About All Those "Bad" Teachers

When you say "those here who love to bash teachers" I think the reality is more like "those here who love to bash people who spew off-topic, non-real estate posts." And sorry, perspective unchanged.

This is another attempt at the government to bash unions and the people that work for them.

It's a slight of hand so that we look at teachers and look away from the trillions that are spent on foreign aid and war. We need to rebuild this country, not Iraq. Pallets of uncounted cash sent to Iraq, but we can't afford to pay a decent salary to teachers?

Bullsh!t!

The corporations own our government now, they will continue to plow under the unions every chance they get.

Teacher bashing is another example of that.

Corporations will not be happy until capitalism becomes worker exploitation.

hey golddouche--you sound like you lacked a good teacher or two wherever the hell you came from--i havent noticed you operating as on-topic-vigilante where it's about bashing teachers and working people--you know, the working people who have ruined our economy as we hear so frequently on this board and throughout our murdochracy

keep on balancing sosh!!

sosh--what a sad story, and sad that this fine teacher's experience is becoming the rule, no longer the exception

what a shameful disgrace we have become

I hadn't thought that teacher-bashing is part of the corporate takeover of the US but it makes sense. It's easy to bash teachers rather than look at the cuckoo popular culture that lauds sports & thug cultcha rather than being a gentleman & a scholar; & with so many parents in the work force, how much time are they devoting to parenting? A teacher friend says that they are trying to destroy public education in this country & I fear she's right. We're rapidly becoming a third world country with the haves & the have nots & nothing in between.

suggested reading: "The Shame of a Nation"; Kozol, Jonathan

Golddouche is almost as funny as Wtushy!

The people who can't tell the difference between union-bashing and teacher-bashing are complete idiots.

Lots of teachers hate the union leadsership as well.

Well, Christie said that teachers use their students as drug mules, so if that is not teacher bashing, I don't know what is.

Republicans and teabaggers like to bash teachers because it is a female dominated profession. They don't have the guts to bash male dominated professions. If they have guts, then let's see them bash cops. I want to see Jim Demint on Fox calling cops "thugs." I dare him.

Socialist, the Sanitation workers you were defending, they were female?

"Well, Christie said that teachers use their students as drug mules, so if that is not teacher bashing, I don't know what is. "

Well, not surprising you don't know what it is... you rarely know what anything was.

And you're flat wrong.... he didn't say they were drug mules, he said they were being used like drug mules... and specifically by... union reps.

Sorry, toots, that's the union, not "teachers".

Moronic that you can't tell the difference.

"They don't have the guts to bash male dominated professions"

You are an idiot. They went hard after the morons running the MTA union, too. Those all chicks?

I don't see anyone on Fox bashing transit workers.

Interstingly, cops and firefighters (male dominated professions) are exempt from the union busting bill in Wisconsin.

here is proof that Christie is more favorable to cops than teachers. Both the cop and teacher asked virtually the same question, but got compeltely different responnses... the teacher getting the nastier of the responses:

Exhibit A:

Policeman: "With a 2% cap on a raise per year, how am I going to afford $8,000 to pay for medical benefits?"

Christie: "You're not. You're not gonna afford it. What's gonna to happen is you're gonna have to make choices among medical plans. And have more choices than just 3 choices which you have now, and only the Cadillac plan. You're going to have to make choices, like everybody else is making choices in this economy. [...]

"A whole bunch of politicians who came before me on the local level and the state level made you promises that they couldn't keep. And they knew they couldn't keep them when they made them. So, I understand you being angry. But I suggest to you, respectfully, don't be angry at the first guy who told you the truth."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/video-christie-explains-police-officer-why-hell-have-pay-more-health-insurance_537449.html

Exhibit B:

The teacher responded by saying that she has a master’s degree and that her current salary isn’t compensating her for the value of her higher education as well as her experience.

To that, the governor responded: “Well, you know then that you don’t have to do it.”

