DesideriScuri
Posts: 12225
Joined: 1/18/2012 Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: DominantWrestler Merit based unions are interesting. People used to, and sometimes still do, get paid by how many items they produce in a day. By having merit numerically evaluated in a manner not tainted by bias or opinion, you can retain group negotiating rights and incentive hard work. Problem is with teachers, one class may want to learn, the next may not, so mathemitizing an evaluation of teacher performance is difficult if not downright impossible to do accurately I have gotten into lots of - ahem - "discussions" with liberals over teachers, teacher's unions, etc. Those liberals and I agreed on two points, and those were, pretty much, the one you elucidated: it's damn difficult to accurately use merit to base promotions, pay, etc., but also that the current union method isn't all that great, either. Where we couldn't agree, however, is in working towards finding an equitable balance between merit and tenure-based systems. It's going to be typical that a 5-year teacher is going to be better than a first year teacher, simply because of experience, and that has little to do with teaching ability. But, is a teacher with 15 years that much better than a teacher with "only" 10 years? At some point in time, tenure becomes moot, when it comes to determining which teacher is doing a better job. You don't have to be good to get more in a tenure-based union. You only have to do well enough to not get fired (or enough to get brought back after being fired). Merit-based systems are better when the results can be quantified. That's where teaching is in such a fucked up place. Results are not easily quantifiable (I wouldn't agree it's "downright impossible"), so a strict merit system is going to be patently unfair, but a strict tenure system has shown itself to be a poor choice, too. My alma mater had a teacher who was 74 when she got fired several years ago. She was already a long-time teacher when I was going through school in the late '80's. She was fired because she fell asleep in class almost daily. After a couple months, the union got her her job back based on undiagnosed (at the time) sleep apnea, leading to her inability to stay awake (and, as a sleep apnea sufferer, I can completely understand the difficulty she had staying awake). The pattern of falling asleep in class, as it turned out, wasn't new, and had been going on for several years, at the very least. I know this was an extreme case and shouldn't be the basis for scrapping the entire tenure-based system. There has to be a better way than the current system, and it needs to be found asap.
_____________________________
What I support: - A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
- Personal Responsibility
- Help for the truly needy
- Limited Government
- Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
|