turfmann on February 28, 2011 at 4:27 PM

Or let people choose. Give parents 90% vouchers to the school of their choice.

In less than 5 years, the worst schools will be closed and leased back to private schools.

I do think that we should have separate schools for special needs children. Private and public schools should be for teaching children that can and want to learn. There are children that developmentally disabled that cannot learn and will be forced to stay in a public setting.

barnone on February 28, 2011 at 5:03 PM

My middle daughter has been accepted at the local charter high school starting this fall (one of the nation’s best high schools). There is no teacher’s union and the facility is about as ramshackle as can be imagined. The school is housed in an abandoned furniture store. There is nothing pretty about the classrooms – cables hang from exposed trusses, the place needs a paint job, the wooden floors haven’t been urathaned since forever.

But apparently the kids and the teachers are clicking. There are twice as many applicants as there are available seats. They are opening a new campus across the street in the fall, effectively doubling their enrollment – only to have the applications double!

Meanwhile, the local school system is b****ing about the amount of money that they have to surrender to the charter school and the local voc-tec school because so many kids are opting out of their system. They have NO clue at all!

For instance, there is an administrator in our school system that sends her kids to the local Catholic High School! There is a former school committee member that is prominently displayed with his family on the brochure of the same school! All the while, the teachers are upset with the parents because we complain about the fact that they want to send love letters of support to President Obama, and that that awful Sarah Palin is a moron. True story – except that I get to pay for it.

OK. And if things don’t come up to your standards (never heard what those are) what’s Plan B? Or will we never hear anything more about it down the road if things are more screwed up than ever?

Actually, I think what you outlined should be done everywhere-companies, police, fire, military. Incompetence is ubiquitous.

Dr. ZhivBlago on February 28, 2011 at 5:58 PM

I’ll tell you what. My great aunt and her niece raised my grandfather. Both women were one-room-schoolhouse teachers. My grandfather was the valedictorian of his high school class but never attended college. He was the kind of man that knew just about everything about everything. Any question you could conjure up, he would have something to offer. He was about as educated a man as I have ever met in my lifetime. Yet, there was no teacher’s union anywhere to be found in his education. And the room that he was educated in was probably smaller than the average teacher’s lounge in a modern school.

And I should also mention that my wife and I have pulled our kids out of public schools when things were beyond the pale and homeschooled them. Homeschooling is something that is so far outside of our comfort zone as to be ridiculous. No one, no one, homeschooled their kids when we were children. No one. Yet, we would join together with other families for activities and find 20 to 30 kids in the group! Pretty damning for the public school system.

Canada sucks. What is new?

CWforFreedom on February 28, 2011 at 5:55 PM

It appears as though you’re still fighting mental health. Good for you

turfmann on February 28, 2011 at 4:27 PM

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OK. And if things don’t come up to your standards (never heard what those are) what’s Plan B? Or will we never hear anything more about it down the road if things are more screwed up than ever?

Actually, I think what you outlined should be done everywhere-companies, police, fire, military. Incompetence is ubiquitous.

Rather, what’s missed is that the district released the data on teachers being fired to pressure the State to not cut the education budget to the city. In 1975 the city had a similar plan to lay off 13,000 teachers, but eventually only let go of around 5,000. The school system is still in shambles today, with a deficit of senior teachers thanks to the generation gap left by the large-scale lay-offs, and chronic classroom overcrowding. The city wouldn’t dream of laying off 20,000 teachers, as that’s nearly a quarter of all NYC teachers, and would see some schools lose over half their teaching force (I assume no one here actually read the proposal).

The whole talk about seniority firing and stuff is also just bluster. Like I said, Bloomberg would never do it. The point is that the State is running out of money because those multi-millionaires in Manhattan have been making out like bandits, between favorable tax conditions and profiting off the economic collapse that many of them had hands in. Until we realize that we can’t keep rewarding them for failure our basic institutions will suffer.

Last night I saw Waiting for Superman. It was quite good and I recommend it.