The teacher responded by saying that she has a master’s degree and that her current salary isn’t compensating her for the value of her higher education as well as her experience.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37817.html

> I don't see anyone on Fox bashing transit workers.

Their contract isn't up right now.... and they certainly were last time it was....

> Both the cop and teacher asked virtually the same question

No they didn't.... not even close.

But nice try!

so why is there no cop and firefighter bashing genius? What's the matter? To afraid to attack people who carry guns?

"Their contract isn't up right now"

Neither are the teacher contracts.

where are the proposals from KIng Bloomberg to get rid of Last In First Out for cops, firemen, sanitation workers, correction officers, subway workers, etc.? How are we supposed to get rid of the bad police officers and the bad bus drivers? Why won't King Bloomberg act on this?

> so why is there no cop and firefighter bashing genius?

Cops and firemen have absolutely been called out for excessive pensions.

But the big difference is... cities have been getting safer, and our kids are getting dumber. Ironic that you can't see that.

> What's the matter? To [sic] afraid to attack people who carry guns

No, I just prefer to attack morons who can't spell.

do you blame the firemen for the fires?

"But the big difference is... cities have been getting safer"

Violent crime in NYC is up dimwit. In places like Camden and Newark crime has skyrocketed.

Crime is even up in Kansas!

http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-prairie-village-police-prevent-crime-201138,0,6876887.story

Socialist:

Your postings on this board are proof that our educational system has failed. And while not all
teachers deserve to be fired for incompetence, yours definitely do.

Socialist really doesn't help his cause with the constant inane postings. His arguments are so unintelligent it is laughable.

When transit workers went on an illegal strike to try to bully crazy pay raises a few years ago, conservatives criticized them. When fare hikes are brought up, conservative media criticizes the lavish pensions.

When Sanitation workers (mostly men) allegedly didn't plow the snow over the holidays, conservative media criticized them.

Crime is down about 70% in NYC from 20 years ago. To argue that crime is back up because of a miniscule tick during a recession is just idiotic.

I think Socialist comes off like a fool for a few reasons. One is that socialism and big intrusive government don't work, so it is hard to argue for something that is fundamentally wrong. The other is that he is just not intelligent enough to make good arguments.

Lemme get this straight, LICcomm: you're too stupid to understand what Socialist posted, so you go on a full-out personal attack against him? Get an education, that's all I can say.

LIC:

That Socialist's analytic and reasoning powers are so poor points to the inadequacy and
incompetence of those who taught him.

Socialist is in fact a demonstration of why teachers should be retained and laid off based
on merit and not on length of employment. and why teachers unions should not be treated the
same as industrial unions or the sanitation department.

"merit"!

That was such a sad commentary on what is happening in our schools.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07winerip.html?sq=merit&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all

Or do you mean "Nice tie, boss! Nice wife, report!"?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/opinion/02culbert.html?scp=3&sq=performance%20evaluation&st=cse

OK. there are a lot of bad teachers, a middling amount or not so many. if there are a lot or even a middling amount and you get rid of them all who do you plan to replace them with? will you just run to the your local teacher shopsmart and pick up however many thousand of them? where do you plan to find highly competent teachers to take on the lesser attractive teaching positions in this country while at the same time you all seem to be proposing to make the employment terms less attractive than they currently are? so you think firing a bunch of people and reducing benefits and possibly salaries will make it easier to staff adequately our horrifyingly bad school districts? i don't see it happening, but hope springs eternal, and all that.

if there aren't so many, what does it matter?

aboutready, you're so silly ... obviously you can find teachers by the bushel at your political campaign rallies. Duh!

