……

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_50.htm

In point of fact, it IS a brilliant , insightful show… and while I may be emotionally stunted, my intellect is adequate (more or less).

The influx of fleeing Californians alone might ruin us. ;-)

aero on April 5, 2008 at 1:36 PM

It’s no joke. That is, in large part, what did it here.

They ruined their own cities and then moved up here and ruined ours.

I’m just surprised that people are assuming that all this “vacation” time exists. Even my daughter, a student, gets out June 6 this year and returns the first week of August. She’ll have 1 and 1/2 weeks at Christmas. The teachers have less. We’re in SC and believe me, the salaries are nothing to write home about.

As to the original issue of the post, I do think teachers and Administrators who use this “Zero-Tolerance” policy in this way are idiots. Common sense has gone out the windows of the public schools when it comes to these sexual harrassment charges.

29Victor on April 5, 2008 at 1:28 PM

Ouch. I am so sorry–that really stinks. I guess I have grown complacent living in a predominantly red state. We have our problems, but at least there are mostly conservatives in charge (for now), and no overt corruption. One can certainly do worse than Texas. And based on our growth rate (four of the top ten fastest growing cities in the nation are in Texas), everyone else is starting to figure that out, too. The influx of fleeing Californians alone might ruin us. ;-)

That should be against the law. People should not be REQUIRED to join a union in order to have the ability to pursue their profession.

aero on April 5, 2008 at 9:48 AM

Yes, it should be. But I live in Washington State. Have you heard about Washington State? Did you read about our last governortorial election?

Here’s the lowdown:

The Democrat lost (gasp).

So she called for a recount of certain (liberal counties), which she had to pay for. She lost again.

(Somewhere in here the head of the King County Chairman of the Dem Party found some “lost ballots”)

So she called for another recount of those same counties, which she had to pay for. She lost yet again.

So she called for a machine recount of those counties and election officials were allowed to “interpret voter intent” in this one. She one this one and was proclaimed to be governor.

The third recount (the one she finally won) was underwritten by the state worker’s union.

But the excitement doesn’t end there…

Washington State is the home of a particularly stupid law that allows the governor to negotiate and approve the state worker’s contract. Just the governor. On her own. You know, the one who is in office because of the state worker’s union.

So she negotiated a contract that stipulated that every state worker in Washington has to belong to the union. Pretty neat how that worked out huh? Pretty neat, of course, except for those state workers who were fired for refusing to join the union.

Governor Gregoire, owned lock, stock and barrel by the state worker’s union.

I had to hear about this union fiasco on Fox News because my local media didn’t report on it at all(at least not that I saw).

All this is waiting for is a lawsuit

That is the whole underlying reason for zero tolerance policies. When the teacher takes 6-year-old Timmy aside to explain that it isn’t nice to slap Mary on the bum and please don’t do it again, that’s exercising judgement. When you expel 13-year-old Alex for repeartedly groping his female classmates, that’s favoritism because you didn’t expel Timmy. Or worse, it could be ‘racism’. It’s easier to have “no tolerance” and avoid lawyers altogether. Eliminate the lawyers or make plaintiffs pay when losing frivolous lawsuits and much of the ZT need goes away.

Something I’ve wondered all my life – do teachers get paid for those three months they are off? If anybody can enlighten me, please do.

abcurtis on April 5, 2008 at 8:17 AM

Technically, teachers get paid for the days they actually work. But (at least in Texas) their annual salaries are calculated and their checks are spread out over 12 months as a courtesy. So they get checks all year round, but they are technically only being paid for Aug-May.

So, aero, here you wouldn’t have had a choice but to join the union. Yuck.

29Victor on April 4, 2008 at 11:54 PM

That should be against the law. People should not be REQUIRED to join a union in order to have the ability to pursue their profession. I don’t think I would have lasted even the three years I did as a teacher if I had been forced to join a union. As it was, I was already pretty much a lone conservative voice in the wilderness.

Not half a year, more like 2/3. Do you know any public school teachers that don’t get a three month vacation in the summer, two weeks in December, and another two weeks in the spring?

Something I’ve wondered all my life – do teachers get paid for those three months they are off? If anybody can enlighten me, please do.

After the meeting, he said, principals were confused about when to call police.

Acts 19:32 – Some therefore cried one thing and some another, for the assembly was confused, and most of them did not know why they had come together.
New King James Version © 1982 Thomas Nelson

Who says the Bible isnt relevant today?

In all seriousness, until WE start electing school boards who’ll hold these nitwits accountable, this will continue, it will get worse. Schools look like and are run like prisons now. “Resource Officer?” Phooey – armed police guard. The fact that the elected school boards are silent in all this says a lot.

A 7 year old “serial offender” should have HIS butt swatted and his parents called. You dont haul a 7 year old off to jail and ruin him for his school life. Wonder how the cop felt in all this?

Woodbridge, Virginia.

Robert

The above link pointed to just a subset of the problems.

My state’s public school teachers are 100% unionized and 97.6% of union money went to Democrats.

