Teacher’s Union Standards; Would You Want Your Doctor to Be “Minimally Effective”?
I was pondering various public school board standards for grading teachers: “highly effective”, “effective,” “minimally effective” and “ineffective”.
I contemplated what kind of surgeon I would want to do an operation on me; would “minimally effective” do? Could I pay more for “highly effective”? Not likely under Obamacare. But “highly effective” is what I would want (call it that silly survival instinct).
And when it comes to the personnel at NASA whose charge up until recently was to place the space shuttle into orbit and bring it, with its crew, safely back to Earth, I know I would want “highly effective” as the Challenger and Columbia disasters were too gut wrenching to endure; only the best for that.
So why settle for anything less than “highly effective”? I only ask as here, on Planet Jersey, around every school budget election time, the roadways are plastered with placards that indicate the urgency of what is at hand: our kids; our future. I have bought into such (actually, I always held such opinion). However, it is mutually incompatible for the teacher’s union leadership to say on one side of their mouth that it’s about the kids while on the other side say that we should protect teachers who are less than “highly effective” and in some cases only “minimally effective”.
But perhaps there is one thing that we can all agree upon: when it comes to advancing the interests of teachers (at times in direct contrast with the students), the leadership of the teachers unions gets a “highly effective”.
-I.M. Windee
