OT: How one School District got rid of the Greedy Teachers Union

[an]

[quote=6packscaredy]I am not sure what a good teacher is.

Most things we learn ourselves.[/quote]Then what’s the point of having teachers at all if we learn things ourselves?

[an]

[quote=6packscaredy]No one can teach you the law. You must learn the law yourself.

I suppose a good teacher directs you toward better questions to think about.[/quote]So when you went to law school, you never asked the teacher anything and teacher never taught you anything you didn’t already know?

[SK in CV]

[quote=6packscaredy]I am not sure what a good teacher is.

Most things we learn ourselves.[/quote]

Good teachers motivate us to learn. They teach us curiosity. They teach us how to learn. They teach us critical thinking skills. I had teachers like that. Both of my kids had teachers like that. In fact one of my kids changed from a pretty average student to an outstanding student as a result of one year with one teacher. There are a lot of those kinds of teachers out there. But we need more of those kinds of teachers.

[scaredyclassic]

Motivation? Curiosity?

Stifled during my schooling.

Critical thinking?

No.

Learning to survive in a rigid hierarchical oppressive system suffused with boredom and arbitrary authority figures?

Yes!

Which is not to say ghats not invalyable

[scaredyclassic]

Dupe

[an]

[quote=6packscaredy]Motivation? Curiosity?

Stifled during my schooling.

Critical thinking?

No.

Learning to survive in a rigid hierarchical oppressive system suffused with boredom and arbitrary authority figures?

Yes!

Which is not to say ghats not invalyable[/quote]So what you’re saying is you haven’t had a good teacher in your entire education experience. That’s a lot of bad teachers…

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=AN][quote=6packscaredy]Motivation? Curiosity?

Stifled during my schooling.

Critical thinking?

No.

Learning to survive in a rigid hierarchical oppressive system suffused with boredom and arbitrary authority figures?

Yes!

Which is not to say ghats not invalyable[/quote]So what you’re saying is you haven’t had a good teacher in your entire education experience. That’s a lot of bad teachers…[/quote]

I don’t think I said I never had a good teacher. Just that I would not know how to define good in this context.

[scaredyclassic]

I’ve had fun teachers, funny teachers, interestingcteachers, depressed teachers, knowledgeable teachers, but no one who has ever caused me to learn more than I get from a book.

[scaredyclassic]

We learn from living, from reading, from thinking, questuoning, envisioning, calculating from observing; school has very limited opportunities to actually learn much. It’s too noisy and filled with cacaphony.

[CA renter]

[quote=EconProf]Now that the unions have come to dominate the teaching profession there is less incentive to be a better teacher, since one’s pay will not likely change. “Step” increases, where teachers get an automatic 2 or 3 percent raise every year just for serving their time, are common for the first five or ten years of teaching. Both the unions and school district administrators want to dodge the touchy subject of evaluating teaching quality and the progress of the teacher’s students in determining pay and promotions. As a result, good teachers get about the same pay as bad teachers, a situation less likely to prevail in the private sector. Incentives matter! Vouchers, private schools, and charter schools are more likely to resemble the private sector in this regard, which is why parents are increasingly demanding them.[/quote]

Once again, proclamations without anything to back up what you’re saying.

Where is the data that shows that unions cause high teacher attrition rates?

Where is the data that shows that private schools outperform public schools **after accounting for parent/student differences**?

[CA renter]

[quote=EconProf]Now that the unions have come to dominate the teaching profession there is less incentive to be a better teacher, since one’s pay will not likely change. “Step” increases, where teachers get an automatic 2 or 3 percent raise every year just for serving their time, are common for the first five or ten years of teaching. Both the unions and school district administrators want to dodge the touchy subject of evaluating teaching quality and the progress of the teacher’s students in determining pay and promotions. As a result, good teachers get about the same pay as bad teachers, a situation less likely to prevail in the private sector. Incentives matter! Vouchers, private schools, and charter schools are more likely to resemble the private sector in this regard, which is why parents are increasingly demanding them.[/quote]

In the bolded portion of your post, you seem to imply that education was better at some point in time…a time in which unions did not have power. Could you please tell us exactly when this time was so that we can compare outcomes from this utopian, union-free system with the outcomes from times when unions were strongest?

FYI, some history about the teachers’ unions to help you get started on this task:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/teachers-unions-rise-a-lo_n_1900130.html

—————-

Edited to add:

Teachers care far less about how much other teachers are paid than they do about how much they, themselves, are paid. Getting bonuses for doing special projects that significantly help the students, or getting some kind of financial reward for getting an aphasiac child to speak and verbally reason, or getting a dyslexic child to read fluently, or getting an unmotivated child to become more motivated would be nice, too. These types of rewards would matter a lot more to the “best and brightest” teachers, and I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of these teachers would favor these rewards long before they would advocate for getting rid of unions.

The “best and brightest” teachers tend to be the most opinionated, outspoken teachers. They rely on union protection when they have to fight against stupid, top-down, politically-driven “changes” to the education system that are designed more to provide profits to certain companies in the education industry than to really teach students how to learn. These teachers have no desire, whatsoever, to weaken their unions.

[an]

[quote=6packscaredy]I’ve had fun teachers, funny teachers, interestingcteachers, depressed teachers, knowledgeable teachers, but no one who has ever caused me to learn more than I get from a book.[/quote]
But none of those characteristics make a good teacher. Maybe some of those make a good friend or person to be around, but definitely not a good teacher. SK listed some characteristics that make a good teacher. If you were never had a teacher who increased your motivation, curiosity, critical thinking skills, make you want to actually learn about something you didn’t before, make you change your perspective on things, open up your horizon with new ideas, then I seriously believe you’ve never had experienced with a good teacher. I’ve had some great ones that had some of those criteria. I also had some really bad one that had none of those criteria and talked to the board the whole class long. Kids were either sleeping or passing note the entire time and he didn’t even notice.

[scaredyclassic]

Never let schooling interfere with your education.

[scaredyclassic]

The overarching emphasis on grades shows that our priority is hierarchy not edumucation.

[scaredyclassic]

That said, if money were no object I’d go to uc riverside and study entomology. I am interested in bugs.

[Author]

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