Why Isn’t Obama Afraid to Take on the Teachers’ Unions?
Two extraordinary things happened in the world of education recently. Taken together, they’re powerful confirmation of just how precipitously the teachers’ unions are declining in power and influence. Yet I can see a very plausible outcome in which we conservatives fumble the ball on the one yard line — and hand them back their power.
First, a Rhode Island school district decided it was fed up with chronic failure at one of the state’s (and probably the country’s) worst schools, and announced it would fire every single teacher at the school. In an industry where pretty much nobody ever gets fired for anything, that was an earthquake.
Then something even more amazing occurred: President Obama gave the firings an unambiguous endorsement. Noting that only 7 percent of the school’s 11th graders pass the state math test, he remarked: “If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn’t show signs of improvement, then there’s got to be a sense of accountability.”
The teachers’ unions exploded; the president of the largest union made openly threatening statements about how much the president would regret crossing them. The professional experts whined that we don’t know whether this kind of dramatic intervention will work!
“I’ll tell you what doesn’t work,” replied Obama’s education secretary. “Doing nothing.”
I don’t want to oversell this. They’re now making noises in Rhode Island about finding some kind of “compromise” that will save some teachers’ jobs. That would save some degree of face for the unions, which would reduce the scope of the victory.
But those noises may themselves be a feint; I wouldn’t be surprised if the full firings went through. And the district is demanding big concessions from the unions in return for any walkback on their part, and there’s every reason to think that they’d get them. With Rhode Island being singled out as having one of the nation’s worst education gaps, with a national leader in teacher personnel policy reform (and protégé of D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee) running the state school system, and with Obama providing cover, there’s no way the district will do anything that could be seen as caving in. However this goes down, it doesn’t end well for the unions.
The first question we should be asking is this: why on earth would Obama endorse something like this? It would be the easiest thing in the world for him to say something like: “We need to create accountability, and that needs to be firm, but this isn’t the way to do it.” He would pay no price — zero — with any of his constituents for saying that. And he would have avoided hacking off the nation’s biggest labor union, one of his more important constituencies.
What needs to happen is that the next republican president needs to repeal the ability of federal employees to unionize and bust every last public union. Then congress needs to start the paperwork on amending the constitution to make it a permanent ban.
Allowing the government to petition against the government for increased benefits by taxing the citizens is immoral and unjust and cannot be tolerated. In order to maintain an incorruptible government, no employee of the federal government has the right to enter into a union.
NEA ain’t SEIU/ACORN and it’s outlived its usefulness… thank you for all the non-thinking Democratic gimme-gimme voters, but no more goodies for you!
#1 astnerii:
You got it right that the govt employee right to unionize is at the bottom of our ills.
But so is the cat’s cradle of regulatory agencies, statutes, laws and ordinances that have our citizenry and our moribund Republic tied down like Gulliver.
The rescue can start with burning the Civil Service Code and privatizing all but police, firemen and military. Guess what? Ain’t gonna happen.
Could everybody be idiots here? The unions said more money would help and when it did not, they continued saying it would. The Left removed content from the curriculum and did not get the results they wanted, but continued pushing grade inflation. The Right looks at curriculum and says proper content will fix things. That is just as silly.
What will work is individual responsibility for outcome. Put “mastery” back in the curriculum. That does NOT mean instant failure for millions. It means the pitting of each student against himself. Give each student a set of books and an advisor for each required subject, previously called a teacher. Do this starting in Junior High School and things will turn around pronto! If biology takes three semesters to master, or even four, so be it, but it will be done.
My problem is that I believe educators and politicians already are aware of the “mastery” approach and have rejected it. No one wishes to rock the boat, but the boat will sink anyway because it is so full of holes.
Why has everyone done this to our children? The needs of society dictate the pressures within the educational system. Until recently it has been cheaper to import unskilled, skilled, technical and academic workers than to produce them. More recently, jobs have dried up.
Education no longer is necessary. Thus, highly paid teachers are shackled with golden handcuffs and the school systems rot. Indeed, it is a Darwinian world for our children. Without neurotic, pressuring parents even the fabled brightest one percent could and do easily fail, unnoticed. Only the need for food, clothing and a roof will change that, but guilt-ridden parents, feeling they too have failed their children, hold the extended adolescents’ heads above water, fearing to led their offspring drown.
When the trend hits pro sports we win.
http://witgunandstein.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-unions-suck.html
The education lobby is fond of saying that a good education is expensive. As we have found out, so is a bad education.
Greg, I didn’t vote for Obama and I’m no fan of his history as described here or his performance so far. But education is one of those things where ideology crosses party lines. Our president may in this case simply get it right. We don’t have to assume it’s a self serving tactic. You rightly point out that you can’t see into Obama’s head. Any president no matter what their ideology and no matter how good or bad their abilities and performance WANTS to work toward a better America (as they see it). So it might be that here is a place were the record of the education system and results are SO bad that left or right we can all see things must change. Barack can see it, too. I think he may just get it right this time.
What’s sad are those who think vouchers are in any way reform. Public education in the United States has a long history of mediocrity. That averageness is not caused by lack of “school choice” or federal–or even state, for that matter–involvement. It’s *directly* caused by the reliance on half-wit, two-bit local elected officials who think they’re more important than they are who are voted onto school boards.
There is no *one* answer to fix school in these United States; rather, it must be several things compounded. One of the clearest, most sensible things to do would *not* to be to drive-out teachers unions. Those unions, as well as all other unions, are meant to provide meaningful and equitable pay for professions receiving the cold-shoulder despite their importance. Take a cheap, private school as an example, costing parents $20,000 each year. Over the course of the thirteen years an average students spends in the school system–and assuming there’s no rise in the tuition rate–that education will cost a family with *one* child $260,000. Keep in-mind, that’s only *one* child. Most public schools in America are funded through property taxes, of which the average household pays no more than $7,000 each year. Using the same equation, that works-out to $91,000; a *savings* of $169,000 over the educational life of that child. And that tax cost does not rise if more children are put into the system.
Teachers are already taken advantage of and under-paid; why in the world should their *only* means of bargaining for equitable pay be taken away?
And the universities?
It only took 30 years, but anyone walking outside his local JHS/HS can see the evidence against the teachers unions. Even DLibs get it after a while.
I am so disgusted by all this teacher bashing! These are our best and brightest, and they have dedicated themselves to serving our children. Has the author of this article have no shame? I know that we have some problems with some of our schools, but mass firings and “union breaking” is never the answer. Here’s a few simple steps we can take to improve education now:
1. Raise teacher pay by at least 15-20%. That will attract more talent.
2. Grant teachers a better benefit package than most currectly enjoy. There’s no reason why people who have dedicated their lives to children cannot have 100% of their health care (families included) paid for. I’ve also endorsed a special retirement fund for teachers that the Federal govt can invest in. Possibly an additional $300 monthly, per teacher, into a special IRA account. Of course, we’ll need strict government over-sight and accountability of such a fund.
3. More time off. The fact of the matter is that most teachers are over-worked and under-paid. End the traditional school year in early to mid-May. That will give teachers a well-deserved extra month or so to re-charge their batteries. Teaching children is a very difficult job, especially when the classroom is filled with inner-city children from broken homes (i.e. the Newark and D.C. school systems).
4. More administrators to help teachers. I always advocated a “teacher first” policy, in the sense that the “first” employee of any school should be the teacher. If a teacher needs help, each should have their own administrator at their beck and call. Admimistrators should be paid well ($65,000+ yearly), but not included in the special teacher retirement fund.
