It’s hard to imagine a teacher’s union making themselves even more despicable and obstructionist, but they’ve found a way. First, the Los Angeles Times published an analysis on teacher performance:
With Miguel Aguilar, students consistently have made striking gains on state standardized tests, many of them vaulting from the bottom third of students in Los Angeles schools to well above average, according to a Times analysis. John Smith’s pupils next door have started out slightly ahead of Aguilar’s but by the end of the year have been far behind.
In Los Angeles and across the country, education officials have long known of the often huge disparities among teachers. They’ve seen the indelible effects, for good and ill, on children. But rather than analyze and address these disparities, they have opted mostly to ignore them.
Most districts act as though one teacher is about as good as another. As a result, the most effective teachers often go unrecognized, the keys to their success rarely studied. Ineffective teachers often face no consequences and get no extra help.
…Though the government spends billions of dollars every year on education, relatively little of the money has gone to figuring out which teachers are effective and why.
This is exactly what one would expect from an industry shielded from the competitive pressures of the market, and instead dominated by the influence of powerful unions. In a free market, understanding what makes one teacher successful over others would be a top priority, as schools sought to attract students by providing the highest quality education possible. But our public education system is more like a jobs program for union members, and it’s too much of a bother for them to worry about the little things like whether or not students are learning, and why.
Rather than attempt to improve upon their performance and learn from this analysis, the LA Times reports that union leaders are threatening to boycott the paper.
The Los Angeles teachers union president said Sunday he was organizing a “massive boycott” of The Times after the newspaper began publishing a series of articles that uses student test scores to estimate the effectiveness of district teachers.
“You’re leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test,” said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which has more than 40,000 members.
Duffy said he would urge other labor groups to ask their members to cancel their subscriptions.
Measuring teacher quality based on student performance, how outrageous!
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I’ve lamented before the ridiculous overreactions of many adults when 21st Century kids act like kids have always acted since the beginning of time, only using 21st century technology. Hysterical school administrations, prosecutors and parents have literally ruined the lives of young people because they sent to their peers, or received from them, racy photographs. Now, New York city schools think they have the authority to punish students for such activities, even when they occur completely outside of school.
Schools now want to punish students caught “sexting” — no matter where they do it.
The Department of Education wants to ban both cyber bullying and sexting in New York City’s public schools at all times, even outside of school hours.
…Not only does the Department of Education want to ban sexually explicit text messaging that students may do off hours on nights, weekends and summer vacation, but they also want to punish them for it, handing out up to a 90-day suspension.
Keep in mind that these are public schools, which makes them agents of the US government. Essentially, the US government is preparing to reach into the digital interactions of children, judge the content of their behavior with other children, and then punish when the government has decided they have transgressed. Gee, I wonder what could go wrong?
Children are easy targets for government control
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This guy is too good for New Jersey:
Hat-tip: Viral Footage
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Reminding us again how important it is to place judges on the Supreme Court that actually adhere to the doctrine that the Constitution is the law of the land, another important case is before the court. The Ninth Circuit wrongly sided with the teacher’s unions and others with a vested interest in defending education’s status quo of failure, but now the Supreme Court has a chance to correct this error.
From an Institute for Justice press release:
Leave a comment…This week, the Court agreed to decide whether Arizona’s scholarship tax credit program violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. That will thrust school choice back into the national spotlight to a degree not seen since 2002, when IJ defended the Cleveland school choice program in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that vouchers are constitutional.
…The ACLU claims that the state, by giving taxpayers the choice to donate to both religious and nonreligious School Tuition Organizations, is unconstitutionally advancing religion in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because most taxpayers to date have donated to religiously affiliated charities.
Mellor said, “This case is most notable for what it does not involve: state action advancing religion. Arizona structured its tax credit program to be completely neutral with regard to religion. Neither taxpayers nor parents have any financial incentive to donate to a religiously affiliated scholarship organization over a nonreligious scholarship organization or to select religious over nonreligious schools.”
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The Congress Elementary School District in Arizona is tired of having to comply with open record laws, or deal with pesky residents that want to know what they’re doing. The school district is now suing four residents on the basis that their lawful requests amount to “harassment.” No kidding:
The Congress Elementary School District claims that past efforts by these residents to obtain documents such as minutes of board meetings and spending reports amount to harassment that should not have to be tolerated.
But Jean Warren, one of the four defendants named in the lawsuit filed January 28, 2010, said the complaint is an illegal attempt to silence citizens who have questioned the district’s policies and spending practices.
The lawsuit says the defendants filed over 100 public records requests since 2002. That’s barely 10 a year. It then hyperventilates that it is contrary to the “public interest” to comply with the requests “filed by the Defendants on an almost daily basis.”
