California Students, Parents Sue Over Teacher Firing, Tenure Rules 399
The L.A. Times reports that a group of students and parents, fed up with what they see as overarching job security in California schools, are suing in the hopes of making harder for poor teachers to stay on the books. From the article:
"The lawsuit, filed by the nonprofit, advocacy group Students Matter, contends that these education laws are a violation of the Constitution's equal protection guarantee because they do not ensure that all students have access to an adequate education.
Vergara versus California, filed on behalf of nine students and their families, seeks to revamp a dismissal process that the plaintiffs say is too costly and time consuming, lengthen the time it takes for instructors to gain tenure and dismantle the 'last hired, first fired' policies that fail to consider teacher effectiveness.
The lawsuit aims to protect the rights of students, teachers and school districts against a "gross disparity" in educational opportunity, lawyers for the plaintiffs said." Perhaps related.
Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
While in rare cases job security is a problematic issue due to incompetence (or worse, in extreme cases), stripping away job security typically creates even more, worse problems in the long term with an even faster race-to-the-bottom. If this succeeds, they could find themselves, instead, fighting against the school board hiring cheap, less-competent or less-experienced teachers because they can get rid of the expensive, experienced ones quickly and easily.
Also, teachers are, in most places, unionized (the article doesn't seem to mention if California teachers are or not). Go against the union in such a drastic manner and you may find yourself with a widespread strike on your hands.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Informative)
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Second of all, all you parents in the room, all this bitching about poor teachers is a pretty recent thing, and it coincides with the emergence of a few things - The first is that you are no longer doing your jobs as fucking parents, letting your kids do whatever the fuck they want without discipline and demanding that they be allowed to dress like whores and use cell phones in class for "safety" reasons in case one of your otherwise right-thinking kids you addled up with psychotropic drugs because of a bullshit "ADD" diagnosis when, again, you decided real parenting was too hard and thought your kid was crazy for wanting to play outside and not stuck to the fucking X-Box for 12 hours a day.
Really? If I had a teacher who said something like you just said, I'd want him fired too.
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I think teachers who said what that person just said should be promoted, and should replace the useless administrators.
Teachers aren't allowed to have a say in what they teach, because it's all dictated to them by politicized "education boards" (see: Texas), they aren't supported by their upper management, and basically they get placed in an impossible situation. Then the very same people who put them there complain that they can't do a job that's simply not possible to do correctly under the circumstances
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Interesting)
Teachers aren't allowed to have a say in what they teach
GOOD!
Teachers are not scientists. They are not the ones performing experiments and establishing the most likely theory. They should not be the ones deciding willy nilly to teach their hypothesis over the scientifically backed theory.
If a teacher decided to teach what they wanted, and taught my child bollocks then I would be absolutely furious, I'm absolutely ecstatic that the teachers are explicitly banned from doing that.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Teachers are not scientist? What the hell are you smoking? I have a teacher's MSc in chemistry and physics. Due to the low image of the profession, the politicized curriculum and the low pay I have worked the job for a few months only.
Since then I am a developer in one of the most advance high tech start ups in the world [semiconductors].
There is also something else that you miss - as a teacher in high schools I don't need to know cosmology at the level of Hawking or string theory at the level of Green. But I must be able yo explain Newtonian mechanics [for instance] in a manner that would be suitable for high shoolers. And this, my friend, is a fucking art and it is difficult as hell! If you want to do it properly, of course...
Trust me, to explain a concept to a researcher or post graduate, who already has all the basics of the scientific method in their heads and years and years of analytical thinking is peanuts, compare to explaining basic concept such as mass/energy relation to high school students.
Take a look at Richard Feynman. Why was he considered one of the greatest educators of all time? Because of his Nobel price? Of course not. Because he was a bloody genius when it came to transferring knowledge. He also had excellent oratorical skills and was very good actor [you need this as a teacher, trust me]. Feynman was the exception that combined genius level scientist with genius level educator. Such cases are rare, but not needed per se - as a teacher you only need to understand the concepts very well, genius level science-making is not required. And as a general rule - most science geniuses are NOT good educators.
End with a quote from my favorite writer:
"Ponder realized he can explain the theory of thaum very well, provided the other person knew everything about it already"
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And this, my friend, is a fucking art and it is difficult as hell! If you want to do it properly, of course...
The art of it is having two fundamental skills or traits.
The first is obvious. You need to have a passion for teaching. If May 1 rolls around and you're focused on your summer vacation, you should probably consider a different career.
I think people really overlook the second fundamental trait, and that's to have the proper intuition to keep people coming back. You're a con man. You said actor, but I think it's a bit more than that and involves reading body language, adjusting to disruptions, and keeping k
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Second of all, all you parents in the room, all this bitching about poor teachers is a pretty recent thing, and it coincides with the emergence of a few things - The first is that you are no longer doing your jobs as fucking parents, letting your kids do whatever the fuck they want without discipline and demanding that they be allowed to dress like whores and use cell phones in class for "safety" reasons in case one of your otherwise right-thinking kids you addled up with psychotropic drugs because of a bullshit "ADD" diagnosis when, again, you decided real parenting was too hard and thought your kid was crazy for wanting to play outside and not stuck to the fucking X-Box for 12 hours a day.
Really? If I had a teacher who said something like you just said, I'd want him fired too.
And this is a good argument FOR Tenure systems. This statement of opinion has absolutely nothing to do with the person's teaching ability, and should not be something which would result in a firing, especially since it was done on his own time, outside the classroom, didn't involve his students... and frankly speaking in most cases it's completely 100% accurate.
