[CA renter]

[quote=EconProf]Let’s step back from the minutia this thread has turned into and look at the larger issues this ruling points to. Much of the national and CA media have pointed out the shakeup this will have on public sector unions.
In essence, the court pointed out what has been obvious to the broader public for a long time: that what teachers’ unions advocate and practice hurts especially the poor and minority population, the very people liberals claim to want to help. The unions protect the adults at the expense of the children. The black and Hispanic parents who see their children trapped in failing schools have been clamoring for change. They cannot afford the private schools the rich liberals opt for, but favor vouchers, home-schooling, charter schools, lotteries to get into union-free schools–anything but their union-dominated local schools.
Now it will be interesting to witness the coming war within the democratic party. How will black and Hispanic politicians react to the rising tide of awareness among their own electorate of the harmful effects of liberalism. Some courageous democrats have already spoken up and broken from the status quo. More will be forced to in the future. This will be interesting to watch.[/quote]

1. You like to make sweeping generalizations about many topics without providing ANY proof, evidence, data, statistics, studies, or logical reasoning of any sort. So, again, I will ask you: Where is your evidence that teachers’ unions negatively affect students?

2. As BG has already pointed out, these parents already have access to all of the resources you’ve noted, with the exception of vouchers (and there is NO evidence that vouchers would improve things, either).

[CA renter]

[quote=joec]

And who’s fault is it that administrators have little experience and is fast-tracked through the classroom? I assume it’s other administrators and teachers as well. If they can’t manage/police themselves, obviously tax payers want to have a say how things are being done.

Since they’re (administrators I assume) are also tax payer funded, I certainly would be FOR going after them and cleaning their issues up as well and all the issues you bring up.

Administrators make a TON of money I’ve noticed in the schools and I’d certainly be for getting rid of a lot of them and curbing back their benefits/pay unless there is progress/benefits in the classrooms for the kids/teachers.

Nothing should be shielded/off the table.

In regards to playing office politics/kiss ass to become an administrator…unfortunately, that’s just a fact of life in ALL business/life/home/family you name it. This will never go away, but that doesn’t mean good administrators with other like minded good administrators can’t play the same game and do positive changes. The notion that every single administrator is underqualified and a bane to all teachers can’t be real.

The message you present just consistently comes off as a teacher who blames administrators (upper management) for the ills of the system. If teachers don’t like the situation, go and run or get promoted as an administrator yourself and try new things and fix the problem. We wouldn’t be here discussing this if there weren’t such a big problem and since schools are still tax payer funded and we pay for it, outside people should have a greater say in what to do.

Even better is if all schools just became private and I can just get 10k and pay for it. If I choose to home school, maybe get direct tax credits or something so people can vote with their dollars.

For the “poor” smucks who can’t afford to pay in the inner city/schools, I guess they would just all close and consolidate and maybe that’s what should happen anyways. Not like many of these kids even want to be there.

All that said, it just sounds like the situation you are describing is older teachers (maybe equated to older/lazy workers in a company) with tenure are just whining that some new hire (maybe a new CEO) is trying to right the ship and fix things and just trying to roadblock the issue. Since these “employees” can’t be fired currently, there is bloat everywhere and costing us more and more.

Just seems like teachers don’t want to change and learn and keep current with best methods.[/quote]

Administrators get paid well because they have a lot on their plates and their jobs range from managing disciplinary issues, finances, accountability measures, compliance with a large number of rules and regulations related to different programs and student groups, site operations, personnel, public relations, etc. They deserve what they make, and I’m not blaming them for the ills of the system, either. I’m blaming the way the system is set up and the politics involved.

And you’re completely wrong about teachers not wanting to learn about superior teaching methods and materials. The problem is that many people will think an idea is “new and brilliant” when, in fact, it was tried decades ago and failed (but the “progressives” weren’t around to know about it because they were probably children themselves when these same ideas and materials were used before).

