Laying off 2-5% of teachers is quite serious, anyone outside the beltway and Wall Street would agree!

Yes, education sucks, but is that entirely the teachers' fault when they are given set curricula to teach? Have the Republicans ever made that better? No, the agenda on education is set by forces far above you or me with very different priorities than a liberal education.

It also does not help that teachers make little money so it is a profession with very low prestige and intelligent young people no longer enter it. Your solution? Cut their pay and lay some off!!!?!?!

The main issue is why do you write articles attacking public employees when our deficit is due to the BANKS and FEDERAL RESERVE, not public education?!?! They squeeze us with their illegitimate public and private debt on money they create from thin air - a right aristocracy of finance. If we were not constantly servicing debt and illegitimate foreign wars, we would not have budget problems.

If your solution to economic trouble is to lay everyone off, then we will be in downwardly-spiralling depression. You don't cut off consumption to fix the economy.

THS,ARE NOT AWARE THAT TEACHERS MAKE THEIR OWN LESSON PLANS ? AND THAT THE LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THE PEOPLE THEY GRADUATE ARE FUNCTIONLY ILLITERATE?

THAT WE RANK IN THE BOTTOM 1/3 OF THE DEVELOPED

COUNTRIES IN MATH & SCIENCE? BUT YOUR RESPONSE IS TO SHOVEL MORE MONEY INTO THE POCKETS OF THE TEACHERS UNIONS & THEIR CRONIES IN THE DEMOCRATE PARTY? MY DAUGHTER ATTENDED CATHOLIC SCHOOLS AND THE COST WAS LESS THAN THE STATE ALLOTED HAD SHE GONE TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND SHE RECIEVED A FAR BETTER EDUCATION THAN DID HER FRIENDS.IN FACT SHE TESTED IN THE 99% PERCENTILE AND NOW ATTENDS A GREAT UNIVERSITY, AND ALL THIS WAS DONE WITHOUT FEEDING AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH,BECAUSE HER PARENTS TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN CHILD.WHAT A CONCEPT.

I think I may have been reading a different article than you. The point of the matter is, no matter how noble or virtuous we may imagine the teaching profession to be, its worth should still only be as much as people are willing to pay for it. Now in the current system we have no idea how much that is, because the whole thing is financed not by competition, but by tax dollars. As a result, there is basically NO correlation between the money we put in, and the results we get out.

Now, I'll definitely agree with you that there are massive problems in our financial sector and that government debt is a huge issue, but spending billions of extra dollars on an education system that proves time and time again that it cannot manage money, is an issue worth our attention.

Unions do not belong in our system of education. They also do not belong in our system of law enforcement or fire protection. These are service areas that should not be susceptible to work stoppages for whatever reason. If a person is intelligent enough to study for and pass the examinations to function in these categories they should be intelligent enough to evaluate the potential for remuneration that exists in the specific discipline or work area before entering it. If it is not adequate, don't work in that area, it's as simple as that. If the people will not fund an endeavor satisfactorily for your needs, that is the reality of the situation, either accept it or go into another line of work. The system will correct itself over time if need be, but a Union, because of the nature of the beast, creates conflict and poses barriers to efficiency that are particularly repugnant in these areas.

ths,

Laying off 2-5% means you are getting rid of the worse of the bunch, which would probably result in a net increase in quality.

And get rid of the unions and let the teachers keep those union dues in their own pockets, again a net increase to their take home pay.

Why should teachers be spared from the economic reality of a recession? Their jobs are already protected to a higher level than any of us and they shouldn't be insulated from the real world any more than the rest of us. In the real world, they could negotiate wages, benefits and work rules that could save jobs. As long as they are a protected class, this will never happen.

THS, obviously your role here is to be the Contrarian to all things Conservative. Fair enough.

"Laying off 2-5% of teachers is quite serious, anyone outside the beltway and Wall Street would agree!"

