Tikkabik

Steve Jobs recently spoke at an education reform conference and came out pretty clearly against teachers' unions.

At an education reform conference where he appeared with none other than arch-rival Michael Dell, Jobs said that one major problem with schools in the united States is that administrators don't have the power to get rid of bad teachers.

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" he asked the crowd.

The problem here is that schools aren't small businesses. They are, by and large, usually one of the largest employers in a given town or municipality, and they need to be run like large businesses. And as Dell pointed out in his comments, the reason why unions exist in the first place is because big businesses were mistreating their employees, and the employees need protection.

I agree with the gist of what Jobs is saying: That bad teachers shouldn't be protected by their unions. And some, to be sure, do hide behind their unions or their tenure to avoid being discharged when they're long past the point of being an effective educator.

But equally to blame are bad administrators that don't support their good teachers or look in the wrong places to figure out what's wrong with the system. As are town and city legislators and committees who either lack effective management skills or prudent oversight to understand what's wrong in the schools. As are state and federal legislators, who often come up with really screwed-up, cart-before-the-horse suggestions for reform or funding that basically apply band-aids to very system and ugly problems with how public schooling is funded.

No, Steve, it's not just the unions. The whole system stinks, from top to bottom.