National Teacher's Strike on the table when Districts starts to end tenure

[Jackson]

Districts around the country are starting to defy Teacher's Unions and ending Tenure agreements. Then Districts can fire any teacher at will.

Sounds good. They can get rid of the lazy bad teachers that are costing the system too much.

But, in times of dire budget crisis, what stops a district from firing good teachers based on the fact that they can hire 3 new teachers for the price of a good experienced teacher? I guarantee that would happen. The dollar is the "Supreme Decider."

 

[Oddball]

Sweet...Use the strikes as a basis to break up the NEA/AFT monopolies.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Unions are not about cash. Unions are about job security.

Even the substitutes will be on the picket line with this one.

No way any union will ever negotiate on this, and the district that insists will have a strike for the whole of the school year.

 

[Oddball]

Not about cash?

What do you think that tenure and cushy pension benefits are all about?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Unions are not about cash. Unions are about job security.

Even the substitutes will be on the picket line with this one.

No way any union will ever negotiate on this, and the district that insists will have a strike for the whole of the school year.

Baruch, I agree with you about security being #1, but state budgets are in critical shape today...and who knows how badly they will require being brought into line.

And, the history of tenure corresponds to that of the progressive movement in America...

1. In the 19th century, university professors largely served at the pleasure of the board of trustees of the university. Sometimes, major donors could successfully remove professors or prohibit the hiring of certain individuals;… In one debate of the Cornell Board of Trustees, in the 1870s, a businessman trustee argued against the prevailing system of de facto tenure, but lost the argument. Tenure - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. The modern institution of academic tenure was hastened by progressive academia’s solidarity with E.A.Ross, progressive sociologist and social engineer and eugenicist. His thesis was that immigration would lead to “race suicide.”

3. He studied at Johns Hopkins under Woodrow Wilson and Richard Ely, and was influenced, as were most progressives, by German national socialists. He shared with Wilson and Ely the belief that social progress had to realize innate differences between races: Africans and South Americans were close to being savages, and Asians might be more advanced but were degenerating.

a. He served as a tutor to Teddy Roosevelt on immigration, and Roosevelt wrote the introduction to Ross’s “Sin and Society.”

4. Ross believed that America was headed for destruction due to immigration, intermarriage, and the refusal of the state to impose eugenic reforms.

a. He wrote: “Observe immigrants…in their gatherings, washed and combed, and in their Sunday best…[They] are hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality…[C]learly they belong in skins, in wattled huts at the close of the Great Ice Age. These ox-like men are descendants of those who always stayed behind.” David M. Kennedy, “Can We Still Afford To Be A Nation Of Immigrants?” Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1996, p.52-68

5. Ross got a position at Stanford, but Stanford’s conservative grande dame and benefactor, Jane Lathrop Stanford disliked his loud and crude denunciation of Chinese ‘coolies,’ as this position was at odds with the university's founding family, the Stanfords, who had made their fortune in Western rail construction - a major employer of Chinese laborers. Ibid.

a. Numerous professors at Stanford resigned after protests of his dismissal, sparking "a national debate.”

b. Progressive organizations led by Richard Ely’s American Economic Association, rallied to his cause.

c. The NYTimes and other newspapers editorialized on his behalf.

d. But, Ross moved on to the University of Nebraska, where he worked with Roscoe Pound, on ‘sociological jurisprudence,’ and modern liberalism’s “living Constitution.”

6. In 1915, this was followed by the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) declaration of principles—the traditional justification for academic freedom and tenure. In 1940, the AAUP recommended that the academic tenure probationary period be seven years -- still the current norm.

Based on conservative resurgance, and the alignment of teachers' unions with the progressives, I wouldn't bet against a redefiniton of tenure.

 

[IanC]

a year long strike or lock out might be worth the shake up. increased private schools, alternate internet learning, home schooling, and a host of unknown changes might be just what the doctor ordered.

 

[Jackson]

Not about cash?

What do you think that tenure and cushy pension benefits are all about?

Friend, you have to remember there are some excellent teachers out there with a great deal of experience that the systems need. (I was one of them before I became a teacher Consultant,lol).

MY salary was based upon the years of graduate work at my own expense, just short of a PHD, and my love of working with children. That love encompasses a great deal of work at home and during the summers writing books and private stories with the children's name in them for homework. I was a specialist and would have been missed.

At the same time I commanded a greater salary and three new teachers with no experience could have been hired based on my salary.

I do not like Unions, although I was a rep. and saw the misuse of their power and saw their demons. I am against Teacher's Unions.

