And yesterday, the American Federation of Teachers endorsed Hillary Clinton.
That's from an article in the NYT — "Hillary Clinton Picks Up Teachers’ Union Endorsement" — that doesn't remind us what Obama is doing that has infuriated the teachers' unions.
I found this from June 2014: "AFT’s Weingarten smacks Arne Duncan about his praise for Vergara decision":
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten just sent a letter... to Education Secretary Arne Duncan blasting him for his statement praising a California judge’s decision to throw out five state statutes that provide job protections to teachers.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu handed down a ruling in Vergara vs California Wednesday siding with plaintiffs who argued that California children who live in low-income families receive an inadequate education because they get the weakest teachers who can’t be fired....
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The important thing about education policy in this country is how it affects Obama and the Democrats.
Follow the money to understand the debate. As one WI teacher union head said, paraphrasing, "I will represent the students when the students join the union."
Education is one segment of population that is totally in the Democrat's pocket, along with media and government bureaucracy. Democrats have sucked America so far down the rat hole, with help from establishment Republicans.
Everyone hates all the money in elections. OR, rather they say they hate all the money in elections.
Education debated at this level mention in the post is a great example of how to fix money in elections.
Remove the federal govt from any influence in education. How many $millions would be eliminated from lobbying of the Federal legislative, Executive and Judicial branches if the 10th amendment of the constitution was adhered to, (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.)
The 10th amendment fixes 97.3% of all the problems associated with the Federal govt.
The education debate is just a very small example of how the 10th amendment is supposed (prevent the Federal govt from using its unlimited power to force activity)work. It protects individual citizens---from the govt.
Time to right off another generation of black youth. But for the Dems, give 'em free shit, get their votes. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I think that was Al Shanker, founder of the AFT, and he was not from Wisconsin.
Otherwise, I do not blame the teachers so much - they are generally good people - as those who taught the teachers, and of course a basic part of that is "unions = good" with no critical thoughts allowed.
I have often asked my brother, former high school principal, how many poor performing teachers he fired during his tenure,
Can anyone guess?
A) 100
B) 50
C) 25
D) 0
If guessed D, you are a winner!
@Curious George, how did you get a quadruple post? And when do you plan to learn how to spell "write"?
@Humperdink, back when my boys were in elementary school there was a teacher who was so bad that children sometimes came out of her class needing psychiatric therapy (no, I'm not exaggerating!). The principal would do nothing about her, so one of the wives on the PTA -- a lawyer -- set out to document the legal case for her dismissal. The union fought fang and claw, and the eventual compromise was for the teacher to teach in middle school where no student would have to deal with her more than an hour a day. And not our middle school, either.
But, conversely, when a thoroughly inadequate principal took over our local high school, she had no trouble forcing out the best teachers, nor did the union lift a finger on their behalf.
Otherwise, I do not blame the teachers so much - they are generally good people
Yeah, but they're the ones who elect their union leadership and otherwise tolerate it. Besides, many if not most of these you refer to as "good people" are in teaching for the job security, the pay, the benefits, and the early retirement, and then, oh yeah, the children. In about that order. And they're counting on their union to get it for them.
... Judge Rolf M. Treu handed down a ruling in Vergara vs California Wednesday siding with plaintiffs who argued that California children who live in low-income families receive an inadequate education...
Wrong, as usual. Did the words 'gene' or 'genetics' show up anywhere in the arguments? I'll bet not.
Bad Students, Not Bad Schools
"Differences in educational achievement owe more to genetics than environment, finds study of UK students"
Kids' School Performance May Be Determined By Genes, Which Affect Motivation Levels [and intelligence, and all other personality factors]
Genes don't just influence your IQ—they determine how well you do in school
How well children perform on exams is largely explained by differences in their DNA.
Chinese girl in the ghetto.
"Ying Ma, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University" went to ghetto schools where she succeeded despite being poor and constantly harassed and abused by other students.
Ying Ma's "Chinese Girl in the Ghetto" is very good. And quite rare.
There are few such works, but the situation it describes is not merely widespread but in fact universal. In my almost thirty years in San Francisco, speaking to fellow Asian parents and alumni of the school district, I can confirm this was their experience of the normal state of most public schools. The active, violent oppression, or persecution, of the Asians by their fellow students rarely made it into the newspapers. It was coupled with the active hostility against Asians by the liberal white school board, who always seemed to resent their complaints.
This subject is politically incorrect, more than most.
For what it's worth, in San Francisco anyway, the situation is better now because the school district has largely re-segregated, and because Asians have become the plurality of the student population.
85%+/- of the teachers and administrators in our public schools are women - a ratio that would certainly not be tolerated if the sexes were reversed - and that has a lot to do with it.
They are indeed in it "for the children" - and nothing is going to convince them different - but men and women look at "what is good for the children" quite differently.
