IGX

This really bothers me. I love how people really think that teachers are in it for the money. After all it is such a high paying job. Yeah, I know they have summers off. They need it after trying to control 35-40 kids at a time for 6-8 hours a day.
The reason that some kids aren't learning is the parents a hell of a lot more than the teachers. Too many of them think that school is supposed to take care of everything.

Sure, there are some good teachers and some bad teachers, but the general hate against them is ridiculous.

Turdacious wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:i would agree with you HOWEVER...there are a lot of institutions that train teachers. like good schools for engineering, there are good teaching schools and you get what you pay for. I get a little weary of the canard that we need to hire smart math and science students to teach when many of them lack the basic skills to interact with students.

it is a lot harder to make a teacher than a mathematician.

I disagree there-- there are different skill sets required. Someone who does serious math for a living is using much more advanced math than that's is taught in K-12.

Advanced math has nothing to do with it. it is a basic reality, the skill of teaching is different yes and IME very hard to develop in a way that aptitude for a particular subject matter is not.

msr2112 wrote:This really bothers me. I love how people really think that teachers are in it for the money. After all it is such a high paying job. Yeah, I know they have summers off. They need it after trying to control 35-40 kids at a time for 6-8 hours a day.
The reason that some kids aren't learning is the parents a hell of a lot more than the teachers. Too many of them think that school is supposed to take care of everything.

Sure, there are some good teachers and some bad teachers, but the general hate against them is ridiculous.

You are right about a lot of parent's being shit heads.

Still the Unions put a teacher way before the kids and because this is building the minds of our children and not cars, those unions should be crushed and they can use the legal system for protection against unfair managment like most of us who never went half commie to get a job.

Tenure is bullshit, no one should be hard to fire if they dont do the job to the top 40%.

Rhee did alot of good for DC schools but it's all falling to shit since she got the axe. Unions and stupid, entitled DC niggers just fucked the children of DC.

Oh well my kids can use them as slaves.

Turdacious wrote:

Stillwater wrote:

baffled wrote:
I've got a couple of friends who are teachers that kind of hate the teachers unions. They're young, motivated and give a shit etc, and with the budget cuts, they don't know if they'll have a job next year while older teachers who checked out long ago are largely insulated.

I imagine their opinions will change once they've been teaching a while.

Maybe they should be upset with the folks that cut the budgets. I find it ironic the one's cutting the budgets are also the one's bitching about the state of schools/students.

Have any of you genius's actually taught a class? ever?

So it's O.K. to replace someone with college grad with no experience at half the pay? I hope none of your bosses get that idea. No one thinks it can happen to them until it does.

I find union bashing hilarious. Without unions you'd be shopping at the company store most likely on credit.

Public sector and private sector unions are different animals. There was a legitimate need for private sector unions-- there's never been such a need for public sector ones.

I disagree. I don't have much knowledge of teachers unions and janitorial/contracting unions for public workers, but cops and firefighters unions are essential. There is a real and tangible element of inherent danger in these jobs, and leaving safety issues to politicians simply would not work. I don't know what kind of vests and guns cops need, and I doubt your average city councilman does either. The fact that these kinds of things can be debated and mutually agreed upon with input from the guys risking their lives for public safety is a good thing.
Plus, in OH public safety services can't strike, so if there is a problem that can't be resolved by management & labor, it goes to a neutral third party arbitrator who settles the issue...case closed. This system works well for us.

The local Police Unions are neck and neck with the NEA for intellectual and actual corruption. I'd like to see both of them collapse. and for the record, I'm not anti-union at all. i think there are many that serve an incredibly valuable function but both of the two I mentioned have gone way beyond protecting the rights of workers on the job.

I haven't gotten positive vibrations from higher ups in the state and national level unions either, the IAFF being my only first hand experience with unions at all...however, local level officers and members have all shown a real dedication to both the communities they serve and the coworkers they are negotiating for.
There's a very thin line between cop and crook, but I still believe they should have a say in the factors that directly effect their safety.

msr2112 wrote:This really bothers me. I love how people really think that teachers are in it for the money.

