Educational issues

Apparently some people in the educational system want to do away with summer school. I wish he'd expound on his reasons a bit more, as summer school has been shown to help even low-income students.

An interesting topic raised in one of my old classes was Good Cause employment, we called it. In parts of Europe, I think by law, someone cannot be fired without a very good reason--and poor performance isn't good enough. In the United States, someone can be fired, essentially, at will or with no cause. In Europe, therefore, hirings and firings are less frequent, it is more costly to employ people (you have to be extra careful who you hire), and salaries are relatively lower. The discussion went on to conclude that in the United States, since hirings and firings and contracts are determined by the market forces, Americans prefer the extra pay to job security.

That's a long set up for one link, I think, but according to an online poll, some educators don't feel this same way. Those teachers prefer their job security over their high salaries. Also, according to that site, most teachers have functional or better parent-teacher relationships at their school, so I think that those polls don't represent a very representative sample of educators.