Far East Cynic

Why them?

Why not attack teachers? It is a lot easier than putting the blame on the parents-who refuse to take an equal responsibility for what’s wrong with American society.

Which is why the quote from John Cole’s place rings very true:

The New York Times is having a hard time figuring out why the right wing is making teachers scapegoats. I’m sure ED has a nuanced take on this at his new blog, but I’ll blunder in and take a crack at it.

If you have a political movement that energizes some of the most ignorant members of society by telling them tall tales,(emphasis mine) I’m just going to guess that those ignoramuses don’t know enough to give a shit about the quality of teachers. And, if they’re anything like the snowbilly grifter they worship, they also resent the teachers in their past who tried to tell them they’re wrong.

Add into the mix a group of elites who will educate their children at private schools or “centers of excellence” in their walled burboclaves, and you’ve got a movement that’s more than happy to throw teachers under the bus. The majority of them can’t appreciate a good education, and the rest of them don’t expect the public school system to provide one to their children.

Are there reforms that need to made in our educational system? Of course there are. But don’t kid yourself-all of the patch work solutions like charter schools, making teachers the scapegoat ignore some fundamental truth-namely  that the flaws in the classrooms are a reflection of the even bigger flaws in American society as a whole.

Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee’s simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy, and that her dramatic, often authoritarian, style is ill-suited for education. If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven’t charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire? Why did the nation’s most comprehensive study of charter schools, conducted by Stanford University researchers and sponsored by pro-charter foundations, conclude that charters outperformed regular public schools only 17 percent of the time, and actually did significantly worse 37 percent of the time? Why don’t Southern states, which have weak teachers’ unions, or none at all, outperform other parts of the country? Rhee often noted that poor blacks in New York are two years ahead of poor blacks in Washington, which properly illustrates that demography is not destiny, but New York didn’t get ahead by firing bad teachers. Chancellor Joel Klein terminated only three teachers for incompetence between 2008 and 2010.

The unions are not the villians here-except in the sense that they had a need to exist to try to do a variety of things to raise awareness about the need to pay teachers well. Both the NEA and the AFT has endorsed plans to get rid of poor performing teachers. But the stereotype that all union teachers are bad is just wrong.  Working with the union and collobrating with them-not confronting them has a track record that has proven effective.

But I guess rich GOP governors of cheese producing states don’t have time to research that.

  1. True, its not JUST the teachers ‘fault” that we are /have raised a bunch of drug/sex crazed youth(who evidently all end up in the NAVY)who can’t read, ‘rite or do ‘rithmetic, but its the unions who SET the rules under collective agreements, like the dead room in NY where teachers wait endlessly to be adjudicated for various infractions that can take months.
    THATS why only three teachers were fired because the process to get rid of bad teachers is so complex and time consuming NOT because they could only find a few bad teachers..Is that even possible in that huge system like NY that there are THREE bad teachers, REALLY? Does that make sense?
    And what happens to reformers like Michele Rhee?
    AFT and Randi Weingarten give 1 MILLION dollars to defeat her mayor…
    NEVER has the AFT given that much to a LOCAl campaign so that MAY prove how eager they are to ‘reform” the broken system…DC spends the most per child and has the lowest matriculation rate and test scores in the country.
    The first goal of ANY union is to look out for the best interests of ITS members eh?
    NOT for the welfare of the kids, or the public or the taxpayer and I would expect nothing less…thats the reason they exist..’Looking for Superman”
    Again its NOT the pay…its the benefits…
    It effectively doubles the salary of a teacher….
    http://www.politifact.org

  3. Talk radio buffoon. Who just spouted all of the lies that are conviently thrown out. Being a teacher requires more education than being a talk radio buffoon.

    Want teachers to work all year? Have year round school. They do it in just about every other country on earth.

    As for defeating Michelle Rhee-go read the linked article, you will see she is not the saint she has been made to be. (But she looks nice!).

    Let me tell you something-one person at the top can galvanize a whole organization against it. If I could give money to rid of the person at the top of our organization I would. Besides-the Supreme Court already said it was legal.

  5. There needs to be a distinction between labour rules negotiated (not set!) by teacher unions and student behaviour rules, syllabuses, textbooks and so on. Yes, of course a labour union is going to be concerned with labour relations but it is not the teacher unions who set the mind numbingly inane syllabus. The blame for those fiascoes lie with the school board (elected) and the state board of Education (appointed). Topping it off, you have individual administrators – management – who set the rules for a particular building regarding permissible behaviour on the part of students.

    Don’t blame teachers for the failures of the educational system. Teachers didn’t set it up like this, school boards and administrators did.

  6. Skippy, LA Unified ran off VADM Brewer from his post. You would have thought that a Black, retired Vice-Admiral would have been what that district needed, if for anything to be a “role model.” But he wanted to make changes, and ran afoul of the union and the mayor and had to quit.

