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Comment by baggy_trough | Hacker News Reader

Do we have the courage to do what's necessary to fix education in the United States? That is:

- abolish teachers unions

- fail / keep back students who don't meet standards, in a completely objective fashion with no regard for racial / ethnic / gender sensitivities

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So eliminate their bargaining power and job and wage protections because parents aren't doing their part to ensure their kids are learning? Doesn't seem fair to me.

> because parents aren't doing their part to ensure their kids are learning?

Someone isn’t doing their job. And we can’t fire the parents. Tackling teachers’ unions seems like a necessary difficult step if we want to take this seriously. Alternatively: we keep letting public education deteriorate until so much of the population opts out of it that killing it outright becomes politically possible.

Perhaps we can take some guidance from college teaching, which has effectively abolished unions. Well over half of college level teaching is done by adjuncts, who are not on the tenure track and have no training or licensing requirements.

You left off: pay teachers top wages to draw top talent, didn't you?

California already spends half the state budget on education. Isn’t that more than enough, if spent with a modicum of sanity?

If spent with a modicum of sanity. Is California paying top salaries to instructors to draw top talent?

Why does every conversation in the USA always involve race?

Because the country is full of people who always have race on their mind?

Maybe read TFA. It has supporting evidence for the actual causes, not imaginary ones.

The fundamental cause is lack of accountability which my points address. Also, you are rude.

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