Severud @ SFSU

Steve Jobs may be doing a great job of running Apple, Inc. but he sure doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to education. Speaking at an event sponsored by the Texas Public Education Reform Foundation he said unionization was "off-the-charts crazy" and compared schools to small companies with the principal analogous to the CEO. I would respectfully submit to Mr. Jobs that many of the problems come from management above the principal and go all the way up to the Governor. The district offices, the legislature, and the Governor are the ones who do the most harm to our education system and not the hard working teachers who put much more into their jobs than they receive in compensation.

I challenge Steve Jobs to come up with a list of "bad" teachers and compare it to my list of bad administrators. I'll win every time. To be fair we should weight the rankings. Someone with the title equivalent of CFO or General Counsel should carry more weight than someone doing the equivalent job of a quality assurance tester working onsite at ASUSTek's facilities. But we'll handicap Steve-o and give The Governator, Deukmejian, Wilson and all the other education-friendly Republican Governors the same importance as an energetic, inspiring History teacher who has no tenure (and no job come July 1).

Please, Steve, continue the analogy and start talking about the people who are responsible for allocating funds and the gross mismanagement they have allowed on their watch. Then come back and we can talk about the teachers.

Labels: education

Posted by Kevin on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 11:17 PM | Permalink