    The Gov . has not said that the teachers and others can’t organize, they can. But some of the provisions of the barganing agreement must be modified. What right do they have, to go tell a state that bad teachers can’t be fired, when they are public employees paid by the state. Even Carter had the foresight to do away with collective barganing for Federal employees back in the 70’s and so far it has worked out. The union made enough stink to get Fed employees off NSPS (awarding performance with cash bonuses) and back to the GS (everybody gets the same) system. Why can’t the employees of WI do the same?

  8. A couple of points-NSPS was pretty bad in my humble opinion, especially as you watched the salary growth and pay pool distributions. (When compared to what my company does with respect to salary raises, it is particularly inequitable). The reversion was foreseeable and probably makes sense.

    You need to look at the particulars of WI. The governor has a very broad veto power. He has a legislative majority that makes setting of a system similar to the federal system virtually impossible.

    Furthermore-and this is the key point-it does not stop here. Ask yourself what happens when all unions are gone, and labor , which is already at a disadvantage thanks to outsourcing and anti worker decisions by companies, has no voice to try to stick up for the needs of its members. A race to the bottom will ensue, where companies will decide what they can get away with.

  9. Sounds to me like they were just blowing off a little steam.:-)

    Besides, I’m just sex crazed. The drug thing would get in the way of continued employment and I like getting paid.

  10. Skippy, you are correct when you say that pay pool distributions were inadequate. It really depended on what command you were with. Case in point, the CNIC Regional command where I work employees made bundles, but down at the installation levels, we didn’t fare as well.

    But you still have to look at how it was done. For example, a GS12-5 in San Diego working for the IRS should make the same as a YC02 (at the same level). Yet, at the beginning of the new year, the GS12 would get the normal pay raise, yet the YC02 would get a much larger bonus. My point is this was done without the use of any collective barganing agreement. And, it was changed back without a collective barganing agreement. So, I say that the teachers union has just gotten too lazy and comfortable with the way things have been, being able to flex their muscle and get what they want without having to actually present a case on why they want things a certain way.

    Teachers do a hell of a job, my family is full of them. But I think what is really screwing up the education system in America is not only the bad teachers, but the lawyers and civil liberties groups. In my day, if you screwed up in school, you got a spanking from the principal. Now you can’t do that. The parents would sue and there are plenty of lawyers who would be more than willing to assist to help bring suit against a school district. Bring back stricter discipline, hold parents accountable for thier children’s actions and maybe you would see a rise in education standards. In my opinion.

  11. What can I say? All those teachers who called in sick and took off to demonstrate have just shown that they are redundant. If they don’t care enough to show up to work why should anybody feel any obligation to pay them? Same thing for all their lickspittle reps who fled the state in order to avoid democratic solutions to the people’s problems. And the doctors who falsified sick leave forms for the protesting teachers? Would you seek education from absent teachers, rule of law from absent legislators or health care from lying doctors?

  12. What I find interesting is how the teacher unions are bad. While I don’t know the specifics of NY, I do know that here in MI, in order to save money, the state did away with all but ONE administrative law judge that hears tenure (bad teachers) cases. Then the legislature has the audacity to accuse the union of making it difficult to get rid of them. (I think that NY has a similar issue.) Tenure does not save anyone that is a “bad” teacher. It does ensure due process and documentation.

    I retired from the Navy and happily continue to serve as a classroom teacher. I also happen to be the union president who watches some administrators do some pretty capricious things from time to time. I have an administrator now who is late, not prepared, shows favoritism to brown nosers and who couldn’t lead anyone out an open door, but I can’t get the superintendent to see that. (They are “nice” and have “good” qualities.) I have now started my documentation through the grievance process which will go to the school Board a couple of times. I sincerely hope the individual can make appropriate changes. If not we will pester the upper levels until they see the problem. I have also had a teacher who was struggling and administration was doing their job. We jointly helped the individual find a different type of employment.

    Any large organization has less than stellar people that survive (as we both have personally experienced, Skippy) but, overall, teachers are great lot putting in considerable personal time and money into their students. By attacking teachers (and their unions who are serving their members) we accelerate the race to the bottom.

    Don’t even get me started on parents who are clueless about their students and want to blame the teacher. I don’t coddle either the student or the parent.

  13. Curtis,

    How do you get the message across otherwise? Polls show most Americans support the unions on the issue of collective bargaining. That is the issue that is in discussion. Plus it does not address the other sleazy things he. Is doing in the bill.