Tzetzes on February 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM

Did you see the part where Canada fired an entire class of 8th grade students for not performing up to par? The part where the school is essentially running on fumes now because it’s incredibly expensive per-student and the donations from people like Soros and groups like Goldman-Sachs have dried up? Or what about the part where parents need to jump through hoops to get their kids registered for the “lotteries”, and only the best of the best get selected? Of course not, because that would blow up the whole notion of Canada’s school being any better then a public school.

China and India lag behind us in general education because they direct almost all of their funding to the gifted students, while providing virtually no resources for the students who are most troubled. Canada’s model mirrors that, expensive education for the gifted, and less money left over for the underachievers. Besides, whose ever heard of a “public school” that can kick a student out for bad test results (which is what Canada does)?

These days teachers have very handsome salaries and labor laws protect educators from blatant abuses. Due process should be permitted to prevent vengeance by someone upset by a bad grade, for example.

Unfortunately, nowadays the public, which pays the freight for bad teachers, has to undertake ridiculously complex and expensive steps legally to muster out those rotten apples. Everyone suffers for this protection racket.

I’m seriously wondering when a course in ethics and school law was dropped by state teacher-certification boards. Don’t most states have laws that justify teacher firings these days?

Or let people choose. Give parents 90% vouchers to the school of their choice.

In less than 5 years, the worst schools will be closed and leased back to private schools.

I do think that we should have separate schools for special needs children. Private and public schools should be for teaching children that can and want to learn. There are children that developmentally disabled that cannot learn and will be forced to stay in a public setting.

I’m hard pressed to think of any other occupation where you can keep drawing full pay – sometimes for up to a decade, as the highlighted article points out – after those types of abuses.

Ever heard of a police union, Ed?

Anyone see how this could become a problem?

Chip on February 28, 2011 at 4:17 PM

Not if you’re a Marxist…

There are all kinds of crazy laws that don’t allow a teacher to be fired absent a hearing by the state department of education, which takes more than 1 year to hold the hearing. And, like all beauracrats, teh hearing officers tend not to uphold firings. And, you have to pay the teachers during the time you are waiting for the hearing to be held.

So, firing a teacher is very difficult to accomplish, for any reason.

I’ve never understood what justification there is for this. At teh college level, the argument is that professors need to be free from retribution for ideas, so that they can research and write unpopular ideas, etc. At least at the higher education level, an argument can be made that “academic freedom” is worth such rules.

But why is this needed for a sophmore history teacher? What controversial research and writing is a 10th grade math teacher engaged in?

There is no basis for k-12 teachers having more job security than any other employee at any other job.

I’m hard pressed to think of any other occupation where you can keep drawing full pay – sometimes for up to a decade, as the highlighted article points out – after those types of abuses. In fact, I don’t know of any others where you can keep getting paid even if your performance was exceptional but there simply wasn’t enough work for you.

Since the UAW has this feature in their contract, I would assume that every governmental employee union has it as well.

It’s come to this: Grief counselors meeting with Democrats over election;
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Update: Pelosi plans party to celebrate

Congress’s “accomplishments”
posted at 6:10 pm on November 8, 2010 by Allahpundit
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I don’t know what they’re so depressed about. With Nancy Pelosi back in charge, surely they’re only two years away from a new House majority.

Stage One isn’t anger, it’s denial.

Anger is Stage Two. Which makes me think that maybe this is actually a covert way of trying to torpedo Pelosi’s bid for minority leader.

(Her office says she wasn’t the one who sent the counselors.)

The only conceivable psychological explanation for why House liberals would want to retain her is that they’re stuck in Stage One; if the counselors can move them to Stage Two, then, just possibly, the healing can begin. We’ll know they’re on the track to “wellness” when they dump her and we start seeing more enraged rants about the “white right” and their “temper tantrum” online.

Exit question: What’s next, grief counselors for stressed-out mafia bosses? Oops!

Update: Going to be a long, long time before they’re off Stage One:
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/08/its-come-to-this-grief-counselors-meeting-with-democrats-over-election/

The Great Common Sense Crusade!