5. Finally, we should institute a “six-month” tenure called for by Medea Benjamin. Once a teacher has been employed full-time for six months, automatic tenure should set in. This will show that we are dedicated to our teachers, which will entice more productivity.
With these simple changes, we can fix our school systems within 5 years, save money and contribute to the fight on racism and global warming. It will just take some courage.
Unions have outlived their time and have become nothing but cesspools of protectionism and corruption, particularly in the public sector.
Several years ago, Washington State Democrat Governor “Queen” Christine Gregoire and Democrat-supermajority-controlled Washington State legislature enacted legislation that FORCED state employees to enroll in and pay dues to unions. Flush with new found power and cash, state worker unions bankrolled the Queen’s 2008 re-election and now regularly use threats and intimidation to control the legislative process.
The state’s government, bankrolled by unions and empowered by extreme-left Seattle elitists, is now imposing huge new tax increases on citizens to cover present and future multi-billion-dollar funding deficits, in spite of the fact the government has grown by 34% (inflation adjusted) since 2004.
Public employee unions and the welfare state are both alive and well in Washington, thanks to idiotic voters and a lap dog news media.
Nonsense on the left. Nonsense in this blog. The situation really is hopeless if even conservatives believe that the schools can be fixed enough to make a difference. Schools help on the margin. A child’s family is the dominant influence on his or her learning.
Absent the large pool of intelligent women who were blocked from pursuing other professions, there is almost no hope of having enough good teachers to help even on the margin.
Think “The Bell Curve.” Another couple of generations down this path and eugenics will start to be appealing again.
Truly, I despair.
-PB
As a former teacher disgusted with public education, particularly the union’s influence over retention of teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, I was pleased with Rhode Island’s stance. Maybe I would still be teaching if unions weren’t so pervasive. Why do we continue to allow a teacher to keep their job if they do not show improvement in their students? Too many are just putting in time instead of actively improving their skills.
“our best and brightest”? Your funny.
“james” @ 7 eloquently stated everything that is WRONG with public schools, the teaching profession, and America’s public schools in general.
It’s always more money, isn’t it? Just shovel in the cash and all will be well, eh, james? And of course, more time off and don’t forget more more administrators, free healthcare and larger pensions. When will it stop?
I contend that my late father (1909-1996) received a better education during his 8 years in a crowded, backwater, one-room schoolhouse than do 90% of today’s public high school graduates. And after viewing sections of it, I would bet many present-day college graduates would have a difficult time completing the math, history, geography, science, English grammar, spelling and physiology segments of my father’s state-required, 8th grade graduation test.
Wow, it gets even better. #11 is just about all that’s wrong with
with education today. “each should have their own administrator at their beck and call”, tenure after six months? Are you insane?
There is a reason my daughter attends parochial school and you exemplify it perfectly. Recent events in Texas with the history books and this story are all good signs that you and your ilk are being exposed as the failures you are.
A couple of questions: 1) does the Federal government have a role in education? It shouldn’t but it has asserted one, based first and worst on “desegregation” and all that that entailed. 2) is the cause of the ridiculous increases in spending on schools caused by teacher salaries or by increases in administrative head count, and pushed secondarily by increases in the costs of supplies, fuel, and so on? Cut the administrative fat first and save 20 percent right there. [For example, why does a Jr High in Fairfax County Virginia, with and enrollment of 1237, need a principal, three asst principals, and six "counselors?" It has 57 accredited teachers.]
#3 pelaut – “Burning the Civil Service Code” would make all government positions “political” again. What I believe you would seek to do is ban unions and get benefits under better control. For the past 25 years Federal civilian pay raises have been tied to military pay raises in the name of “equity.”
Climbing to the top is not easy.
Why would a teacher right out of college, who has no teaching experience, and is paid at best, maybe 30k a year, want to take a job at a school that was deemed under performing and has had all the teachers fired?
Why would a teacher with 5 or 10 or 20 years experience in the classroom want to take a job at a school that has been deemed under performing?
Is firing the staff really the answer?
Can we fire the parents who don’t feed their children? Can we fire the parents who send the kids to school in the same clothes for a week straight? Can we fire the parents who are rarely home to oversee their kids success with doing homework?
Using that same logic, then every factory worker at Toyota should be fired, Right? Obviosly the Toyota workers have lost focus on the task and all should be let go. Toyota is under performing.
But hey, only in corporate America. The banks were failing and the government threw plenty of money at them. They even had to ‘cut back’ the adminstrators bonuses. Ouch. Based on the new under perfroming criteria, Why were all the bank employees not all fired?
The auto industry was failing. The government threw plenty of money at them. They even had to ‘cut back’ the adminstrators bonuses. Oh golly.
Ouch. Based on the new under perfroming criteria, Why were all the auto workers not all fired? Obviously the workers lost focus.
It just doesn’t add up.
Double Standards? @ 19:
You will find that most Americans agree that throwing taxpayer money at banks and the auto industry was wrong. Hopefully this fall’s congressional elections will rectify those wrongs by sending those who voted for such legislation back home.
And public schools will only improve when competition for education dollars (vouchers and charter schools) forces them to kick the unions, social engineers and chronic troublemakers out of public school classrooms. Drastic cuts in welfare progams will help also, causing students (and parents) to realize they will have to earn their own way rather than count on taxpayers to feed, clothe, house and provide medical care for them.
19. Double Standards?,
Actually, parents who neglect and/or abuse their children can end up losing their children.
If parents really want their children to have a good education, they should just pull them out of the ‘public cesspool’ altogether. Who wants to throw their child in with a bunch of disruptive, thuggish, drugged-out piranhas who come from homes where the parents don’t give a flying frickety frack?
When ‘public school’ is no longer necessary except to house the criminal malcontents of ‘society’ maybe ‘public school’ can receive the new name ‘jail’ and ‘teacher’ can be replaced with ‘warden’.
Teachers are drawn from the bottom 1/3 of college graduates.
The truism of “Those who can, do; Those who can’t, teach” has never been more apparent than at the present time.
11. James, you ARE insane. “Tenure?” Pet administrators? MORE time off? Raise already more-than-generous pay/benefits? MORE government “over-sight” [sic]?
Dude. Read my lips. EDUCATION IN AMERICA IS FAILING. And you want to throw more or our hard-earned blood money at the bozos responsible.
Let me give you a snapshot from one small county in Pennsylvania that represents most small communities in the U.S. today. A teachers’ strike nearly resulted in an entire senior class failing to graduate — see http://tinyurl.com/yeeob9a.
Average salary in Schuylkill County: $28,495 (see
http://tinyurl.com/yf3wbnu)
Average TEACHERS’ salary: $47,608 (see http://tinyurl.com/yfv3aym)
Teachers were demanding FULL health-care benefits for the REST OF THEIR LIVES after retirement, AND a sizable raise, from a district that was already stretched too tight, tax-wise, to afford what they already were paying.
And what kind of student performance was there in return? “[J]ust three of 14 districts met or surpassed the [state] average on the 11th-grade math test, and only four of 17 districts did so on the sixth-grade reading, seventh-grade reading and eighth-grade math tests.” (see http://tinyurl.com/yb9zm8e)
—————————————–
Of course, there are other aggravating factors that result in poor student performance, especially financial hardship among urban families and a culture-wide trend toward lack of parental interest in students’ performance.
But all of that can be overcome — focusing on, primarily, “[G]reater accountability for struggling schools, more high-quality curricula and course work, more equitable funding, and more effective teachers in high-poverty schools. Jay Matthews, the education columnist for The Washington Post, also stressed the importance of high expectations but added expanded learning time and authentic assessment as necessary steps to help failing schools.
