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You are wrong. But, in your heart, you knew that.
Nope. I am wholly correct.
The teachers unions are not totally at fault - however there is no chance of real improvement without abolishing the union system in our schools. And a whooooole lot of teachers will say the same.
So, your suggestion is we fix the schools by first turning teachers into second class citizens. An interesting approach. Somehow, I doubt a whoooooole lot of teachers will agree.
Teachers are not the problem and the union is not the problem. They are just an easy scapegoat.
Administrations of schools are top-heavy, teachers are not part of that. We basically have enough staff to barely get by.
Actual cases in point:
My average class size last year was 28 students (room had 30 desks). We were 3 books short.
I had special ed kids in 2 classes where no aide was available for the class.
All Health classes that had special ed kids had NO aides at all. Tests had to be given only when an aide could slip free for 15 minutes or so to read the tests to them and the tests had to be very brief.
Those are facts.
We also had a special ed kid that required an aide to be with him all day (IEP required it).
Nope. I am wholly correct.
The teachers unions are not totally at fault - however there is no chance of real improvement without abolishing the union system in our schools. And a whooooole lot of teachers will say the same.
So, your suggestion is we fix the schools by first turning teachers into second class citizens. An interesting approach. Somehow, I doubt a whoooooole lot of teachers will agree.
So everyone who isn't in a union is a second class citizen? That would include almost all the people who pay teachers' salaries. You just spit on all the people who pay the bills.
Teachers are not the problem and the union is not the problem. They are just an easy scapegoat.
Government control is the problem.
Administrations of schools are top-heavy, teachers are not part of that. We basically have enough staff to barely get by.
Actual cases in point:
My average class size last year was 28 students (room had 30 desks). We were 3 books short.
I had special ed kids in 2 classes where no aide was available for the class.
All Health classes that had special ed kids had NO aides at all. Tests had to be given only when an aide could slip free for 15 minutes or so to read the tests to them and the tests had to be very brief.
Those are facts.
We also had a special ed kid that required an aide to be with him all day (IEP required it).
When I went to school, no teacher had an aid. I never even heard of such a thing as a teacher's aid. Now you think it's a teach a class without help. That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers.
Class sizes were also closer to 40 students when I was in school.
Administrations of schools are top-heavy, teachers are not part of that. We basically have enough staff to barely get by.
Actual cases in point:
My average class size last year was 28 students (room had 30 desks). We were 3 books short.
I had special ed kids in 2 classes where no aide was available for the class.
All Health classes that had special ed kids had NO aides at all. Tests had to be given only when an aide could slip free for 15 minutes or so to read the tests to them and the tests had to be very brief.
Those are facts.
We also had a special ed kid that required an aide to be with him all day (IEP required it).
When I went to school, no teacher had an aid. I never even heard of such a thing as a teacher's aid. Now you think it's a teach a class without help. That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers.
Class sizes were also closer to 40 students when I was in school.
Administrations of schools are top-heavy, teachers are not part of that. We basically have enough staff to barely get by.
Actual cases in point:
My average class size last year was 28 students (room had 30 desks). We were 3 books short.
I had special ed kids in 2 classes where no aide was available for the class.
All Health classes that had special ed kids had NO aides at all. Tests had to be given only when an aide could slip free for 15 minutes or so to read the tests to them and the tests had to be very brief.
Those are facts.
We also had a special ed kid that required an aide to be with him all day (IEP required it).
When I went to school, no teacher had an aid. I never even heard of such a thing as a teacher's aid. Now you think it's a teach a class without help. That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers.
Class sizes were also closer to 40 students when I was in school.
Administrations of schools are top-heavy, teachers are not part of that. We basically have enough staff to barely get by.
Actual cases in point:
My average class size last year was 28 students (room had 30 desks). We were 3 books short.
I had special ed kids in 2 classes where no aide was available for the class.
All Health classes that had special ed kids had NO aides at all. Tests had to be given only when an aide could slip free for 15 minutes or so to read the tests to them and the tests had to be very brief.
Those are facts.
We also had a special ed kid that required an aide to be with him all day (IEP required it).
When I went to school, no teacher had an aid. I never even heard of such a thing as a teacher's aid. Now you think it's a teach a class without help. That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers.
Class sizes were also closer to 40 students when I was in school.
Administrations of schools are top-heavy, teachers are not part of that. We basically have enough staff to barely get by.
Actual cases in point:
My average class size last year was 28 students (room had 30 desks). We were 3 books short.
I had special ed kids in 2 classes where no aide was available for the class.
All Health classes that had special ed kids had NO aides at all. Tests had to be given only when an aide could slip free for 15 minutes or so to read the tests to them and the tests had to be very brief.
Those are facts.
We also had a special ed kid that required an aide to be with him all day (IEP required it).
When I went to school, no teacher had an aid. I never even heard of such a thing as a teacher's aid. Now you think it's a teach a class without help. That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers.
Class sizes were also closer to 40 students when I was in school.
the aids are required by law for special ed students you ignorant fuck
PS some of the aids are not worth having. Sometimes I spend more time trying to get the aids to do their job than teaching.
