Thank God we have Jonathan Alter protecting teachers when is he coming to help out. Oh I guess he's already done enough

LP - This is impressive as Jonathan Alter shows what a great supporter he is of education as he once took his fat salary and bought a bunch of kids a couple of pencils and a paper clip or two. What Alter doesn't express in this piece is who determines what is best for kids: teachers that are sitting beside them every day in class or one overpaid reporter who really only gives a damn about them for a three minute segment on television. I think the teacher should weigh in and have some more accountability on their public air waves. I don't think this MSNBC reporter would be getting a passing grade.


> yes.

>> and i'm a huge supporter of teachers, and i have been involved for 15 years in donors choose which helps teachers with classroom supplies and i have always thought that teachers are badly underpaid and this idea in pennsylvania of the republican governor cutting $1 billion from public education is insane, but having said that the interests of adult interest groups are not always congruent with that of kids. we have to ask what's best for kids, not what is best for the adult interest group, and they are not always the same. so what we need is a grand -- what we need is a grand --

>> and we should not always pit them against each other.

>> well, no, but part of the pitting is that partly because every time somebody criticizes the teacher unions, we are teacher bashers. we are not bashing the teachers, but critical of some and not all, but certain practices of the union to protecting incompetence who are inflicting educational malpractice on the students, and we need grand bargaining and a lot more pay in exchange for a lot more accountability and not necessarily through a standardized test, but broader assessment of the teacher quality.

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