In his guest column, printed Nov. 9, Terrence Magee suggests that, when reformers insist the education system is broken, it is “… too simplistic to blame the teachers.”

It is too simplistic to blame only teachers – and unnecessary. There is more than enough blame to go around.

Yes, the educational system is broken — standardized testing reveals local student effectiveness is 40 percent or less. The questions that beg to be asked are: Why, and can it be fixed?

In 1972, Eric Hanusek, a noted economist, conducted a study of disadvantaged inner city youth. He found that an effective teacher could advance their students a grade and a half within a single school year. He similarly found that an ineffective teacher could retard their students by half a grade.

The solution, to help our students, is so blatantly obvious — school boards, school superintendents, school principals, and even high school drop-outs could readily shout it out: Replace each ineffective teacher with an effective teacher.

And yet, that is prohibited, and where the discussion resembles Alice in Wonderland.

Teacher unions have insisted, and their powerful lobby has persuaded legislators, that the watery definition of effectiveness advocated by teachers is what will be used when seeking to identify ineffective teachers. Accordingly, all teachers, including the ineffective, will be found effective. They will all be found equal and none will be replaced.

Because it is legislated, schools cannot do otherwise, but parents might. In my family, whenever we need a doctor, we ask our nurse friends to identify the best one. The teachers we know (if they can be persuaded) can name both the effective and ineffective teachers.

If the question were carefully asked, parents could discover who the effective teachers are, and could then request that particular teacher for their child. But, since the system is fiercely designed to protect teachers — not children — parental requests will likely be denied.

Richard Sabine, Lewiston

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