When I went to school, no teacher had an aid. I never even heard of such a thing as a teacher's aid. Now you think it's a teach a class without help. That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers.
Class sizes were also closer to 40 students when I was in school.
the aids are required by law for special ed students you ignorant fuck
PS some of the aids are not worth having. Sometimes I spend more time trying to get the aids to do their job than teaching.
How true. During my 20 minute lunch break while walking down to heat my instant coffee, I'll see SPED aides sitting there drooling along with half the kids while the rest are bouncing off the walls. I'm not trying to be mean but that's the way it is.
"That just goes to show how fa the work ethic has declined among teachers. "
Add to that parenting today is subpar. If kids are struggling the very first place that should be examined is the home. This is a no brainer. Home life messed up? No dad around? No discipline at home. No meals cooked? Causes a ruckus in class. Refuses to do any work. Absent alot. Who's to blame for this? The teacher of course. Thats the way americans see it. Kid had better be proficient on the state test. Its hard to create a good product with defective parts.
1. "In a high-profile presser on the economy last Friday, President Obamas central proposal was to hire more public employees. Then, in his weekly address, he argued that hiring more public school teachers would allow the U.S. to educate its way to prosperity. His Republican presidential rival, Governor Romney, has recommended precisely the opposite...
2. ...lets look at public school employment and student enrollment over time.
3. ...enrollment is only up 8.5% since 1970, whereas employment is up 96.2%. In other words, the public school workforce has grown 11 times faster than enrollment over the past 40 years.
4. If we went back to the staff-to-student ratio we had in 1970, wed be saving $210 billion annually.
5. ...improved student achievement boosts economic growth. So if the 2.9 million extra public school employees weve hired since 1970 have improved achievement substantially, we might well be coming out ahead economically. So lets look at those numbers
6. Despite hiring nearly 3 million more people and spending a resulting $210 billion more every year, achievement near the end of high school has stagnated in math and reading and actually declined slightly in science since 1970.
7. ...the total cost per pupil of each graduating class from 1970 to the present. ... on a per pupil basis, a K-12 education has gone from about $55,000 to about $150,000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms.
8. The implications of these charts are tragic: The public school monopoly is warehousing 3 million people in jobs that appear to have done nothing to improve student learning.
9. Our K-12 government school system simply does not know how to harness the skills of our education workforce, and...
10. ... is preventing these people from contributing to our economy while consuming massive quantities of tax dollars. "
President Obama is Totally Wrong on Education: America Needs to Fire, Not Hire, More Teachers
Obama, again.....
Thinking that is not just wrong....
...but is deleterious.
You are both right and wrong, because you are lumping everyone into this category of "public employee".
In 1970, if you went into your typical high school you would have found a principal and one or two vice-principals. They would have been the entire technical, non-teaching staff in the school. If a student needed counseling, that would have been done by a teacher - who would have been assigned specific hours for that purpose. If a social worker was needed, the local government would have been called in.
Walk into a high school today and you will find it packed with full time counselors, psychiatrists, etc. I live in a county with a sizable school system. It's current budget calls for 14,777 teachers and 4,200 "specialists". These include career counselors, pshyicatrists and psychologists, social workers, athletic trainers, etc. We aren't talking about janitors and HVAC technicians or even the office staff it takes to run a large organization. These are people dedicated to things which are only peripherally related to education. Most of those staff are actually higher paid than the average teacher.
It isn't teachers who are the problem. We could significantly cut schools budgets and increase the number of teachers if we simply went back to the idea that the purpose of a school is to educate.
There is nothing inherently evil about unions, but in this country unions have evolved to be a very destructive force, especially in Academe. They fight "management" to get as much as they can, and they see it as their obligation to protect the job security of every single union member - especially the worst ones.
One of the major sections in every teachers' contract is the complex and impenetrable procedure for disciplining a teacher who breaks a rule. And every Bargaining Unit has teachers who are incompetent, lazy, and who should have been jettisoned years ago. But ask your local HR representative how many teachers got "unsatisfactory" performance reviews last year (I have, several times), and when you cut through all the bullshit the answer is ZERO.
Instead of complaining about standardized tests being irrelevant, the NEA should be in the forefront of developing tests and other evaluation tools that permit the schools to assess students' progress and explore new initiatives that might achieve some success. But the only initiatives that the NEA is interested in are the ones that mean more money or benefits for teachers (e.g., smaller class sizes).
The school system mirrors our country in many ways. Just as we have an "income gap" that keeps getting bigger and bigger (which I don't see as a problem), we have an education gap, where the kids from the best (generally) suburban public schools can get a fabulous education - equivalent to a good private school, while inner city kids are lucky they can learn the basics because of the classroom behavior problems, teacher apathy, and disengaged parents.
And ironically, money is demonstrably not the answer. Some of the most expensive school districts in the country (e.g., our nation's capital) have the worst educational outcomes, and parochial schools spending well under $10k/kid are kicking ass, as they always have (with non-union teachers making $35k/yr).
