The American educational system is as good as Lithuania

I have always been astounded by some of my non-nursing peers and the salaries they draw. Social workers are a good example; I have worked with many graduate-prepared social workers (that's about six years of post-secondary education) who earned about two-thirds to half of what I did. Some were envious of the salary but not the educational requirements, "Too much science and math."

The current issue of Newsweek has done a great job in detailing the misery that is the American educational system of today. Here are some lowlights:

• Over a third of teachers come from the lowest 5% of SAT scores.
• Students with two strong teachers in a row (successive grades) will eventually excel no matter what their background while students with two weak teachers will not recover academically.
• In most states teachers are given lifetime tenure after two or three years teaching. This means they can not be fired, even for cause.

The article is filled with examples of teachers who are not just weak but malicious - yet still teach. A quick search on the Internet finds many more examples of why really bad teachers can keep teaching. Santa Barbara High School teacher Matef Harmachis has threatened, sworn at, and made lewd comments to students but keeps on going. The school spent a million dollars trying to fire him without luck. A million that could have been spent of bonus pay to teachers who demonstrate success. Los Angeles has it even worse. They currently pay ten million dollars a year to teachers to do nothing, literally nothing. Some 160 teachers who have been accused, among other things, of sexual contact with students and other staff, harassment, theft or drug possession. The union rules prohibit them from doing any useful work such as grading papers, filing, or even stuffing envelopes. They simply sit.

Teachers rarely have student's test scores as a measure of their proficiency. In New York it is even illegal to tie student's scores to their teacher's evaluations. Powerful unions ensure that the system is set up so that teachers are not accountable for their student's failings. What other measure could be used to evaluate a teacher?