May 20, 2011 4:36PM # Turns out State Schooling Isn’t Communist after all… By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) --- SHARE Albert Shanker, long-time head of the American Federation of Teachers union, [said back in 1989 that](http://aftexposed.com/background): > It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve: it more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy. But hang on a minute! Doesn’t the following description sound a lot like the work rules in our public schools: > Promotion was determined by the Table of Ranks.… An official could hold only those posts at or below his own personal rank.… \[S\]tandard intervals were set for promotion: one rank every three years from ranks 14 to 8; and one every four years from ranks 8 to 5.… This meant that, barring some heinous sin, even the most average bureaucrat could expect to rise automatically with age.… The system encouraged … time-serving mediocrity That, ladies and gentleman, is not a description of the work rules of the communist-era Russian bureaucracy. It describes the rules in the ***Tsarist*** Russian bureaucracy (see Orlando Figes, “A People’s Tragedy,” p. 36). The funny thing is, according to Figes, “By the end of the \[19th\] century, however, this system of automatic advancement was falling into disuse *as merit became more important than age*.” So the modern U.S. system for promoting public school teachers was discarded as inefficient and unworkable… by the Tsars. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).