LTTE: How public schools are being dismantled

[Bluebear]

Richard Secrist, Mesquite (Nevada)

Politicians, tax-cut advocates and others pushing privatization — those who have no interest in seeing schools succeed — are setting the education agenda.

First, taxes are cut or kept from growing with the need to fund our schools, then that is used as an excuse to cut enrichment programs like art and music that might have kept some marginal students engaged. Class sizes increase just as more students are coming to school with chaotic home lives that don’t prepare them for the discipline of school. And when educators reach the point they can’t do the job necessary with a paucity of resources, they’re called incompetent.

Next, politicians privatize public education under the euphemism “charter schools,” which skim off the students with engaged parents and oddly don’t have to follow all the same rules as regular public schools, accelerating the death spiral of public education. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that charter schools overall outperform public schools. To the extent that these private schools do work, the rewards will go to the stockholders and executives, not the teachers who are usually not unionized.

It is absolutely mind-boggling to me, that when it comes to bonuses for bankers and crooked CEOs, too many of us say that in order to keep the high caliber of talent necessary in high finance, we need to reward them with salaries and stock options that seem to be the size of some nation’s entire economies. But teachers? Not so much. Let’s slash their salaries and budgets.

It’s time parents, students and the public generally wake up to the massive dismantling of our public institutions taking place in this country under the guise of “privatization,” “free markets” and “deregulation.” Whenever you hear those code words, reach for your wallets and hang on, because someone is going to take you to the cleaners.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/mar/10/how-public-schools-are-being-dismantled/

[NJmaverick]

1. teacher's wishes to be immune from any sort of job performance standards

can not be put ahead of children and their (our) futures

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Which teachers want to be immune from any sort of job performance standards?

Please. Do tell.

[NJmaverick]

4. Have you been paying attention to the education debate?

those oppose to education reform insist that the problem is with everything and everyone BUT the teachers. If you suggest standards they say that that it's impossible to measure their job performance and those that would measure it are evil and out to get them.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. That is complete bullshit

As a teacher I am in every thread on this topic that I see when I have time to post. I also know most of the teachers who are regulars here in the Education forum. None of us are resisting performance standards.

You also missed our larger point. So far, teachers are the only stakeholder being held accountable. That's not how we can improve our schools.

And if you worked for some of the lame brained fools we teachers have worked for, you would call them evil too. For some strange reason, teachers are now supervised largely by mid level management who has never spent a day teaching. It's an insane system.

[HillbillyBob]

12. I hear ya proud..

MBAs can't find their own ass with both hands, a gps and a friggin map.
I have never met one that was competent at anything in the real world.
Master of Bushit A*******.

[maryf]

14. How do you compare a teacher who teaches honors with one who teaches

a class with a lot of classified kids?? You do realize that its all mainstreamed now? If you have merit pay, administrators will be giving the teachers they like the cushy easy jobs, the ones they don't the jobs where the advances are measured by things like a kid making it to school/class three days in a row.
Kids are not widgets or assembly line parts. Each year there are different challenges, some years are heavenly, some years make you want to quit. The chemistry of the classes can be changed in an instant by the addition or subtraction of one kid. It can't be measured. The current system pays by experience, which is just about the fairest, as with experience each situation is handled better. It makes no sense to consider merit pay, think about it!!! Its not possible...

[pscot]

9. But corporate profits

can and will be put ahead of children's needs and adequate pay for teachers. Let's see who can get to the bottom quickest. We're going into free fall.

[NJmaverick]

10. One problem with your claim

in states like NJ it's the PEOPLE who pay for the cost of education through property tax. So to try and gain sympathy points by painting this as some sort of anti-corporate crusade is simply disingenuous.

[pscot]

11. New Jersey isn't unique

Most states tie school funding to property taxes in one way or another. The question is whether you want to earmark tax dollars for publicly controlled schools, or turn them over to corporations owned by investors like the Bush family, the Bass family, the Waltons, or maybe a consortium of Chinese generals. If you like the current health care system, I suspect you'll love corporate controlled public education. Right now you have the right to go down to the local school board and raise hell if you don't like what's going on in the schools. But if your local elementary is one of 300 operated by Halliburton, that could change, doncha know. But hey, it's your call.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Very accurate

Charters opened here about 10 years ago. They started cutting our budget about 5 years ago. In the meantime, the mayor gave TIF financing to wealthy corporations who agreed to help rebuild downtown. So now we have a beautiful downtown full of businesses that don't pay property taxes.

And this week, the board voted to close half the schools.

Bastards.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Diane Ravitch has been all over the place preaching this, and...

has a book out. I remember her talking about a charter school set up primarily so the noneducational "manager" of the school would get paid $450,000-- all from public funds and doing nothing for the money but setting up the deal. And the students did no better than those in the public school tht was eventually closed.

Public education is under the gun as never before.

[tularetom]

6. Lazy parents depend on the teachers to do their job for them

And when the teachers can't overcome the inertia of years of kids sitting on their ass in front of the TV, the parents look for a scapegoat, which opportunistic politicians are more than willing to give them.

Politicians are afraid to pick on the cops or firemen. They can scare the shit out of the public with crime statistics and such. But teachers - an easy mark, they can't fight back.

[KitSileya]

8. I don't think that you can categorize most parents as lazy.

They're overworked because of the backsliding of their wages, and they're clueless as to how to raise kids thanks to the generation of '68 who raised them refusing to set any form of boundaries - authority sucks, right? Without any good foundation for setting boundaries for their kids, and lack of energy to take that fight with their kids when they realize their kids have no manners, we teachers end up trying to do it ourselves, with the 25 kids in our classrooms, which will never succeed - if the parents cannot do it with a adult-kid ratio of 2:1, how can 1:25?

Tho' I don't agree with you when it comes to the laziness of parents, I do agree with you that the frustration this situation engenders in them causes them to latch on to the easy scapegoating offered by "opportunistic politicians."

[maryf]

13. good points

parents are overworked, kids are over tired, and teachers are over burdened, especially with all the additional data mining foisted on them...

[QC]

15. kick