Union buster and rich guy, go figure
Steve Jobs makes a lot of sense when he’s talking about music and copyright protection, but when the topic is schools, he seems to be on a different planet.
The teachers’ unions, Jobs believes, are ruining America’s schools because they prevent bad teachers from being fired.
“I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way,” Jobs told a school reform conference in Texas on Saturday. “This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.”
The solution, Jobs believes, is to treat schools like businesses: empower the principal to fire bad teachers like a CEO.
Hiring only insanely great employees and firing the bozos has been one of Jobs’ longest held managerial principals.
“In everything I’ve done it really pays to go after the best people in the world,” he said in a 1995 interview. “It’s painful when you have some people who are not the best people in the world and you have to get rid of them … but nonetheless it has to be done and it is never fun.”
Calling all Apple Fanboys™ and Apple Bashers™, this looks like a great chance to show how smart and witty you all are as you continue a 25 year tradition of idiotic ramblings that will have nothing to do with the story at hand.
He’s an ass. It’s not that he doesn’t have a point about tenure, but if you fire all the under-performing teachers, who’s going to replace them. Look at Apple’s wages for a person responsible for managing 30 people and look at a public school teachers wages. By the way Rand Corp suggested privatizing public education over 20 years ago. I can’t stand all these self aggrandizing idiots that has a plan but no perspective of the problem. Leave that aspect to elected officials. 😉
My wife is a teacher and takes her job very seriously. She attends workshops spends hours at night trying to create creative lesson plans to keep her class interested in learning. Unfortunately her job is not the only one that affects her class. She looks at the lack of parent interest in their kids affecting how well they learn. Many parents seem to busy to help their kids with homework or even make sure they are doing it. Im sure their are bad teachers out their, who for many reason do not do a good job of educating. But I do not believe this is a big problem.
Too many variables involved? Nonsense! School, and teacher performance is easily quantified. Besides, look at the difference between public and private schools. The overwhelming majority of private schools are superior to the overwhelming majority of public schools. Which are unionized? Sure , there are fabulous public schools in high tax neighborhoods like fairfax, VA – or Burbank – or other such places beyond the financial reach of most Americans. But why do middle class – and lower middle class parents scrape together 3-5 grand a year to send their kids to the local parochial school instead of the free public shool? And which is unionized?
I’m not usually a fan of Steve Jobs’ opinions, as he seems a bit too close to Al Gore.
But in this case, a few years (decades) running a company has shown him that protected classes (i.e. Unions) of employees do not help the company. And, since education is so important to the country, he’s left the left on this one.
4. “The overwhelming majority of private schools are superior to the overwhelming majority of public schools. Which are unionized?”
Unions are only one aspect to the differences between public and private schools. The main difference is that the parents care enough about their child’s education to pay for the private school. Studies have shown that the number one factor for a successful school is parents that care about education.
Another very important difference is that private schools can kick out students. Public schools basically cannot unless an egregious criminal act is committed.*
So not only do you have parents who are committed to education, all of the students are committed to education, as any goof-off would be kicked out.
I have no doubt that unions are a factor, but they are a minor factor among many.
* And even if a kid rapes another student and gets kicked out of one school, he will simply be sent to a different public school. Kids have a right to a public education that cannot be denied. Basically the only way to get a kid out of the public school system is to have him quit, deported, or sent to prison.
Do you really think that if that same burden was applied to all private schools they’d be as successful?
Growing up I had some really truly awful teachers that were only there because of tenure.
One of which was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed that all little boys were rapists and that when they took their toys apart they were learning to “take apart women.” I wish I was kidding.
Not to mention I learned nothing in that class. It was chemistry and we never got off of the first chapter. Everyone failed the end of year test and they had to curve it.
I hear she only got fired after she attacked a fellow teacher.
Get rid of the Unions? How about getting rid of those incessant iPods kids carry to school everyday. It used to be that Apple computers were the darlings of school systems nationwide. School administrators will remember this the next time they upgrade their computer systems. He needs to stick to running his company and stay out of public policy. His cockamamie ideas will end up hurting his reputation and ultimately Apple shareholders. Save all the grandstanding until after you step down as CEO.
Steve forgets that there are two issues with the public schools, the unions, and the lack of an equal playing field for competitors. Perhaps it is not the unions, but the near monopoly that the public schools have over education. I pay for the public schools, and I pay for private schools. At least give me a tax deduction for the tuition for the private schools. This will permit more people to opt out of the public schools, increasing competition. The public schools (administrators and unions alike), will need to compete or lose. In some cases, the unions are working with management on improving things, in others, the unions and management are simply fighting and killing the business.
Level the playing field and let the market decide!
School, and teacher performance is easily quantified.
How?
For testing to work, you would have to factor in the intelligence of the kids, which varies wildly from school to school. Right off the bat, this is a non-starter, because measuring innate characteristics of the kids would lead to charges of racism, sexism, and every other kind of -ism you can think of.
Or are you under the impression that teachers in affluent neighborhoods are simply better than teachers in poor neighborhoods, because that’s how the metrics skew.
The public schools (administrators and unions alike), will need to compete or lose.
