UT opinion article on SB 1021 and Prop 30

[an]

CAR, I find it a little funny that you think parents involvement are essential for improvement, yet you think most parents don’t know anything about educating their kids, so their input is not meaningful. AFAIK, the parents who are the most critical of the teachers are the parents who are most involved. The parents that don’t care tend to have no critical assessment of the teacher.

So, are you essentially saying that have parents be fully involve, but only to be a drone and listen to the teacher? Especially since you think bad teachers are few and far in between while bad parents are more abundant than not. Do I understand that correctly>

[scaredyclassic]

SCHOOL IS HELL, by matt groening.

so few citations to the simpson’s creator’s presimpsonian pivotal work, yet it covers virtually everything one needs to know about education.

[an]

[quote=scaredyclassic]SCHOOL IS HELL, by matt groening.

so few citations to the simpson’s creator’s presimpsonian pivotal work, yet it covers virtually everything one needs to know about education.[/quote]Only if you have a crappy teacher. I actually enjoyed schools most of the time.

[CA renter]

[quote=AN]CAR, I find it a little funny that you think parents involvement are essential for improvement, yet you think most parents don’t know anything about educating their kids, so their input is not meaningful. AFAIK, the parents who are the most critical of the teachers are the parents who are most involved. The parents that don’t care tend to have no critical assessment of the teacher.

So, are you essentially saying that have parents be fully involve, but only to be a drone and listen to the teacher? Especially since you think bad teachers are few and far in between while bad parents are more abundant than not. Do I understand that correctly>[/quote]

There is a HUGE difference between reading to your kids, taking them to museums, working with them on number concepts, having discussions with them regarding current events, explaining personal finance, etc. vs. managing a classroom full of children with a wide disparity of abilities and behavioral attributes. Knowing how to be a good parent is NOT like knowing how to be a good teacher in a school setting. While some skills can transfer, they are not the same.

And yes, there are FAR more bad parents (as a percentage of parents) than there are bad teachers (as a percentage of teachers); I would say it’s many, many multiples worse. Why? Because all you have to do in order to become a parent is have sex. Teachers, especially public school teachers, have to:

1.) have a college degree (a B.A./B.S., at minimum)

2.) have a teaching credential which almost always requires two full years of post-baccalaureate classes and teaching experience under the guidance of a master teacher and college professors

3.) pass criminal background checks

4.) submit to ongoing observations by on-site administrators and, possibly, master teachers.

—————

In general, the parents who are most critical of the teachers are the stay-at-home moms who have no life outside of their children, and who have managed to maintain a 7th-grade emotional disposition WRT malicious gossiping, cattiness, and insecurity.

The parents who help their kids the most are the ones who work with their children when the kids are in their care, and then send well-rested, well-fed children to school who are ready, willing, and able to stay on task and not cause problems in the classroom.

[Coronita]

[quote=AN][quote=scaredyclassic]SCHOOL IS HELL, by matt groening.

so few citations to the simpson’s creator’s presimpsonian pivotal work, yet it covers virtually everything one needs to know about education.[/quote]Only if you have a crappy teacher. I actually enjoyed schools most of the time.[/quote]

A crappy teacher by itself isn’t a problem.. I had a few crappy teachers that made it fun just going to class, because we didn’t have to do much…

A crappy teacher that *thinks* they are hot sh!t and feels compelled to exercise a certain level of authority on a subject matter while obviously being incompetent….can be miserable..Especially if you’re someone that can’t stand bullsh!t…

I hate people who talk and talk but can’t do…Talkers just suck…
Some people have this problem that for every 1 thing they do, they’ll talk it up with like 4 lines of bullsh!t. I prefer the folks that do 4 things and take 1 line or less to tell you what they did…

[CA renter]

[quote=livinincali]Here is the latest SDUSD complete budget I could find.

http://www.sandi.net/cms/lib/CA01001235/Centricity/Domain/13/budgetbooks/SD-Unified_Budget_Overview_2011-12_FINAL.pdf

On page 9 they say total enrollment including charter school in 131,541. It also says non charter enrollment is 117,249.