“To illustrate these items in the real world Matthews drew on his experience interviewing and researching Jaime Escalante, a teacher working in a high-poverty public school in East Los Angeles and basis for the film ‘Stand and Deliver.’ While a teacher at Garfield High, Escalante taught calculus to 18 students who would go on to pass the AP exam largely using the methods Matthews advocated.” (see http://tinyurl.com/ygvvh5v)
See the difference? EXPECT that all kids can learn, and then HOLD THEM TO ACCOUNT. They’ll deliver. And be so much better people.
We’ve had enough of our money thrown down a sump hole. From the teachers’ side, we’re tired of bad ones making the many good ones go on the defensive. Too many good teachers are not given the leeway to actually teach.
People like you, James, need to sit down and shut up.
8. That’s a lie. That’s not a cheap private elementary or secondary school. Maybe a cheap private college, but not elementary or secondary. The Catholic Church runs schools whose tuition is $7000 per year or so, and if you’re Catholic, your parish will pick up half the tab. And guess what, the results of Catholic schools are far and away superior to public schools.
Tolbert.
That is the most uneducated statement ever. Teachers are not ‘drawn’ from the lower third of college students. People who go into teaching ‘want’ to go into teaching. You think they rank all the crappy students in college and track them teaching, are you kidding me?
You were probably the little jerk in the back of the class always taunting and disrespeting your teachers.
8. Pro-Education,
People pay for ‘public schools’ with their property taxes even if they don’t have children or they home school their offspring. In other words; many people are paying for a service they never receive.
Can I get a refund for home-schooling my child and not ‘using’ up public school resources? I wish!
AreYouKiddingMe,
From your inability to correctly parse my assertion, I deduce that you are either a teacher or one of the bottom third.
And no, I wasn’t the jerk in the back of the class in school, I was the jerk at the front of the class who graduated in the top 1/3 in college with a hard science degree.
Return to GO, do not collect $200.
By “uneducated” I deduce that you mean “unindoctrinated”, thanks for the compliment.
Now scurry back to your collective and report how mean I’ve been to you.
Let’s make it simple. Hold the parents accountable for their childrens education. What you will see is an overall improvement in the education of our children.
What an interesting article! Oh, how I hope you are right.
A relative has a PhD from Caltech and taught there part time. When he retired from a well known company, he volunteered to teach AP physics at his local high school. Due to teacher union rules, he wasn’t allowed to do so.
That tells you everything about how screwed up our system is.
The reality is that there are many things wrong with our education system, not least of which is the mandates by state and federal governments. That said, any time schools want to try something new or different, the teachers unions are first in line to stop it.
I’ve been teaching for over 20 years now. I’ve taught in both private and public schools. I’ve seen amazing and awful in both.
We as teachers have created our own worst enemy by not having an effective method of ridding ourselves of weak teachers. That is a real problem that needs to be addressed. I wish I had the answer. We have also shot ourselves in the foot by agreeing to step and column pay scales. This prevents us from having a free market where good teachers can market themselves to the hightest bidder and where weak teachers would fall away.
Another problem schools face is the cookie-cutter dictates of No Child Left Behind. This moronic law has forced my elementary school to teach math and English language arts for the entire day. No social studies, no art, no science, no p.e. Of a school of about 600 we have two subgroups who don’t perform as well as they are expected to. They have improved every year, just not to the level of NCLB. This is due to about 30 of the 600 students.
Finally, at every level I have taught from gang-bangers and other various thugs and chronic truants to middle class kids in California’s central valley to the very wealthy in L.A., the main reason for a child’s success is parent support and expectation. Then comes the teacher.
Mr. Forster:
“The first question we should be asking is this: why on earth would Obama endorse something like this?”
First answer: Because he’s sensitive to the perception that his administration is the unions’ “bitch”. Unions generally are polling lower in public approval, and the Aleeged Hawaiian sends HIS two precious pumpkins to the Quaker-run Sidwell Friends School, rather than the warm and caring embrace of the DC Public Schools racket.
So it’s not like any ringing endorsement he might give in defense of this school’s teacher workforce wouldn’t come around to bite him in the behind, and despite what you assert, even a lukewarm boilerplate “chin music” kind of statement could be damaging to our beloved Teleprompter…he’s a fragile One, y’know.
And we essentially agree on the answer to your second answer.
Basically, unions are a richly-deserved “safe” political target now.
“A critical mass of the “social justice” folks are realizing that the unions have been taking them to the cleaners for a generation.”
Well, I wouldn’t read TOO much into that observation. People who wander in circles with “social justice” on their minds have an awesome innate capacity to doublethink. After they imbibe and regurgitate a few slogans, they’ll slip right back into their functional comatose state…or else wipe their minds completely clean of any vestigial factual memories of labor mis-, mal-, and non-feasance.
I wouldn’t hold my breath awaiting for unions to clean up their acts and offer across-the-board quality performance for the across-the-board quality pay and benefits they demand.
Not without wholesale criminal investigations, convictions and imprisonments of senior labor officials and their harem of stooges in the leadership.
“Once their allies on the left get wise to their game and abandon them — seeing them, at best, as competitors in the race to gobble up a bigger share of government spending — where will they turn?”
Brazil…or some other moderately civilized nation without an extradition treaty with the United States.
Wave “bye-bye” to the West Pig Knuckle Amalgamated Brotherhood of Teachers Pension Fund as it departs in the middle of the night for sunnier climes!
“But in the long term, I’m as optimistic as I ever have been about the prospects for real reform — especially for vouchers, the only reform that will make any of the other reforms sustainable.”
No…you’re discounting “Right to Work” legislation gone national, and/or a ban on Collective Bargaining for Civil Service Employees. These would also have far-reaching effects.
“The dam is cracking. We are going to win.”
No we’re not. We’re going to continue the fight. These things are never “won”, and I’m not sure that they SHOULD ever be.
The Public School system was a solution to a set of circumstances, the unions inside the schools were solutions to another set of circumstances. Who’s to say that these circumstances won’t arise again?
We can’t solve all problems for all time, and it’s foolish to try. We CAN, (perhaps), address what we can in our own time and with the tools available to us.
One thing that would help? Start supporting in the primaries Democrats who care more about schooling children than they do about the teachers’ unions. Californians could start by making Mickey Kaus’s campaign more than a Quixotic primary run.
No one is addressing one of the foremost problems: Education education… that is, the program of the “Education” colleges in universities. Check into this. Do you think that, say, a mathematician is better at teaching math than the PE guy? Well, if so you are woefully antiquated. The teachers do not learn any particular field, rather they are taught to teach. They are taught didactics and, believe it or else, the “history of learning” though where Plato or Arnold comes into play is mysterious. No, the education programs are instead indoctrination centers that make the politically correct regime in grammar schools look like Hillsdale. But once in the classroom only these anti-educated specimens advance. The “expert” in education is considered to far surpass, say, the biologist in teaching biology. The Lefties do have us by the nards in controlling our childrens’ day, but they also have us by the collar as they control and define credentialing in this field. The very concept of “teaching” divorced from WHAT is being taught must be destroyed and destroyed utterly.
Dang, James @11! That was the most awesome bit of satire on crazed, Leftie edu-think I’ve ever read. Hilarious stuff!
“Teachers are over-worked and under-paid” and should get a “well deserved” extra month off? LMAO!
“Six month tenure” called for by Medea Benjamin (sweet touch!)? And this will “entice more productivity”? Dude, that is satire at a celestial plane. Sheer genius.
