with 0 competitive pressure, in charge of a failing institution, extremely active political lobbying, which vehemently rejects any proposals at performance-based compensation for its members, would be assumed to be the problem; the burden of proof would be to explain how this setup could possibly not cause corruption and incompetence.

Ludicrous

> in charge of a failing institution

Schools are ultimately run by elected officials and (non-union) administrators, not teachers' unions.

Functionally, barely.

Why don't you go ahead and break down what you think teachers' unions control vs what admins and school boards control? I'd love to hear your perspective.

I dont know about chicago buy up here in canada the teacher contract has clauses that make it near impossible to fire specific teachers without cause and cause is basically defined so strictly that the bad teachet will hit retirement before being fired inlesd they have sex eith their students. You couldnt even move all the bad teachets to one school and shut it fown because the seniorityapplies actoss the whole distrixt. This in itself is utter poison. Managers need to be able to fire on their own perogative as a f*ndamental part of management.

The description you wrote applies very well to school district administrators. The difference is that district admins are out of direct contact with students, or never had it in the first place.

Do district superintendents have to wait 6 hours to use the bathroom because there's no one to cover their duties?

What you write applies nicely to most large corporations, especially the CEO caste and the incestuous board of directors community. These bogons tell the corporations the "run" to print money in the form of stock, which they issue to themselves. They reject any substantive performance-based compensation for their members. Someone is funding all those dark money campaigns. How could this setup possibly not cause corruption and incompetence?

Check out the documentary, "Waiting for 'Superman'".

There's a rebuttal documentary called "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman". Apparently the factual accuracy of "Waiting for Superman" left something to be desired. Maybe I'll watch them both.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com