But honestly, is there any other factor in this whole picture that has had a more destructive effect than the teachers' unions? I can't think of any.
There is nothing inherently evil about unions, but in this country unions have evolved to be a very destructive force, especially in Academe. They fight "management" to get as much as they can, and they see it as their obligation to protect the job security of every single union member - especially the worst ones.
One of the major sections in every teachers' contract is the complex and impenetrable procedure for disciplining a teacher who breaks a rule. And every Bargaining Unit has teachers who are incompetent, lazy, and who should have been jettisoned years ago. But ask your local HR representative how many teachers got "unsatisfactory" performance reviews last year (I have, several times), and when you cut through all the bullshit the answer is ZERO.
Instead of complaining about standardized tests being irrelevant, the NEA should be in the forefront of developing tests and other evaluation tools that permit the schools to assess students' progress and explore new initiatives that might achieve some success. But the only initiatives that the NEA is interested in are the ones that mean more money or benefits for teachers (e.g., smaller class sizes).
The school system mirrors our country in many ways. Just as we have an "income gap" that keeps getting bigger and bigger (which I don't see as a problem), we have an education gap, where the kids from the best (generally) suburban public schools can get a fabulous education - equivalent to a good private school, while inner city kids are lucky they can learn the basics because of the classroom behavior problems, teacher apathy, and disengaged parents.
And ironically, money is demonstrably not the answer. Some of the most expensive school districts in the country (e.g., our nation's capital) have the worst educational outcomes, and parochial schools spending well under $10k/kid are kicking ass, as they always have (with non-union teachers making $35k/yr).
But honestly, is there any other factor in this whole picture that has had a more destructive effect than the teachers' unions? I can't think of any.
There is nothing inherently evil about unions, but in this country unions have evolved to be a very destructive force, especially in Academe. They fight "management" to get as much as they can, and they see it as their obligation to protect the job security of every single union member - especially the worst ones.
One of the major sections in every teachers' contract is the complex and impenetrable procedure for disciplining a teacher who breaks a rule. And every Bargaining Unit has teachers who are incompetent, lazy, and who should have been jettisoned years ago. But ask your local HR representative how many teachers got "unsatisfactory" performance reviews last year (I have, several times), and when you cut through all the bullshit the answer is ZERO.
Instead of complaining about standardized tests being irrelevant, the NEA should be in the forefront of developing tests and other evaluation tools that permit the schools to assess students' progress and explore new initiatives that might achieve some success. But the only initiatives that the NEA is interested in are the ones that mean more money or benefits for teachers (e.g., smaller class sizes).
The school system mirrors our country in many ways. Just as we have an "income gap" that keeps getting bigger and bigger (which I don't see as a problem), we have an education gap, where the kids from the best (generally) suburban public schools can get a fabulous education - equivalent to a good private school, while inner city kids are lucky they can learn the basics because of the classroom behavior problems, teacher apathy, and disengaged parents.
And ironically, money is demonstrably not the answer. Some of the most expensive school districts in the country (e.g., our nation's capital) have the worst educational outcomes, and parochial schools spending well under $10k/kid are kicking ass, as they always have (with non-union teachers making $35k/yr).
But honestly, is there any other factor in this whole picture that has had a more destructive effect than the teachers' unions? I can't think of any.
There is nothing inherently evil about unions, but in this country unions have evolved to be a very destructive force, especially in Academe. They fight "management" to get as much as they can, and they see it as their obligation to protect the job security of every single union member - especially the worst ones.
One of the major sections in every teachers' contract is the complex and impenetrable procedure for disciplining a teacher who breaks a rule. And every Bargaining Unit has teachers who are incompetent, lazy, and who should have been jettisoned years ago. But ask your local HR representative how many teachers got "unsatisfactory" performance reviews last year (I have, several times), and when you cut through all the bullshit the answer is ZERO.
Instead of complaining about standardized tests being irrelevant, the NEA should be in the forefront of developing tests and other evaluation tools that permit the schools to assess students' progress and explore new initiatives that might achieve some success. But the only initiatives that the NEA is interested in are the ones that mean more money or benefits for teachers (e.g., smaller class sizes).
The school system mirrors our country in many ways. Just as we have an "income gap" that keeps getting bigger and bigger (which I don't see as a problem), we have an education gap, where the kids from the best (generally) suburban public schools can get a fabulous education - equivalent to a good private school, while inner city kids are lucky they can learn the basics because of the classroom behavior problems, teacher apathy, and disengaged parents.
And ironically, money is demonstrably not the answer. Some of the most expensive school districts in the country (e.g., our nation's capital) have the worst educational outcomes, and parochial schools spending well under $10k/kid are kicking ass, as they always have (with non-union teachers making $35k/yr).
But honestly, is there any other factor in this whole picture that has had a more destructive effect than the teachers' unions? I can't think of any.
"There is nothing inherently evil about unions,..."
Agree.
"is there any other factor in this whole picture that has had a more destructive effect than the teachers' unions?"
Absolutely.
The elected officials that rubber stamp each and every demand.