Tenure is supposed to protect teachers from being fired over dumbass Political bullshit like this. It's there for situations like when the idiot chi
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And this is a good argument FOR Tenure systems. This statement of opinion has absolutely nothing to do with the person's teaching ability, and should not be something which would result in a firing, especially since it was done on his own time, outside the classroom, didn't involve his students... and frankly speaking in most cases it's completely 100% accurate.
This statement is crap, much like the parent statement, and it speaks directly to this person's ability to teach kids in this setting. Declaring that ADD diagnoses are "bullshit" is way outside the scope of a public school teacher unless that teacher happens to have a medical degree, and demonstrates a bias against something that they have no expertise to judge. Telling parents in general that they aren't doing their jobs or that even a majority of students are allowed to do whatever they like is simply
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I dunno. Implying you're sexually provoked by how barely-teens dress and have trouble ignoring that ("dress like whores") seems like a good reason for other people to keep their children away from you, especially in the context of a power relationship involving lots of unsupervised time together.
There was no such implication, and trying to draw one is a disgusting ad-hominem attack. He's complaining that parents demand that their children be allowed to dress like whores. We can agree that whores often tend to dress a certain way, yes? And children should not dress like that? Is this really controversial?
I'm concerned about a reaction I've seen a few times similar to this - a person complains that some child is dressed inappropriately, and others try to attack that person for "sexualizing a mino
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My high school English teacher would give that "family of teachers" guy an F.
He taught us about proper rhetoric. I shudder to think what those "professionals" are doing in class.
Also, I've thought teachers are idiots pretty much forever. This includes elementary school. So it's no new thing by any stretch.
The other stuff (including money) doesn't matter so much. Parents do need to be involved. Teachers likely may not like it though.
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Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, why is the Teacher's Union demonized here but the prison guards or border guards' union is not?
Uhh ... the California prison guards union is very heavily demonized, especially about their financing of campaigns to build more prisons and mandate harsher sentences. But they are usually not demonized by the same people. This is because the teachers unions donate to the Democrats and the guard unions donate to the Republicans. People don't like to demonize the hand that feeds them.
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Umm no (Score:4, Informative)
A little Googling indicates the prison guard union in CA gives twice as much to Democrats as Republicans, and spends much more than that on ballot initiatives.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
> First of all, why is the Teacher's Union demonized here but the prison guards or border guards' union is not?
Who is going to complain about prison guards? Felons?
Out of sight, out of mind...
Teachers, on the other hand, will be coming into contact with plenty of respectable types like voters and homeowners and small business owners.
No one cares if the prisons fail to rehabilitate people. Felons have already been written off by society. The same can't be said of schools and teachers.
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I was going to simply say that the teachers get demonized because it's their fault the prison union got so big. I know that's not true, rather, I know that's not 100% true.
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You either don't live in California or you don't really read the news much.
Republicans are effectively a non-entity in California. The republicans no longer even a speed bump on Sacramento passing anything.
While the prison guards union DOES pay to the republicans, it, like the teachers unions, pay much more to the democrats.
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They're doomed to become adults who can't utter or write two sentences without using the F-bomb multiple times, like the above critic.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a parent in this room. My son is nothing like that. I would say that I don't know any of the kids in his school are like you describe. Those stereotype that people like to throw around are just bullshit. They are probably the same things people said about you when you were in school; and its just as invalid now, as it was then.
What IS different know, is a concerted 'attack?' on PUBLIC school teachers. I am not sure why. My sister is a third grade teacher, I assume she does a good job. She is however, dirt poor because of low pay and still ends up buying her own room supplies. I am not sure why anyone would want to be a public school teacher these days. Maybe thats the goal.
Why don't you look in the mirror and ask yourself why you like to think and write about whore school girls in see through leggings with no underwear.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Interesting)
The attacks on the public teachers' union might be a viewed as a concerted attack, because they are exhibiting a concerted attack against any and all that would improve the quality of public education at the expense of the public teachers' union. Parents and taxpayers alike are sick of paying for what is obviously a failing (or failed, depending on perspective) system. This is not a condemnation of all or even the majority of teachers. You don't see unions protecting bad employees to the same extent in other industries. Teachers' unions present no incentive to excel and the mentality actively discourages it, because it makes other union members look bad. It's like teaching to the lowest denominator, but now you're tell the teachers to be the lowest denominator.
Not everyone is the top of the cream (both teachers & students). In my opinion, the biggest problem with the public education system is that we predominantly teach to an age. You're 12, so you're going to learn 'A' this year. You're 15, you're going to learn 'B' this year. Never mind some students are capable of learning 'A' & 'B' in the same year, while it may take a year or more for others to learn just 'A'. There are also instances where students exhibiting self learning are actively discouraged, ridiculed or penalized (the source may be either other students or even the teachers).
You can say what you want, but this culture of imposing equality is what is causing the generative decline of our educational system. We actively hold back capable students so the less capable don't have their feels hurt and feel inferior. Doing this actively destroys our society and does harm to less advantaged students with greater abilities. Public education in the US is sadly about making sure everyone makes the lowest common denominator, rather than excelling. Meeting expectations does no one a service. Exceeding expectations does, even more so when those are raised.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Insightful)
DISCLAIMER: I work in Public education.
There are plenty of satisfactory to excellent teachers out there. The problem isn't these teachers who work hard and are underpaid, and it never will be. The problem is the relatively few, but numerous enough to affect everyone, that are just horrible. You cannot dodge the rain.