Let's face it, anyone who has grown up in NYC public schools know witht the great teachers there are some really bad teachers. And even as a kid, you were aware of the ridiculous rules that made it near impossible for a teacher to lose their job, basically they had to get caught sleeping with a student and even then sometimes didnt lose there job.
This was and is ridiculous.
A fair compromise; Employ the old tried and true 80/20 ratio.
Layoff 80% on senority, 20% on merit.
You'll see how fast education improves in all facets

If the pensions and benefits are brought to reasonable levels, there wouldn't be a need to fire as many teachers. Additionally, bad teachers should be fired regardless of the economic environment.

so the teachers aren't bad, it's just that they are not being punished for not being more enthusiastic about teaching kids in the South Bronx?

i doubt your teachers were the ones i was thinking about, truth. most of us have absolutely no experience with the bottom quartile or even half of the school districts in this city, or this country.

And I honestly can't think of one bad teacher (as in "bad at teaching") at any of the public schools I attended ... plenty with quirky behaviors, though, and I'm sure lots would be fired at the whim of administrators for that sort of thing.

I love reading stories of some of the people who were put in the "rubber room" ... for example, that guy who punched a reality-tv starlet on camera near the New Jersey boardwalk: NYC (PE?) teacher, rubber-roomed for that reason alone, regardless of merit or job performance.

AR
True enough, I was in pretty decent districts,and my elementary school was ranked in the top 5 in the city I believe.
But there were some really bad junior high teachers and less so at my high school.
For a fact, a gym teacher had a relationship with a girl in high school (I know, so cliche), all three years, 10th grade thru 12. She wasn't the first, and wasn't the last.
Had a science teacher with several pipes and one bong in his drawer, no they weren't confiscates, they were his.
I remember one teacher so angry at a student picking the student up off his chair by his head. That's right, grabbed his head with both hands, forced him out of his seat.
All because the kid's basketball came loose from under his seat and rolled into the aisle.
Not even a reprimand.

Not to do with teacher quality but had another teacher who's mother lived in his car. It wasn't rumour, saw with my own eyes. Stacks and stacks of newspapers and one elderly female just sleeping in the passenger seat everyday.

When people work with no fear of job loss whatsoever, quality will always suffer.

80/20 rule is a no brainer.

So let's say you had a pool of 1000 and have to get rid of 50. With 80/20 your getting rid of the 10 worst of the tenured litter and at the same time saving 10 of the up and comer cream of the crop. THat is an exponential improvement. Not to mention the extra snap in the step from the middle pool to avoid the bottom in the future.

i don't think your numbers work for the poorer districts, truth. it's not hard to be enthusiastic the first few years of teaching. but staying so is less easy. which is why so many young teachers quit.

i don't think that objectively there are that many "bad" teachers. there are probably far more "bad" students. i did go to a very bad public school. through an administration error i was put into study hall. i managed to find another class, fortunately, before the incident in which five or six guys in the class tied up the teacher and proceeded to take apart every desk. no joke. there was almost no likelihood that they would graduate, and indeed they did not, so they really didn't care what they did or did not do. but as you might imagine, they excelled at shop, so i think a life of engine repair and oil changes was looking rather compelling.

at my daughter's very expensive private school she has had a few lackluster teachers, and two i considered to be rather awful for the price (one was situational, just having an awful year for a number of reasons, but the kids still bore the brunt of it).

Liberals believe that teachers have a magical ability to be immune from human failings and that it is impossible for a teacher to be bad at his or her job. Comical!

And way way way more bad parents.

truthskr10, you give four examples of "bad", but none of "bad teaching".

LICcomm, there's a process in place to remove teachers, with due diligence and without capriciousness. Teachers can also be weeded out in their early years, before they're granted tenure, in case the hiring process failed. It's the singular attack on teachers that makes one wonder where all the alleged "bad" teachers are, and then what the motivation is for the current witch-hunt and scapegoating of teachers.

AR
Well now your adding another element, bad students (or kids). THat you'll have regardless of the teachers. And most of those bad students do dominate in junior high.

And I hope nobody mistakes my 80/20 rule. Im not saying get rid of 20% of teachers. But when you are forced to get rid of teachers, 20% of the number you have to let go should be the bottom of the barrel tenured teachers. It is a fair compromise.

