When Ms. McArdle refers to school competition, she apparently doesn't mean on the gridiron or the diamond, rather that it should be like Ford vs. Toyota, neglecting to acknowledge that students who don't perform can't be fired at will, nor can parents be forced to participate in the educational process. (I suppose she'd say that Ford can't fire anyone because of the UAW, & gov't. regulation keeps Ford from really clamping down on their suppliers, but let's not go there.) If only there were an imaginary "charter school" out in the sticks to "compete" there probably wouldn't be any further problems.
And the problem in rural areas is not the teacher's unions, it's the geographic fact of no possible competition, and often the net outmigration of educated people who might make good teachers.This I don't even understand:
This is not some crazy right wing opinion about unions in general; it is a specific problem with public employee unions. The cops and firefighters have their own issues, about which I will happily wax lyrical some other day, but in the end most of them boil down to getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to do no work. If the laziest ten percent of New York's teachers spent all day drinking coffee and doing "literature review", this would be a fiscal problem, but not a desperate one. The problem is, we stick the teacher's [sic] union's problems in our classrooms.Does the second sentence mean police & fire unions are featherbedding? (Maybe we should be setting more fires so those lazy firefighters aren't just sitting around all day.) Or does she mean teachers are not working? Is it only the laziest 10%? How do they get away w/ this, if they do, police, firefighters or teachers? By "teachers union's problems," does she mean lazy teachers? How is that the union's problem? Are the unions a deliberate evil, like the Cosa Nostra, making the school districts hire & pay people who show up only for their checks? Or, or, or?
P. S.: Just occurred to me that there are no slang terms for firefighters similar to those for police officers (cops, the heat, pigs, & so on). Interesting. (Until someone corrects me.)
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"about which I will happily wax lyrical some other day"
Don't kid yourself, Megs. There's nothing "lyrical" about your writing. In fact, that sentence is so painfully bad, your use of the word is almost ironic.
Guys, get a load of this: As you know, in her eagerness to refute some strange, confrontation commenter, Megs said the EPI data was biased. The EPI begs to differ.
I warned her about libel. Now she'll need to write another back-sliding apology.
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