Mare Tranquillity
Well-Known Member
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- May 15, 2007
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Oh yeah, as a business owner I have beaten my employees into forming a union. You don't know anything about me, but you've certainly made your proctological point.
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We need many, many, many more like this
- Thread starter Webrockk
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Oh yeah, as a business owner I have beaten my employees into forming a union. You don't know anything about me, but you've certainly made your proctological point.
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Pandora
Well-Known Member
I know our teachers avarage 55-70 thousand a year. There are 193 student attendance days and a dozen prep days. Portland has to make more for the teachers than Eugene. I can check it out.
Thread dynamic: OP illuminates a charming story about abysmal government school performance in a Rhode Island community, the teacher unions inflexibility to improve it, and their subsequent firing by the superintendant.
In the real world, this would appear to be good news....in a "community seeks improvement by demanding more from their tax dollars" kind of way.
But no....the real world has gone topsy turvy, where abysmal is acceptable as long as there is evidence of other failures, and blame to lay elswhere.
For example:
Somehow...in the minds of some participating in this thread, this is an opportunity to deflect from the topic by explaining just how darn tough it is to work 2/3's of a year and still earn 3 times the communities mean wage. While others have chosen to go completely off topic with an attempt to deflect criticism from a failing teachers union by equating it to systemic failures of a few private, non-union companies, banks and bailouts...a "well, what about them" defense.
My take: Instead of recognizing, accepting and correcting systemic failure, some will defend it, or attempt to lay blame elsewhere solely for the sake of personal agenda, and petty partisan politics, and this attitude, in my opinion, speaks to the reasons behind America's incremental slide into mediocrity, and will ultimately ensure complete and utter failure...or worse, enslavement.
Please see: Hegelian Dialectic
In the real world, this would appear to be good news....in a "community seeks improvement by demanding more from their tax dollars" kind of way.
But no....the real world has gone topsy turvy, where abysmal is acceptable as long as there is evidence of other failures, and blame to lay elswhere.
For example:
Somehow...in the minds of some participating in this thread, this is an opportunity to deflect from the topic by explaining just how darn tough it is to work 2/3's of a year and still earn 3 times the communities mean wage. While others have chosen to go completely off topic with an attempt to deflect criticism from a failing teachers union by equating it to systemic failures of a few private, non-union companies, banks and bailouts...a "well, what about them" defense.
My take: Instead of recognizing, accepting and correcting systemic failure, some will defend it, or attempt to lay blame elsewhere solely for the sake of personal agenda, and petty partisan politics, and this attitude, in my opinion, speaks to the reasons behind America's incremental slide into mediocrity, and will ultimately ensure complete and utter failure...or worse, enslavement.
Please see: Hegelian Dialectic
Somehow...in the minds of some participating in this thread, working from August 20 to June 10 each year and going to college in the Summer is the same as: "...work(ing) 2/3's of a year...". And something wrong with a person with a Master's degree plus about ten years of service making more than the average for that community ($22,000, the poverty wage for a family of four.).
Nevertheless, the wages stated for teachers in that district are not the national average.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_nat.htm#b00-000025-3099
Teachers and Instructors, average $40,770 per year. Now compare that to other occupations with master's degrees.
If you do not have the facts, exaggerate and sling the Bull S.
Again, if it is so wonderful being a teacher, it is not too late for you to become one.
You are really beginning to bore me.
We're still talking about the events, and circumstances in Rhode Island, right?
I didn't write the OP, I just happen to agree with the actions taken.
I'm terribly sorry I bore you, but I'd suspect there's a bit more to it than that...perhaps an uncomfortable, sorta dirty feeling that you, as much as you want to, cannot agree with the actions taken in Rhode Island because it would not be prudent to your self interest...
I'll say again, if you're miserable, change careers...It's not the responsibility of the rest of us to ensure your happiness and prosperity.
GenSeneca
Well-Known Member
The Collectivists are desperately trying to make their happiness and prosperity your responsibility. Be advised, they're not afraid to use force, violate your rights, and legislate you into slavery, in order to achieve their goal.
Yes, the parasites have been incrementaly devouring the host for decades, one state at a time (see California), one country at a time, until global means of trade and global government reigns as overlords to a private propertyless, shackled, global community of collateralized proletariats
I quit teaching eight years ago. So much for self interest.
A childish and doltish response unrelated to the core issues...what I expected.
Core Issues:
1) Teacher union protecting "bad" teachers.
In my state (Michigan), there is not tenure for teachers, teachers can and are fired for due cause. Also, teachers are forbidden by law from striking. Therefor, unions are virtually powerless. Since, tenure was withdrawn, teachers forbidden to strike, the education system has continued to decline. Hummmm? I wonder if that means bad teachers and unions are not the root cause of the problem after all.
