NYC Schools Chancellor Joins Parade of Teacher Haters Without Addressing Widespread School Board Malfeasance

This article by Joel Klein effectively puts and end to tenure, which protects teachers from small minded religious nuts and politically motivated attacks, without saying that. He also makes an assertion about the Troops to Teachers program, which I conceptually wholeheartedly support as part of the solution for teacher recruiting, but he cites no evidence to back up his claims about the efficacy of that scheme. This is a typically intellectually dishonest politician move.

Here was the comment I left (I know I intended to stop posting on HuffPo, but I just can't seem to help myself):

Unfortunately, this article focuses, as too many do, on scrutinizing teachers without any proposals to evaluate and fix the gross incompetence and fiscal mismanagement of local school boards. Basically, by having school boards, we allow amateurs who have never taught one student or undergone one minute of pedagogical training to make the day to day decisions as to how our children are educated. In the private sphere, allowing amateur outsiders to run things just isn't done and with good reason.

So you get horrible monuments to educational malpractice like the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Mississippi and South Carolina school systems (the latter sees a 53% high school graduation rate) and yes, the New York City public schools, just to name four.

Let's abolish the antiquated and no longer useful institution of school boards, dissolve the school districts and allow children to attend any public school they want rather than making them captives of those districts and come up with a way to make both teachers and politicians to own the educational outcomes of their constituents. Without school board reform or abolition, any proposals regarding teachers are spinning your wheels.