And while you would certainly like taxpayers to just hand you $10K to use at your own discretion, I’m sure most taxpayers would not want to just hand you their hard-earned money like that. Again, students have a right to an education at a public institution, they do not have a right, individually, to that money.

BTW, assuming you’ve worked in the corporate world, surely you’ve seen the “new genius” who was supposed to come in and improve everything…but then after managing to screw everything up and piss off all of the workers, they ride off into the sunset with a nicely padded bank account while all of the long-time, “lazy” workers are left with having to fix the mess that was created by this “genius.” Now picture this happening in a school setting with all of the various moving parts. It’s obvious why teachers will fight this, and they are very much within their rights to do so.

Try looking at a map of where the “good” and “bad” schools are, then see if you can connect the dots. It’s not teachers who determine which schools perform better or worse.

[CA renter]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

[CA renter]

[quote=scaredyclassic]He seems in retrospect to have been doing a really good job of holding that country together.[/quote]

Exactly what a friend of mine said years ago. We try to intervene in things that we do not understand. Poor decision making skills all around.

[CA renter]

[quote=spdrun]

Solution is for the mainstream media to STOP PUBLICIZING THIS CRAP. I’m not advocating for censorship. I’m arguing for a gentleman’s agreement to give this kind of lunacy a passing mention vs putting it on a 24-hour news cycle and using it to gain attention and push agendas.

It’s well-known that media attention promotes copycats.[/quote]

Bingo.

[CA renter]

[quote=no_such_reality]Did you identify the need to fill the nail holes on walk through and provide the tenant with the ability to remedy themselves?

Frankly, if you’re going to be looking to charge for the normal nail holes from hanging pictures, you shouldn’t be renting a place out unfurnished. It’s unrealistic to expect people to leave the walls sitting bare and short of big holes and meaningful repair work, the cost of having a tenant turnover.

Piddly *ss stuff like this is why so many renters, IMHO are just uncaring SOBs when leaving. They assume you’re going to grab every penny you can from the security deposit so they might as well leave the work for you.

Seriously, a foam touch up brush from home depot is 39 cents, a little 8 ounce far of match-paint, something like $2.99 and a small can of spackle is another $2.99 with again, a sub-$1 plastic putty knife to do it and you need about an hour to do them all.

You walk in, squeegee a dab of spackle into the hole and wipe smooth, move to the next hole repeat. When done with the spackle, pick up the pint of paint and the foam brush, shake, step up to the hole, did the corner into the paint, wipe on can lid, dab tiny corner on spackle spot. Move to next nail hole, repeat.

Or hire a handy man and turn it into a $100-$200 “job”.[/quote]

Nailed it with this and CE’s post, above.

This is nothing compared to what a long-time landlord will see. Not sure why any LL would expect their tenants to keep everything as though the house were a museum. It’s for living in, and it will cost money to maintain it on an ongoing basis. This is what being a landlord is all about. If the tenants were hanging pictures, it means they thought of it as their home and probably treated it better than tenants who’d keep the walls bare.

[CA renter]

[quote=svelte]How can this not be a good thing?

I see no reason teacher’s jobs should be more protected than anyone else. If you do a poor job, you should be out of there.

And as far as parents forcing an unfair firing – I’m sure it has happened, but I doubt it has happened often. During my entire education and my kid’s education, I can’t think of a single parent uprising for or against a teacher.

And normal employment law will protect teachers in those cases – just like normal employment law protects other professions.

My wife and I, we hope this ruling sticks.[/quote]

Didn’t you say that both you and your wife worked (full time?) when your kids were in school? If so, then it’s highly unlikely you would have known about the actions of these types of parents. It’s almost always the domain of the bored, neurotic SAHM who has nothing better to do than try to control every aspect of her child’s life. These women usually try to get the support of a handful of other SAHMs who tend to join her because they want to be accepted by the “queen bee” of the school. These are the women who used to live for major drama in their personal lives when they were in school themselves, and they’ve failed to mature mentally, emotionally, and socially beyond adolescence.

