When you have done nearly all there is to do to hurt teachers, what remains? It’s simple, really. Outsource their jobs. Privatize the actual education of our children.
And that’s just what Michigan Senator Phil Pavlov (25th District), who cancelled his only townhall meeting this summer, is planning to do.
School districts could hire school teachers through a private company, expanding a privatization program already allowed for lunch workers and bus drivers, under legislation being prepared by the head of the Senate Education Committee.
As part of a significant education reform package sponsored by Senator Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), schools could privatize their instructional services, giving district a way to avoid the perceived high-dollar packages pushed by the teacher unions.
“I look at it as offering options,” Pavlov said. “If there is something out there that can offer school officials the same options at a lower cost, schools need to take a look at that. It needs to part of the conversation on reform.”
Michigan Education spokesperson Doug Pratt rightly points out that this basically amounts to the “lowest bidder” method of selecting of teachers.
“What Sen. Pavlov seems to be talking about is handing the education of our children over to the lowest bidder and letting for-profit companies take over our classrooms,” Pratt said.
Cost considerations will be on the mind of the company in charge of the teachers, with the over-riding concern being “How can I do this as cheap as possible?” Pratt said.
Maybe what we can do is hire teachers in China or India to telecommute into our classrooms. Then we just hire some tough guys at minimum wage to control the kids in the room and maintain the proper “decorum” for “learning”. I hear there are a lot of unemployed “union thugs” they could hire.
We really are going over a cliff in Michigan. The main questions remaining are whether or not we can hold on long enough to vote these idiots out of office in 2012 and how much damage they can do to our society until we do.