And teachers complain about poor pay, well I don't want to pay the crappy teachers a nickel, but we have to pay them something, so the Union Negotiates rules and regulations protecting the crappy teachers equally with the excellent ones. THUS, if teachers want better pay, as a whole, then I want better teachers, as a whole. Again, this is not a slam against most teachers, it is a slam against the Unions that protect their members to the point of harming the vast majority of their membership.
Our failing schools are failing because of three things: Lack of caring parents (society can't fix this), Bad Teachers, enough to sour the whole profession, and funding models that reward failure and punish success. We can fix two out of three, and this will likely impact the third.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the average person doesn't have to suffer the consequences of the prison system?
The real problem is, you are right and the anti-union people are right. Last hired - first fired policies do nothing to protect quality teachers. And policy that doesn't consider the teacher is a policy that has no interest in the educational quality being provided by a school. The work environment that administrators continue to force teachers to work in with miserable pay do nothing to attract high quality educators. And the result is a miserable education system.
The unions fought for the 40 hour work week back in the day and the alleged teacher "unions" force teachers to work unreasonable hours for unreasonable pay.
Funny how businesses that attract competent talent don't require union protections to keep their employees around.
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Funny how businesses that attract competent talent don't require union protections to keep their employees around.
The head of a then non-union airline said in the early 1980s "any company that gets a union deserves one." Treat your workers fairly and they will have no need for a union. Fuck them over and watch them organize.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Informative)
Food for thought? No, not at all. It just shows how deeply biased you are and how tightly your blinders fit that you can't see why. Seriously, pretty much everyone has at least one completely crappy teacher and one ancient past-their-prime marking-time-to-retirement teacher over the course of the travels from K-12. We demonize the teacher's union because they enable and tacitly condone such things.
No, it's not. It goes back at least as far as when I was a kid in the 70's - long before cell phones, widespread 'drugging up', or home video game systems.
While I agree the parents should shoulder their portion of the blame, you need to get out of your echo chamber and into the real world.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Informative)
No, it's not. It goes back at least as far as when I was a kid in the 70's - long before cell phones, widespread 'drugging up', or home video game systems.
It goes back to at least the 1950's. Why Johnny Can't Read [amazon.com] was a national bestseller in 1955. When Sputnik was launched In 1957, teachers were blamed for letting the Russians beat us into space.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Interesting)
They all want to know about style, what sort of cases, And the summing up, and the shots that are likely to be Fired by the other side, but not a single one wants to pay. ‘You’re asking me to pay? But what have I learned?’ ‘It’s surely the teacher’s fault, if our young dunce feels Nothing stir in the left side of his chest, as he fills my Poor head for five days with his ‘dreadful Hannibal’.
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Seriously, pretty much everyone has at least one completely crappy teacher and one ancient past-their-prime marking-time-to-retirement teacher over the course of the travels from K-12. We demonize the teacher's union because they enable and tacitly condone such things.
And, why should the students be made to suffer? Because the teacher only has 1 or 2 more years until retirement, they should be allowed to do a half-assed job that sabotages those students future? This argument is disingenuous and harmful to the students, which, is what we're trying to stop.
If the teacher is either unwilling or incapable of doing their job, they should be gone, regardless of their seniority. Tenure at a high school and below level is just a paid excuse to do a piss-poor job of teaching. T
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Uh, not to detract from your exceptional points, this isn't exactly a new thing ...
"Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates
And parents wonder why being lazy and letting someone else indoctrinate their children isn't a problem ...
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Or no teachers at all since it really doesn't pay to be a teacher in that rotten environment. There already is a teacher shortage across the country. So you don't mind having to ship your kids 30-40 miles because the school you were sending them to had to close due to no teachers right? Don't think it can happen? Here in my state they consolidated 7 schools because of that.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Interesting)
There used to be a saying that went something like those who can will do, those who cannot will teach, those who cannot teach will coach and those who cannot coach will become politicians.
There is not a teacher shortage- there is an ability to pay teachers shortage. I know of plenty of teachers with state credentials who cannot find work because there either is not enough room in the schools or schools are pinching their budgets so tight that increasing class room size and decreasing teachers is a way to pay for it. These teachers have been on the substitution lists for years and actually hold other jobs waiting for an opening which is usually created by someone retiring unless a new school is built. Some of them have went into the charter/private schools arena in order to put their teaching credentials to use. It's probably no wonder why people claim the charter schools produce better students- they end up with not only picking and choosing the students but with the fresh and innovative new talent to teach them.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know of plenty of teachers with state credentials who cannot find work because there either is not enough room in the schools or schools are pinching their budgets so tight that increasing class room size and decreasing teachers is a way to pay for it..
Meanwhile, as the budgets are being shrunk, the number of mandates that the school system must undertake increases.
A few years back Florida imposed mandatory background checks for everyone who came into contact with kids. There was no additional funding given to the school boards to implement this, so they eliminated teaching positions to pay for it. Oh, and lost more than half of the folks who volunteered their time to help out with school activities (ie after school programs or even stuff like "Hauling kids to weekend band practice") because the hassles outweighed the benefit of sheparding any other kids than their own.
...yeah, teachers are the root of all evil in our school system.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no shortage in ability to pay teachers. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any other country in the world [cbsnews.com]. It's ludicrous to even suggest we're not spending enough on education.
The problem is is an overabundance of administrators who siphon away money from teachers and kids. In the few school budgets I was able to dig up, administration payroll accounted for over half of total payroll.