On page 35 you can see the breakdown of expenses excluding charters so it’s probably more accurate to compare expenses to 117K students.
The 3 major ones being.
Certified Salaries 516 million
Classified Salaries 218 million
Employee Benefits 311 million <- This is the invisible killer. Employees don't see it on their paycheck as an amount but it's increased from 276 million in 2007-2008 even with fewer staff. Everything else has decreased. Total expenditures on page 38 are 1.11 billion. So it seems pretty accurate to say 1,111,000,000/117,000 ~ 10K spending per kid. On page 36 you can see the number of positions by type. Basically 5000 classroom teachers and then about another 2500 employees related to special education. That is only 7500 of a total staff of 12,848. So there's quite of bit of not in the classroom staff in the budget.[/quote] Sorry, after so many pages on this thread I'm not really sure which post you're referring to here. This is the only one I could find where I asked you for proof of your assertion that 2% of any increased funds goes toward new teachers, supplies, infrastructure, etc. Also, I can't see where half of the new money is going toward raises, much less 10% raises! Can you please link to the data showing where teachers have been getting raises that would consume half of the increased funding? From everything I've seen and heard, most teachers have either seen stagnant wages (declining in real terms) or nominal cuts (making the cuts even more devastating in real terms), some being quite severe, since the recession started in ~2008. Is this the post you were responding to?: [quote=CA renter][quote=livinincali]The problem with giving schools more money is that it’s never used for the things they say it will be used for. Say we gave SDUSD a 10% increase in the budget. Anybody want to bet that least than half of that increase is going to give the existing teachers and administrator raises? They might use 2% of that money to hire new teachers and make a big spectacle about how they hired those new teachers but the vast majority of that money is going to the existing employees in raises. Not only that but the biggest portion is going to go to those people that have a short time left in the classroom (i.e. nearing retirement) or those already not in the classroom (Administrators). Why should we give money money to schools when we know the money isn’t going to be used to improve the education experience. The existing administrators and teachers are the ones that are failing and giving them all 10% raises isn’t going to suddenly make them better teachers or administrators.[/quote]

Again…evidence, please![/quote]

[an]

[quote=CA renter]In general, the parents who are most critical of the teachers are the stay-at-home moms who have no life outside of their children, and who have managed to maintain a 7th-grade emotional disposition WRT malicious gossiping, cattiness, and insecurity.

The parents who help their kids the most are the ones who work with their children when the kids are in their care, and then send well-rested, well-fed children to school who are ready, willing, and able to stay on task and not cause problems in the classroom.[/quote]Just as I expected and stated. You want parents to be involve, but only limit to the classroom door and supposed to completely trust the education of their kids to someone else. You’re hoping for an ideal that’s very rare. The parents who take an active role in their kids’ education will also be active in PTO, volunteer in the classroom, take their kids to various activities and know the life/capability of their kids. It’s very rare to have the type of parents you’re describing.

As for the stay at home moms, that’s exactly what I said. The parents who are most critical are the parents who are most involved. You can’t be that involve in your kids’ education when you’re working 10-12 hours/day. When you’re extremely involve, you’ll see the inadequacy of the teacher teaching their kids, why is why they’re critical about it. As for the traits you describe of the stay at home moms, I don’t think it has anything to do w/ stay at home mom but more about a particular type of woman.

FYI, I never imply that there are as many bad teachers as bad parents. But that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I said that you expect parents to be involve in their kids’ education, but suppose to listen to the teacher 100%, as if the teacher knows everything about your kids. Sorry but real life doesn’t work that way.

