Say no to seniority

From the Boston Globe:

IN ORDER to attract the best and brightest to education, we need to make it worth their while. This means paying some teachers more than others based on their effectiveness in the classroom instead of their seniority and education level (“Teacher salary system decried,’’ Page A1, Jan. 18). The Boston Teachers Union can help kids and make the profession it represents more enticing by dropping its opposition to this reform.

And here, at Laborpains.org

Cognitive dissonance is the holding of two diametrically opposed ideas at the same time and believing both of them equally. I think of this phrase often when confronted by the demands of teachers unions. On the one hand, the unions believe that teachers are incredibly important to the development of children — that they are dedicated educators who can change the lives of any child through their efforts.* On the other, unions resist methods to judge the efficacy of educators because, they claim, factors for success in school have little to do with what goes on in the classroom and everything to do with factors out of their members’ control: poverty, parental involvement, and other factors are more important, they claim.