Moving the goalposts doesn't pass muster around here. The mere possibility of laying off teachers was called an "emergency" not merely "serious." It's hardly an emergency. OTOH, laying off 2-5% of teachers, while serious, is no more or less serious than layoffs in the private sector. I don't recall anyone on the Left getting worked up over the layoffs invariably caused by the tax hikes manifested by these never-ceasing phony "emergency" expenditures. Funny how that works.

"Yes, education sucks, but is that entirely the teachers' fault when they are given set curricula to teach?"

First of all, nobody in the column said or implied the dismal quality of our education system was the entire fault of the teachers. In fact, the whole point of the column, had you bothered to read it, was to show how these funding games and dishonest tactics by the teachers' unions and the Democrats are major factors in the poor quality dilemma.

"Have the Republicans ever made that better?"

Actually, yes. And every time we do, we are met with open hostility, dishonest attacks and smear tactics from the Left, including the teachers whose jobs we are trying to elevate. For example, here in Massachusetts -- galactic center of Liberalism -- when the Republican Governor passed the MCAS program, a system of testing designed to measure students' performance year to year, the very proposal was savagely attacked. Even now, more than 10 years after the program has achieved significant, even startling improvements in performance, the same tired old objections are being raised every year. The test is unfair. Teachers are supposedly "forced" to "teach to the test" and the test is supposedly racist, just to cite a few lame arguments. All from the Left, attacking a highly successful Republican reform.

"No, the agenda on education is set by forces far above you or me with very different priorities than a liberal education."

No actually, the education agenda is typically set by school boards and textbook committees, both of which are usually terribly Leftist in their agendas. Not to mention schools of education, which themselves are shockingly Leftist. Then there are the unions, which drive a Leftist mentality still further. You're also wrong that these things are beyond our control, as recently witnessed by the Texas Board of Education's decision to extract some of these politically correct fantasies out of at least the Texas school system's classrooms.

"It also does not help that teachers make little money so it is a profession with very low prestige and intelligent young people no longer enter it."

First of all, it's preposterous to claim that teachers earning a median salary of over $50,000 plus state benefits are "low paid." Second of all, that's on top of the fact they get summers off while they collect unemployment, and they are compensated for most of the seminars they attend, which is why most of them occur during the school year -- an astonishingly wasteful practice that began when I was a lad in elementary school. Prior to that, there were no paid "teacher's workshop" days off from school. One year, they simply appeared with no explanation, and they've been getting more numerous ever since.

"Your solution? Cut their pay and lay some off!!!?!?!"

So you didn't actually read any of the column, yet you felt obliged to respond in a comment anyway in which you foolishly revealed the fact that you could not possibly have read the column? That's an interesting technique.

"The main issue is why do you write articles attacking public employees when our deficit is due to the BANKS and FEDERAL RESERVE, not public education?!?! "

No, once again, you are badly misinformed. Our record-setting deficits are due to wildly fantastical ideas of economics, whereby politicians apparently believe they can spend massively increasing sums of money every year, far more money than we have, and do so ad infinitum. But it's simply not so. These bailouts are a prime example, but far from the only ones. In fact, Mr Will's examples were designed quite clearly to show that this child-like tendency to call everything and anything an "emergency" in order to justify yet another totally unjustifiable spending binge is a large reason we're broke. He's correct.

"They squeeze us with their illegitimate public and private debt on money they create from thin air - a right aristocracy of finance. If we were not constantly servicing debt and illegitimate foreign wars, we would not have budget problems."

Since you clearly haven't the faintest idea what money is or how an economy works, I won't bore you with the lesson. So I'll simply point out that your hypothesis -- that our budget problems stem from spending on wars -- is wrong. The fact is, all the money spent to date on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq do not equal the money spent by the Obama administration in the first 10 months of his service. That's not even counting the skull-crushing expenditures of Obamacare, the economy-killing pending Cap & Tax legislation, or the takeover of the auto industry.

"If your solution to economic trouble is to lay everyone off, then we will be in downwardly-spiralling depression. You don't cut off consumption to fix the economy."

That's excellent advice, especially since nobody suggested or implied any such thing. Do you make a habit of going around arguing with things nobody said?