If this kind of low performance, fiscal waste and kickbacks were discovered going on in a publicly held company, there would be mass fireings and possibly jail time. But here, in my state, everyone knows exactly what’s going on and no one cares. And as long as the government schools keep babysitting our kids for 6 hours a day so that we can persue other interests, no one is going to do a thing about it.

I’m not citing a study. When I was teaching school the Assistant Superintendent walked us through how the Federal Government was arriving at the numbers used to judge our school system.

Buford on April 4, 2008 at 8:25 PM

Oh, well then… So you’re citing a school superintendent for facts on why there were so many dropouts in one of his schools…. uh….hmmmmm…..

You realize that you’re telling this to a guy that has heard school admins give every excuse in the book and blame everything from developmentally disabled kids to class size to George Bush to explain why their schools are failing.

Nevertheless, you know the guy way better than I do so I’m going to trust your judgment on this one.

But, like I said before, you’re talking about your experience in your district and the underlying circumstances there and I’m talking about the circumstances in my area. So… we’re going to have different reasons for the dropout rates.

And, like I said before, the study that I was citing wasn’t a federal study, it was done for the Department of Education, but it was done by John Hopkins University and they (according to them) took great pains to factor in the kinds of things that you have been pointing out. Our district super tried to say that the results weren’t valid, but no one believed her (I think it’s a her) this time.

rokemronnie on April 4, 2008 at 6:45 PM

Normally correcting spelling mistakes is picayune and petty. In this case, however, since we’re discussing education, since you’re a product of public schools, and since the difference between allude and elude is so glaring, it seemed germane.

I believe it’s spelled “German.” (I kid).

My younger daughter was getting confused by the “manipulatives” used by her teacher in her early algebra class. Finally I put them aside, got a sheet of paper and wrote a simple equation. Then I showed her how if you do the same operation to both sides of the equation, it’s still equal and in a couple of hours taught her the basics. The next day she told me that her teacher said that while it wasn’t the way they were learning it, as long as she got the correct answers it was okay. Imagine that, my daughter had to get her teacher’s approval to do algebra in a math class.

One of the other problems that I have with public schools. The kids are expected to learn a certain way, if they don’t happen to be the kinds of kids who learn that way then they are out of luck.

Since teachers have so many students and are expected to control/teach them all together there is probably little they can do about that. Nevertheless, I know plenty of really smart kids who believe that they’re dumb just because they don’t learn the way that they are expected to.

Thanks for the link.

My state (Washington) is 100% unionized. I figured as much.

So, aero, here you wouldn’t have had a choice but to join the union. Yuck.

tikvah- that really happened? is the victim ok/alive? how horrible!

NightmareOnKStreet on April 4, 2008 at 8:23 PM

Yeah, it did :-(. I think the story was kept quiet in Baltimore (not in the news), but my boss at the time was a psychiatrist and worked at the facility where he was sent for counseling. I don’t have an update on the victim, but I think they were able to reattach it.

For a lot of these zero tolerance cases, like the butt slapping, it’s obviously taken to the ridiculous, but I wonder how many of these may have been victims of sexual abuse (like in the case I mentioned) acting things out on other children. They’re not doing it maliciously/intentionally, but the schools still need to protect the other kids, and I think that future teachers/schools need to be aware that this has been an issue in the past.

We don’t see this money since she uses it to get supplies for the year, the school district gives her $200.00 per year for supplies, when she spends much more (about 2k a year).

You see the money. You just choose to spend it on supplies that I doubt are absolutely necessary. If your wife is the creative and outstanding teacher that you believe her to be, I’m sure she can figure out how to teach kids without spending all that money.

rokemronnie on April 4, 2008 at 6:45 PM

In this you are wrong. When I went from private industry to teaching I was appalled to find out that teachers were expected to buy their own basic classroom supplies. Supplies that were pretty much necessary for the job. Basic things like chalk/white board markers. If you go into a classroom it is a good bet that everything in that classroom with the exception of text books and furniture has been paid for by the teacher.

Having said that, teachers by and large are well compensated for the work they do. I knew of teachers that were making $120k per year. Of course you had to put in over 30 years and have a PhD to get that, but it was certainly doable.

I would like to see the study that your are citing. You’ve posted a lot of facts about it, but haven’t said where you are getting those facts yet.

29Victor on April 4, 2008 at 5:17 PM

I’m not citing a study. When I was teaching school the Assistant Superintendent walked us through how the Federal Government was arriving at the numbers used to judge our school system. This was done so that we could look at what part of the figures we could actually do something about and what things we had no control over. It was very obvious that we could only affect the dropout rate as calculated by only a percentage point or two. This had to be done as under No Child Left Behind the school system gets to pick what criteria is used to be graded on performance. (Sounds like garbage, but then NCLB is pretty much garbage anyway, and a huge infringement on state’s rights.) We wanted to be sure we picked criteria we could actually have some effect on, and it was readily apparent that we had no control over the dropout rate as the Federal Government calculates it.

…3 year old boy who ripped off another boy’s penis on the first day of school…
tikvah on April 4, 2008 at 8:17 PM

tikvah- that really happened? is the victim ok/alive? how horrible!