I agree that genetics are the unmentioned factor in many racial stories but black kids deserve to get decent teachers. The distribution is skewed a little in IQ but it is not the determinate for most kids. Part of the problem is that schools are devoted to all sorts of non-educational goals, including many social goals of the left. When I was a medical student my wife taught second grade in an east LA school near the medical school. Her kids came from poor families and many of them had parent s who did not speak English,
She had no discipline problems. She had to be careful in parent-teacher meetings to avoid any criticism of the kid's efforts to the parents or the kid would come in the next day black and blue. The parents wanted the kids to do well in school. That's course, was before teachers' unions and also the days when bright college girls went into teaching instead of law school or medical school.
The teachers' unions do not have the interests of children as a major concern.
The hold public sector unions have on the Democratic Party creates a feedback loop that ultimately destroys the Democratic Party's attempts to use the government to the benefit of the populace. The unions funnel money to the Democrats, and, because of the money, the Democrats in office refuse to kick the asses of corrupt or incompetent union members. Over time, human nature drives the union members to perform less & less for more & more money, & their bosses in elected government do nothing.
I have & am living through this experience right now in the MD suburbs of DC. When we first moved here, the county provided first rate services for high taxes. Now, 35 years later, the county provides third-rate services for even higher taxes.
This is probably one reason why FDR as governor of New York fought the creation of public sector unions. They're just one of those things that don't work in theory but at first do in practice. Finally, theory catches up with practice, and they work in neither.
Everyone hates all the money in elections.
No, everybody hates the other side's money in elections. There's nothing wrong with our side having money; besides, the only reason we need money is the counteract the other side's dirty money, which they got by being a bunch of big meanies.
No, everybody hates the other side's money in elections
Yeh, I thought the same while typing that. But it just muddies the water. The point is the money is people scared that the power of the federal govt is going to take what people have that is rightfully theirs. Remove the power and the money is forced to be split up between the states. And lets face it. Big money has no interest in influencing one state. As a percentage of elected legislators those at the state level have little interest in spending their life at the state capital. It is truly a citizen legislature.
If American public education were a product, who but an idiot would buy it? There was a time when the average American student stood on equal terms with the world. Now where do we stand in academic achievement? Sixteenth in the world? Seventeenth? Lower? In terms of per capita expenditure we're alone at the top, so who cares if Johnny can read? The state of public eduction in this country is entirely the achievement of the NEA, so their endorsement of the crone is fitting and proper.
It is the mother and father's responsibility to be their child's advocates and teachers.
The state of American education has actually changed very little. We are graduating people from high school at historically high numbers, and educating them about as well as we always have. The difference is, expectations have changed. Now we not only expect everyone to graduate high school, (which is a fairly modern idea) we expect everyone to go to college, which is an extremely modern, and highly unrealistic, idea.
All that being said, give parents as much choice, and responsibility, as possible. I am a public school teacher and I support vouchers and charters.
"educating them about as well as we always have."
My ex-wife, who was an elementary school teacher when I was a medical student and who was an advocate of public school when we were married, went back to teaching for a short while in the 90s when Pete Wilson was reducing class size by hiring more teachers. She was appalled at the change in teachers. When she taught it had been in east LA so the students were the same or better.
She could not get over the attitude of the teachers. They would ridicule the kids in their classes. She complimented the second grade teacher on her kids for reading readiness for third grade (where she was_) and the poor woman burst into tears. No one had ever complimented her on her teaching,
She said if she were doing it now, she would home school her kids.
If you have a child in a New York State school, read this and weep: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/nyregion/questions-of-bias-are-raised-about-a-teachers-exam-in-new-york.html?_r=0
I believe almost all the denizens of "Watters' World" have graduated from high school in this country.
Having graduated from Norwegian high school, I still do not understand it.
(And I graduated in the long ago before they found oil in the North Sea, so the kind of money you spend on the public schools here was quite unknown to us.)
Education, and K-12 public education in particular, remains a defining issue for Democratic politicians.
Teachers unions provide tremendous support for their favored candidates (phone banks and other in-kind assistance, not just money, although there's plenty of that too) yet many of those Democrats claim to represent (such as inner-city minorities) know all too well just how bad the union-ridden public schools available to their children are.
Thus, the few Democratic politicians worth considering are those few who have broken with the teachers' unions. And arguably those who can't put daylight between themselves and the teachers unions are fairly characterized as corrupt political hacks.
It is possible for Democratic politicians to defy the teachers unions and survive. And obvious example would be the recent Chicago mayoral election, where the teachers unions when all-in behind Jesús García, thus forcing a run-off election yet ultimately failing to eliminate their target.
Of course, Hillary! will toe the teachers' union line; did anyone really expect more of her?
What is going on here is a fight between two important Dem constituencies - unionized teachers and Blacks. The Blacks suppky the votes, but the teachers provide money and campaign workers, and in the end, that has typically been more important. I remember seeing something a couple decades ago that noted that somewhere around 1/3 of the delegates to the Dem National Convention were teachers. Likely fewer now, but..... The problem for the Dems is that the Black community is discovering that one of the big reasons that so many of them struggle is because the Dem party has sold out their education for support from the teachers' unions. Firing bad teachers is just part of this. Throw in vouchers and charter schools that are very popular withBlacks,but killed by Dem politicians catering to the teachers'unions.
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