Thursday, September 27, 2012

School Competition Breeds Success

Let's push Repeal of Triborough Amendment, push Charter Schools & Parent Vouchers for choosing schools. The current government monopoly with teacher union control is unsustainable. Financing with income tax instead of property tax is not the answer, since the same open-checkbook mentality will rule.

We need many elementary schools and high schools in an area including public, private, and parochial schools to compete with each other as there is competition among public and private colleges. At the college level, parents and students have access to loans and Pell grants to allow students to choose competitively where they want to go for education.

Competition promotes Excellence.

Monopolies promote Decay (Remember old AT&T phone monopoly with very little innovation in phone technology for years.........now with phone competition, ie. Apple, Blackberry, AT&T, Verizon, Samsung, we have marvelous new phone technology.

We should stop holding back our children with a monopolistic public school system.....Open up education with vouchers and charter schools. 

7 comments:

Ralph Mitchell said...

However, there are two engines which are driving our national education of children into mediocrity.

1) our current monopoly of public school education - no competition breeds mediocrity

2) automatic teacher pay raises breeds mediocrity

Also, in my opinion, there is no link between teachers having a masters degree and their effectiveness in
being an excellent teacher of young children.

Solutions --- 1) Vouchers so parents can choose the best schools for their children and schools improve and compete for parents selection of their schools.

2) Get rid of teachers unions and union contracts and replace them with individual teacher contracts as Coleman HS in Kingston. Then you will see the performance of individual teachers accelerate to maintain their own high pay scale and their own professional development.

Ralph Mitchell said...

Comparing teaching professionals to accounting professionals is like comparing apples and oranges.
If you try to make teaching a profession similar to accounting, you effectively destroy the teaching profession, which we are in the process of destroying in New York State. Teaching young children is a unique calling. If starting teacher salaries were averaging $25,000 instead of $45,000, you would still get an adequate supply of teacher graduates. However, if accounting salaries were much less, you would not get an adequate supply of accounting graduates. Now, how are we destroying the teaching profession in NY State? We are currently graduating hoards of teacher graduates, knowing full well that there are and will continue to be fewer and fewer teacher openings. There are dwindling openings because teachers unions have inflated the salaries of teachers to the point that school districts must close schools, increase class sizes and layoff YOUNG teachers in order to pay for these automatic, accelerating teacher raises. The teaching profession in NY State is in an unsustainable, downward, dive-bombing spiral. It is a shame, but this is what happens when government monopolies are dependent on a shrinking NY State economy. It is very sad.

Ralph Mitchell said...

All new taxes increases and all new federal grants go into our local school budgets to give teachers in teacher's unions more automatic raises independent of teacher performance. This sounds like an unsustainable, losing proposition. Public School monopoly is a corrupt, unimproving, and unnecessary way to educate children. Give us a charter or private school with a library, some computers and some young teachers who will accept less pay and I will show performance increases for our children that you would not believe. Get rid of the middleman teacher's union. They serve no purpose for education our children.

Ralph Mitchell said...

All new taxes increases and all new federal grants go into our local school budgets to give teachers in teacher's unions more automatic raises independent of teacher performance. This sounds like an unsustainable, losing proposition. Public School monopoly is a corrupt, unimproving, and unnecessary way to educate children. Give us a charter or private school with a library, some computers and some young teachers who will accept less pay and I will show performance increases for our children that you would not believe. Get rid of the middleman teacher's union. They serve no purpose for education our children.

Ralph Mitchell said...

The new teacher evaluations should determine which teachers get raises and how much. For example,
“highly effective,” “effective,” get high and average raises, while “developing,” or “ineffective” do not get raises. The automatic step raises for longevity should be scrapped in favor of the above raise system.
However, it sounds like the new teacher evaluations will not affect raises, but will affect promotions to principal for example.

Ralph Mitchell said...

Why not try a proven system to educate our children? Let's have many competitive schools who seek out and pay for the best teachers so they can attract the most students. Parents would send their children to these good schools with Pell-type grants. These Pell grants work at the college level where you have competition between colleges for students. Good teachers would have security, since their competitive schools would not dare want to lose the better teachers. Remember, a school, just like a company depends on the results and success of their good employees. Look at IBM. Look at Apple.
The sooner we get rid of the automatic pay raises for teachers and the virtual control of our public schools by teacher's unions, the sooner our children will have the best education possible.

Ralph Mitchell said...

Don't blame the closing of schools on the Tax Cap. Blame the closing of schools on the Unsustainable contracts continually demanded by the teacher's union. Mr.Padalino, please say that we closed 4 Kingston schools due to falling enrollment and due to Unsustainable contracts continually demanded by the teacher's union.