Ms. Downey,

Thanks for your reply. Industry and Education are fundamentally different types of organizations. No business requires one employee to work with substandard raw material while the person at the next desk gets to work with excellent raw material. Education does. You can't resolve this problem when considering merit pay. Saying lawyers have merit evaluations or journalists have merit evaluations and educators will have to do it too is a cop out. If your raw material is bad you cannot produce a good product. What's more, of the dozens and dozens of parent-teacher conferences that I have attended, I've never seen a single case where a student was doing well in all their classes except one. Uniformly at those conferences every teacher addresses the same issues with the parent and the student. Pay attention in class, turn in your homework, use the study guides to prepare for tests, come for extra help before or after school if you are struggling with anything. But the same students, skip class or go to sleep, chat with friends constantly when awake, fail to turn in any work, never ask a question or come for help, and fail miserably. Blaming the teacher is not logical.

Teachers are already evaluated on the basis of their organizational skills, their adherance to the curriculum, their classroom management, their cooperation with colleagues and administrators. If they fail in any area, they don't keep them on board. My experience has led me to believe that giving administrators merit pay as an additional weapon will drive more of the good teachers into industry and out of education. It is just the last straw. I was an excellent teacher. I had remarkable credentials and success in the classroom. I would have received every possible merit pay increase. I am totally against merit pay.

When I was young I played racketball. I loved the game and really worked on my game. I played at the Norfolk YMCA and the players there took racketball and handball seriously. I remember playing with one of the more expert players and he told me, "Son, it takes five years to learn how the ball bounces." As odd as that sounds, I noticed that after five years, my judgement of where the ball was going came to be flawless. It really took five years to learn the basics of the game. Teachers are not currently averaging five years in the profession before they leave to do something else, anything else. They leave because they are assaulted by students, administrators, parents, and members of the press. I'm telling you the teachers are not the problem. Sure you can find a teacher who is worn out and hanging on for retirement and another who is incompetent and has been protected by someone so they still have a job, and you can point at them and say, "Ooooo, bad teacher." But generally, teachers are doing okay. Money is the problem.

I'm convinced that there is a national Republican Party strategy to reduce funding to public schools at the state level and break the back of public education. In the name of "school choice" these people want tax support for parochial, segregated, education, just like it was in the old days. It is not an accident that Governor Sonny keeps reducing the program budgets of schools and it is not related to the economy. It is a Republican Party strategy. Personally I don't think the schools need a little more money. I think they need twice as much money. Thirty thousand dollar starting salaries, that do not increase until the 4th year of teaching, drive sane people to do other things. I taught for ten years and each year I saw more regulations piled on teachers, more cover your ass paperwork, larger class sizes, less administrative support, less money for copy machines, paper, and supplies. Workbooks--forget about it. Lab equipment--not a dime. Software to support the curriculum--if you can raise the money privately. I've seen defeated schools. There a lot of good teachers working there, but they are overwhelmed. We need more money in those schools. They need 3 or 4 more security people, several more discipline administrators, more in school suspension teachers. They need twice as many teachers in those schools. The break down of discipline in the hallways and the classroom breaks the spirit of the teachers over time. The principals can't solve it either. Clayton County is a disaster area. South DeKalb is a tragedy. And there is no miracle cure like the we see in the movies.

But money absolutely solves the problem. Smaller class sizes, more supplies, up to date equipment and texts. Sonny Purdue and the Republican legislators want to make sure this doesn't happen because their consituents want public schools to fail. If you really want improvements, there have to be some forums to study the problems and demand solutions from our politicians. A good project for the AJC I think. I'll be there to add my voice. Let me know when to come.

I actually think we'd have better schools the moment we allowed collective bargaining by teachers. If you want to compare educators to businesses, why is it illegal for teachers to unionize and strike? Georgia teachers unions are a total joke. And why is the law written so that teachers have to pay social security but then can't receive social security? Another horrible consequence of being a teacher. Why did I sign a blank contract every year that I taught?-- A contract that guaranteed no salary, no grade level or subject. Indeed a contract that was meaningless if the county wanted to rif me, but was used as a bludgeon against me if I wanted to change jobs. Teachers are treated like crap in Georgia.

You may feel that I am messing with you here--that I'm getting in your kitchen on this stuff. But I've been thinking about it for a long time and I have ideas. You could lay off the teachers in your column. I think they are just an easy target and that if you went after Sonny Perdue and the Republican legislature your job would be in jeopardy. But hey, I'm going to evaluate YOU negatively until you do something besides jump up and down on teachers. They are getting beat up enough without you.