  14. Triletter,

    Who is attacking who? There’s nobody attacking the teachers. All the attacks I’ve seen are going the other way. You confuse the issue deliberately to shield the unions from blame. The angry, mouthy hate filled group is the union guys there in Madison. We can see it for ourselves. They called in sick. How many working parents had to find care for their school kids or stay home from work themselves because these hate filled union scumbags needed to go off and picket the working representatives of the state government while the democrat reps were all taking a powder? But thanks to other union crooks with MDs after the name at least the union thugs are getting a lie to cover their absence so they get paid for not showing up for work. Good gig if you can get it….but it’s pretty common among union workers these day isn’t it?

  15. Skippy,

    Those polls were addressed at the standard center/middle places on the net. I think the one by Time/CBS was the most fucked up one. It was asked of 36%Dems/26%Reps/rest undecided. 20% were union households although the national average for union households is 11%. In other words they were a complete sham.

  16. This trying to paint the unions as “hate filled” is an interesting meme. Malkin and the rest of the town hall whores are trying to paint them as that-but the facts don’t support it. Its not hate to stand up to a bully-and to make sure they understand that their actions have consequences.

    I again get back to the point-they called in sick for a weekend. They got their point across. They went back to work. If the parents don’t like it-tell them to vote for more responsible politicians.

  18. Skippy,

    Sorry, but no one had to keep their kids home due to a teacher calling in sick; they have these people called substitutes. Are they the same as teachers? No, but they fill the bill for a day or two. Watch a little bit of Stewart to see the attacks. Two years ago Faux News is defending the contracts of Wall Street Bankers saying a contract is a contract. Fast forward to today and teachers (and other public servants) are the cause of budget deficits and we need to cnx their contracts. Bull shit!

    Easy to malign teachers (and other public servants), but how many bankers (who totally fucked the economy due to their risk taking) have truly bit the big one due to this crisis. I’d take their measly $10 million dollars. What about the legislature that has more vacation time than teachers and the qualification is to be able to fog a mirror and lie with a straight face? While it pays the bills, how many of the critics have spent any significant time in the classroom? Parent teacher conferences and your own time in the classroom 20+ years ago doesn’t count.

    Finland, the paragon of teaching according to a BS documentary, filmed by an an elite with a private education, is 100% unionized. Coincidentally, they have a lower level of poverty than the mighty United States. Go figure!There are problems in US education, but it isn’t due to the unions. Lazy parents – maybe.

  19. Skippy,

    I think that last should have been to Curtis. Hey, what can I say but it is Friday and the beer from the local brew pub is good. Keep up the good work and commentary.

  20. Hi Triltter,

    Finland has as many illegal Mexican/Latino immigrants in their schools as the US? As many disadvantaged blacks?

    go on. keep comparing.

    Tell you what. Why don’t you compare American white kids to Finland kids?

    Sound racist? So what? If there is a difference, any difference in education IT MUST BE THE TEACHERS fault right? Who else are you going to blame?

    You can do the whole poverty comparison too.

    Did you ever look at the stats at 4th grade and 8th grade and wonder why we have thousands of schools that cannot graduate more than 50% of the freshman class?

    What’s that about?

    And you don’t get bankers at all do you? Who mandated sub-prime or face a law suit? Who was that? Go on? It was your government and DOJ who mandated that. What the bankers did was sell that trash debt to f9ing idiots who bought it and farmed it around and kept credit on the books for insolvent loans no longer owed them since they sold the instruments only to find that foreclosure in the absence of the instrument proved a non-starter.

  21. Curtis,

    Facts are pernicious things. The blame for the Walt Street meltdown lies with bankers. Specifically with a woman named Blythe Masters. She is the bitch who created credit default swaps. And now is aiding and abetting what can only be described as genocide through unregulated food commodities trading.

    Policymakers did not immediately recognize the increasingly important role played by financial institutions such as investment banks and hedge funds, also known as the shadow banking system. Some experts believe these institutions had become as important as commercial banks in providing credit to the U.S. economy, but they were not subject to the same regulations. These institutions, as well as certain regulated banks, had also assumed significant debt burdens while providing the loans described above and did not have a financial cushion sufficient to absorb large loan defaults or MBS losses. These losses impacted the ability of financial institutions to lend, slowing economic activity

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae did not create that-predatory lending and dishonest practices by the largest banks enabled them to be used as vehicles to faciltiate the transfer of wealth from consumers to the favored few.

  22. No Skippy,

    Congress created them. Evil carnate voted for them. The regulators who knew far better were advised to turn a blind eye by Congress.

  23. A few quick points on education:

    a. Back in the 1960’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan did some important research and found that rather than $/pupil, the single biggest contributor to student achievement was parental involvement. If the child’s family values education and is involved on a daily basis, then the child’s chances of succeeding go up exponentially. If there is no parental commitment, then you could spend all the money at your disposal and you would still end up with sub-optimal results. Yes, there has to be some minimal level of expenditure – you need a safe environment with books, etc. but you do not need to build a palace like some suburban communities do.

    b. Spending on education can be cut, but it needs to be done intelligently. One key measure of waste is the ratio of support/administrative staff to teachers. When we spend, we need to spend putting teachers in front of kids not on folks filling out forms and generally getting in the way.

    c. What is the role of the US Department of Education and is it effective in carrying out its mission? If not, what parts are not needed and can be cut/eliminated? I do not know the answers, but I do know that if we asked such hard questions with honesty about each Federal Agency I suspect that we would eliminate many and expand some others.