2) Teachers are over paid.
In Michigan, a teacher must have a bachelor's degree to begin teaching, must obtain (usually at their own expense), a minimum of 18 semester hours of college credit within the first two years. Most teachers go on to obtain a master's degree. An average pay of $42,000 for person's with those qualifications are not in any stretch of the imagination, "over paid".
3) Teachers responsible for current state of education.
There are several entities involved in education. The state, the school board, the superintendent, the administrators (principals), the parents, the students and the teachers. Of all those entities, the teachers have the least power. Teachers may not discipline (that is the job of the assistant principal, errant students are just usually told not to do it again, no matter what the offense).
A few instances in my former district:
A girl in the middle school held a pencil on a student's seat, the kid sat on it, was impaled. Girl was punished by the principal with a day in "time out".
A boy was removed from middle school art class three times by police in handcuffs; the last time for stabbing another kid in the chest with a pencil. The same student had been taken out of the class by the teacher previously (by physical means) to the office when he had refused the art teacher's instructions to go to the office. The principal "wrote up" the teacher for his actions as "inappropriate". A few months later, the school board issued a directive that if a student refused to go to the office, it was within the teachers duty to take him there physically. The teacher who had taken the kid to the office did not have the reprimand removed from his file. From that day on, that teacher no longer made any effort to control the class, and two years later retired.
On two occasions in the same district's High School, students attempted to firebomb a female English teacher's new van. They poked paper towels into the gas tank and set it on fire. It did not blow up (no oxygen in the tank to cause an explosion), just burned the side of the van. After the van was repaired, they did it again. They were never apprehended.
In the same school it became the custom for boys to defecate into the toilets and not flush them. Other boys would do the same until the toilets would overflow when flushed. In another event, one of the boys smeared feces over the walls and mirrors in the boy's room. The administrator's attempted remedy was to have automatic flushing toilets installed. However, the boys would just take their dumps next to the toilets instead.
I asked the principal of the high school, "Just what tools are we allowed to use in this school to control the student's behavior?" His answer was: "You can ask them to stay after school to talk to them." Which begs the question: What do you do if a student calls you (and it has happened), a "stupid coc...ing moron", and declines to stay after school to have a nice talk?
These are only a few of the examples. There are many, many, more.
In Michigan, it is very common to come across former teachers working in other occupations despite having spent years achieving an education focused on teaching. I know of no other occupation that has the high of an attrition rate. In the district I worked, there was a constant influx of talented people who were beginning a teaching career. Most left in the first year, almost all, by the second.
I should conclude that the reason for the poor state of Michigan's education system is: Bad teachers, teacher unions, over-paid teachers, teachers only working part time and having the entire Summer off? Or, just could the problem be caused by something else?
My aunt (teacher, retired) wound up in a hospital in NC for two days because she was physically assaulted by two students in her 8th grade english class...I know a few hazards of being a teacher from her nightmarish stories about students, parents, admin and the teachers union...it takes a special person to endure the modern classroom, and I commend you for your efforts.
However, the OP is about an abysmally performing school in Rhode Island, and an inflexible teachers union that was not interested in improving the situation, and I simply agree with the outcome.
Your personal experience, and the Michigan school system has zero bearing on this case or any others, though I appreciate your perspective.
However, the OP is about an abysmally performing school in Rhode Island, and an inflexible teachers union that was not interested in improving the situation, and I simply agree with the outcome.
Your personal experience, and the Michigan school system has zero bearing on this case or any others, though I appreciate your perspective.
There was not enough in the article about the school system in Rhode Island to make any conclusion as to the cause of failure. The union may have been very interested in improving the situation, but the solution offered by the administrator may have been a ridiculous one if the actual circumstances were known. Only one side of a many faceted situation was stated. I have seen many ridiculous "solutions" offered by administrators that never address the problem. Nevertheless, one would have to visit that school to know what was really going on.
Pandora
Well-Known Member
Teachers in large cities have it way harder than teachers here in Oregon or Washington. I dont know about Washington but in Oregon the lowest paid teacher makes more than the avarage teacher in inner cities.
I do not think that is very fair. Teaching in NYC Chicago and other dangerous places should have hazard pay.
How about putting some teeth into, or actually enforcing current laws for juvenile delinquency and parental neglect.
The infrastructure is in place, and already budgeted for in every municipality in the country...it's called the judicial system. Merely throwing more money around will never correct problems when current regulations, laws and statutes are hap-hazardly enforced.
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Pandora
Well-Known Member
Agreed, that should be done too!