Of course they're all in it out of the goodness of their hearts. That's why they vehemently fight against any suggestion that bad teachers be fired.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:I haven't gotten positive vibrations from higher ups in the state and national level unions either, the IAFF being my only first hand experience with unions at all...however, local level officers and members have all shown a real dedication to both the communities they serve and the coworkers they are negotiating for.
There's a very thin line between cop and crook, but I still believe they should have a say in the factors that directly effect their safety.

I take no issue with that...the problem is that public sector unions have sway with massive voting blocs and they know this and have extended their reach well beyond protecting their members from harm and insuring a cushy future for their members.

Without unions, who would decide what a "bad teacher" is? The principal or school board that may or may not have a personal vindetta against a teacher?
What makes a teacher bad? Test scores or student performance? Many of these kids have much bigger issues than school on their plates and simply don't give a fuck, and they disrupt kids that do.
I'm sure there are bad teachers or teachers that don't care, and I'm all for getting rid of them. I just don't know how to determine how a teacher performs.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:Without unions, who would decide what a "bad teacher" is? The principal or school board that may or may not have a personal vindetta against a teacher?
What makes a teacher bad? Test scores or student performance? Many of these kids have much bigger issues than school on their plates and simply don't give a fuck, and they disrupt kids that do.
I'm sure there are bad teachers or teachers that don't care, and I'm all for getting rid of them. I just don't know how to determine how a teacher performs.

The same way everyone else does, observe, assess, and make decisions with local control. That's not a business model, that's an organizational model that all hierarchical structures use.

As a parent I think the test scores are bunk, too many other hands in that soup for it to be useful but I do know that I can tell you when my kids have a shitty teacher within about a month of the school year. So far the lowest performing ones have been older teachers that are burnt out. My step father was a career teacher, a very good one and it was clear as a bell when he was done. Incidentally, he home schooled all my brothers and sisters because of his disgust with public ed. Sister has an MA in mathematics and is pursuing PHD in Education reform, one finishing defending his thesis in Poli-Sci, the third has a BS in computer science, lives in his pajamas and makes way too much money, the fourth is on a scholarship to USC in music. Only one of them took more than 2 years to complete high school.

None of them are particularly brilliant, all of them had a great teacher early on that inspired them with a hunger to learn. That is uncommon.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

Stillwater wrote:

baffled wrote:
I've got a couple of friends who are teachers that kind of hate the teachers unions. They're young, motivated and give a shit etc, and with the budget cuts, they don't know if they'll have a job next year while older teachers who checked out long ago are largely insulated.

I imagine their opinions will change once they've been teaching a while.

Maybe they should be upset with the folks that cut the budgets. I find it ironic the one's cutting the budgets are also the one's bitching about the state of schools/students.

Have any of you genius's actually taught a class? ever?

So it's O.K. to replace someone with college grad with no experience at half the pay? I hope none of your bosses get that idea. No one thinks it can happen to them until it does.

I find union bashing hilarious. Without unions you'd be shopping at the company store most likely on credit.

Public sector and private sector unions are different animals. There was a legitimate need for private sector unions-- there's never been such a need for public sector ones.

I disagree. I don't have much knowledge of teachers unions and janitorial/contracting unions for public workers, but cops and firefighters unions are essential. There is a real and tangible element of inherent danger in these jobs, and leaving safety issues to politicians simply would not work. I don't know what kind of vests and guns cops need, and I doubt your average city councilman does either. The fact that these kinds of things can be debated and mutually agreed upon with input from the guys risking their lives for public safety is a good thing.
Plus, in OH public safety services can't strike, so if there is a problem that can't be resolved by management & labor, it goes to a neutral third party arbitrator who settles the issue...case closed. This system works well for us.

"There is a real and tangible element of inherent danger in these jobs, and leaving safety issues to politicians simply would not work" - I could not agree more, this should be one of the top, if not the top, priority of unions in fields like those.