One hundred requests since 2002 is an almost daily basis? No wonder kids can’t count. They are being taught by morons – thuggish, tyrannical morons who think they have a right to lord it over children and parents alike without ever being questioned.
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States are running out of money. If there was a bankruptcy process for States, many would be going through it. Naturally, this means lawmakers are looking for things to cut and places to save money. An obvious target is the generous subsidies they force taxpayers to give to public universities so little Johnny can sit around playing beer-pong in his Birkenstocks.
And now Johnny is pissed off that the gravy train is slowing down. So what’s a Berkley Progressive to do? Destroy some property, of course!
See how a Berkley student representative defends this leftwing tantrum
Petulant, entitlement-minded tantrums aside, are students right to be upset? No.
They have no right to taxpayer money for their education. Moreover, part of the reason tuition is so high is because government continues to subsidize it, which encourages overconsumption.
Maybe students should target their ire at universities which waste money on silly moonbat courses.
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Congress is considering expanding oversight of charter schools. No big surprise, the standard position of Congress regarding government these days is “more, please!”
It’s not just Congress calling for more oversight. Charter school organizations were also there testifying in support of an expanded effort by Congress.
But in the first Congressional hearing on rewriting the No Child Left Behind law, lawmakers on Wednesday heard experts, all of them charter school advocates, testify that Washington should also make sure charter schools are properly monitored for their admissions procedures, academic standards and financial stewardship.
The president of one influential charter group told the House Education and Labor Committee that the federal government had spent $2 billion since the mid-1990s to finance new charter schools but less than $2 million, about one-tenth of 1 percent, to ensure that they were held to high standards.
“It’s as if the federal government had spent billions for new highway construction, but nothing to put up guardrails along the sides of those highways,” said Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
Charter schools have thrived thanks to the competitive advantage they gain over public schools by being less regulated. They have more room for innovation, and it shows in their results.
So what is to explain their call for more government oversight, which also risks increased regulation? I see two possible explanations.
The argument presented in the article gives us a strong hint. Here’s that argument again: “the federal government had spent … less than $2 million, about one-tenth of 1 percent, to ensure that they were held to high standards.”
It’s all about the money. When government takes responsibility for ensuring the quality of a product, whether it be food, drugs or education, it also bears the cost. So taxpayers pick up the oversight tab, which is itself a kind of marketing. Charter schools don’t want to spend time and effort (money) convincing parents that their product is of a certain quality if government will do it for them.
The other potential motivation for charter schools to desire greater federal involvement is that it simplifies the range of regulations they have to deal with. While most charter schools operate locally or with only one or a small number of schools, the industry is growing and other charter organizations are looking to expand their operations across the country. It would make sense for these organizations to prefer being regulated by one federal government rather than 50 state governments that might write 50 different sets of rules for them to comply with.
This kind of pressure from industry to federalize and standardize regulations is common. And while it makes sense for them as individual business entities, the nation as a whole loses the benefits of having competitive regulatory regimes when that happens. Like all things, governments operate more efficiently and innovate better when they are forced to compete.
As charter school organizations seek greater congressional oversight, they should keep in mind that oversight is rarely not accompanied by increased regulation. That regulation will necessarily threaten the very purpose of having charter schools: to bring innovation to education.
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I’m interrupting my CPAC coverage to mention an utterly outrageous story. A school district in Pennsylvania is being suid for spying on the webcams of students in their homes. The school system provided the laptops to the students, but kept for themselves the ability to turn on and monitor the webcams whenever they pleased.
Michael and Holly Robbins claim they were alerted to the snooping when an assistant principal at Harriton High School warned their son, Blake, in November last year that he was “engaged in improper behaviour in his home”, citing a photo taken on his laptop webcam as evidence.
Mr Robbins said he later verified through the assistant principal, Lindy Matsko, that the school district was able at any time to “remotely activate” the webcam in a student’s laptop and “view and capture” whatever image was in its line of sight, all without the user’s knowledge or permission.
The lawsuit also argues that “many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions” including “various stages of undress”, the lawsuit adds.
At least we can thank our government monopoly education system for showing once again why governmen cannot be trusted.
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Well-paid Rhode Island teachers get the heave-ho for refusing to work more to improve student outcomes:
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers’ union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000…
The school superintendent has responded to the union’s stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.
If they won’t do the job that’s asked of them, I’m sure there are plenty of knowledgeable people currently unemployed who will. There is no reason to keep pandering to these teachers unions.
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It’s not just exaggerated political rhetoric, the American left really does look fondly upon the blood-soaked socialist ideology:
The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.
Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism.
The propaganda of state-run education is at least partly to blame.
So how much blood and misery must an ideology cause before the left abandons it?
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
