If Christie's benefits plan goes through, all teachers will make less money - 12% to 20% less. He says that won't matter to student learning.In speech nearly identical to those he's given before other scholarly groups and at his trademark town hall, Christie laced more criticism of the NJEA into his call for changing education policy."They're there to protect the lowest performers, to protect a system of post-production compensation," Christie said of the union. "For you to believe that's for the kids, you have to believe that a child will learn better under the warm comforting knowledge that a teacher pays nothing for their health benefits."
So, if teacher pay doesn't matter, why have merit pay at all? If you live in the fantasy world where you can slash teacher wages by that much and not see a decline in teacher quality, why would you think merit pay would make any difference?
In fact, if you really believe this idiocy, why not just slice teacher pay in half? It won't affect the kids, right Guv? Hell, let's go all in: teachers work for free from now on!
As all humans with half a brain in their heads know, you get what you pay for. Gut teacher pay, and teacher quality will decline. And merit pay, getting rid of seniority, destroying tenure, and VAM are all about gutting teacher pay. Christie just doesn't have the balls to say so.
His "thoughts" on education are completely incoherent, yet he gets to go to Harvard and preen and pose like he's a serious thinker on this stuff. He's not: he's a clown. If he ever had the spine to debate this stuff in a fair forum with someone who knew his or her stuff, he'd get his clock cleaned.
And I think, deep down, he knows it.
Speaking of incoherent thoughts....perhaps you can help me understand something. I've been kicking this around in my head for a bit but getting nowhere. I hear over and over from those in support of the governor (and he himself) that the NJEA is all about protecting bad teachers but for the life of me I can't qutie figure out why this would be so. I'm told (again, from the gov and his supporters) that the NJEA is all about $$. Do bad teachers pay more in dues? It seems to me that if a poor teacher is let go, a warm body is still needed to teach in that position so a new teacher will be brought in and he or she will, more than likely, be paying NJEA dues. Why would teh NJEA care where the dues came from?
ReplyDeleteEven if I were to buy the nonsense argument that teachers somehow "go bad" as they age (as if they were a dairy product), it still makes no sense. Do older teachers pay more in dues than all those new, fresh, superteachers we keep hearing about? ...you know, the ones they are claiming are so wrongfully let go first. If so, then I guess it would make sense for the NJEA to go out of its way to protect those older, super duper high dues paying teachers (even if they are past their sell by date)....help me understand this Duke!
Unless....maybe it's not about always about the money afterall? Hunh.
Oh, man, Thinker: this is brilliant! See above.
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