If you intend to apply business principles to schools, you have to apply all of them. As an example, how would a school go about choosing the best suppliers and telling the crappy suppliers to go fly a kite?
Do you see what that means in the real world? For schools to “compete” they need to get rid of poor students, those with disabilities and other issues, and only keep those who can perform. Ummmm waitaminute, isn’t that what SN just said up in post 6????
Taken a step further, how would a school-as-business set prices? In order to initiate a new product, where do they get capital? Voters just won’t stand for all this nonsense.
So as you can see, the “public education as competition” thing doesn’t hold up to even the first level of scrutiny. Anyone promoting competition in education needs to look at the real eductation situation while leaving prejudices aside.
10. He suggested that the school principal should have the ability to fire bad teachers. It would be up to the principal how he determines good / bad teachers and awards them appropriately – firing if necessary. The school being in an affluent / poor area would have no impact on the principals ability to do that.
(Disclaimer: My wife is a 8th grade math teacher with a Math, Teaching, and Gifted-Education degrees. Where else can a person with three college degrees get paid less?)
It’s easy for someone like Mr. Jobs to look from his highly paid, highly respected, highly sought-after position and say that he could fix things with a wave of his hand. To say that to run a school like a business ignores the fact that the “customers” are going to be the students and their parents.
At a recent Parent-Teacher conference, probably less than 1/3 of the parents showed up. And of those that did, 75% of them were for the students that were in the A/B/C-grade range (or 1/2/3 depending on your grading system — i.e. the upper end). The parents of the students that were in the lower end rarely showed up. And of those that did, they kept telling her “It’s your job to make him learn when he’s in school…”
One even had the audacity to ask what could be done to help their child. When she recommended some additional after-school assistance, the parent said no because that would interfere with his babysitting of his younger siblings! (I won’t even get into the number of parents that were choosing athletics over education.)
In the business world, these types of customer problems don’t exist. If you buy a car and ignore proper maintenance but then bring it to me when the engine is dead, tires are flat, and the body is rusted through, the business man would just tell you that it’s due to neglect. In the school system, the teachers are expected to take this rusted out piece of junk and turn it into a luxury automobile.
I might like Mr. Jobs ‘solution’ if it involved some sort of parental commitment and penalties if their child (_THEIR_ CHILD!!!) isn’t putting in the necessary work to take what the teacher presents each day in class and apply it.
Dan L
I taught in the public schools for 34 years before taking early retirement. Jobs is an idiot on this one. He is assuming that the administrators are driven like business administrators and they are not. In the school system I taught in, the only ones to get promoted in most instances were the ones who played ball with the current administrators or had connections on the school commitee. Promotions were not on the basis of talent and ability.
And I have no use for teacher’s unions. Most of the time they are useless and simply take care of themselves with little concern of genuine issues of the membership.
Administrators hated me, but outside the system I was named to Who’s Who in American Teaching and twice nominated for a Disney All American Teachng Award, Key Club Award for Excellence in Education and Horace Mann Teacher, but the adminstrators could not wait for me to retire. Sorry, Jobs, but that view of yours is BS– and iIdon’t mean Bachelor or Science..
I taught in the public schools for 34 years before taking early retirement. Jobs is an idiot on this one. He is assuming that the administrators are driven like business administrators and they are not. In the school system I taught in, the only ones to get promoted in most instances were the ones who played ball with the current administrators or had connections on the school commitee. Promotions were not on the basis of talent and ability.
And I have no use for teacher’s unions. Most of the time they are useless and simply take care of themselves with little concern of genuine issues of the membership.
Administrators hated me, but outside the system I was named to Who’s Who in American Teaching and twice nominated for a Disney All American Teachng Award, Key Club Award for Excellence in Education and Horace Mann Teacher, but the adminstrators could not wait for me to retire. Sorry, Jobs, but that view of yours is BS– and I don’t mean Bachelor or Science..
If unions were the sole problem then states that do not have unions should be much better than states that do have unions. But many of the states that do not have unions (mostly Southeast) are among the worst performing states. I agree that unions probably don’t do anything to help improve schools, but they certainly are not the biggest cause of poor performing schools.
I think he has a point. Right now it’s almost impossible to get rid of bad teachers . Plus there is no real incentive for a teacher to become a better teacher. Basically it’s like: get in the system and stay in the system for ever. Those are the jobs for life and your performance is not very important.
And the scary part is that the jobs are oh so important. The school system should not become like a real industry but it would be better if they would adopt some industry standards.
Well at least Steve Jobs has identified a problem that can be solved. Everyone else talks about different problems. The fact is there are bad teachers, and they cannot be fired easily under the current system. I don’t think you realize just how bad many teachers are. Requiring an education school degree takes out a certain percentage of high caliber people who might be interested in teaching. Beyond that, teachers tend to come from the bottom third of college graduates. Pretty much wherever teacher testing has been implemented, you get high failure rates, followed by calls to change or ignore the tests. In Massachusetts, 60% failed the first round of teacher testing, and they then changed the cut score and let people retake the test.
I don’t normally agree much with Jobs, but he is right on this one. Unions have their place but a couple of obvious examples where they have gone completely overboard are schools and the auto industry.
