Those who can teach, those who can't get elected to the Missouri House of Representatives and file bills that would punish those who teach.
Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, R-Washington, a former public school teacher, made a name for himself quickly during the past House session with a bill aimed at his former colleagues.
The bill would have eliminated teacher tenure and force all school districts to adopt a four-tier pay scale, based on standardized test scores, in which the top tier would receive 60 percent higher pay than those on the second tier, with the third and fourth tiers receiving lesser amounts.
Dieckhaus also sponsored a bill allowing open enrollment of public school students across district boundary lines, another ill-advised plan that would create chaos for public school districts.
An offshoot of legislation such as that which Dieckhaus and his partner in the Senate, Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, are sponsoring is an effort to direct more and more students into charter schools.
For his efforts, Dieckhaus, the chairman of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, has been rewarded with $13,500 in campaign contributions from retired billionaire Rex Sinquefield, Missouri's leading educational voucher supporter.
Dieckhaus' quarterly disclosure report, filed today with the Missouri Ethics Commission, showed he received $18,875 in contributions, with all but $5,375 coming from Sinquefield.
Sinquefield's generosity came in the form of three $4,500 payments, with the first coming on Aug. 30, the second on Sept. 7, and the third on Sept. 21.
Obviously, we can look forward to more efforts by Dieckhaus to push an anti-public school agenda during the 2012 legislative session.
1 comment:
So what is wrong with charter schools, given that pretty much everyone knows that the public schools are failing? In fact, we need to cut the education budget in these days of declining wealth for the average worker.
We need to limit the 'free babysitting' to four years maximum in order to teach the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. If parents are able to homeschool their children to pass the basic testing, then they get half of what it costs to send their own children to public schools.
I'm a big fan of what these visionaries Dieckhaus and Cunningham are doing to end the failure of public schools.
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