However, municipalities and school districts (and eventually the defense department) are running into the same wall GM, Ford & Chrysler ran into - Legacy Costs.

The auto companies couldn't compete based on their legacy costs, especially in the small car market, where they all but gave up, and when the 90's SUV crazed cash cow died, shit really hit the fan.

In the state I live in (MI) Legacy costs in schools are the fastest rising cost. If you gave schools a spending increase every year to match inflation, the actual amount spent on educating kids would continue to decrease as legacy costs would continue to eat a larger percentage of the budget. To increase actual per child spending, you would have to increase taxes, and continue to increase them each year to cover the rising legacy costs. An ever increasing tax increase will go over as well as structured periodic programming at crossfit.

Municipalities are facing the same thing with their police and fire departments, and the armed services are going to face it, and if something is not done, they will just start booting experienced personnel too early just so they won't have to pay full pensions.

It only hit the "big 3" first was because of the competition.

Don't blame the people in office now, blame the ones that voted that crap in the first place, then never managed it to make sure what they promised could be delivered.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:Without unions, who would decide what a "bad teacher" is? The principal or school board that may or may not have a personal vindetta against a teacher?
What makes a teacher bad? Test scores or student performance? Many of these kids have much bigger issues than school on their plates and simply don't give a fuck, and they disrupt kids that do.
I'm sure there are bad teachers or teachers that don't care, and I'm all for getting rid of them. I just don't know how to determine how a teacher performs.

The same way everyone else does, observe, assess, and make decisions with local control. That's not a business model, that's an organizational model that all hierarchical structures use.

I think this is exactly right. Evaluating teachers will be complicated, but evaluating the performance of most workers is complicated. There is nothing about education that is unique in that respect.

Of course, the administrators' jobs should be on the line as well as the teachers'. If they can't get their teachers to perform, they should be fired.

Yes there are some shitty teachers. Yes there are a tremendous amount of problems in schools. If anyone thinks that this is even close to outweighing the general shittiness of parenting as the overwhleming problem then, in my opinion, you are very wrong.
It's like someone with a 50 pound squat spending $200 on a pair of olympic lifting shoes and expecting that they will get to 500.

Yes there are some shitty teachers. Yes there are a tremendous amount of problems in schools. If anyone thinks that this is even close to outweighing the general shittiness of parenting as the overwhleming problem then, in my opinion, you are very wrong.
It's like someone with a 50 pound squat spending $200 on a pair of olympic lifting shoes and expecting that they will get to 500.

My wife, a college prof, makes way less than I did in the Corps. @45K a year, and she teaches summers, does grant programs with "inner city" kids, is on the contract negotiating committee, organizes the visiting writer program, works on the school magazine and grades papers until midnight most nights.
Suck it.

edit: and a big hats off to Seeahill for helping out last year. It was special to meet him and the students were really thrilled.

TOM don't fuck this up for me...I love giving Timmah some shit and this sorta thing really takes the wind out of my sails. He needs to be disliked because of that fucking cabin and a whole host of other reasons...it's the natural order of things. Don't give peoples reasons to like him.

msr2112 wrote:Yes there are some shitty teachers. Yes there are a tremendous amount of problems in schools. If anyone thinks that this is even close to outweighing the general shittiness of parenting as the overwhleming problem then, in my opinion, you are very wrong.

Actually the lesson from successful school turnarounds is that you can't control much for shitty parenting (unless you allow charters that are able to turn kids away), but you can control for ineffective teachers and administrators. NYC is an example-- they have put in place programs to combat poor parenting (opposed by the unions of coarse) that have increased school attendance, test scores, and graduation rates. They have increased these three things even in school districts with high minority populations, significant numbers of students coming in with limited english skills, and high poverty rates (measured by free lunch eligibility).

Turd can you throw some numbers on that NYC example? Increased scores form what to what, attendance...,graduations etc...

Having two kids in fair to middling public school, I have to say, when they pull out the stops for test day, it's a big fuckn deal and the District does get results. The education is still a shade suspect but the test scores have gone up.