Merit pay needs to exist to reward good teachers. Length of service and degrees being the only measures of compensation is ridiculous. Tenure should not exist at all. I don’t care if you have 40 years of service, if you suck, you should be in fear of losing your job.
Sure that doesn’t solve everything but you have to start somewhere. The way it is right now, the instant anyone anywhere propose some kind of reform on a school system, the unions jump into action to squash it.
Everyone has their different view on why schools are failing, everything from unions, bad teachers, lazy parents, lazy kids, bad administrators, etc… and you know what… most have a point. The entire system needs serious help. The unions have abused the system, too many bad, unmotivated teachers, most parents aren’t involved, most kids goof around in class and don’t give 25% effort, and most administrators are incompetent or playing a political game. They have so many issues; I’m not sure where we should start.
Someone above made the comment about being forced to keep bad students. Why do we have to? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to motivate kids and parents? So many kids act up in class, just send them to the office and after X amount of times, they are suspended… after that, they are expelled from public schools for a year. Oh yeah… if you don’t graduate from high school… you don’t get low income, social programs. No food stamps, no welfare, nothing… How’s that for motivation?
I predict you would see almost all discipline problems go away and grades would quickly go up now that they have to pay attention. I knew very few kids that got Ds and Fs that didn’t have a discipline problem. Once the kids were motivated, teachers would come around also.
I’ll tell you why Steve Jobs is wrong on this one. Teacher’s Unions are the only part of the education establishment that sticks up for the teachers. Administrators are supposed to care, but often don’t, and many parents think of school as free day care.
Considering the education required to become a teacher and the amount of workload that teacher’s have to deal with, they are one of the poorest paid professionals. If life were fair, teachers would be making lawyer salary and lawyers would be making teacher salary.
School boards want to save money, so they pay teachers as little as possible, if the unions are not there to stop it.
You can’t run schools like a business, and you can’t quantify the value of a teacher based on student performance. Otherwise you will have a fight over who gets to teach the “gifted” classes.
Yikes! Steve is jumping the shark!
What’s next? Shaved heads, tattoos, claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby…
What a lousy concept… to expect students to pass a standardized test that indicates if they have been taught the minimum requirements by their teachers. Wow… what will they expect next? Maybe they will come up with come kind of “report card” that tells parents how well their kids are doing in school. Nah, it will never happen, it would violate the rights of privacy of the children…. and besides, how do you explain a report card with all “A” grades, yet then the student fails the standardized test.
he´s setting the stage for the iTeacher
Jobs hit a home run… and the majority of my family was in a union at one point or another.
#26 Right on! My wife is a unionized teacher and she and I hate it desperately. She took a huge (20%) pay-cut when we moved from a state without a teacher’s union… that’s right, pay CUT! She also has to pay $1,000/year in union dues for the privilige of making less money. She’s always complaining about all the do-nothing tenured teachers who scurry off to check their contract every time the’re asked to stay two minutes past when the bell rings. Not only that, the union takes our money and spends it on (what else?) political candidates and propoganda that we don’t support. The NEA newsletter is nothing more than a liberal rag that doesn’t even bother sticking to the topic of education. In our experience, belonging to a strong teacher’s union has hurt our standard of living, keeps bad teachers securely employed, and creates a caustic environment among the staff. YEA Unions! Let’s all hold hands and sing “Solidarity”!
Just a note on vocabulary. Where does this word ‘tenure’ come from in the context of this discussion? Tenure is a very special right enjoyed by certain university and college professors, allowing them extraordinary freedom of expression in their classrooms and work. And even tenure does not completely protect them from losing their jobs in the event of demonstrated incompetence or wrong doing. Teachers do not have tenure. They generally have the protection of union contracts. Teachers can are are frequently dismissed for wrong doing or many kinds and even for expressing that do not suit their employers.
Every teachers’ union contract I have ever seen provides ways for the employer to remove incompetent teachers. This usually involves collecting evaluations over a period of time, taking remedial action and finally dismissal. The real problem lies with school boards and administrators who do not like taking the time and trouble combined with the unpopularity and legal expense involved.
Don’t get me wrong: there are poor teachers out there. But not as many as some people like to make out. And is is wrong to put the blame on teachers’ unions alone.
Well back in the 2000 presidential campaign, I was listening to the Neal Boortz show (Libertarian Viewpoints) and he had a similar tune to that of Steve Jobs. But it was worded something to the effect of:
What the teacher’s union won’t mention is something to the effect of 48% of all teachers in this country send their own children to a private school. Throw in the fact that Bush was trying to push for school vouchers and Gore wasn’t, and you can see why this little tidbit of info wasn’t put out.
Boortz astutely points out that the Teacher’s Union is a big supporter of the Democratic Party. That and the fact that marginal / grossly inadequate teachers have no desire to be tested and you can see where all of this was heading. Go figure.
Steve Jobs is teh coolzzz.
Teachers don’t have tenure? Then can you please explain that ballot initiative in California a few years back, something about eliminating teacher tenure.
#22) Yeah teachers unions care for the teachers, but I think the point is to care for the students’ education.