Just because the role of a parent is different than a teacher does not mean a parent does not know/see when their kids’ teachers are not good or are inadequate for their children. After all, as you said, a teacher have to manage a lot of kids. Some are better at it than others. But parents who are involve and know their kids will see when the kids are being taught by a good teacher and when they’re being neglected by a bad teacher. To parents have no clue of what a good teacher look like is pretty out of touch. But, that might explain your thinking.

BTW, aren’t you a stay at home mom? Aren’t all home schooling moms are stay at home moms?

[an]

[quote=flu][quote=AN][quote=scaredyclassic]SCHOOL IS HELL, by matt groening.

so few citations to the simpson’s creator’s presimpsonian pivotal work, yet it covers virtually everything one needs to know about education.[/quote]Only if you have a crappy teacher. I actually enjoyed schools most of the time.[/quote]

A crappy teacher by itself isn’t a problem.. I had a few crappy teachers that made it fun just going to class, because we didn’t have to do much…

A crappy teacher that *thinks* they are hot sh!t and feels compelled to exercise a certain level of authority on a subject matter while obviously being incompetent….can be miserable..Especially if you’re someone that can’t stand bullsh!t…

I hate people who talk and talk but can’t do…Talkers just suck…
Some people have this problem that for every 1 thing they do, they’ll talk it up with like 4 lines of bullsh!t. I prefer the folks that do 4 things and take 1 line or less to tell you what they did…[/quote]I totally agree. The crappy teachers I had were benign, so, it was fun, because I slept in those class and still get an easy A. The crappy teacher I was referring to are those who are the type you’re describing or much worse. The worse one are the ones that belittle the children, abuse the children, demean the children, etc. Those are the teachers that make school hell.

[CA renter]

AN, flu was directing that last part at me. He’s not trying to make an actual point.

[an]

[quote=CA renter]AN, flu was directing that last part at me. He’s not trying to make an actual point.[/quote]Whether he’s directing that at you or not is irrelevant. I totally agree with him that those are crappy teachers. But IMHO, those are not the worse. The worse teachers are those that belittle, demean,abuse, etc their students.

But it’s a little sickening to hear you defend them so easily (even though you say you don’t condone those behavior). If you defended those teachers so easily, how can I take anything you say as objective and unbiased analysis of the situation?

[CA renter]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]AN, flu was directing that last part at me. He’s not trying to make an actual point.[/quote]Whether he’s directing that at you or not is irrelevant. I totally agree with him that those are crappy teachers. But IMHO, those are not the worse. The worse teachers are those that belittle, demean,abuse, etc their students.

But it’s a little sickening to hear you defend them so easily (even though you say you don’t condone those behavior). If you defended those teachers so easily, how can I take anything you say as objective and unbiased analysis of the situation?[/quote]

I’m not at all defending them, but what we don’t know is the context of those situations. I’ve heard and seen situations that might appear one way if we were to look at a transcript (especially one that is truncated), but look entirely different when seen in context.

I’m willing to bet that if we were to record all the goings-on at your house when you had 20 kids there every weeekday for a year (including disrespectful ones, angry ones, ones who never listen to you, etc.), we’d hear things that would make most people want to call CPS on you. I’d lay money on it. Now imagine if we could cut away all of the conversation before and after the worst thing you’d say so that we don’t have context, how do you think that would sound?

[CA renter]

Would you be interested in an anecdotal example of what I’m talking about, based on my own experience? Don’t want to type it all out (shout out to you, flu!) if you’re not interested.

[CA renter]

[quote=flu][quote=AN][quote=scaredyclassic]SCHOOL IS HELL, by matt groening.

so few citations to the simpson’s creator’s presimpsonian pivotal work, yet it covers virtually everything one needs to know about education.[/quote]Only if you have a crappy teacher. I actually enjoyed schools most of the time.[/quote]

A crappy teacher by itself isn’t a problem.. I had a few crappy teachers that made it fun just going to class, because we didn’t have to do much…

A crappy teacher that *thinks* they are hot sh!t and feels compelled to exercise a certain level of authority on a subject matter while obviously being incompetent….can be miserable..Especially if you’re someone that can’t stand bullsh!t…

I hate people who talk and talk but can’t do…Talkers just suck…
Some people have this problem that for every 1 thing they do, they’ll talk it up with like 4 lines of bullsh!t. I prefer the folks that do 4 things and take 1 line or less to tell you what they did…[/quote]

LOL! I think this silly barb of yours is aimed at me, as usual. I can back up everything I say. The only reason I have longer posts is because I’m not full of bullshit opinions based entirely on right-wing propaganda and talking points…I come with experience, facts, and data — fully cited — unlike you.