I’ve seen it multiple times when I was a student and also when I was a teacher. Almost every school has at least one of these women (very rarely men), and they can be a HUGE pain for the teachers and administrators who have to waste precious time and resources coddling and mollifying these high-maintenance women because they have to worry about lawsuits and publicity problems.

[CA renter]

[quote=no_such_reality]LOL, I’ll pull this quote from the prior thread on this topic.

…

Basically your comment exemplifies why this ruling is needed.

You see, no one is actually in charge. The administration is, but only as long as the union and teahers agree.

That’s dysfunctional. Sure, some insane heavy handed administrators will make a mess in places, but just like most teachers are good, most administrators are good.

The problem is the dysfunctional relationship between the two and with union protections insures there is no accountability.

Meanwhile, LAUSD is moving a couple hundred ‘teachers’ to their own homes because having them show up to ‘teaching jail’ is too costly.

Res ipsa loquitur, it’s is broken.

And yes, I will say thank you for the years of service you have done in the schools. But honestly CAR, you come across as extremely burned out by your years of teaching.[/quote]

You’d be surprised at how little experience many administrators have. Many of them fast-track through the classroom, some working as little as 1-3 years in the classroom, because their goal all along was to get into administrative positions. Perhaps you think that these administrators should be telling teachers what to do, but most teachers would disagree with you. Not only that, but administrators tend to move around more than teachers do, and the goals and methods that each administrator brings to the school site can be confusing and contradictory. The older, tenured teachers have seen it all before, so they tend to be a bit jaded and dismissive of the new administrators and their brilliant and new ideas (most of which are neither brilliant nor new). That’s not a bad thing, it’s an asset to the school and the students. Trust me, if teachers think that something will work better than what they’re currently doing, they will jump on it; but they will not bow and scrape before the new administrators just because these admins want to pad their resumes and make a name for themselves as they attempt to climb up the political ladder.

Most teachers have 6+ years of college, and the tenured ones (especially the vocal ones) have years of experience on top of that. They don’t want people who have no or less experience or knowledge about the job to dictate what they’re supposed to do on a daily basis. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

No, I wasn’t burned out by teaching. I got out because we wanted a SAHP with our kids. But I’ve seen too many teachers deal with all kinds of scary situations with crazy, power-hungry politicians, parents, and administrators…and I wanted none of that. I went from the corporate world to teaching because it was my life-long passion, but after seeing what I saw, I would go back to the corporate world before going back into teaching. It’s sad, but teachers get neither the credit nor the respect that they deserve because the vast majority of people out there really don’t have a clue about what teachers do for a living.

[CA renter]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=Blogstar]Never in my life not even up to 35 or so years ago when I had my first beer would it have occurred to me that there were not enough good beers…and I like beer a little bit. I am humored by the variety now more than anything, it’s funny to see the hype like little kids trading poke,e,mon cards or something. Same with cigars and wine . Little boys become big boys only the price of their toys goes up.[/quote]

no, seriously, im willing to agree that all wine tastes about the same…but a good IPA is not like a regular commercial beer, any more than kraft mac and cheese is like a bit of goat cheese from some foofy shop.

not saying it’s necessarily ultimately better, just different…[/quote]

FWIW, the good beers also don’t go through you like the cheap beers do. You don’t have to hang around the bathroom all day/night when you drink good beer.

As afx already mentioned, there is no place like Stone in Escondido. Hate to put it on the internet because I don’t want to make it even more crowded, but Mr. CAR and I have agreed that Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido is about as close to heaven as you’ll ever get on earth. It’s pretty kid-friendly, too, because of the beautiful gardens. We want to live there. 🙂

[CA renter]

[quote=bearishgurl]

OTOH, public school “principals” are unrepresented (CAR, correct me if I’m wrong here). They can and will be transferred from school site to school site at the whim of their employing district. Principals, although “supervisors” of a school site, have very little (if any) decision making capacity as it relates to curriculum or facilities. For instance they CAN decide which direction and how parent traffic should flow in the mornings and afternoons in the front parking lot of their site and issue a parent bulletin to that effect but they CAN’T decide if a local scout group will be allowed to use the school cafeteria after school for regular meetings. Principals can’t use ANY stationary for parent announcements/bulletins which does not identify both their school site AND the district to which that school site belongs.