You did mean it as satire, didn’t you? James?
We need teachers unions because of the lack of pay and respect we get from school administrators. Plus, its important that we are paid a fair wage because our job is vital, we have to raise, babysit and educate other people.s kids. Most parents dont care about them and society would rather not deal with them. So our Unions are needed for the forseeable future and no democrat or republican politician would be wise to mess with us. Like other “real public servants” we deserve our meeger pay and benefits for the incredible work we do for our country. Next time you think, thank a teacher.
To Eowyn, #23:
I know the story of the senior class in Pennsy. The reason the entire senior class almost failed is because there simply wasn’t enough money to go around. The educators in that school-system were basically working for free. The Feds have enough money to wage war on Pashtun tribesmen for 8+ years, but cannot give educators life-long free medical care, life-long free government vehicles, and yearly cost-of-living retirement increases? I’m sorry, but the only way to resolve the crumbling mess we call schools is to start investing in educators. If you believe in anything less, then you might as well believe that you’ll be dueling is out with the King of the Nazgul sometime soon.
Double Standard needs to keep up: now that there’s some non government digging going on there are several indications that Toyota is the victim of a scam, seized upon by Government Motors to destroy its’ competition.
One problem is that education, as an industry, has distanced itself both from teaching and from learning.
I recently attended a Baldrige National Quality Conference where Baldrige National Quality Award winners spoke of their achievements. The school administrator of a district that had gone from abysmal results to outperforming all of its peers and winning national recognition had several insights.
One of the memorable things about her talk was her philosophy about schools: “This isn’t about the tall people in the building.” Another key component of her success — parental involvement and accountability for the performance of their students — was encapsulated in her practice of taking attendance at first period: she counted the “tardy cars”. This made the parents partners in the children’s success. The kids were no longer markers to be tallied to maximize state and federal aid — they were the center and the purpose of the school.
Schools have evolved, in all too many cases, into pre-correctional holding pens. At best, some have become places for the distribution of free food. This wasn’t what was intended when the concept of free public education was woven into the fabric of our society. The federal usurpation of what should be a local and State function invited the concomitant monopoly of the NEA and the AFT. The “Department of Education” has turned public education into a game where the children are at best a secondary consideration, and at worst get in the way of the struggle for power and funding.
We are turning out a bunch of indoctrinated, but not educated, kids, who have no marketable skills, whose critical thinking capabilities are just about equal to analyzing bumper stickers, and who feel that they are entitled to a living just for showing up.
“best and brightest”- you can’t be serious? Education majors are traditionally the intellectual slugs in any university. But in their defense, they fill in grids really well.
25. AreYouKiddingMe:
That is the most uneducated statement ever. Teachers are not ‘drawn’ from the lower third of college students. People who go into teaching ‘want’ to go into teaching. You think they rank all the crappy students in college and track them teaching, are you kidding me?
From NAMEAverage GRE Scores by Intended Graduate Major, 7/1/01-6/30/04, here is how Education and Social Work majors compared to other majors. With the exception of Secondary Education, which ranks around the middle, Social Work and the other Education majors are definitely from the bottom third.
One does not have to be a genius to be a teacher. Moreover, superior intelligence does not necessarily mean one will become a superior teacher. Nonetheless, it would appear that with the exception of secondary, education majors are from the lower tier.
RANK VERBAL GRE
21 Education – Secondary 486
32 Education – Curr & Instr 462
43 Education – other 437
40 Education: Elementary 443
44 Home Economics 435
45 Education – Special 432
46 Education – Counseling 428
47 Social Work 428
48 Education – Administration 427
49 Education – Early Childhood 418
Rank QUANTITATIVE GRE
25 Education – Secondary 577
34 Education – Curr & Instr 548
41 Education – other 531
43 Education – Elementary 527
44 Education – Administration 523
46 Education – Special 502
47 Education – Counseling 500
48 Home Economics 498
50 Social Work 468
When I was a Student, homework consisted of milking Cows, gathering firewood and helping run a Farm.In spite of this when I left school after the ninth grade to take my place in the adult workforce, I had knowledge of Math and Science to continue my education at the local library.
Todays poor Kids entering the Workforce from High school have no idea how to teach themselves anything.
At age 73 I am still employed because no one has stepped up to replace me.
The Central Falls RI superintendent, Fran Gallo, is the right person in the right place. A daughter of a man who dropped out of middle school to help support his 15 siblings, she learned English before he did. She also struggled with dyslexia and was first in her family to graduate college, all with the support of her father. I suspect she sees him in the parents of her students, many of whom speak English as a second language, but attend parent teacher conferences at 90+%. With her poersonal background, she doesn’t have much truck with the unions tricks and excuses about kids and their parents. She also has the backing of the State Commisioner of Education. She will not rub the teachers’ noses in it, but any ‘compromise’ will likely be her terms. Probably the worst 50% of the teachers will stay fired, the rest hired back along with new blood.
I think James (#11) was having a laugh, his post appears to need a /sarc tag.
I hear the RI district has already surrendered and will “negotiate” with our side. The author is way off the mark here. Obama will never abandon the teachers because we are the front line indoctrination weapon used to dumb down and create a government dependent society.
I am very well paid. More than twice what the average private sector job in my small community pays. I can’t be fired and have benefits for life. Did I mention I only work part of the year?
I teach math but could not tell you the difference between algebra and geometry. I was top of the class in education school, where I mastered critical pedagogy theory. I hold a PHD in social justice.
My point of view is shared by 80% of all teachers. We actively teach against the family and against the US government as it exists today. I don’t do much just follow the play book. I am always amazed that the parents just sit there and take it. Not so much these days since the parents for the most part went throught the same process. Go functionally lobatimzed.
The pisser is, all you ranters can’t do anything about it. By the way I don’t hold back anymore. I speak openly about these views. No one can touch us or any of the goverment employees. We are organized and we are your new masters. Now shut up and get back to work so you can pay my salary.
There you have it.
You were the jerk in the front of the class thinking you knew everything.
Answer: The teachers’ unions are now so intertwined with the Democrats that the Democrats don’t have to make them happy anymore.
Most older (and bitter) teacher union members cling to the union over ugly battles long over. The new generation of teachers see the union for what it is – an anachronism that holds good teachers back from getting compensated in a manner that is commensurate with their skills and achievements. Concurrently, they see it protecting lousy teachers who are kept on over them when cuts are made simply because they’ve been around longer.
Also – the far-Left positions and associations the NEA and AFT have engaged in over the years have alienated moderate and conservative teachers – an increasingly not-so-silent majority.
As it stands now, those of us who would be happy to join our local union can’t – UNLESS we sign on with (and pay) the state and national unions. No thank you!!!
My last straw was when my state union issued a statement condemning the war in Iraq. Buh – bye!
#11 “James”
I hope you had your tongue firmly in cheek with that diatribe. If not, then you are truly part of the problem.
I am opposed to labor unions as much as most but I do have some sympathy for teachers. In the past fifty or so years we (Canada and the US) have witnessed tremendous changes in our societies: no-fault divorce which creates more single parent households, easy access to illicit drugs which cause crime and psychological stress, and of course, increased immigration from third world countries. Too many kids in our school systems come from fractured families with high levels of stress. Many in the system have English as a second language. All of these issues have a bearing on the ability of kids to learn. So as I see it, parents and teachers are equally to blame. Government immigration policies also contribute to the mess.
It is too bad that we couldn’t fire some parents for their neglect of their children. Governments also must be held accountable for promoting immigration policies that burden the system.
