NJ Teacher's Union refusing minor paycut

[CADsortaGUY]

Or more likely you'd get the 'big box' schools come in and homogenize everything in the name of slashing cost and raising shareholder profits.

Low salaries - check
Crappy health insurance - check
No security - check

Uh, we already have a too homogenized school system. I don't think it could get any worse than it is now if it was privatized(even just management of them). The thing is, people would vote with their dollar, not just have to eat whatever BS the NEA, the Feds, or other morons who don't have the kid's best interest at heart serve up.

Competitive positions - check
Performance based reviews - check
Security brought in to deal with those that need dealt with - check
Disruptive students - tossed together until they get their act together(think baby sitting) - check
Students that want and can achieve can excel and progress without being held back by the system - check.

 

[nonlnear]

Or more likely you'd get the 'big box' schools come in and homogenize everything in the name of slashing cost and raising shareholder profits.

Low salaries - check
Crappy health insurance - check
No security - check

And if people don't like them, they won't go to them. Frankly I think there would be pretty major public skepticism of for profit schools. Legitimate or not, there is a pretty pervasive notion that schools should be non-profits so I don't think that's nearly as big of a risk as fearmongers hold it out to be. Education isn't like medicine where there are high margin niche markets. It's not that easy to make a school into a cash cow, at least not for very long. I also don't imagine an instantaneous transition to totally deregulated education any time soon, if at all. The closest I imagine could ever happen in my lifetime is a full voucher system, which would probably be restricted to nonprofits, or at least have strict controls on profit disbursements and margins.

Do you honestly think that Wal-Skool would successfully muscle out a well run parent owned co-op? Even if you are running a school for profit, the way to make schools profitable is very different from retail. Absolutely everything about the business is completely different. In retail things become homogenized because the way to squeeze more form your margins is to streamline inventories, logistics, marketing, etc. Education has none of these problems. (Yes there is marketing, but you aren't marketing product. It's purely branding.) There simply aren't the same incentives to homogenize anything except in those aspects of programming where the gain in consistency actually improves overall outcomes.

And, as CADsortaGUY said, we already have totally homogenized schools. It can't get any worse in that regard.

 

[Patranus]

Uh, we already have a too homogenized school system. I don't think it could get any worse than it is now if it was privatized(even just management of them). The thing is, people would vote with their dollar, not just have to eat whatever BS the NEA, the Feds, or other morons who don't have the kid's best interest at heart serve up.

Competitive positions - check
Performance based reviews - check
Security brought in to deal with those that need dealt with - check
Disruptive students - tossed together until they get their act together(think baby sitting) - check
Students that want and can achieve can excel and progress without being held back by the system - check.

Well, we have that now, its called a charter school and they are VERY successful.
The "progressive" however is strongly against them because they compete with government.

Not to mention they have no unions....

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Well, we have that now, its called a charter school and they are VERY successful.
The "progressive" however is strongly against them because they compete with government.

Not to mention they have no unions....

 

[xeemzor]

Huh? Scripted? For my geometry class, I have 74 performance indicators that my students may be tested on during their state exam. Last Friday was the last day of the 3rd quarter. I have 8 weeks left. I'm done. I've frequently gone well beyond the curriculum and push students with much more difficult problems than they'd find on their state exam. I got to choose which textbook I was going to use - I rarely use the textbook. I have high hopes for about 1/3 of my class to get 100's on their state exam (my wife is going to kill me, because a 100% = dinner at a nice restaurant.) But scripted? Other than a list of 74 performance indicators, and needing to make sure I follow IEPs to the letter, I have complete autonomy in the classroom. My students just completed a video project for their last unit, learning how to use a variety of common software applications in the process to edit clips that they filmed, etc.

My physics class had fun today (next week is our Spring break, so this is the last day before a week off) doing a lab with jello jigglers by cutting them into lenses so they understood how lenses work via refraction, etc. Neigher are in the curriculum - jello jigglers or lenses (lenses were in the curriculum until about 8 years ago.) Again, autonomy in the classroom. Without tenure, there's no f-ing way I'm going to do anything other than teach exactly what I'm supposed to teach. I would fear going beyond the curriculum because some helicopter parent might complain that I'm making the course too hard for their child by going beyond the state curriculum so often.

While I'll agree - tenure makes it hard to get rid of bad teachers in schools, it's absolutely necessary to protect the good teachers. Furthermore, tenure is necessary for the good teachers to stand up to the administration when making decisions that are in the best interests of the students, particularly when standing up to the board of education when the board is charged with balancing the best interests of the children with the costs to the district. Without tenure, school boards, or rather, groups within the community could work to get control of school boards, not for the interests of the students, but for their own interests (most likely cutting taxes.) Without tenure, it's impossible for anyone to criticize their actions or take a stand.

This is exactly why government runs schools are a bad idea. They constantly stifle innovation and creativity in the workplace while allowing a bloated bureaucracy. We need competition in schools to create an environment where teachers like Dr. Pizza are awarded and change isn't seen as a bad thing.

Dr. Pizza, how would you like it if teacher pay was tied to performance? How would you feel if you were allowed to try new things in the class room at a private school?

 

[ShawnD1]

Dr. Pizza, how would you like it if teacher pay was tied to performance? How would you feel if you were allowed to try new things in the class room at a private school?

While great in theory, this is not a good idea simply because it's often not the teacher's fault that kids are not learning things. Yes there are some really really bad teachers out there, but look at all the other factors.
-bad parents
-can't expel trouble makers
-kids were put in your grade 8 class even though they obviously failed grade 7

The other issue is that tying pay to marks encourages "learn the test" type teaching. Instead of actually learning the material on a deep level, you simply learn how to pass the test. I've had a few teachers spend several classes explaining in detail what the test looks like and how you answer the questions; they had to stress this because they could get in serous trouble if the marks are too low even if the students know and understand the material.

An example of learning the test is when the teacher explains how to answer multiple choice questions. "all of the above" is often the correct answer while "none of the above" is often incorrect. The people writing the tests often have their best answers for the first possible answers then the rest (answers D and E) are just stupid filler and are probably not the answer. Look for patterns in the possible answers, if the A,B,and C follow a trend and you know A and B are wrong, then C is probably wrong as well. My social studies teacher explicitly told us terms to use in written answers because they were looking for those terms to explain things.