The Broken Innovation Machine Part IV

The educational system is defunct.

The teaching unions have caused large cracks in the Broken Machine. Teachers seldom get fired. No relationship exists between producing good students and teacher compensation. With the same lack of accountability, a corporation would go bankrupt. Why do we consumers not require a return on our invested tax dollar like shareholders require from corporate managers? We all know this to be true. Our state representatives allocate millions of dollars to build state-of-the-art brick educational buildings, then pay the teachers less than a McDonald’s manager.

Our colleges pay the athletic directors more than $1 million per year and our top math instructors less than $80,000. No other country has this situation. In many countries, great national prestige is accompanied with the title of “professor.” In this country, the position is maligned with quotes like the “professors live in an ivory tower,” or “those that can do work, those that cannot teach.” Wake up, wise up, do something.

The teaching unions bear the full responsibility for a decline in education in our schools. A brand new teacher with no experience has a staring salary of $30,000 per year. A teacher with 30 years experience makes $48,000 per year which represents an annual increase in salary of less than 1% per year. Bad teachers and good teachers make the same salary. Teachers who grade papers at home make the same salary as teachers who do not. The teaching unions, while making great noise over compensation are virtually silent on accountability. Teacher pay is based on time in-place rather than the production of great students.

Here is the rub: the unions in most states are so strong that a person with 20 years of doing mathematics in a business environment, of giving seminars on math to hundreds of people, is barred from teaching math in high school because he or she does not have a teaching certificate. The teaching union is not unlike the unions of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s -- they did a great job for awhile then committed suicide with their members. I know of what I say. For example, I can teach math in a college graduate school, but can not teach math in high school.

The teaching unions are in the way of providing the best teachers for our students. When was the last time you heard someone say they wished to grow up to be a teacher. Even the TV shows about teachers depict most of the typical teacher’s day “babysitting” rather than teaching.

There is more coming on this subject as I pinpoint the blame and infer the solution. We need a new CEO.