Mr. Forster,
Interesting article but your assertion that “[Obama]’s not content to advance himself by playing it safe” seems certainly at odds with those aspects of his career of which I know. It doesn’t even mesh well with your second assertion that “[Obama] wants to ingratiate himself with the people who are taking [the teachers unions] down”.
Furthermore, I really don’t understand your point after Obama’s failure to preserve the Washington DC voucher plan (“The Obama administration closed the program to new students”).
I don’t mean to sound quibblesome, but in the Cold War we had one thing more than entrepreneurial spirit and a just cause. We had the Strategic Air Command USAF, Curtis LeMay, commanding, and that has made all the difference. It was not to no purpose that the Creator of the Universe vouchsafed to this nation, and no other, the biggest effing stick on the playground. Thank you.
8. Pro-Education — what a dolt.
People pay property taxes whether they have children or not and for the duration of their entire residency, not just the years they might have children in the school system. Also, some of us fools still trying to hang on to the family farm pay much more than the average household, not to mention all the commercial and business property which pay higher rates while contributing no burden whatsoever on the school system. It’s a racket that the NEA has over-milked. This article gives me hope that it will soon crumble.
AreYouKiddingMe, Actually, Tolbert is correct. Students in our education colleges score lower on the SAT/ACT and graduate exams than average. Such tests are not the only indicator of a good teacher but the facts are the facts.
Tort reform isn’t just for health care. The fact that teachers can not keep order in the classrooms for fear of being sued, shot, or shived means that all other reforms are doomed to failure. That, more probably than the money, is why top performers in college go into industry or commerce instead of teaching. It used to be different, thirty to fifty years go top students often became teachers because they genuinely wanted to share knowledge, today’s schools preclude that possibility to all but the truly masochistic.
The unions have to go, period. Having said that, the local school boards need to be concerned with more than the win/loss record of the football coaching staff.
The competitive athletics in the school systems are draining enormous amounts of resources for the sake of relatively few students. . . and the entertainment of parents. If kids want to play sports let them join private clubs, make the schools about education, as they were originally meant to be, and the results will be akin to making the federal government about the Constitution, as it was originally meant to be.
Back to the subject before closing, Obama isn’t afraid because his narcissism blinds him to reality, he genuinely believes that his magnificent presence alone is enough to carry the day politically. He should have studied more history, most folks agree that Trotsky was smarter than Stalin, but look where he ended up.
Tolbert #27, LOL, salutations from another front row jerk with a Chemistry degree.
11. james:
Dont ya hate it when people just don’t see satire? You weren’t kidding but just trolling? OK, but your still a funny guy.
Not an easy subject. I was an Ivy league grad who stood up at one of my union (NEA) meetings and said that we should spend more time and energy promoting excellence and high salaries, than protecting our weak sisters. I went on to become an administrator with pretty good results, but it was already an excellent school system, which I was generally maintaining and tweaking, rather than building. It’s difficult to generalize about who goes into teaching. Certainly high school draws upon a different pool than does elementary, and top schools tend to get top picks.
There are so many variables; mediocre communities tend to have mediocre public schools, because they do not insist upon, or know how to demand more. Teaching is very demanding, fairly essential, and provides a stable job (and retirement), which seems puny when one’s talented friends are raking in big bucks, but solid, when they are unemployed or have gone bust. James is delusional, but then so are the folks who want to essentially dismember the public schools.
Obama is in a place where he can strike some useful blows against entrenched incompetence, and in tough economic times, the public loses sympathy for union jobs.
Further economic collapse will permit/ force some useful sorting out of the value of jobs, BUT almost EVERYONE fears the tough love of letting AIG/Citibank fail etc. Therefore a large majority votes for going the safer route, and we muddle onward. Most rational human beings do not want to risk financial chaos, so all changes will be relatively small until we are FORCED to take action,and even then, we take the safest possible course. It’s a survival thing, not a philosophical thing.
I live in a small rural village. It is actually called a village, our school district encompasses two small villages, one about 800 people and the other about 1500, add another say 1000 in the between rural area outside of village limits that would be in the school district. I graduated in 1981 with the largest class that had ever graduated from the school district, all 163 of us. Until my daughter’s class graduated 24 years later with 174, it had remained the largest class to go through. As of this year the school superintendent made just over $100,000. This is ludicrous, we are not some large metropolitan area. Teachers make as good a wage as those of us still working. We are in an area of Michigan that has been hit very hard by the ongoing saga of GM losses. All those good jobs from Oldsmobile and Fischer Body are gone, as gone as the torn down factories that once housed both of those now gone companies. As the economy shrank however, the school district absolutely refused to deal with the new reality.
Pro Education believes that the money spent is well spent. Anyone who looks at the issues in public schools can’t say that. For over 2 years I have home schooled the youngest child. I wish deeply that I had home schooled all of the kids. I still pay my taxes as well as spend money every month to get the materials I need to educate my child, who by the way is doing much better than his peers with his education. The school district we are in spends just over $8000 a year per pupil, in a district that has about 1600 students from two rural areas. That number is K-12.
Then there is the whole teachers should be treated special because they have such a hard job. As a Registered Nurse I always want to call bullshit! I imagine the majority of people understand the difficulty teaching can be, that said I have a job that is difficult as well, and despite how many times you will find nurses who go up against physicians who want to do things that we know is inappropriate or up against residents who will kill you with their stupidity, it is the rare nurse who will call for special privileges for nurses like teaching unions call for and for which thousands of teachers agree. No one is so special that they can’t lose a job. When I went into nursing I knew that I wasn’t going into factory work in which one could shut down machines and go home. I have been forced into 16 hour mandatory shifts more than once, in fact I was forced into a 20 hour shift twice. Nurses work holidays and our families learn how to accommodate that, I have been kicked into a wall by a drunk, been swung at more than a few times, deal with drug seeking patients routinely, stopped counting how many times I’ve had blood, urine, poop or sputum on me. And I knew that this was all the norm of the job before I went to school to do it. Are we to believe that teachers didn’t realize what they were going to be getting into before they opted to be teachers?
What is missing from this story on what is happening in RI is that the school district wanted to be able to make some major reforms, and the union refused to play ball. So instead of some losing their jobs, everyone will lose. Ain’t unions grand? As a nurse in a union hospital, we are currently fighting with our union to even be able to VOTE on the proposal the hospital is offering. The union doesn’t want the vote because it will lose power, yet the majority of nurses are ready to go with this. At the last minute the union canceled our vote on Tuesday and has refused to set another vote date. These people have the ability to adversely affect my ability to earn a living and I’m supposed to like it?
I say break the unions, the faster the better. They still live in the 1930s and seem to have no idea the world has moved on and has left them behind. The sooner the rest of us realize it and finish breaking what is already mostly broken the better off the whole country will be.
“Next time you think, thank a teacher.”
Really, f*cktard?
No, next time you ‘think’, thank your brain that actually flourished DESPITE the public cesspool school system.
Lest you conveniently ‘forget’, some of our founding fathers were home-schooled or had limited ‘public education’.
Thank GOD for that!
37. james:
To Eowyn, #23:
I know the story of the senior class in Pennsy. The reason the entire senior class almost failed is because there simply wasn’t enough money to go around. The educators in that school-system were basically working for free.
——————————————-
You’re behaving trollishly, if you’re not a troll, and one ought not to feed the trolls. But I don’t want anyone thinking your argument has any credibility whatsoever.
No, you DON’T know the “story in Pennsy.” Sure, there wasn’t enough money to go around — to further fatten the wallets of the educators. What part of the tax base can’t handle it doesn’t make sense?