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I'm not sure what schools you were looking at, but the education budget for North Carolina is very different from the picture you paint. Out of $8.2 billion, about $3 billion goes directly to teacher salaries. $750 million goes to resources for students with "special needs" and $250 million to "at risk" students. Another $500 million to teacher assistants and $300 million to instructional support. $400 million to transportation, $400 million to vocational education. Those are the biggest items in the budget
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Informative)
There already is a teacher shortage across the country.
Not true at all. Most job openings for teachers attract hundreds of qualified applicants for a single position. A local job fair for teachers attracted 700 people, with a line snaking around the block. You can Google for many other examples. Teachers in California make over $70k on average [sacbee.com], get off at 4pm, get three months of vacation, and have gold-plated medical and retirement plans. Why would there be a shortage?
...Because most teachers max out well before that! (Score:5, Informative)
When you factor in the cost of living in CA, $70k doesn't go all that far....
But I digress. Six years ago, starting pay for a *full-time* high school teacher in my former home county of Brevard, FL, was $22k, with another $3k/yr bonus for a "high demand" science/math teacher. Since then, benefits, class sizes, and general conditions have only grown worse. The teachers I know (and I know many) routinely put in 10+ hour days, plus more weekends than not.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
Teacher here. Sure, in theory I have a couple of months off in the summer. BUT, the other 9.5 months a year, I routinely work 12 or more hours a day for 5 days a week plus at least another 5 to 8 hours on the weekend. Which is 65 hours a week minimum, not including the extra busy times (parent-teacher conferences, state testing times, finals, etc.) or the extra-curricular activities.
This week, outside of 'work' hours, I will coach soccer practice a couple of times plus coaching at a soccer game. I will attend a basketball game to further support my students. I will take paperwork home so that I can help students with their homework during school hours, instead. I will attend three meetings and chair a fourth. If the need arises, I will call students' parents. Additionally, I will eat my lunch standing up while supervising the students' lunch time. (Also this week, but not typical, I will chaperon a dance on Saturday evening.) All of this is in addition to my 'job' of teaching the students.
Why would there be a shortage of teachers? Because not everyone can handle 6 hours a day being *the only adult* in a room with 20 to 30 (or more) teenagers? Not just 'handle' of course, but actually work hard to help those teenagers, even when they are too immature to understand that they need help, and even when they actively fight against your help? Who could pass up a job like this?
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stripping away job security typically creates even more, worse problems in the long term with an even faster race-to-the-bottom.
Citation needed.
Go against the union in such a drastic manner and you may find yourself with a widespread strike on your hands.
You're making a profoundly good case for the abolition of all unions. Our children and our future ought not be held hostage to these thugs.
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Tenure as property?
You're really running off the rails there. You will convince NO ONE of anything with that kind of argument.
Well, nothing positive anyways...
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If you are against tenure, you are against the following: (1) the right to bargain, (2) contracts, (3) due process, and (4) property rights.
(1) The fact is that you do not have the right to bargain over everything. For example you do not have the right to bargain away the rights of other human beings, such as the rights of the children in these class rooms.
(2) The California courts were not against contracts when they ruled that contractual noncompete clauses were void. So too, if you are against specific clauses in other countracts that does not mean that you are against contracts.
(3) This story is in fact about due process at work. The pe
"Tenure" == Due Process (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are against tenure, you are against the following: ... (3) due process, ...
(3) This story is in fact about due process at work. The people filing suit are against tenure and are using due process to fight it.
I really can't speak for California, but in the Northeast US ( Pensylvania and North ), Tenure == Due Process.
In my area, a new teacher ( 3years in some states, 5 in others) can be fired or "non-renewed" without a stated reason. In practice, new teachers are given good reviews mid-year and booted without comment or useful feedback. Such would-be teachers are almost unemployable after this, and the lack of feedback means that they can't work to address preceived flaws in case they do find a way to work again.
Experienced teachers can be dismissed for any legal reason. This is usually some combination of illegal activity (bank robbers can't be teachers usually), immoral behavior (porn stars are not encouraged to continue a teaching career), incompetence (yep, you can lose your job for incompetence), and insubordination (boss tells you to be on time, you aren't...). Of course, cause has to be documented. And except for the first two (illegal, immoral), a single incident is generally not sufficient grounds for action. This is good, a single parent complaint should not end a teacer's career.
The "problem" is that when ANYBODY is terminated for cause, their terminaion can be appealed in the state courts. This is not unique to teachers, but unions are in a good position financially to challenge these terminations, and so they do so nearly every time. Ex-employees of private firms generally cannot afford the legal fees to do this, and so generally don't challenge. The union provides the resources to access "due process".
The legal appeals process favors the district if the situation is well documented and if all of the rules were followed. The key to this is making sure that you have administrators with time to spend on process. A solid HR staff can help backstop this. Of course, the only thing that voters and unions agree on is that administration is a waste. And HR looks like more administration. Districts lose these cases a lot because administrators have other priorities and so don't do a great job with documentation or process.
In my current state, employees terminated for cause are not permitted to collect unemployment insurance. Private employers are more likely not to name a cause and accept the bump in their unemployment costs. This also tends to discourage lawsuits ( a bird in the hand...). School systems don't usually have this option with tenured (due process enabled) staff.
Big private companies tend to have the middle managment, HR types, and processes in place to cover themselves when they want to terminate for cause and contest unemployment. Small companies do not, but don't contest.
It's that simple.