…

Any long-tenured teachers teaching in underperforming schools are doing it primarily because they want to give back to their community and make a difference in their student’s lives. Very often, they themselves graduated from the same or nearby school in the same district, have a lot of family living in the immediate area, have residential rentals in the immediate area or all three. Their (now “underperforming”) school assignment has always been “home” to them. They know their way around and “know” from whence their students came and what their daily lives are like.

You can’t blame these teachers for low student performance. Most of them taught at that same (or nearby) school when the student performance at that school was much higher. Public school teachers have no control over the following:

– a school attendance area slowly changing from a primarily SFR area to multifamily area (ex: North Park SD);

– hundreds of new construction units in a school attendance area set aside for low-income tenants; (ex: any number of newer areas in both North and South SD County);

– a proliferation of social services for homeless families moving into a school attendance area (ex: Southcrest SD [from dtn and East Village]);

– the exit of large corporations and defense contractors in a school district attendance areas leaving many previously well-employed parents unemployed; (ex: Solar Turbines, Gen Dyn, Rohr, etc)

– the construction of high property-tax subdivisions (w/ HOA/MR) in an established school district attendance area, overloading the schools and causing the parents of the newer students to realize they must work several jobs between them to pay 3-10 times the property tax (incl HOA) than the parents of students residing in the established areas.

– soaring property values in a school attendance area, causing families with children to either move in with well-established relatives or to a nearby rental apartment in order to remain in the area, where in past decades, parents of minor children were buying single family homes in the area. (ex: Pt Loma HS and feeder schools)

– the construction or conversion of hundreds of units of military housing in a given attendance area, causing some schools to have disproportionate numbers of “temporary” students of ~2 years attendance duration who are often enrolling and withdrawing at different times of the school year in groups and who may not be present for the CAHSEES and other academic performance measuring testing after attending a particular school most of the school year as a “stat.”

I could go on here, but suffice to say, many public HS’s in SD County which were considered “excellent” in 1974, 1984, 1994 or 2004 and are now considered just “average” or “mediocre” in 2014 may end up again to be “high performing” in 2024, all depending upon the whims of local politicians and military decisions from on high.

Public school teachers must work with the raw material that is before them and that “raw material” is each student along with whatever “baggage” they can’t help but bring to the classroom every day. We can’t blame public school teachers just because certain groups of students do better than others and there are currently less of those better-performing groups in attendance at their school assignment.[/quote]

Another good post, BG. While many managers in a public/municipal setting are not represented, principals in a given district might be represented by ACSA. I think it might vary from one district to another, so can’t say anything definitive.

http://www.acsa.org/#

Principals do have some say — even a lot of say — in curriculum decisions and facilities management, depending on the district and/or the school site. They manage the site budget, write grants proposals, make sure the school is in compliance with state and federal laws regarding funding (like Title I and Chapter 1 funding) and other programs, manage the overall school environment and teacher/student morale, arrange for the funding and sourcing of special programs and activities, handle discipline and interactions with students and parents, etc.

The second part about many tenured teachers staying in poorly performing schools is true, too. I’ve known many teachers who really loved working with disadvantaged students and would never choose to go to an “easy” school, no matter their seniority/tenure status.

[CA renter]

[quote=livinincali][quote=CA renter]
The problem is that I’ve seen other teachers who were terrorized by administrators and wrongfully terminated (and won lawsuits as a result). I’ve seen parents in the vocal minority who were hell-bent on trying to oust a particular teacher just because she was older, or didn’t do things exactly the way this particular group liked. I can’t think of any other profession (other than politics) that is so scrutinized and so beholden to such a large number of people who have no education, experience, or knowledge about the profession.[/quote]

I honestly don’t think having tenure or not having tenure changes this. If someone is truly wrongly terminated they still have the courts to reconcile that action without tenure. If administrator ends up in court more than once on wrongful terminations then fire the administrator. You have cause at that point.