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

Stillwater wrote:

baffled wrote:
I've got a couple of friends who are teachers that kind of hate the teachers unions. They're young, motivated and give a shit etc, and with the budget cuts, they don't know if they'll have a job next year while older teachers who checked out long ago are largely insulated.

I imagine their opinions will change once they've been teaching a while.

Maybe they should be upset with the folks that cut the budgets. I find it ironic the one's cutting the budgets are also the one's bitching about the state of schools/students.

Have any of you genius's actually taught a class? ever?

So it's O.K. to replace someone with college grad with no experience at half the pay? I hope none of your bosses get that idea. No one thinks it can happen to them until it does.

I find union bashing hilarious. Without unions you'd be shopping at the company store most likely on credit.

Public sector and private sector unions are different animals. There was a legitimate need for private sector unions-- there's never been such a need for public sector ones.

I disagree. I don't have much knowledge of teachers unions and janitorial/contracting unions for public workers, but cops and firefighters unions are essential. There is a real and tangible element of inherent danger in these jobs, and leaving safety issues to politicians simply would not work. I don't know what kind of vests and guns cops need, and I doubt your average city councilman does either. The fact that these kinds of things can be debated and mutually agreed upon with input from the guys risking their lives for public safety is a good thing.
Plus, in OH public safety services can't strike, so if there is a problem that can't be resolved by management & labor, it goes to a neutral third party arbitrator who settles the issue...case closed. This system works well for us.

Can't completely agree with you there. The issues that were faced by private sector workers when unions were being formed were far more significant than those faced by public sector workers-- even cops and firefighters. And if you think that unions like AFSME could care less about cops and firefighters you are wrong. They are used as a cash cow to fund other union activities and largely ignored otherwise.

Stillwater wrote: I imagine their opinions will change once they've been teaching a while.

Maybe, but then they would be getting the same protections the dead beats get. Which is kind of the point. Don't do well, no matter how long you're there, public or private sector, you should have to find a new job. Do well, give a damn, be rewarded. It's not that hard.

Stillwater wrote: Maybe they should be upset with the folks that cut the budgets. I find it ironic the one's cutting the budgets are also the one's bitching about the state of schools/students.

One could make the argument that they should be upset that legislators let budgets get out of hand and promise things that were unsustainable.

You may not have heard, but the state's finances are about as bad as anywhere in the country at the moment. Nearly $16 billion deficit, taxes set to be the highest in the country, lowest credit rating etc, etc. Everyone is going to feel the cuts, but the teachers unions are the ones with any political bite to them. No union for the elderly, who are going to feel it as badly as anyone if the cuts ever actually go through.

Stillwater wrote:
Have any of you genius's actually taught a class? ever?

I would answer, but it's "geniuses", not "genius's". Take a knee.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Turd can you throw some numbers on that NYC example? Increased scores form what to what, attendance...,graduations etc...

Having two kids in fair to middling public school, I have to say, when they pull out the stops for test day, it's a big fuckn deal and the District does get results. The education is still a shade suspect but the test scores have gone up.

Yes and no (I've done some research on their high schools-- not K-8).

If you want to get into the weeds, or just get an idea of what New York State tracks:
https://reportcards.nysed.gov/counties.php?year=2011
You have to dig by county (For NYC-- I'd focus with Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Kings counties personally).

NYC took control of its school system a few years ago and started to have real success. There were a few elements:
1. Parents got some choice in where to send their kids. You will notice that a lot of high schools started to lose 10-15% of their students a year. Generally they were poorly performing schools.
2. They started to form schools within schools to focus on kids with needs (not special needs-- that's different), including some after school programs. It does make the school by school numbers more difficult to look at.
3. They started to form a lot of specialty schools (not quite charter schools but close). These tended to be smaller (avg. 500 students; previously most HS's in NYC were about 4000 kids).
4. Local administrators got more responsibility on how to run their schools. If they didn't perform, they were out of a job.
5. They experimented with 5-6 year plans for graduation (this had mixed results, and doesn't show up well on the state scorecards, which measures kids in four year cohorts).
6. AFAIK they didn't stack the deck with the testing. Atlanta, for example, has been questioned lately because kids would do really good on third grade tests one year, and the next year be tested at below a third grade level.