If you have noting insightful or useful to add to these threads, then STFU (you requested that we say that, BTW).

I have no idea why you feel so antagonistic toward me when I’ve been nothing but nice to you. Perhaps having your ignorant, narrow-minded beliefs shattered by the truth is too uncomfortable for you to bear.

[CA renter]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]In general, the parents who are most critical of the teachers are the stay-at-home moms who have no life outside of their children, and who have managed to maintain a 7th-grade emotional disposition WRT malicious gossiping, cattiness, and insecurity.

The parents who help their kids the most are the ones who work with their children when the kids are in their care, and then send well-rested, well-fed children to school who are ready, willing, and able to stay on task and not cause problems in the classroom.[/quote]Just as I expected and stated. You want parents to be involve, but only limit to the classroom door and supposed to completely trust the education of their kids to someone else. You’re hoping for an ideal that’s very rare. The parents who take an active role in their kids’ education will also be active in PTO, volunteer in the classroom, take their kids to various activities and know the life/capability of their kids. It’s very rare to have the type of parents you’re describing.

As for the stay at home moms, that’s exactly what I said. The parents who are most critical are the parents who are most involved. You can’t be that involve in your kids’ education when you’re working 10-12 hours/day. When you’re extremely involve, you’ll see the inadequacy of the teacher teaching their kids, why is why they’re critical about it. As for the traits you describe of the stay at home moms, I don’t think it has anything to do w/ stay at home mom but more about a particular type of woman.

FYI, I never imply that there are as many bad teachers as bad parents. But that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I said that you expect parents to be involve in their kids’ education, but suppose to listen to the teacher 100%, as if the teacher knows everything about your kids. Sorry but real life doesn’t work that way.

Just because the role of a parent is different than a teacher does not mean a parent does not know/see when their kids’ teachers are not good or are inadequate for their children. After all, as you said, a teacher have to manage a lot of kids. Some are better at it than others. But parents who are involve and know their kids will see when the kids are being taught by a good teacher and when they’re being neglected by a bad teacher. To parents have no clue of what a good teacher look like is pretty out of touch. But, that might explain your thinking.

BTW, aren’t you a stay at home mom? Aren’t all home schooling moms are stay at home moms?[/quote]

Yes, I’m currently a SAHM, and while most homeschooling parents (many are dads, BTW) are home, some work outside the home or work in a home office.

I’m not saying all SAHMs are this way, only certain ones, and they’re usually the ones who are constantly trying to force the entire class (or school, even!) to do what they want. It doesn’t matter to them whether or not these changes would benefit the students as a whole, they only care about their own child. That’s fine when you’re homeschooling, but it’s NOT okay when your child has to attend a school/class with many other children.

Our eldest attended a public school for her first year and I volunteered in the classroom on a regular basis. The teacher liked me because I was credentialed, so could help her with some of the paperwork and ongoing assessments, etc. Unfortunately, many of the other moms who volunteered in the classroom were more of a hindrance than help. They chatted with their kids and their kids’ friends (totally distracting the kids from their assignments), and chatted with other moms who might be in or near the classroom. Then, they would gather with the other hens outside of the classroom after school and make snide remarks about the teacher’s ability, etc. I’ve seen this more often than I care to admit. Sorry, but that is not helping your children.

