Steven Brill on How to Fix Public Schools

"[Teaching] is the only workplace, the only occupation, where by and large you are not paid, promoted, recognized, measured in any way having to do with your performance, only having to do with how long you've been breathing," says journalist and media entrepreneur Steven Brill.

His new book, Class Warfare, chronicles the rise of a reform movement that's bringing a measure of accountability and choice to public schools. The book grew out of Brill's widely read 2009 New Yorker piece about the "rubber room," a holding pen for New York City teachers who couldn't be fired after they were removed from their classrooms for poor performance.

Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie sat down with Brill at his office in New York City.

Approximately 7 minutes.

Camera by Jim Epstein and Anthony Fisher; edited by Epstein.
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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Steven Brill
• Education Reform
• Charter Schools
• Voucher School
• Rubber Room
• Nick Gillespie
• Reason.tv
• Reason Foundation
• Reason Magazine
• Libertarian
• Libertarianism

[kev3d]

Matt Damon is going to dislike this video.

[jone4700]

It's sad really. Such disarray.

[usagill]

Yeah, kill the Unions. First.

[rocko81679]

He is a actually wrong about the pay of teachers being the only profession that is paid based on how long they have worked. Many professions are like this, most nursing jobs and most health care are paid this way, as well as most of the trades are paid this way. I wouldn't argue that it way to hard to fire teachers, but I don't feel that we have an exorbitant amount of teachers that would or even should be fired if it were easier. Overall, pretty large generalizations in this video.

[rumco]

To be honest, he didn't say how to fix them, he said what's wrong with them. To fix them, one needs privatise all of them.

[DarkwingScooter]

@darwinkilledgod Part of toeing that line is a willingness to buy into the debt to wealth model as a basic conception of how the economy function and how individuals should function in society.

[DarkwingScooter]

@darwinkilledgod It wasn't designed for that purpose, but in a round about way it serves it.

The modern "Prussian model" education system was designed ab initio to produce good musketeers, which requires a lot of unit cohesion and discipline.

In today's world that translates into a population willing to "toe the line" with a stock set of values and a homogeneous basic set of world concepts (as opposed to metaphysical concepts of the Catholic church).

[dlstb]

@Loathomar Therein lies the rub! If you could just get parents to actually do their job as a parent we wouldn't even need schools. So lacking an option to take children away from merely decent parents and ensure they went to great parents, the next best option is to provide a framework which allows the decent parents to at least try to make their child's learning experience better. There really is nothing we can do to rid the world of stupid people or bad parents until they kill a kid is there.

[darwinkilledgod]

@DarkwingScooter The crazy bit was that schools are somehow designed to get people to spend money and go into debt. That's clearly nonsense as the widely adopted "story of stuff" documentary demonstrates.

The effectiveness of "Merit" pay depends entirely on who determines what is meritorious. If it's the unions, it's a waste. If it's teachers grading each other it's a waste. The only way it works is if the consumer (parents) decide what is good. Same as every other industry.

[GetMeThere1]

@kev3d : hehehe, Matt Damon has 4 sock-puppet accounts :)

[UTubekookdetector]

James Madison is spinning in his grave, seeing a FEDERAL Dept. of Education.

[DarkwingScooter]

@darwinkilledgod Haha, why only a little crazy?

It is because you think my position is self-contradictory, it isn't.

It is possible to not be partisan and jump on the "unions are bad" bandwagon while accepting that they sometimes do bad things in the face of an untenable and irrational situation. Performance rating teachers will NOT alleviate the problem, if you have taught in this context you would know it that just the opposite is the case.

The problem is baked into the system.