“Basically working for free”? You call an average salary of $47,000-plus “free?” In a region where other workers make $20K less?
Obviously, you’re a byproduct of modern education, and a perfect example of why reforms are so needed.
And by the way — Eowyn whacked the Nazgul king but good.
In the not to distant future, we’ll be able to do away with most of the teachers in this country and replace them with computer based education systems and administrators.
The unions will say machines lack the human touch and can’t socialize kids like a good liberal teacher can and parents will tell us that someone has to watch their kids so that they can go to work.
It has also been said that it takes three or more good teachers in a row to set an average student on the path to academic success but only two bad teachers back to back to ruin one for life. Considering all the bad teachers out there, it’s a crap shoot, isn’t it? Programs designed for individual student needs will take the “coin toss” factor out of public education.
I, for one, welcome our new overlords.
I think #11 was serious! He is a poster boy for the current public school system.A course in Logic should be mandatory in every high school.
No one should have a BA and an MA in Education. It makes sense to have a bachelor’s degree in the subject you intend to teach and an MA in Education, or vice versa, but two Education degrees are worth squat.
I’ve had the good fortune to know a lot of teachers in my life and discuss the teaching system so here our my thoughts.
1) Teachers aren’t the problem, bad teachers are the problem. Many teachers are intelligent and dedicated, but a few bad teachers can ruin the work of many.
2) To the teachers are in the bottom 1/3 of college classes concept: couldn’t that just show how hard the education classes are at many schools? I know where I went to university those seeking a teaching degree had a much higher credit requirement than anyone else.
3) We need to get rid of the concept of no child left behind (I’m not talking about the policy necessarily, but the concept). There are bad students (both intellectually and behaviorally) who have no business being in school. Any teacher can give you accounts of students who have come in, ruined class, and then any attempts to discipline them result in, at most, a suspension.
We need to steer more kids away from high school into technical academies (instead of pushing everyone toward college) and also have little tolerance for students with behavioral issues.
4) I don’t think teachers are over paid, at least not by a lot. I say this as someone who makes considerably less than a teacher but wouldn’t trade positions with them. Every ‘good’ teacher I’ve known puts in considerable amount of unpaid overtime and is often expected to perform impossible tasks.
5) Parents aren’t involved. We can talk about the school system as much as we want, but this factor means more than anything.
6) To those who believe our schools are grounds for indoctrination; you’re wrong. They aren’t effective enough to do that. Now some teachers certainly try in their own classes, but that doesn’t mean it is a system wide issue.
7) The curriculum system is likely broken. Classes on British literature are great, but probably not necessary or worthwhile for all students. I say likely because curriculum varies widely by area, as it should.
Not convinced by this at all. This town is a top destination for illegal aliens, primarily from Mexico. Seach “illegal immigrant Central Falls” for more on this.
This town’s Mexican peasants aren’t interested in learning English, and most place little value on education, so their spanish-speaking kids are completely unprepared for schooling. This is not the teachers fault, but it is the teachers fault for being to PC to point this out.
In Obama’s world, the Mexican pressure groups MALDEF and La Raza trump teacher’s unions, and the LA Times reports that he’s going to be sending his civil rights task force to LA to investigate whether teachers and school administrators are all fluent in Spanish and teaching the children Mexican history, among other crucial civil rights issues. Should be fun to see that go down.
#11 Clearly your special needs teacher is probably having a nervous breakdown.More administrators in education-are you insane?Educational administrators,as any competent teacher will tell you ,are a vile bureacratic cancer.Self serving,generating useless rules and paperwork to justify their loathsome existence,they constitute a class of virulent parasites on our schools.Together with the inane curriculums generated by that other class of parasites,Progressive educators, they have destroyed American Education.
“A critical mass of the “social justice” folks are realizing that the unions have been taking them to the cleaners for a generation.”
“The social justice folks are wise to this now.”
Sounds like a wish more than a fact.
Liberals and internal voter analysis:
1. Diss unions and risk losing their votes, 0% risk
2. Diss minorities and risk losing their votes, 0% risk
3. Diss Israel and risk losing Jewish votes, 0% risk
Sounds like they are sitting in a good spot. When you have so many votes locked up, historically speaking, you can pretty much say whatever you want without consequence.
The day liberal voting blocks actually switch sides will be the day America gets back on the right track. ALL politicians need to put America first or be sent to the shed. Wishful thinking on my part.
The teachers union, the public employees union, and the prison guards union combined forces when Schwartzenerger became governor in California and they kicked his butt because the public didn’t really know what the issues were and how much better California would be today if Arnold had gotten the measures passed that he wanted. Liberals run California and the unions run the liberals, we here on the west coast are doomed, our state has become a cesspool of corruption, that is the result of liberalism. Observe and learn you other 49 states because if it happened here it can happen there.
The problem with teacher’s unions is that they do not agitate for effective instructional methods,curricula,or disccipline.They acquiesce or condone every cretinistic idea from the Progressive(read idiotic)education establishment,from Whole Language(Illiteracy),Self Esteem(promoting mediocrity)and Costructivism(constructing ignmorance). They have allowed these PC loons to disastrously experiment on our children. As a result, they have lost their credibility,their integrity,and the respect of ther American people.
Mr. Foster’s poiece is way over the top regarding the unions’ role in our schools’ failure, but dead on as to the impotence that comes from unions having themself legally adopted by a political party.
I wrote about this here (http://mistermoleman.com/2009/09/09/nea-and-the-party-the-nclb-saga/) and here (http://mistermoleman.com/2009/07/10/nea-past-and-present/).
I did not vote for Obama. But he deserves praise for his decision to face down the teacher’s Unions and barnacle administrators. Nothing in the past 30 years has promised more for kids. Teacher’s Unions are encrusted on the shcools to the detriment of the kids.
I know he didn’t support vouchers in D.C. but nationwide, his demand that school districts shed old structures seems to have benefitted many states. It might even budge California’s unionized teachers.
As Bill Perron (69) notes above, California’s unions ahve all but paralyzed the state’s schools and government. I hope the kids get better schools as a result of what Obama’s doing.
PS to No 71: No one has overemphasized teacher’s unions: if anything they need harsher scrutiny: see the New Yorker and LA Times pieces about the inability to fire teachers that are judged so bad the districts won’t let them teach–they pay them full salary not to teach instead. Hndreds of millions wasted on teachers no one can fire. Why? union rules. Teachers in LA canot be evaluated based ons tudent eprformance? Why such a bizarre rule? Union rules. Everyone knows it. They have ruined schools that used to be terrific places and ought to be the best schools in the nation. because the Unions have seen to it that schools exist for teachers–not students..
Homeschooling is gowing by leaps and bounds. And almost all of the various HS teaching styles are producing mature, intelligent, independent adults, not the sniveling, inane adolesecnts that are so full of themslves that ate proud they cant do algebra. Publicsd schools are doing fine; That is, they are doing exactly what they were desigend for by Dewey, Horace et al.
For a SOLID eucudtaion at home, that teahed you how to THINK: http://www.classicalliberalarts.com and inexpenisve. Program like these are at the forefornt of the educational revolution.
Let’s consider breaking up mega-districts. A school district should consist of a single high school and the elementary, middle, junior high schools that feed it. No more than that. The more remote the ‘administrators’ are from the parents, the less they are accountable to said parents for the (lack of) positive outcomes. ‘Administrators’ that teach nothing should be shown the boot. To me the only, and I mean *only* full time staff that don’t teach should be janitorial/maintenance, food service and library and I’d be thinking bonuses for members of these groups that did put in some class time. And I’d consider the holding of an Ed degree to be disqualifying unless said applicant actually had some useful skills. Hire on probation for a year and see what the parents think, not the students or the thrice-damned goonions.