Because schools have to deal with far more than a parent’s precious little Johnny/Susie, they will allocate resources — including teacher time and attention, etc. — in a way that some parents might not like. Sorry, but if the parents think that a teacher should spend 50% of his/her time coddling and working with little Johnny, then they are out in left field. Teachers have to deal with a lot more than a single student and his/her high-maintenance momma.

[edited to add:]

So…yes, the best way for a parent to help his/her child is to work with them at home and make sure they come to school ready and willing to work and learn.

[Coronita]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]AN, flu was directing that last part at me. He’s not trying to make an actual point.[/quote]Whether he’s directing that at you or not is irrelevant. I totally agree with him that those are crappy teachers. But IMHO, those are not the worse. The worse teachers are those that belittle, demean,abuse, etc their students.

But it’s a little sickening to hear you defend them so easily (even though you say you don’t condone those behavior). If you defended those teachers so easily, how can I take anything you say as objective and unbiased analysis of the situation?[/quote]

I didn’t even realize we were talking about CAR until now. CAR if you took it because you think I was referring to you, I’m sorry you did, because I wasn’t…

Anyway, AN I was specifically referring to some of my public school teachers that were just horrible in different ways….And there were many of them, though some of them, as I said, ended up being entertaining…

First, there was my sixth grade math teacher…Who conveniently called me into a parent-teacher conference, because apparently I was (1) not paying attention (2) seemed like I was clueless on what was going on and (3) had a problem with focusing….

The sixth grade honors math teacher, mind you, had a thick Californian accent, complete with every other word coming out of his math was “dude”….And part of the reason why I was tuning out was because I couldn’t understand what the he was saying….
He could barely teach the subject, kept rambling as if he knew what was talking about…The conference was pretty hysterical. I mean, here was this teacher, obviously teaching a subject way over his head, trying to explain to my parents that math wasn’t my subject and how when I grow up, it’s probably best that I don’t pursue a STEM degree..Lol….I think that was the first time my dad ever expressed anything about public schools…the first thing that came out of my dad’s mouth was … “Are you kidding me? That is honor’s math in the U.S., and “he” is your teacher?”

Seventh grade honors math wasn’t much better. The teacher was sort of a mean nasty person.. I still remember she would give everyone a “blue slip” for everything, and send kids to the principal’s office for the smallest things…Her teaching skill wasn’t that great either…A lot of parents complained about her, but nothing happened… Personally, I got along just fine with that teacher.. She taught verbatim from the book, so I just ended up reading the textbook instead of listening to her.

High school wasn’t much better. The English (H) teacher had a really nasty temper…Blew a gasket if you sat too close, blew a gasket if you got up to get a tissue, or had to go to the bathroom, or just was a bad mood.

10th grade was actually fun… English (H) was taught by a surfer dude again… He shared with us that when he was a kid, he hated English and reading, so he got by with cliff notes and the comics version of required reading… I thought it was such a good idea and great tip, that I basically did the same thing that year and saved a bunch time by reading cliff notes and checking out movie versions of class novels….

11th grade US History AP was fun. It was taught by a diehard anti-Reagan guy.. He always went off the deep end about “Ronnie-nomics”… Thought JFK was God….Talked about cops being “pigs”, talked about revolting against authority, and talked about being “free”…He also talked about his view on relationships… (guy ended up having an affair with a former student in his class….uh yeah)….That’s all I remember about that class. We showed up, listened to his B.S. and stories and took the AP exam at the end of the year after cramming the last two weeks before…

12th grade was actually great. I had a real physics AP teacher and a real math teacher calculus BC teacher…Both intentionally flunked half the class the two weeks of school… Their way of weeding out the students that wouldn’t be able to keep up..Both stuck exactly to the topic, no BS, no crap…. For the rest of us that survived, we pretty much covered the first year of college during the entire year….Still my favorite two teachers…..

…..
Funny, how after all these years, it’s these things that stick in one’s mind….And supposedly I went to one of the better public schools at the time….

[Author]

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