I think everybody can agree that between tenure and union rules it was incredibly difficult to fire a teacher with cause. It was such a process that administrators didn’t want to go through the time and effort of doing it, even if it was the right thing to do. I don’t even know if being an ineffective teacher was actually cause. Usually it’s something far worse, like sleeping with students.[/quote]

Without the unions and tenure, many teachers will be fired without legitimate cause. The administrators/parents will always be able to drum up some kind of excuse to justify it: inappropriate clothing showing cleavage, too friendly with students, to strict with students, benched students during recess (yes, some parents have threatened to sue because of this), test results didn’t improve enough (even though the students might have been a particularly tough lot), etc.

Also, how do you think the teachers are going to pay for the legal expenses to fight these unjustified terminations? The unions are the ones who put up all the money and spend all the time on these cases. If you get rid of tenure, and get rid of all of the other perks for teachers, there will be no union…that is the ultimate goal of the Privatization Movement.

If there is any job in the world that needs tenure, it’s teaching. That being said, I do agree that getting rid of truly bad teachers (and public employees, generally) needs to be easier.

[CA renter]

Good post, BG.

[CA renter]

Again, BG is absolutely correct about tenure and how teachers are assigned to the different schools. It’s the poor and poorly-performing schools that tend to have the greatest number of non-tenured, new teachers.

[CA renter]

You must read this goofy thread started by paramount in order to see how and why this is being sold…and who’s behind the curtain.

http://piggington.com/ot_california_teachers_taking_on_the_california_teachers_union

[CA renter]

[quote=joec]

The problem and my initial gut feel from reading both your posts is that you make it sound like doing nothing is better than trying to do anything. You sound like a teacher that will get bounced and even though I believe you aren’t in that profession now, it just has a tone that any attempt to fix anything will not work no matter what we do.

Everything is big business motivated and we’re all sheep for trying to boot bad teachers. Bad teachers do no one any good and if it’s good teachers vs. bad teachers, we should all rejoice. Maybe like with corporations, teachers can share a salary/bonus pool so bad teachers who no one likes and is ineffective will get voted out.

I suppose like with healthcare, I think we have a broken system and maybe changes to tenure laws, evaluation by honest parents, who knows, something else is worth a shot to “try”.

I didn’t see a solution yet, but maybe teachers can be evaluated a year out or half a year in the next grade?

If the kid learned stuff, obviously, no matter how much the parents/kids hated the teacher, they did a good job maybe.

Again, let’s go in a dialog to fix things rather than throw our hands up saying nothing we do will help…that’s what I got at least reading the 2 posts.[/quote]

You’re right about my not teaching now, and wrong about my being someone who would be “bounced” from the position, even if I were still teaching.

The problem is that I’ve seen other teachers who were terrorized by administrators and wrongfully terminated (and won lawsuits as a result). I’ve seen parents in the vocal minority who were hell-bent on trying to oust a particular teacher just because she was older, or didn’t do things exactly the way this particular group liked. I can’t think of any other profession (other than politics) that is so scrutinized and so beholden to such a large number of people who have no education, experience, or knowledge about the profession.

Your desire to “do something” is much like the desire of the anti-gun groups who haven’t a clue about what to do about crime, so they just run around like chickens with their heads cut off because “doing something” is better than carefully evaluating the complex issues involved and intelligently coming up with solutions that will actually work.

I’ve posted before about ideas that will most certainly have better results than blindly scrambling around for perceived solutions that are being fed to us by people who have no teaching experience and whose sole purpose is to dismantle the benefits and rights of working people. The societal and economic damage that will result from that is far, far greater than what we’re getting with the current system, even if a few below-average teachers slip through the cracks.

[Author]

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