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
While in rare cases job security is a problematic issue due to incompetence
It is NOT rare. 90% of teachers are competent and conscientious. But about 1 in 10 needs to go, and 1 in 10 is not "rare". Nearly every kid will have one or more incompetent teachers during K-12. Both of my kids have had bad teachers. My daughters 7th grade science teacher spoke English so poorly that the kids could not understand her. So she assigned each student a chapter to teach. For the rest of the semester they taught each other, while the teacher sat in the back of the room and watched Youtube videos. Many parents complained about the situation, but that was several years ago, and she is still "teaching". It is absurd that someone like that continues to be employed at taxpayer expense.
There was a recent report [urban.org] that estimated that a bad teacher can cause $250k/year in economic damage when you consider the lost future earning potential of the ill educated students.
My experiences (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't that many but the level of incompetence was astounding and nothing could be done.
Re:My experiences (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sorry but the statement that "nothing could be done" is a lie.
If the teachers were truly ineffective or incompetent, then you should have complained to the school's administrators and insisted that your students be removed. That is your right. If they refused, then you take the issue to the school board. If that doesn't work, you file a complaint with the state (and also against the teachers license if you actually have evidence).
If you failed to do that, it indicates to me that maybe the teachers really weren't that bad. Because if you did nothing despite knowing there was a problem, you are part of it. When you find ineffective teachers you also have ineffective administrators and schools boards. You can't have one without the other.
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I'm sorry but the statement that "nothing could be done" is a lie.
Baloney. I have personally complained about bad teachers, and I know other parents that have as well. I have NEVER heard of a teacher fired for incompetence, or anything other than blatant criminal behavior.
If the teachers were truly ineffective or incompetent, then you should have complained to the school's administrators and insisted that your students be removed. That is your right. If they refused, then you take the issue to the school board. If that doesn't work, you file a complaint with the state (and also against the teachers license if you actually have evidence).
Can you cite a single example of any of these things resulting in a California teacher being fired?
If you failed to do that, it indicates to me that maybe the teachers really weren't that bad.
This is an idiotic statement. That is like saying that global warming isn't a "real" problem because if it was you would have personally volunteered to stop breathing. The fact that I haven't dedicated
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Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
I had my run-in with the occasional terrible teacher, who should not have been teaching. I also had some really excellent teachers, who can be credited with a large portion of my success in life. Guess who gets driven out first when working conditions are made increasingly shitty? When teachers are underpaid, overworked, disrespected by management, then the ones who are best (combination of academic excellence and natural leadership) will eventually burn out on their altruism and take one of the many much higher paying jobs that they are more than qualified for. The ones who are petty authoritarian teach-to-the-test dimwits, with no prospects for better employment, stick around forever. Unions aren't keeping the bad teachers in --- self-serving slimeballs will cling on no matter what, and will gladly game the system to look good on a shallow management-driven metrics system. Unions are keeping the good teachers in, giving people a rewarding professional career.
Screwing the Experienced and Competent (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the double-edged sword of tenure. Remove the tenure protections and yeah, you get to fire those 10%. But in the meantime you've put those good 90% in the position where they have no job security and get watch their already low salaries stagnate relative to the rest of the economy, and they also need to worry about being fired for personal politics. A lot of those 90% are going to throw in the towel and walk out the door at some point.
So who will be left teaching your kids? Any recently graduated kid with a bachelor's degree who can pass the mirror test. And they'll stick around just long enough to A) get fired for complete and gross incompetence or B) get some experience and quickly move on to something else far more rewarding and lucrative. Oh sure, you might get a handful of golden souls who really give a damn and can suck up these crappy conditions because they are already retired from another profession or have a spouse who is making good money, but these folks are one in a million.
Tenure is a flawed system for sure. Bad people will look good just long enough to get tenure, then they will drag their feet until retirement, not caring a whit about anything. But that same tenure is a huge perk that the good 90% enjoy and desperately need for them to do what they do for the pay that they get.
Full disclosure - I am a tenure-track college professor and a member of my state teacher's union.
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So she assigned each student a chapter to teach. For the rest of the semester they taught each other, while the teacher sat in the back of the room...
Truth be told, that was probably a better outcome than you might think, if the students actually did teach each other. And 7th graders just might. They certainly are capable. Of course paying a union salary for no service whatsoever is absurd, but as far as learning environments go, that was one of the better ones. There have been studies that indicate that type of learning environment is actually the best possible. The kids would have been far worse off if she'd persisted in standing up in front of th
Re:Dangerous... (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't thinking very hard. Judges are the same.
Teachers and professors have controversial jobs and once they've (theoretically) proven themselves to be competent, tenure is supposed to protect them from outside influences just like we try to protect our judges. We (at least once upon a time) deemed academic freedom to be so valuable that we'd suffer some teachers milking their tenure for the benefit that all of the others could teach our society to the best of their ability without fear of retribution.
Now we under pay our teachers, force them to follow standardized curriculum and testing, and even try to ban subjects that aren't compatible with existing societal beliefs regardless of academic rigor. In a world where teachers are underpaid and have little freedom to teach to anything but a standardized test, tenure probably is worthless. It wasn't always so though, and I for one think we are worse off because of it.
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Judges are the same.
Judges at certain levels are granted lifetime posts with the expectation that it would grant them immunity from the pressures of which you speak. Not all Judgeship positions are the same (typically those at county/local levels). Certainly the intent of federal judges to be lifetime appointments was to put them above the position of political reelection.
There is no reason for a teacher to be politically protected, if they're doing their job objectively, and teaching facts and not ideologies.
I also take issue
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"There is no reason for a teacher to be politically protected, if they're doing their job objectively, and teaching facts and not ideologies."