My best friend is a teacher, 10th grade in brooklyn. Not the worst life, Excellent benefits, can afford to live in manhattan (east village), has great holidays, summer off, in her younger years moonlight bartending. Travels at least 4 times a year.
10th grade in brooklyn is no picnic, and at 110 pounds, she handles her class quite well, bad students and all.

Alan
True my examples may not have been proper in illustrating poor teaching academically but is that all we learn from teachers? What did my classmates and I learn socially?

A priest that fondles small boys is ok if he gives great sermon?

"small boy" (or girl)? Certainly not okay.

But the rest depends on many factors. Even the notion of age of consent varies greatly over time and place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent). Explicit or implied coercion is another factor, where and when violation takes place, whether to give opportunity to desist, etc. etc.

It used to be standard for employees of businesses to have a few drinks at lunch time, every day if they felt like it -- Mad Men lunches for executives, but also beer for the workplace-injury classes, like construction workers. We no longer tolerate that, but what about after work? What about pot-smoking after work? What about punching reality tv starlets who don't attend your school, after work and in a different state?

truth, she may be the best teacher in the world, she may not. you don't see her teach.

it's strange. two years ago the most hated workers were the bankers. this year it's public employees, with an emphasis on teachers. if i'm thinking about going into banking there's a likelihood that i'm equipped with a strong ego and a high desire for income.

what would make me, or anyone, want to go into teaching now? even if you get rid of 10-20% of teachers for "cause" i doubt they'll be replaced, classes will just become bigger and the "better" teachers will be expected to handle it, so you won't be creating any new spots.

what did you and your classmates learn socially, truth? does your mother sleep in your car? do you pick up people by the head? obviously sexual molestation is absolutely not acceptable, but the vast majority of us have had teachers of various competencies. and most of us have not been the worse for it, even in the poorest of neighborhoods there is only so much teachers can do to compensate for pre-existing conditions. what every child could really use is two or three truly transformational teachers, they are the ones that change the playing field. but that can't be a criteria for teaching, that's just luck.

Hey guys (Ahart/AR)
I see this argument will easily fall into the elements of forming arguments around one's personal political point of view. And Im just not that passionate about the subject to continue on the thread.
Im fairly centrist. Just like corporations were too ridiculous some 50 years ago, I find the ridiculousness has now tilted towards many unions (not just teachers).
My 80/20 suggestion is middle ground.

Some closing points;
AR: 1) I have and always will hate bankers 2) I have on more than one occasion dated a girl half my age (though I'll concede my high school teacher was unlikely the reason :) ) Of course it may certainly have affected some of the 1000 other kids. It certainly affected my younger sister and her classmates when rumours got real public (teacher's son was in my sister's class).

Ahart
Two of my friends did smoke with that teacher on occasion (during school hours)

Ultimately it appears we are arguing over behavior rather than performance and thats where politics comes in I guess.
Though the line may be grey, it seems there is no line period, that's all.

To me this isn't political, truth, it's a question of logistics. while there aren't that many "bad" teachers, there aren't that many "great" ones either. and i think that's true of most professions, except maybe those that both set a high bar for entry and have high pay. i don't think you can start getting rid of fairly large numbers of teachers without first having a plan for replacing them. at the end of the day i think we're just going to wind up getting rid of large numbers of teachers, and we won't replace them. that's a different question, and that's politically based. but i think teaching is like any other area, some employees are great, some good, some so so, some not so good. to compare it to a company, if the means are there (money and/or potential employees) to replace and upgrade those who are not so good, then do so. i don't think we have the money or the potential employee body to do so, even if we get rid of mostly experienced teachers.

btw, i am no fan of first in/first out.

In capitalist countries, normally when current wages are not attracting qualified applicants, the effective solution is to raise the wages offered.

Those who seek to improve the schools by lowering the already low pay of teachers (and retirement benefits are obviously part of pay) must be operating on some non-capitalist model of the economy.

The advocates of this position seem to be largely the same people who argue for a real estate pricing model that predicts that high unemployment, reduced government services (e.g. transit, garbage collection and education), and increased building will lead to higher prices. Is the connection logical or just coincidental?

