I agree 100%

Teachers’ unions exist only to serve their own left wing agenda - not the good of the children, nor respect for the parents that public schools are supposed to serve.

Of all places, Forbes–widely read by business folk–has a terrific article about why it’s a dumb idea to make a campaign of firing teachers, as “reformers” have. The writer, Nick Morrison, is a regular contributor to Forbes. He quite rightly says that the real problem is keeping and supporting teachers, not firing them.

“While it may excite conservative commentators, this proposal is doomed to fail, not least because firing teachers requires finding replacements, and there is no guarantee they will be any better, if they exist at all.

“But there is another side to this debate, and that is the difficulty of keeping teachers in the classroom. Not just good teachers, but any teachers….

“Teacher retention is a problem familiar to school leaders across education systems. In the U.S. an estimated 40-50% of teachers leave within the first five years and the attrition rates of first year teachers have increased by about a third in the last two decades.

“A report by the House of Commons education committee found similar retention levels in England, while in Australia research suggests almost half of new teachers leave within five years.

“Why are they leaving? The obvious answer might be low pay and student behaviour, but studies in all three countries suggest this is not the case. Instead, the main culprits are lack of support and workload issues.

“The latter is tied into growing levels of accountability in public education. While taxpayers quite rightly want to see that they are getting value for money from schools, this has translated into an increasingly heavy burden on teachers in terms of paperwork.”

It’s good to see common sense in a mainstream publication.