Restated:
There is no reason for a Judge to be politically protected, if they're interpreting the law objectively, and ruling based on facts and not ideologies.
End of the day, teachers need to be protected when little Johnny comes home and asks mom and dad why the teacher said he came from monkeys and his bible school teacher said he didn't. Or that condoms protect fr
Suing won't help (Score:3, Insightful)
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The union negotiated contracts are designed this way to protect the union members that have paid the most dues.
Tell that to the GM, Ford and Chysler employees who had their collective agreements null and voided by states, provinces and federal governments. Just because you think that's what'll happen it doesn't mean it always will. And in the case of the automakers, those cases are still before the courts.
Re:Suing won't help (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Suing won't help (Score:5, Interesting)
There is FAR more to union protection of teachers than featherbedding.
The people to blame for many school problems and whose effect is largely ignored in the current debate are school administrations.
Here's a classic written by a (now retired) terrific science teacher who fought the Rutherford, NJ, administration over how they tested students and won in court after a protracted struggle. Steve Masone greatly inspired many of his students, self included. He had the guts to take on a pretty toxic administration when he could have just coasted and sacrificed his students instead.
http://www.hammerofchalk.com/ [hammerofchalk.com]
The administrators concerned retired comfortably without consequences to their careers.
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I'm curious why no one ever mentions the school board. You know, the ones that negotiate and approve the contracts?
If these contracts are so bad, why exactly are these people given a pass?
You cannot have poor teachers without poor administrators and a poor school board.
about damn time (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sorry, did I read that correctly?
Tenure? In state-funded primary and secondary schools? In a country as brutally meritocratic as the US?
Who was the last poor president?
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Harry Truman.
Re:Tenure? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Who was the last poor president?
Both Obama and Clinton qualify. Reagan might qualify too.
Meritocracy means that you can be born poor and become rich or a member of what currently passes for the aristocracy.
It's the ideal of Andrew Carnegie.
Someone mentioned Truman. Eisenhower also came from a precarious working class background.
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Tenure in other education setting working with people who are not adults. Teachers are rewarded for connecting with kids, not called an African American child the n-word as a principle recently did, have a week of lesson plans every week for the entirety of your career, showing up to work on time every day for the entire
Re:Tenure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tenure? In state-funded primary and secondary schools? In a country as brutally meritocratic as the US?
Well, let me tell you of a couple of situations in my hometown in which tenure saved teachers' job.
The first teacher in question taught history, and one of his elective courses was focused on radical protest movements from 1950-1975. The thing was that many conservative elements in town wanted the course to not exist, or at the very least state quite clearly that all the radical protest movements were because of spies from the USSR. They had the ear of the dyed-in-wool conservative mayor, who in this city's structure was also the chair of the school board. They tried several tactics to fire him, including trying to convince the union to accept some nice cash benefits if they allowed a provision in the contract to create a process for firing teachers that were presenting content "detrimental to the community" or similar nonsense. The teacher continued to teach until his retirement, which allowed students to learn about that period in US history in a way that neither their textbooks nor their parents were really showing them.
The second teacher in question was the advisor of the award-winning school paper. Said award-winning school paper did some investigative journalism and discovered some not-nice things about an assistant superintendent, which they duly published. The assistant superintendent reacted by driving to the school, barging into the paper office, and almost physically threatening the student editor who happened to be there at the time. The paper of course duly reported on this incident in their next issue, so the assistant superintendent went to the advisor and demanded that the advisor give the entire editorial board suspensions for insubordination or some-such. The advisor refused, so the assistant superintendent immediately tried to get him fired.
So yes, tenure can and does matter, even for primary and secondary teachers.
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It would help if you would understand what tenure is and what it is not in state funded primary and secondary schools. That does require some knowledge, however
If you are against "tenure" you oppose the following: the right to bargain, contracts, due process, and property rights.
It has little or nothing to do with: seniority, lifelong guaranteed employment, academic freedom.
Furthermore, the US is not very meritocratic. If you think it is, you are deeply ignorant. For one thing, I couldn't largely predict
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Re:Tenure? (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying that teachers should be suddenly stripped of their tenure status/benefits is the same as stockholders saying that CEOs should be stripped of their golden parachutes.
Umm, no it isn't.
Nobody forced you to buy stock. The government IS forcing you to pay for these teachers.
People knew damned well what they were getting into, kicked the can down the road and now someone has to pay the piper.
People that arent paying for it now, kicked that can down that road. It was wrong of them to do it.
Now tell me which is worse?
A) Violating their contracts by firing some teachers that happen to be fucking up our children.
B) Forcing people that had no say whatsoever in the matter to honor a contract that they never would have agreed to had it been their decision.
The problem with public sector unions and these "in the future" provisions is that none of the people at the negotiating table have to face the consequences they are negotiating over. None of them have to face the consequences so long as we continue to say that the contract must be honored above all else.
I say fuck that, the contract was immediately void because the contract imposed an obligation on unrepresented people (people that werent even born yet, in fact.) The people still around who are in the greatest position to have known the injustice of such a contract if upheld and could have made choices about it are precisely those teachers with tenure, yet they chose to try to benefit from that very injustice for which we are discussing. They neither deserve nor should they entertain the protection of law on this matter at all, yet here they are trying desperately to use the law as a weapon against innocent people so that they themselves can benefit. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them.
Turn arounds fair play (Score:3, Insightful)
if when you as parents fail to live up to your responsibilities the teacher can have your child permanently removed from class because they are there to teach and not babysit?