"where do you plan to find highly competent teachers to take on the lesser attractive teaching positions in this country while at the same time you all seem to be proposing to make the employment terms less attractive than they currently are?"

Good question. I guess we could always cut taxes and ummm, umm, Don't Tread on Me!

"Liberals believe that teachers have a magical ability to be immune from human failings and that it is impossible for a teacher to be bad at his or her job."

ok, LICC, you are right. Teachers are bad. But because your such a genius who knows everyhting, I just signed you up to teach an English class at a Bed Stuy high school. I'm sure you will have no problems whatsoever increasing test scores by 20%, right? RIGHT?

Will there be a materials budget for bumper stickers?

so LICC and somewherelese, I have an honest question for both of you:

How do you determine who a good teacher and who a bad teacher is? Test scores???

When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?

WASHINGTON — In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its “shining stars.”

Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes’ students scored “proficient” or “advanced” in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.

A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district’s elementary schools, Noyes’ proficiency rates fell further than average.

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.’s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes’ classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

Noyes is one of 103 public schools here that have had erasure rates that surpassed D.C. averages at least once since 2008. That’s more than half of D.C. schools.

Erasures are detected by the same electronic scanners that CTB/McGraw-Hill, D.C.’s testing company, uses to score the tests. When test-takers change answers, they erase penciled-in bubble marks that leave behind a smudge; the machines tally the erasures as well as the new answers for each student.

In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.

On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm

Socialist--I don't really understand your point. Since some teachers cheat, we shouldn't bother trying to evaluate whether they're actually good at their job.

How about when people cheat, that's one of the criteria that can be used to fire them.

I can remember being in my public school class in 2nd grade (early 1960's).
There was a student named Jessee who was out-of-control in the classroom on a daily basis.

I don't remember our teacher's name, but: One day Jessee was going off: Running around the classroom and throwing books. The teacher decided enough was enough -- he had already contacted Jessee's parents, to no avail. He walked over to that kid and smacked him and Jessee took off. A race around the classroom ensued and when the teacher finally caught Jessee -- he smacked him again. Jessee went back to his seat at his desk. The teacher said: "I think that Jessee and I are going to be very repectful to each other from now on".

And, that is what happened as a result.

It could never happen today, nor am I saying that it should.

It was the mid 1960's. Makes not a lot of difference.

Because Jordyn, when you put such a huge emphasis on test scores, you only encourage cheating. And this was not just a case of a few rogue teachers. I GUARANTEE you that the higher ups knew about it.

So fire the principal or whoever too. I don't get it. This argument could be made against any sort of performance analysis that could be gamed. Most people don't take away that it's not worth bothering to try to evaluate performance. In fact, by this logic we'd just pick the oldest kid from each school each year and send them to Harvard because they must be the smartest (and people would just cheat on tests and schoolwork if we tried that). If you happen to be the youngest kid in each class, sucks to be you--you're not good enough for college.

Personally, I'm not beholden to any particular way to evaluate teachers, but relying solely on seniority seems to result in fairly ugly outcomes in most places I've seen it practiced.

the problem people have with a system that places such importance on standardized testing, beside the most obvious that those results are easiest to manipulate, is that is removes the "learning" from the education by teaching strictly to the test. the way to excell on a standardized test is through memorization and repetition, and while that is important for such benchmarks as sats, all learning just cannot happen that way. it does not allow for any.....wheel turning. learning is as much about the facts of something as it is about why that something occurs, how it occurs, etc. it's more important to teach children how to think and develop thoughts and ideas and understandings. when one learns only enough to do well on a standardized test, they didn't learn it because they didn't arrive to that ultimate understanding, they memorized a piece of data. which unless they are rain man, they will forget almost immidiately after taking the test.

So there's no way to test for critical thinking skills? What about, say, the LSAT?