I'll have to dig for some more big picture stuff that will probably be of more use to you. But AFAIK in the education reform area, NYC is considered kind of a darling. As you point out, higher test scores can be gamed and don't necessarily help the kids.

http://www.all4ed.org/files/HelpingStudentsNYC.pdf
has some info on how NYC gathers data and on some of the alternative programs they have put in place for at risk students.

I'll dig for more later.

EDIT-- link edited so it would work.

That's a more than a good start, thanks. We have a couple of those focused schools within schools locally that are successful.

I've toyed with letting my kids test into them but my motivations are not educational, they are cultural. From what I've seen, the schools lack the discipline problems and cultural fucktardery of Gen Pop...whether that's because nerds are well behaved or becuase white and asian kids know how to keep get away with shit better remains to be seen.

Turdacious wrote: Can't completely agree with you there. The issues that were faced by private sector workers when unions were being formed were far more significant than those faced by public sector workers-- even cops and firefighters. And if you think that unions like AFSME could care less about cops and firefighters you are wrong. They are used as a cash cow to fund other union activities and largely ignored otherwise.

Sure, firefighters aren't getting their arms and legs ripped off in substandard factory conditions or being bound into indentured servitude by the factory store...you're right, but you're comparing apples and oranges. While being a cop or fireman is not the most dangerous job in America, it is still dangerous, and even routine fires and traffic stops claim the lives of the people doing those jobs. Being able to negotiate terms that may mitigate the risks of those careers is what I'm talking about.
...and I said I don't know much about AFSME or the teacher's union. I don't put any faith in politics above the local level, so when union money is used to fund a bunch of crazy lefty bullshit, it doesn't surprise me in the least. I just want to be able to negotiate for enough guys to be at the firehouse to help me out if I fall through a floor, decent equipment, and a livable wage/retirement for the hours I work and the shit I'm exposed to.

Pinky wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

ButterCupPowerRanch wrote:What makes a teacher bad? Test scores or student performance? Many of these kids have much bigger issues than school on their plates and simply don't give a fuck, and they disrupt kids that do.

The same way everyone else does, observe, assess, and make decisions with local control. That's not a business model, that's an organizational model that all hierarchical structures use.

I think this is exactly right. Evaluating teachers will be complicated, but evaluating the performance of most workers is complicated. There is nothing about education that is unique in that respect.

Malcolm Gladwell from 3-1/2 years ago:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008 ... t_gladwell

The dismissal of teacher preparation programs by the liberal arts faculty on many campuses was so complete that in the 1930s the president of Harvard described Harvard's Graduate School of Education as a "kitten that ought to be drowned."

Folks with degrees in education score the lowest in testing for math, literature and science of all degrees.

Then, the unions have worked it out so teachers get extra pay for graduate work in education.

And, cuz I really don't give a shit of what any of your wives or family do for a living:

I have three brothers, a sister and my wife who are or were teachers. My wife currently teaches special ed at the middle school.

When you have an education system which is a centralized monopoly based on the old Soviet form of government, it will always fail.

msr2112 wrote:Yes there are some shitty teachers. Yes there are a tremendous amount of problems in schools. If anyone thinks that this is even close to outweighing the general shittiness of parenting as the overwhleming problem then, in my opinion, you are very wrong.
It's like someone with a 50 pound squat spending $200 on a pair of olympic lifting shoes and expecting that they will get to 500.

Again we know our society is filled with shitbirds who should be beaten or killed depending on their level of shitdome but when you are a parent doing what you are suppossed to do you don't need your kid being "Taught" by some blow hole who does not want to do their goddamn job.

I can make a huge list of bad teachers I had but Darth is in no condition for one of his long post.

Tenure is a problem that is simple to fix, no fucking more tenure.
No more affirmative action, I want my kids taught by the best and racial and ethnic quotas don't get the best.