Biased Idea From Onset (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to talk of "bad teachers" and say that unions keep them employed. But the truth is that "bad teachers" are the minority. Unions keep more "good teachers" employed at a livable wage than "bad teachers".
It is normal that the minority get the spotlight, just as it is normal that the Chihuahua barks the loudest.
Are you joking? (Score:3)
Unreasonable hours and unreasonably low pay have been the norm in public education for decades.
If the unions did their job in public education, teachers would be working 40 hours a week and making at least 50K a year.
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Enhancing the role of the principal as a "coach" rather than a paperwork pusher, disciplinarian, or fund raiser is first.
Like this "Principal"?
http://nypost.com/2014/01/16/s... [nypost.com]
Principals work for the Administration and whatever political flavor the current Administration is pushing. Good teachers work for the students, because they enjoy teaching and see a value in making chuildren smarter.
Of course if you have a religious ("Intelligent Design") bent or a politically correct bent (one must never admit that "Negro" was a word spoken in the English language - http://www.theroot.com/article... [theroot.com] ), a heavy handed Principle is a go
get rid of tech the test and College-for-all (Score:2)
They are both 2 big things that hurt schools and take away for things that are needed.
In asia they are very big on tech test and why should teachers be ranked on how good people are at test cramming?
College-for-all kills stuff that works better for some people like trades, career education, tech schools, and apprenticeships.
internships are some times tied to the old College system for jobs that are better set in an trades, career education, tech school settting.
Tenure in K-12 Tenure in higher ed (Score:2, Informative)
In higher ed, tenure is about academic freedom. In K-12 it's a misnomer. All that tenure means (and the technical name is continuing contract) for teachers is that the district has to follow due process to get rid of the louses. They can't just fire at will, which they can do if the teacher has a provisional contract. Admins simply have to do their job, but they tend to want to be buddies with the staff, or use their position to hire relatives, so quality goes to hell. That is not the union's fault; the adm
Two Things Suck About This (Score:2)
2. Is there anything about computers or their use in the parent?
I can't believe we employ any of them, honestly. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:This is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Except professors don't teach at high schools, which is what this seems to be about.
And probably more to the point, the bigger problem is no one can agree on what a bad teacher is to be measured by beyond anecdotes. But I strongly suspect its "shouldn't have given my child a bad grade!"
Re:This is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Should there be some form of performance metric? Sure. It needs to be very carefully set up though, and the child's own performance needs to be a part of it as well as the parents. NO teacher is going to be able teach calculus to a kid who skips 2 days a week to babysit for his siblings because his parent(s) can't afford childcare. It also needs to be politics resistant, I don't want my kids teacher worried about their job because some new guy won an election. I want them worried about how to best teach the next chapter, and that is it.
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Uhh huh... Meanwhile in the real world there is a real teacher shortage. And a move like this sends what message? When my niece asked what do I think she should study I told her anything other than teacher. Why? Because they are under paid, over worked, glorified baby sitters having to wipe the asses of both the kids and the parents.
Re:This is a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no teacher shortage.
When you hear that schools are having a difficult time getting teachers, that indicates that the school/district/state is an awful place to work.
It's not unusual for there to be five applicants for every science position. There could be 30 for an English position. It's even worse for primary education. The only place there might be a shortage is in Special Education.
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> And the tenure process is rigorous and as full of hard work as any other promotion process at any company or organization.
In what other industry can I get a sweet deal like that? It doesn't matter how talented or charming I am, my current position is effectively temporary. It's the same for pretty much everyone else too (except for teachers).
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And goodness knows, if YOU can't have it, no one should. The same people who bitch about "the war on sucess" or cry about class warfare ruining the country will get in a line to gripe about the sweet pensions and benefits that public workers, teachers, or union auto workers get because it is unfair that they can't get the same thing.
Working hard is the secret to success until someone gets something you don't then the game is rigged and it is all unfair.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not that rare (Score:4, Interesting)
You've hit the nail on the head. There are some corporations (e.g. Pearson) that have been salivating over how much more money they could make from our educational system. The first step was to convince us that our current system was broken. The second step was to blame the teachers. The third step was to "convince" politicians (who have no educational background) that the business' solution of constant testing was the cure. They test in the beginning of the year and then they test at the end of the year and if the students don't do well enough, the teacher gets fired. No qualifiers such as said teacher's students are intelligent but don't do well on standardized tests. Or, since the test is very secret and not audited by a third party, that the test itself was flawed.
Of course, the corporations have a financial incentive for students to fail. Schools with failing students might buy more test prep books, sign up for teacher training sessions, administrator training sessions, or other goods/services the corporation provides. Schools with students doing well don't generate more corporate profits. In New York's first round of testing, only 31% of students passed.
Just to add insult to injury, New York has adopted a system called EngageNY which is essentially a script for the teacher to follow. It tells the teacher what to say, when, for how long, and in what manner. It literally is broken down into 10 minute segments instructing the teacher on just what to do during each. There is no leeway for teaching in a different manner that the teacher's students might understand better or for spending more/less time on subjects. Teachers are expected to teach according to the script. Of course, this makes teachers nothing but glorified actors who can be swapped out for other people at a moment's notice. (Think about every teacher who inspired you to learn and ask if that teacher was unconventional or sounded like they were robots reading a script.)
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And the tenure process is rigorous and as full of hard work as any other promotion process at any company or organization. They don't just hand tenure out to anyone - most teachers already have to work for years to even qualify, and then they have to submit a huge portfolio and be approved by the county or university. All it does in reality is negate the "right-to-work" state laws which allow anyone to be arbitrarily fired for any reason.