For that matter, what about math tests? Do people really think you can memorize the answer to algebra problems?

the lsat is taken by adults, jordyn. yes?

are you you really not understanding? i don't know, maybe you really don't. ALL...LEARNING...CANNOT..HAPPEN...THAT...WAY

Typical liberal nonsense- don't hold anyone to any standards, milk the system, no one is accountable for their own performance. Sad.

And why would anyone get into teaching? Beside liking what they do and feeling gratified, teachers get above average pay and benefits with a below average workload. I'm not saying the work is easy, it's not, but compared to other things, it is no harder and the time off is greater.

Typical liberal nonsense

which part?

"ALL...LEARNING...CANNOT..HAPPEN...THAT...WAY"

What way?

You proposed that standardized tests don't measure critical thinking. I pointed to some types of test that measure critical thinking and can't be "defeated" through rote memorization. This has to do with evaluation not with learning.

I agree that standardized tests aren't fully diagnostic of all attributes of a person's learning. So what? We use imperfect measure to figure lots of things out in life. Why should how well students be any different?

P.S. There's some subjects for which memorization seems entirely appropriate. For example, history. It's hard to imagine how you'd argue someone was a successful student of history if they didn't know a lot of facts about history.

we seem to be having 2 different conversations. you are defending standardized tests as a measure of knowledge - fine. i am talking about the teaching philosophy that is structured purely around the test. in that case, it is not any legitimate measure of the scope of a child's knowlege, it IS the scope of the child's knowlege. it is the extent of it. i can't make this any clearer and i won't try. we can agree to disagree. fyi, if it helps to clear anything up, i am talking about nyc public schools.

So I still don't understand how someone can learn how to pass a math test without actually understanding math.

I totally agree that standardized tests shouldn't be the totality of teach evaluations. Subjective criteria such as teacher and student satisfaction and even evaluations by the principals or fellow teachers should be considered as well. Or whatever. As I mentioned above, I'm somewhat indifferent to the evaluation criteria. I'd love to see teachers propose something reasonable.

College professors and teachers at elite high schools are often formiddable. Grammar school teachers and teachers at PS-whatever are, by and large, glorified babysitters. What sort of lifetime pension does your babysitter get? Nothing. She gets an hourly rate, that's it. That's what most teachers should get.

There I said it.

Dwayne_Pipe: Seems like you'll get what you pay for with that approach.

On the other hand:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28leonhardt.html

I agree, Jordyn: We'll get what we pay for. Shouldn't it be that way? If we can abolish the teachers unions, we'll find star teachers getting premium pay, weak teachers getting forced into other lines of work, and most others somewhere in the middle. Isn't that how it is with your field? Isn't that how it SHOULD be? Why does there have to be tenure, and a "standard wage" based on years of service?

"and a "standard wage" based on years of service?"

Is there not a "standard wage based on years of service" in every profession? How many new lawyers make more than experienced ones? How many new doctors make more than experienced ones? Research has shown that new teachers are the least effective and that is why they are paid the least.

Also, a teahers' union is needed so that teachers don't get fired if they become too expensive or because they are not a$$ kissers.

socialist, thanks for reinforcing my point about typical liberal nonsense.

"If we can abolish the teachers unions, we'll find star teachers getting premium pay, weak teachers getting forced into other lines of work, and most others somewhere in the middle"

You just need to get rid of the strict seniority system. This happens in non-union environments, and there are union environments without it.

The Superintendent for HR in one of the Westchester school was arrested recently on felony larceny charges for falsifying credentials of selected teachers to get them paid more. Hopefully if convicted they can revoke his pension and claw back his salary for the years when he was committing the crimes. Plus go after the teachers involved if they knew about it. I'd even say no jail time, let him move to Florida without retirement benefits and with a reduction in his worth from the salary clawback (plus reimbursement of the healthcare benefits, etc.)