    Bottom line: teachers unions, etc. are not really the core of the problem. The issue is also not about race nor is it particularly tied to wealth. The issue starts with large numbers of parents who lack the discipline required to step up and do their damn jobs. Next it is also about those same parents who refuse to take their responsibilities as citizens seriously. As citizens we should expect and demand competence and the efficient use of our resources. There is no one to blame but ourselves.

  24. And its also culture isn’t it?
    I live across from an elementary school with barely any white kids,,there are Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Indians, care to make a guess which kids are burdened with books and which aren’t?
    Skippy
    The Democrats actually controlled the House in 2006 and under the watchful eye of Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank, all sorts of dubious machinations occurred.,
    I guess Charlie was too busy doing his income taxes and Barney …well, you know….

  25. What you guys forget is two things:

    1) The affect that the manipulation of the markets had in debt.

    2) The desire of a whole industry to sell people into homes that they could not afford-based on the premise that they could make gobs of money on an investment that was never meant to do that.

  26. You guys ever wonder how private schools do it so much better and cheaper than public schools K-12?

    You ever wonder why the Democrats running DC, House of Reps, Senate and Whitehouse didn’t hesitate to slash vouchers for children in DC so that they could attend good schools vice the $25,000/pupil public hellholes?

    So it’s OK with democrats to steal money from everybody including the little children…

    Pathetic.

  28. There are a couple of things I think you should read Curtis. First is a book by Richard Whitmire that chronicles the tenure of Micheller Rhee. She is not as great as you make out.

    Second is reports that point out the overall loss of private sector pensions-which were enabled by those who wanted corporations to be able to screw over their employees.

    You want to send a kid to private school you should have to pay for it yourself. The money should go to improving the schools. Public school should be the only option./ That’s not stealing-its demanding that stingy bastards cough up the money they owe.

  29. Skippy,

    Like all leftists you always automatically make the leap of accusing others of non-crimes or thought crimes.

    1. Why read about Rhee when I could and did read about her in the WSJ, NYT and Washington Post? When I visited with my folks or cousins who live in and around DC and they thought she was doing an excellent job at weeding out the dead weight. I’m sure your author wrote from a certain perspective and with an agenda because the state of the DC public schools is an unmitigated disaster.

    2. Us stingy bastards find it interesting that some states/local governments can educate their pupils to at least but usually higher standards than most other states. We have every right to demand BMW services for BMW prices but what we get from the teacher’s unions are mostly Pintos. $25K/student in DC. $671 Billion for ONE school at LA Unified last year. One school.

  31. Skippy-san,

    OK, tell me what her failures were. Just list them and describe their origin, her action to resolve and the ultimate outcome and then contrast with nobody doing nothin about it ever. I don’t see how she could have failed at much and giggle at this, anything at all she failed at was due to 100% teachers union intransigence, resistance from the elected school board and if she was trying to realign a broken system and failed that just means that the broken system survived intact.

  32. The AFT also favors plans to get rid of bad teachers, just not in a way that unfairly demeans large numbers of educators. In 2009, Rhee said she had to fire 266 teachers for budget reasons and told an interviewer, “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed seventy-eight days of school.” In fact, she later conceded, only 10 teachers had been fired for corporal punishment and two for sexual misconduct since 2007. Just recently, an arbitrator reinstated 75 educators fired by Rhee in 2008 after determining that Rhee had not explained why they were being terminated nor given them a chance to respond to charges. At one point during her tenure, Rhee floated the idea of getting a Congressional declaration of emergency, so she wouldn’t have to bargain with the democratically elected representatives of teachers at all. “Cooperation, collaboration, and consensus-building,” she argued, “are way overrated.”

    But in fact, collaboration can be used to achieve Rhee’s objectives—such as getting rid of bad teachers—in a way that elevates rather than demoralizes educators. Several communities, from Montgomery County, Md., to Toledo, Ohio, use peer evaluation and review, whereby expert teachers come into a school, try to help struggling educators, but in the end recommend that some be terminated. This might seem like the fox guarding the hen house. But in both communities, teachers were tougher on colleagues than administrators had been because the 7th-grade teacher is hurt when the 6th-grade teacher is incompetent. Beginning in 2002, 177 Montgomery County teachers were dismissed, not renewed, or resigned in the first four years of peer review, compared with just one teacher who was dismissed due to performance issues between 1994 and 1999. Peer review remains controversial among many teachers, but the AFT has a national policy in support of it.