Greg Forster: Being more cynical, I think the real reason that the “social justice” types are starting to rebel against the teachers’ unions is because the problems are starting to bite their kids. It was one thing when only poor black inner-city kids were stuck with lousy schools, but now the rot is so bad that it’s beginning to affect a lot of suburban districts as well. While many lefties are rich enough to send their kids to private schools, a lot of them aren’t, and they don’t want to see their kids suffer.
Also, I must take some umbrage at one of your comments. The Russians did not have more “guts” than we did in the Cold War. They may have had more audacity, or cleverness, or ruthlessness, but those are not the same things. Any society that has to build walls to keep its citizens imprisoned and throws people in jail–or worse–for simply speaking their minds is a fundamentally cowardly society.
To all who talk about the importance of parenting: No question that it is very important. However, in the inner cities, it has gotten to the point where it is very difficult even for those parents who do care to find a good education for their children; and even in the suburbs the rot has spread far enough that it is making parents’ lives increasingly difficult.
Not to mention, there is a certain chicken-or-egg argument here. Kids who don’t get good educations will be less likely to stress the importance of schooling with their own kids. I also agree with those who note that we need to make life a lot less comfortable for those who don’t get good educations, such as cutting welfare and so forth.
Comments on what others have said, in order:
#5 Golf Mage: Actually, sports unions are about the only ones I have any sympathy for anymore. Do you really think that if the players’ union is broken that the owners will drop ticket prices one cent? Ha, ha. When the owners have been screwed over by the players for a hundred years like they screwed over the players for a hundred years, maybe then I’ll have some sympathy. Not before.
#18 Spinoneone: Hey, at least if we got rid of the civil service rules, government employees would be accountable to *somebody*. Right now, they’re not accountable to anybody but themselves, which is the worst situation to have, and is a large part of the reason why we have messes like what public education is today.
#24 mythbuster: Thanks for pointing out that #8 was BS’ing–not to mention that a large increase in vouchers would produce, absent government interference, a corresponding increase in inexpensive private schools to meet the demand. You know, kind of like in DC.
#34 megapotamus: What you’re saying is absolutely true–but it’s also true that in college, you have the opposite problem: a lot of teachers who are well versed in their fields but absolutely awful at communicating their knowledge to their students–assuming they even desire to do so, which at far too many large research universities, they don’t. So you want to avoid extremes in either direction.
#47 Peter Galamaga: There are a lot of ironies like that around unions. My dad has worked in railroading a lot, and he notes that the union rules are still basically what they were in WWI (imposed by the government, by the way): you can only ask people to take a train like 160 miles in a day. In turn, however, many train operators have to work 12 hour shifts, then come right back again after 8 hours. You screw people over, you get screwed back. I think something similar is happening in the schools; the ridiculous privileges the teachers have won in some areas are contributing to the decline of their work environment in others.
#59 Eowyn: The scene where Eowyn takes out the Witch-king is one of the few places where the movie actually *improved* on the book. “I am no man!”
#64 Chris: While it is true that the schools aren’t cranking out fanatical Party cadres, it’s also true that they deprecate the right values a lot of the time, too. This cannot fail to have a bad effect over time.
Welcome to Texas? Minimal unionism, teachers get a degree in a real subject, and then get a certificate to teach. Which meant I had a teacher with a chemistry masters degree, and industry experience? And math teachers who didn’t just know math, they loved it? And could share their excitement. For that matter, the social studies teacher was a sincere communist, but at least I got the real version, not a watered down clueless idiot.
It’s literally sickening to read the New York Times puff piece on teachers- where the good teacher actually went and learned math- as if that were an exotic accomplishment. What is the rest of the country going through? It doesn’t have to hit itself in the head with a sack of hammers.
And, yeah, there is a crazy dropout rate. I’ll grant that. There was a crazy dropout rate around the turn of the century, too, when immigrants were crowding New York’s Lower East Side. And these were the people who built the entire physical plant of New York, and most of its industries. The current dropouts are building our roads, our buildings, and wiring our technical stuff. They won’t stay down forever, nor will they let their kids break their backs like they do. ITT has commercials pitched right at these people. ITT is a good degree, if you’re working class. The teachers are the same ones stocking up the community colleges. I think it might be more demanding, in some cases, than in public unis. I know I didn’t have to sweat over some english papers, the way my friend did at ITT. He’s a manager at EDS now, rather than a homeless, clueless dropout, like he was.
I’m not sure I believe the excuse about traumatized students, either. Until this century, an intact family wasn’t guaranteed in a more permanent way- from what I’ve read, childbirth was an extraordinary hazard. So kids could expect to lose their mother, fairly early, or kids could die, or dads could die at the plant, or on the farm, or keel over of a heart attack, or even cholera. I think kids were traumatized then, too, but there were strong railings holding them on track. Like, manners. I know manners have been stigmatized as exotic exclusion devices, but consider them as safety belts.where one can stay strapped in until a time of safety. That safety might be a few years, granted, but I doubt it’s fair to let a kid “let it all hang out” when “all” is so completely messed up. I don’t know that kids have the coping skills to face a divorce, for instance. Just a thought, not more.
I know I send my kids to a public school. Half the teachers there are familiar with homeschoolers, and support them. Every teacher, so far, has been a sunday school teacher, as well, so obviously, they feel a calling. I know they are gifted at what they do. Every kid makes it out of their first grade reading. Every last kid, even the ones who don’t speak english when they come in, can read at the end of the year. Amazing schools are possible in poor areas.
ari
Conservatives might be overstating their case in their rush to blame *teachers* for disappointing results. (They might reply “no we blame teachers *unions* which is true but I daresay rank and file teachers get caught in the blast – look at the rhetoric!) I say that as a conservative and wrote about this at http://livethetrinity.net/2010/03/charter-schools-and-teacher-bashing-conservatives-take-heed/.
Appreciate Chris’ points above. The situation is more complex than the above article seems to suggest.
What a load of generalities!
From your posts it’s clear that many of you have no idea what goes on in a school. Since I work in a school (not as a teacher) and since my wife works in a different school (as a secretary), perhaps I can provide some insight on what goes on in here.
There’s the 4th grader at my wife’s school who has to have the police come get her out of bed. Evidently she was sexually abused a year or so ago by her mom’s boyfriend-of-the-moment and now she doesn’t want to go to school. Mom “can’t do anything with her” to make her get up so when she won’t get out of bed mom calls the school and makes it their problem to get her to school (Side Note: Why is it the schools job to get her to school? It’s not it’s the parent’s responsibility but the Principal at the school actually cares about the child and wants her in school where she can get structure and support, something she’s not getting at home). So the mom calls the school and talks to my wife who then calls the school “resource officer” to drive out and get the child (literally kicking and screaming).
There’s the kindergartner at my wife’s school who is 4 years old. Minimum age for kindergarten is suppose to be 5. What happened? The child was in kindergarten in a private school in Chicago. They moved to our area and enrolled their child in kindergarten at the public school. Since the child had been in kindergarten already it was school board policy that he be allowed to continue in kindergarten even though he is too young. The child is too young to grasp the concepts in kindergarten and acts out. Now the teacher has to spend the time she should be teaching trying to control this 4 year old.