But our systems need good teachers and new teachers need the experience before they can command a classroom and gather more insight in teaching strategies. I evaluated and mentored new teachers. Just my thought.

Our pensions and benefits are not cushy. Not like other unions, btw.

 

[PoliticalChic]

a year long strike or lock out might be worth the shake up. increased private schools, alternate internet learning, home schooling, and a host of unknown changes might be just what the doctor ordered.

If you are suggesting that removing tenure will turn the American system around, I think you will be disappointed.

Teachers are but a small part of the problem.

To my mind, vouchers with the funds attached to the child...a system which will find more and varied schools, but with basically the same teachers...will produce far more success.

 

[Oddball]

Not about cash?

What do you think that tenure and cushy pension benefits are all about?

Friend, you have to remember there are some excellent teachers out there with a great deal of experience that the systems need. (I was one of them before I became a teacher Consultant,lol).

MY salary was based upon the years of graduate work at my own expense, just short of a PHD, and my love of working with children. That love encompasses a great deal of work at home and during the summers writing books and private stories with the children's name in them for homework. I was a specialist and would have been missed.

At the same time I commanded a greater salary and three new teachers with no experience could have been hired based on my salary.

I do not like Unions, although I was a rep. and saw the misuse of their power and saw their demons. I am against Teacher's Unions.

But our systems need good teachers and new teachers need the experience before they can command a classroom and gather more insight in teaching strategies. I evaluated and mentored new teachers. Just my thought.

Our pensions and benefits are not cushy. Not like other unions, btw.

Oh, I'm not saying that there aren't great teachers out there...Or even that most of them aren't very, very good at what they do....I'll be the first to admit that most teachers are probably better than their pay scales.

That said, there is more to the NEA/AFT teacher monopolies than meets the eye, as your salient comment on useless toady union reps demonstrates....If it's anyone who has the cushy benefits it's the union reps and the scads of do-nothing administrators, who wouldn't know the business end of a syllabus if it bit them....Yet another prime example of institutionalized professional welfare, which sucks money out of the productive and useful pursuits of teaching, to feather the nests of the unproductive moocher.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Too bad we don't have a politician with the balls to pull a Reagan on the teachers' union.

Get to work or you're fucking fired.

 

[IanC]

a year long strike or lock out might be worth the shake up. increased private schools, alternate internet learning, home schooling, and a host of unknown changes might be just what the doctor ordered.

If you are suggesting that removing tenure will turn the American system around, I think you will be disappointed.

Teachers are but a small part of the problem.

To my mind, vouchers with the funds attached to the child...a system which will find more and varied schools, but with basically the same teachers...will produce far more success.

actually I agree with you that vouchers and charter-like schools could do a lot to transform education. changing the focus of education in the direction what parent want would be a good step. hiring and keeping teachers that are in step with the school's character are an important component. my children have been in both private and public schools and I am unsure if their actual learning went up in private school but the attitude was certainly better because they knew what was expected and were more involved.

 

[Skull Pilot]

We need to scrap the entire education system and start again. The whole process has been corrupted.

Read the book for free here:
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

[youtube]DDyDtYy2I0M[/youtube]

 

[PoliticalChic]

a year long strike or lock out might be worth the shake up. increased private schools, alternate internet learning, home schooling, and a host of unknown changes might be just what the doctor ordered.

If you are suggesting that removing tenure will turn the American system around, I think you will be disappointed.

Teachers are but a small part of the problem.

To my mind, vouchers with the funds attached to the child...a system which will find more and varied schools, but with basically the same teachers...will produce far more success.

actually I agree with you that vouchers and charter-like schools could do a lot to transform education. changing the focus of education in the direction what parent want would be a good step. hiring and keeping teachers that are in step with the school's character are an important component. my children have been in both private and public schools and I am unsure if their actual learning went up in private school but the attitude was certainly better because they knew what was expected and were more involved.

Very true...but I think that "...they knew what was expected and were more involved..."
applies equally to the teachers.

I know many who are disgusted with limitations placed on them, and the watered down politically correct curriculum over which they have no control.

If you have the time, you might like the ideas behind E.D.Hirsch's content rich curriculum...

