I am clearing out some discussion threads I have saved and came across this one. It was the result of me reading an article on Colorado teachers being stripped of tenure  because of poor evaluations. The article is from Chalkbeat.

This particular person definitely came from a business, data, analytics approach towards how to make K-12 education better. Our back and forth was lively and informative and while we both had points of agreement our philosophies in the end were likely unchanged. I’m just posting my favorite excerpt to save the essentials before I dump some files visually cluttering my folders. The poster I.D. was “Newport”. I’m “Dan McConnell”.

NEWPORT: Mr. McConnell, not sure if you’ve ever taken a stats course, but it strikes me that you and I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement about which is worse — Type 1 or Type 2 errors. The former is an error of commission — wrongly forcing an ineffective teacher from the classroom. The latter is an error of omission — failing to remove an ineffective teacher from the classroom. And there is an inescapable tradeoff between the two types of errors — the more you try to avoid one, the higher the rate of the other you must accept.

Like teachers unions leaders, you prefer to focus our attention on the injustice of the Type 1 Error — while ignoring the enormous economic, social, and individual cost of the Type 2 Errors we make every year when we leave ineffective teachers in our children’s classrooms. And if you look at the research about Type 1 and Type 2 errors, you find that in retrospect most people have far more regrets about the errors of omission they have made, because their costs are far higher in the long-run than their errors of commission.

Let me be clear: I believe — based on the evidence — that the cost to our society of Type 2 errors in K12 — in this case, leaving ineffective teachers in our children’s classrooms, is far higher than the social cost of Type 1 errors. And in today’s globalized, knowledge-based economy, that gap is growing wider at a non-linear rate.

As I presume you either a teacher or teachers’ union flack, I don’t expect you to understand what I have just written, because it is so far out of the realm of your experience.

But trust me on this: the stakes on the table are far higher than you appreciate.

 MR. McCONNELL:  “As I presume you either a teacher or teachers’ union flack, I don’t expect you to understand what I have just written, because it is so far out of the realm of your experience.”

 I understand. Don’t feel like you have to dumb it down for me because I have been a political fan-boy since I was 13 and saw some greasy ex movie star demean a president with true character-one who continues to this day to give graciously and selflessly to the world. So type 1/type 2, yeah…I get what your saying. But I think you are getting the flavor of that concept of inescapable trade-offs wrong, and making a leap from public schools to the massive, systemic, endemic social and economic injustice that exists-not because it’s too difficult to fire experienced teachers, but because mythological “investors” and “job creators” have done so only for themselves and the continued deference to them is the looming Death Star of truly high stakes.

Inescapable trade-off:

A) “Yeah, we might arrest/jail/execute an innocent once in a while-but oh well, at least we get some criminals too!” (Make teachers easy to fire)

B) “Yes…a guilty person might go free occasionally, but by guaranteeing the rights due every citizen we minimize injustice” (Protect teacher tenure)

You seem to favor the former, I favor the latter.

Teacher, yes. “Flack”, not so much-although I served as president of my local the last couple years, will be VP this year (might go back to Prez after my kids are all off to college, it’s a busy life right now)…I don’t know.

Honestly, my union has disappointed me. Not because I don’t believe less in unions, but it has been too little baseball bats and flaming bags of poo…too much sucking up to crony capitalist hoping for a seat at the table. My union leaders have bent over and taken it for all of us, from policy makers driven by donors who sit around CEO tables having their “Aint we so much smarter than teachers” stroke fest under the table (political donations, not truth, buy validation).

But I don’t expect you to understand how people who have no understanding regarding a profession buy influence over that profession and/or assume the ability to judge it.

Sometimes a haphazardly crafted word salad, even when the chef is blindfolded, can have hints of some technical culinary skill. Unfortunately your bowl of bullshit doesn’t quite meet that mark.