While I only have anecdotal evidence that comes from three teachers I know in the Chicago-land area, from what I have heard the tenure process was the easiest process for advancement in any profession I know of. But as of the last 5 years or so, the process has become much more difficult. It does seem that today you have to be either in the right place at the right time, or be a very good teacher to get tenure in the good school districts. The rest either become day care teachers or move out to the sticks t
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Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers.
Great sound bit, lousy argument. Any cost no matter how small would be argued by the schools as some massive threat to their ability to operate. If our kids school division had to pay for new instruments for the music room, or new text books, or turn the heat on, they'd t
Re:This is a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there any demonstrated correlation between college grads and losing a few teaching days?
10 calendar days per year less than the national average. 1 hour less per day than the national average. This adds up to Chicago students losing two full school years (or more) compared to the national average by the time they get to college.
I don't know if you really need a scientific study to make the demonstration that 2 years is a huge gap, but one thing is for sure: the odds that such study could be done by someone who went to school in Chicago are tiny - with a college graduation rate of 12%, which is 1/3 of the national average and even lower than Alaska.
Re:This is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
By the time they get to college, this "tiny difference" adds up to more than one semester.
Not all tiny differences add up. My parents used to pull me out of school for a week most years for family vacations etc. Over the course of school from K-12 then I lost a full semester easy. Plus the flus, doctors appointments, deaths in the family, snow days, easily another couple months. I STILL maintain it didn't cost my education anything at all -- and that was me actively "missing" actual classroom time where the other students were still present, vs the school just not having school for that time.
This applies to everyone, including people from Chicago. If you consider that people "clock out" an hour early, then Chicago students (and teachers) also do, so the gap remains the same.
Again no. They don't mentally check out an "hour early"; they mentally check out after they've hit their concentration / absorption / knowledge retention limit, or whatever you'd like to call it; or completed their major tasks for the day. Extending or shortening the "day" by an hour makes no difference to how long you can concentrate. It just changes how much time you waste after your 'done'.
[...] you can discard that because it's a mere 0.13$ in his pockets every minute...
No I can't discard taht. Because that's 13 cents a minute every minute. Its a small value, but it accumulates in a very understable way. But not everything works like that. Learning is more "chunky"; in that you learn in chunks. When I took math, for example, I was good at it, I absorbed a typical "lesson" within the first 10-15 minutes of the class, and then got bored. Some of my classmates had a rougher time, and it took most of the lesson. Others just didn't grok it even with 45 minutes, and needed after school tutors etc.
But the point is the lesson is absorbed as a chunk. Adding 1 minute to each math class I ever took would have been several hours more "math class" in my life but with no benefit to me whatsoever. The teacher wouldn't present 1/60th of a new concept in that extra minute that would graually accumulate and be the equivalent of university Calculus I by the end of highschool. That's not how learning works, spending 1 extra minute each day doesn't give you an extra lesson learned after the end of each month.
Either the teacher has enough time to teach the concepts or they don't. Kids learn at different rates, so the average lesson is designed around most of the kids fully understanding it within the first half of the period; the last half is is for the slower kids, and for practice problems.
Adding a minute to each class would have accomplished essentially nothing. It doesn't accumulate benefit the way getting paid a few cents extra per minute does.
Re:This is a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers.
Interestingly, that seems to be completely made up.
In 2012 there were 170 teaching days for elementary school teachers. After the strike and contract negotiations there were 180 teaching days in 2013. [chicagotribune.com] High school teachers also had a 10 day increase. In both cases, the length of the work day also increased (see the same link as before).
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By the capitalist wreckers who are trying to smash the unions and destroy public education.
Or do you think all those millionaires like Bill Gates and Obama who send their kids to elite private schools give a shit about public school students?
Interestingly, Obama always supported the all-powerful teachers union in Chicago, who managed to get working conditions so good for their members that the schools had to cut the number of teaching days to afford those gold-plated teachers. I cAs a direct consequence, this is one of the areas in the country with the lowest ratio of college grads. Yes we can!
I can't believe I'm the first one to reply that Correlation != causation.
Why exactly is this a direct consequence?
Re:Tenure is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought tenure was a way to keep administrators from messing with academic freedom. Without it teachers would "follow the party line" and never research or teach anything controversial.
Re:Tenure is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when have k-12 teachers been researchers?
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Tenure makes plenty of sense for college professors who had to work very hard to get it. (6 years doing the PhD, plus 3 - 4 years as a postdoc, years more as an adjunct, then anywhere from 5 - 10 as assistant professor, all the time having to be the very best or risk falling to the wayside.) And they do research. It is the research more than the teaching that needs to be free of administrators and that is what makes tenure useful. (Of course that doesn't happen in practice -- the NSF, the DoD, and other fed
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It was and still is.
I had an outstanding science teacher who resisted nonsensical, counter-productive standardised testing in Rutherford, NJ, and had the statistics to back up his contention. He could have caved in to the educrats and sold out his students, but he had the exemplary integrity to fight instead at considerable personal and social cost.
The school board tried to throw him under the proverbial bus, but he sued and eventually won. Without strong teacher representation he'd have been fired and man
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if it's written into the contract, how can you not honor it.
You can have a judge rule that the contract is illegal. Which is what they're trying to do.
Re:Teachers Never Get Fired (Score:5, Informative)
He would show up 20 minutes late, shit all over the floor, and complain about the humans who tresspass in his forest.
He wasn't even trying to do his job, but I guess competence or dedication of a teacher can never be questioned.
This is a true story. Its on the internet so you know its true.