"The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy.

a. In the new millennium, Massachusetts students have surged upward on the biennial National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—“the nation’s report card,” as education scholars call it. On the 2005 NAEP tests, Massachusetts ranked first in the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math. It then repeated the feat in 2007. No state had ever scored first in both grades and both subjects in a single year—let alone for two consecutive test cycles. On another reliable test, the Trends in International Math and Science Studies, the state’s fourth-graders last year ranked second globally in science and third in math, while the eighth-graders tied for first in science and placed sixth in math. (States can volunteer, as Massachusetts did, to have their students compared with national averages.) The United States as a whole finished tenth."
E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy by Sol Stern, City Journal Autumn 2009

 

[IanC]

PC- exactly. private school teachers are often expected to be involved in much more than just teaching a subject. at the only private school I have intimate knowledge of the teachers are almost caricatures of the various types of teacher we imagine but they all consider themselves integral parts of how the school functions and the direction it is going in. everybody is excited and there are few outsiders (and those few dont stay long).

 

[Jackson]

Many states have their own "Progress Tests" that are watered down tests that make the state look good. Be sure your state or district uses National normed Standardized tests. If it has the name of the State on the test, it's a red flag.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Many states have their own "Progress Tests" that are watered down tests that make the state look good. Be sure your state or district uses National normed Standardized tests. If it has the name of the State on the test, it's a red flag.

Beyond the state tests, computer models are available that link student scores to their teachers.

In '09 the union blocked NYState from releasing this info to the public. Just as I don't believe in hiding student's scores to protect their self-esteem, the same applies to teachers.

"Ever wonder how effective your child’s teacher is? Officials in Albany would rather you didn’t know. At least that’s the lesson one has to take from their refusal to allow data systems to match students to teachers,…

Standardized tests produce rich sources of information that researchers can use to identify effective policies and practices. The data revolution, moreover, promises to move education policy away from politics. Numbers don’t have agendas or run for reelection. Accurately collected and properly analyzed, data can reveal truths that escape our sight.

One such truth is the effectiveness of individual teachers. Data analysis is far from perfect, and no one argues that it should be used in isolation to make employment decisions. But modern techniques can help us distinguish between teachers whose students excel and teachers whose students languish or fail. There’s just one problem with the data revolution: it doesn’t work without data.

New York has deliberately refused to take that step. The state already has a sophisticated system for tracking student progress, but it doesn’t allow this statewide data set to match students to their teachers. No technical or administrative factors prevent the state from doing so. Only political obstacles stand in the way."
Teachers’ Unions vs. Progress—Again by Marcus A. Winters, City Journal 14 December 2009

Since the 'Race to the Top,' these scores will now be made available.

 

[1uscitizen]

PC- exactly. private school teachers are often expected to be involved in much more than just teaching a subject. at the only private school I have intimate knowledge of the teachers are almost caricatures of the various types of teacher we imagine but they all consider themselves integral parts of how the school functions and the direction it is going in. everybody is excited and there are few outsiders (and those few dont stay long).

I've had experience in both private and public - my kids attended both and I've taught at both. The environment at private is in no way even remotely similar to public. The stress levels are like day and night, and until we drastically raise our expectations and requirements in public schools, comparing the two isn't at all realistic.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Sweet...Use the strikes as a basis to break up the NEA/AFT monopolies.

DAMN straight

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Unions are not about cash. Unions are about job security.

Even the substitutes will be on the picket line with this one.

No way any union will ever negotiate on this, and the district that insists will have a strike for the whole of the school year.

YEAH!!
That will teach em'...just try and improve education by getting rid of bad teachers...making teachers have to perform to keep their job!
What an outrage!!
What are these bad teachers supposed to do if they lose their jobs! They will never find another one with 3 mos. off...retire after 30 years...that is so unfair to expect them to perform well year after year!!

Go unions!!

 

[1uscitizen]

Unions are not about cash. Unions are about job security.

Even the substitutes will be on the picket line with this one.

No way any union will ever negotiate on this, and the district that insists will have a strike for the whole of the school year.

YEAH!!
That will teach em'...just try and improve education by getting rid of bad teachers...making teachers have to perform to keep their job!
What an outrage!!
What are these bad teachers supposed to do if they lose their jobs! They will never find another one with 3 mos. off...retire after 30 years...that is so unfair to expect them to perform well year after year!!

I don't disagree that unions protected bad teachers in the past. I don't think that's happing much these days, though.

I'm not sure why, but there seems to be an aggressive drive to dumb down public ed (no failure=dumbed down). There are still many teachers out there (many are veteran/high paid) who refuse. They are solid teachers who are very good at what they do. The only thing between them and the unemployment line is the union. The idea that "good" teachers will be retained if the unions are removed is wrong. Be careful what you wish for.