Socialist, what's wrong with firing teachers if they don't kiss ass well enough. In other professions you need to kiss ass, why should teachers get a free pass on yet another private market criteria? Also, if they get too expensive, why can't we find cheaper teachers or ask the current teachers if they'd take a cut? If they are really good, and if they've kissed enough ass, they shouldn't have any problem.

How about a middle aged middle princiopal calls a young female teacher into his office. He says "You know Sally, because of cutbacks, we are going to have to lay some teachers off. I sure don't want to lay you off." After the principal says this, he closes the door and proceeds to take his pants off.

How is this different from every other job in the world?

Did the middle aged principal start as a teacher?

Maybe that's your answer, this type of behavior, according to Socialist, is endemic to teachers. They need to be protected from each other, right? But unless the mayor or Board of Ed president is removing his pants, it doesn't sound like Socialist has an argument for why teachers should have any protections from the taxpayers.

Essentially though, Socialist's argument is that public employees are lower quality, have fewer skills, and don't have much by way of merit to defend themselves and get advanced. Therefore, the public employee, according to Socialist, needs special treatment, like the kids in the special needs class.

Socialist's support for his arguments are fictional anecdotes.

Ha, good catch.

With all the failures of socialism, I guess you have to make up the few victories you claim....

So, protect bad teachers so principals don't take their pants off!

Or, better yet, work on fixing the crappy principal union that doesn't allow you to fire the de-pantser!

The teacher's union currently protects theirs...

Campbell’s Law states that incentives corrupt. In other words, the more punishments and rewards—such as merit pay—are associated with the results of any given test, the more likely it is that the test’s results will be rendered meaningless, either through outright cheating or through teaching to the test in a way that narrows the curriculum and renders real learning obsolete.
In the era of No Child Left Behind, Campbell’s Law has been proved true again and again. When the federal government began threatening to cut off schools’ funding if they did not achieve across-the-board student “proficiency” on state reading and math exams, states responded by creating standardized tests that were easier and easier to pass. Alabama, for example, reported that 85 percent of its fourth-graders were proficient in reading in 2005, even though only 22 percent of the state’s students demonstrated proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard, no-stakes exam administered by the federal government.

Simultaneously, instances of outright cheating were rising nationwide.

http://www.dailykos.com/

Increasing reliance on standaridzed exams will only lead to more schools "teaching the test" instead of real life skills and will most certainly lead to more "ErasureGate" scandals.

Why do you think that no police department in America has merit pay for police officers? What would happen if cops who make lots of arrests or write lots of tickets got bonuses? Do you think there would be corruption and amybe, just MAYBE, innocent people would be arrested or ticketed?

What would happen if the NYPD gave captains bonuses for reducing crime levels in their precincts? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, crimes would not be documented?

>Campbell’s Law states that incentives corrupt. In other words, the more punishments and rewards

I agree, teachers should no longer even be allowed to give tests to the students.

>What would happen if the NYPD gave captains bonuses for reducing crime levels in their precincts? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, crimes would not be documented?

Ideally, NYPD would stop arresting people. Then Socialist's world would be complete.

> Violent crime in NYC is up dimwit.

Moron, murders are a small fraction of what they were in 1990. Of course, a recession won't help things, but the increases have been small... and a bigger factor has been... FEWER COPS!

whoops, try again!

"Increasing reliance on standaridzed exams will only lead to more schools "teaching the test" instead of real life skills and will most certainly lead to more "ErasureGate" scandals"

Yes, forget those TEST skills like reading comprehension, and the ability to do math.... we need real-life skills like posting on message boards and learning how to properly play hooky.

Sorry, education starts with LITERACY and basic skills. You should get some. ;-)

"That Socialist's analytic and reasoning powers are so poor points to the inadequacy and
incompetence of those who taught him.

Socialist is in fact a demonstration of why teachers should be retained and laid off based
on merit and not on length of employment. and why teachers unions should not be treated the
same as industrial unions or the sanitation department. "

true dat

http://manhattanda.org/press-release/da-vance-106-defendants-including-80-nypd-and-fdny-retirees-indicted-social-security-d