dimensionsix dot net

This is an interesting commentary by Leander Kahney, Wired News’ chief Mac blogger, and a guy who seems to usually be knee deep in the famous Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. Basically, he lays the smackdown on the comments that Señor Jobs had about teachers unions and how they jack up the educational experience.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of it all, myself. On the one hand, Jobs is sort of right. The protection of lousy teachers who will teach what they want, how they want knowing there will be no reprisals due to their union does represent a serious issue in our educational system. It’s the same issue that affects most, if not all, public serivce unions. I have no doubt that such arrangements cause issues like this. However, I strongly disagree with jobs in two fundamental ways:

First, Jobs’ solution to this problem is the usual school vouchers and choice talking points that most conservatives espouse. Kahney takes issue with this, and so do I. Vouchers don’t actually solve the problem, they just shift it around. Let’s look at the scenario like this: you have an underperforming school district with 1,000 kids. Into this comes a charter school that is great, but it can only take 250 kids. There are several issues that immediately arise:

1. How do you fairly decide who gets access to that school and who doesn’t? Let’s be frank for a moment. If the area we’re talking about is mixed-race, you know those white and asian kids will get preference long before blacks and hispanics do. It’s not pretty, but it’s reality. Racism isn’t dead, it’s just under the rug. My point is that you’ll never manage to do it in a truly fair way. You could do it by test scores, but say 500 of those kids have good test scores. How do you narrow it? Do the other 250 that didn’t get in really deserve not to?
2. What have we done with the other 750? They’re still stuck in the crappy public schools, and now there’s even less money for those because we’re putting all the money in vouchers and school choice. How have we solved anything there?
3. What happens if the charter school is eventually run by some people who think the sun revolves around the earth, the dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark, and the earth is only 6,000 years old? Suddenly, we’re back to shortchanging all 1,000 kids of a good education.

All in all you’ve put kids in a slippery slope from which there is little escape. It’s better to spend the money to improve all of the schools and give all 1,000 a fair shake.

Secondly, the union criticism is a bit unfair in some ways. Yes, there are rotten apples. There’s always rotten apples, no matter what industry you’re in. Most teachers are hard-working people that have this notion of making a difference in this world. Why else would they teach? Most teachers could easily make thousands of dollars more by going into a private sector job. The unions help these teachers get okay salaries and benefits that school districts would love to just wash away if they could, because elected district officials only hear the calls of potential voters who are angry about taxes and big government, not what is necessarily best for our nation’s children. They’re not perfect, but there is a reason they exist. We need to not forget that.

If you want to honestly fix schools, it starts with acknowledging where the real problems are. Only then can you realize that the problem is not with the unions, but at the very heart of how we run our education system. Until we can get to that point, we’re all just going to be stuck here, living in Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field, not knowing the difference.