market competition. there is a profit motive behind all of the extra testing. we need to get the corporations out of the schools. the union says school of choice would enrich corporations but further immoverrish poor teachers. teachers paid enough? no. you got some teachers making over $100,000 a year. and they aren t making enough. matt damon agrees with that. his mom is a union teacher. a teacher wants to teach. why else would you take a [ bleep ] salary and really long hours. teachers make a [ bleep ] salary? well, maybe to matt damon. but today american teachers make more per hour are than accountants, nurses, architects. i can guarantee you this, it is not about the money. kevin is a former d.c. politician. when i was chairman of the
anywhere in america and we ll take it and we ll outperform the other schools in five years. john: ben chavis the model at the american indian charter public schools right in the heart of a rough neighborhood. now, these are hard workers here. the kids in american indian schools have some of the highest test scores in california. you can do that on the same amount the state gives every school? we get less than other schools. the kids in american indian are scoring so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn t even a word for it. john: they use different techniques. here at american indian they pay some kids to tutor other kids. we hire students and we pay them. they are excited. they are going to make some money. chavis is politically
because they weren t going to get any value out of it. and the great teacher gets paid no more than all of the other teachers. that s right. gets paid no more. if we were doing seniority based layoffs would have got laid off first. she decided to pay good teachers more and fire bad teachers. that did not go over particularly well. reid must go. a few you weeks into this i was visited by my then general counsel and he comes rushing into my office and says you have got to stop firing people. i said why? i mean if the people are not doing the jobs that he this are supposed to be doing, we need to move them out. and he said welcome to d.c. public schools where we never fire any one. but you did fire a lot of the people. eventually we did. she found a 90 day loophole that let her close some lousy schools and fire some teachers. nothing short of a firestorm surrounding the future of the school system. 30 principals this week.
right, how good are the teachers doing, i found that 95% of the adults were being rated as doing a great job. so how can you have a system where all of the workers are thinking we are doing a great job and a great job for the kids and what we are producing for them is 8% success? she visited schools and saw empty classrooms. i walk into this one school and go to the first classroom. five kids in the classroom. same classroom. nine kids. third, three kids. seven kids. i m thinking what is going on. finally i get to the fifth or sixth classroom and ask the teacher. i said where are all the kids? and she said well, it s friday. i thought really? i just couldn t believe that was the answer. so i said is that all? and she said no. i thought great, okay. she is going tell me some are on a field trip or something like that. she said it s raining, too. turned out that not every classroom was empty.
kids. you but ho but you how do yw if they are learning anything if you don t test them and compare. i know my kids are learning when i look in their eyes. the protests had celebrity support. actor matt damon. he was asked from reason tv about the rules that make it hard to fire a teacher. in acting there isn t job security. why do you think there is that in teachers. do you think job insecurity makes me work hard. i want. you take it mba style thinking, right? mba style. business school idea. well, yes. charter schools, vouchers, even obama s race to the top are based on the idea that competition is good. if kids are free to take their school money to any school, competition among schools including for profit chains will force all of the schools to get better or go out of business. the best schools will expand. but the unions don t like that