One of the teachers in the High School where I work tells of a student that like a lot of students, tries to get out of class. This student raises his hand near the end of class every day and asks to go to the bathroom. After a few days of this the teacher sees that this is a habit and since there is only about five minutes left in class, tells the young man he can hold it until the bell rings. The student goes home and tells his dad that the teacher wouldn’t let him out of class. Dad tells the kid to pee in the corner and that next time the teacher will let him out of class. This kids dad was on the school board at the time.
Mom doesn’t like the “brainwashing” her 2nd grade son is getting in school so she pulls him out to “home school” him. Two years later she puts him back in public school (because she’s sick of having him at home). Now he’s in fourth grade and reading at a 2nd grade level because mom didn’t teach him to read while he was home schooled, she just sat him in front of the TV while she watched her soaps in the other room. Guess who now has to teach that kid to read…the teacher. How good do you think that kids test scores are going to be? Did the school leave him behind? No, mom did.
This is the kind of crap that teachers put up with EVERY DAY. Starting salary at the school where I work is about $28,000 and the school pays the insurance for the employee. When things are going well you can expect about an $800 raise per year. When things aren’t going well you don’t get any raise. When you have a year like this one, they let three teachers go, make the employees start paying a portion of their own insurance and give everyone a 1.62% pay cut. $21,000 was cut out of the technology budget (there go all those fancy computers that are going to replace teachers), $10,000 cut out of the elementary supply budget (paper, pencils, markers, all those thing teacher use to teach), $8,700 cut out of the Middle School supply budget, $8,820 cut out of the High School supply budget. The art budget is so small that the art teacher is asking for donations. Does this sound like a good learning environment?
With all of these cuts how do you expect to draw the “best and brightest” to teaching. How do you expect us to compete with other countries in education? How are we suppose to “Leave no child behind” when teachers don’t have the basic necessities needed to do their job? Explain that to me Mr. and Mrs. “I shouldn’t have to pay property taxes to schools because I don’t have any kids in the school”.
I had a teacher in High School that made more money being a waitress at Applebee’s in the evenings and the summer than she did working full time as an English teacher. One teacher at the school where I work made more money growing tomatoes and selling them at the farmers market than he did being a teacher. In fact, almost every teacher I know who doesn’t have a spouse with a really good paying job has some sort of side business in order to make enough money that they can “afford” to teach.
In our state, teachers don’t pay into Social Security. Their retirement is all they have. What happens when those retirement benefits get cut? Is that fair? Is that an environment you want to work in?
Most teachers I know are working toward a Masters Degree. Why? Well, the honest answer is that you make more money with a masters than with a bachelors degree. We all like to make more money don’t we? With a Masters Degree a teacher knows more about their subject and can teach it better. That’s the theory anyway. (I’m sure on of you will argue that more education doesn’t make you a better teacher. Have at it. I dare you to go try to teach a room full of students something when some or all of them don’t want to be there).
To the people that say that teachers have some of the lowest grades and scores in college…you’re right…and you’re wrong. Some teachers teach because they think it is a secure and easy job (those would be your “low grade” teachers). Others teach because they get great satisfaction from teaching. They want to help kids. They want to do something meaningful with their life and not necessarily make as much money as they could by going into another field.
How many people in this country would know how to read and write if it wasn’t for a teacher? How many would know math, social studies, history? “Well their parents could teach them” some would say. Oh yea…is this the same parent who can’t get her daughter out of bed, or are you speaking of the dad that told his son to pee in the corner? Parents should teach their kids about the world, and some do. But far to many leave the job of parenting to the schools and to the teachers. Parenting is not a teachers job, teaching is a teachers job, but with far too many parents doing a poor job of parenting, the teacher finds themselves filling both rolls.
I’ve gone on long enough. Hopefully one of you who thing teachers are rich and have it easy learned that you aren’t as smart as you think you are. Most of you proabably missed the point completely.
Not all teachers are not good teachers…but many are.
Not all parents are good parents…but many are.
Teachers unions don’t always get it right…but they don’t always do wrong.
Don’t lump everyone together because they’re in the same boat. Some are paddling, some are bailing, and some are just sitting on their ass.
Stop pointing the damn finger at everyone else while acting like you are in no way shape of form part of the problem. We’re all part of the damn problem…and that’s why we should find a solution.
81. The solution is stop protecting bad teachers, and then the population will embrace you. You can’t expect people to be taxed out of their homes to pay for bad teachers.
On the inside The American Federation of Teachers show average teacher pay at $47,602 a year. I am sure that some pay is worse and some pay is better. I also imagine that, just like nurses, those who go into teaching ARE WELL AWARE OF WHAT THEY ARE GETTING INTO! I’m sick to death of sob stories of how hard teaching is. Does anyone wonder about the KIDS in the classroom who are also putting up with the same BS the teacher is? If the classroom is that difficult for adults to tolerate what about the kids that are forced to endure the same situation? Do they matter? Quit coddling the problem children as well as their parents and just maybe things will change.
In an earlier post I identified myself as a nurse, I too have had people pee in the corner, I’ve also had people pee on me, and frankly that’s fairly mild. But I think it should be stressed that I knew when I went into nursing that I would be dealing with all sorts of bodily fluids, that working weekends and holidays is a part of the job, as well as dealing with adults that are as much buttheads as the parents and kids you have described above, not to mention the buttheads physicians we get to deal with at times, and so on. I can tell stories after 20 years of nursing that would curl your hair or at the other end of things, sicken your stomach. For most nurses top of the wage scale is about $55,000 a year. In general you have to work 15 years to get there. Tell me how different that is from teachers, fireman or policemen.
But whose whining all the time? Who uses your kids as a whip? And I guarantee that if nurses had as bad an outcome as many teachers do they would get fired, but just try to fire a teacher. They get to be so special that they don’t have to worry about being good or not. No one should be that special. Not even the hallowed teacher who obviously can do what no one else can do.
Give me an effing break.
I am presently a teacher in the public school system in a low state. I teach my students how to write. We have just completed a part of our state testing on writing. I am proud of my student achievement, but, even though I know how far they have come this test will not measure what they have truly accomplished. I do not teach to a test. I do know that the future is in this generation coming up right now. These are the students who will be paying for my retirement, If I can ever retire, and I’m frightened. I put hope in my students telling them they can rise above what they are now or have been in the past. We need to get rid of the Department of Education and give control of schools back to the states and local governments. Morals are lacking in our society and these morals need to be put back in place. The family is the backbone of a strong nation. Our welfare system promotes the breakup of the family and is creating a ‘handout for me’ only society. This has been fully orchestrated by previous and present government administrations. No fix will be easy, but drastic changes need to be taken to re-build families and our education system. We compare our whole population against the cream-of-the-crop populations of the world. If you really want to compare our children then use the scores of the brightest group verses the whole group. I think you will see the USA is still on top. I do think bad teachers should not be teaching. I hope I’m not a bad teacher. I will never know my student’s scores which stinks. I am a single person, and I have two jobs. Thank you for reading.
By the way MY GRE score was around 940, I guess I fall into that lower third of the low rung intellect.. stated by a previous commentator. My degree was …EDUCATION.
The unions will say machines lack the human touch and can’t socialize kids like a good liberal teacher can and parents will tell us that someone has to watch their kids so that they can go to work.
Perhaps we need to think all students do not require a college degree to make it in this country. We have a need for technical workers in many fields that pay good money and will pay even more in the future. Plumbers, electricians, engine mechanics, and many others are under employed now. We should utilize our trade schools and get those not suited to a full day of academics into an area of education that will encourage them to stay in school and start earning money at an earlier age. England has an excellent OJT program that does not require students to stay in school beyond 16. There are better ways if we will explore them and look at the best interest of the student and not the teachers.