A lot of people are yelling for Rod Paige's ouster as Education Secretary because he compared the teachers unions to terrorist organizations. While it has become all the trend to connect groups that people don't like or find convienent to terrorists, I don't think that he deserves to be fired over such a thing. While I wouldn't have put in those words, I think that some of the teachers unions would rather put their jobs ahead of the quality of the education they provide for kids. I think that there should be higher standards for teachers to enter the field. I feel for teachers and I understand that they have to work hard; I have a lot of friends who are in education and it's not an easy job. It takes a special person to be a good teacher, but you need accountability as well. The majority are good, but we need to make sure that they're up to date. It's good for the profession and it's good for the kids. As for Paige, I think he's done an okay job, he didn't do much as Houston's superintendant of education. He experimented with student testing, but it turned out that his policies overinflated the scores to show that there was a substantial rise since the early 1990's. In Washington, he hasn't been known as a policy giant either.
