With the attacks on teachers and all, why is there never any studies or stories on school boards?

[Safetykitten]

Offices, perks, cars, mismanagement, overpaid staff, too much staff...

Why not any questions about this seemingly bottomless money pit?

[Odin2005]

1. Because School boards are tools of RW infiltration.

[Safetykitten]

3. I would think this would be red meat material to show how money is wasted and not getting...

to the teachers and kids.

[QC]

32. There's your answer. n/t

[WinkyDink]

2. What? Cars?! Staff?! Our school boards in my area of PA are unpaid elected volunteers!

Now, if you want to talk ADMINISTRATORS,......

Where do you live?

[Safetykitten]

4. I think that maybe there are others not in that situation.

[Obamanaut]

5. Here they hold elective office, and are paid nicely. nt

[wtmusic]

10. Administrators aren't tenured either.

If they don't do their job they get fired - and very quickly and inexpensively too. Kinda the way it should be.

[Nevernose]

31. Where I live, admin has their own union

It's quite a simple process to fire a tenured teacher for not doing their job well; it's just a pain in the ass and could take several hours over the course of two or three weeks. Administration hates doing that much work in most work location -- they have much more importantr paperwork to be filling out.

They also have their own union, and out of about 800 of them, I can't recall a single one ever losing their job. Being transferred away from kids and to the ed shed maybe, but never fired. They're union is too good and their contract is too tight, and the District feels that firing an administrator would reflect poorly on them.

The only thing my union membership has ever helped me with is protection from shitty and incompetant adminisrtators (and thank god for that).

[etherealtruth]

6. Google Detroit Public Schools

Sadly, there have been a "wealth" of stories about the school board .... almost none of them good.

[wtmusic]

7. School boardmembers don't have tenure.

If you're a boardmember and you're a pain in the ass or ineffiective, you get voted out and you're gone.

[MadHound]

8. And if you're a teacher,

With tenure, who posts a picture of you enjoying a glass of wine abroad, and post it on Facebook, you're fired.

Please, don't try pulling that tired old teacher tenure argument out, it has been beaten to death and shown to not be the great evil that some people like to portray it.

[wtmusic]

9. Really?

Do you have a link to the glass of wine story? :shrug:

The tenure argument is hardly tired; it's the spark that ignited the charter school movement. When it costs $250,000 to fire a tenured teacher, and.02% of teachers in large city districts are fired annually, there's something wrong.

[Safetykitten]

11. This is about school boards. Not teachers.

[wtmusic]

12. With the word "teachers" in your subject line and all

I was confused. My bad. :D

[MadHound]

13. Here,

<http://in.news.yahoo.com/us-teacher-fired-posting-pic-herself-holding-glass-20110208-001602-957.html>

There is no real sourcing in that piece showing that "In New York City, it often costs taxpayers $250,000 just to fire one incompetent teacher." Just the bald statement, and frankly, given both the media's and NYC's assault on public education, that could very well be another "welfare queen" story. Show me the actual stats, not just claims.

I'm a teacher, from a family of teachers, with many friends in education. I know tenure, how it works, and if you are a bad teacher, or even if you're a good one, tenure is not going to keep you in your job. It is there simply to insure that you get a full and fair hearing. What, you don't think that teachers should get a full and fair hearing?

[wtmusic]

19. I did show you actual statistics, and you ignored them.

.02% (or less) of teachers in NY and LA are fired annually.

10 teachers out of 55,000 in New York. Do the math.

That's about 200x less frequently than other occupations. Surely, even coming from a family of teachers, you're not arrogant enough to tell me that teachers are 200x better employees than architects, policemen, waiters, and the rest of us? :shrug:

The reason they're not fired is because of tenure - it's too damn expensive to get rid of them. That's also why there are convicted child molesters still on the payroll in New York. The 500 lb. gorilla that is killing teachers unions, and driving the charter movement.

[MadHound]

22. Umm, you're forgetting about the 132 cases that are pending a hearing,

Why's that?

You seem to be one of those people who are determined to bring everybody down to your own sorry level. Rather than fighting for unions so that you can get good benefits, you would rather tear down the unions by any means possible. Why is that?

And why are you limiting yourself to New York City anecdotal evidence. Here, two can play that game.
<http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2010/02/24/rhode-island-teachers-fired/>

Eighty eight teachers, fired, most of them were probably tenured. We can play this game all night, and for every overblown anti-teacher, anti-teacher union story you put up, I can put up a dozen showing that, get this now, TEACHERS, TEACHER UNIONS AND TENURE ARE NOT PART OF THE PROBLEM. But I have a DVD to watch, so I bid you good evening, and stop trying to demonize teachers and teacher unions.

[wtmusic]

26. Pending cases are irrelevant.

10 teachers were fired last year, out of 55,000. That's .02% and that's not enough, by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm not going to play dueling ad hominems with you and I certainly won't admit my goal is to "tear down the unions by any means possible", a statement which you'd find impossible to justify. The truth is that unions are just like corporations - when they have a monopoly they are certain to exploit it. That's what's happening here.

The Rhode Island story is typical in the Dept. of Education's heavy-handed response to dealing with this state of affairs, and it's destroying public education. If Obama had an ounce of business sense he would apply the Sherman Antitrust Act against teachers unions and break them into smaller units (in fact one of the first invocations or the Sherman Act was against the American Railway Union). Not to destroy them, but make them competitive. There is no earthly reason based on skills and training a high school teacher deserves $113,000/year, or the truly insane degree of job security afforded by most teacher's union contracts. They get it because (usually) they're the only game in town.

If Obama did use the Sherman Act against labor, he would have to bring it to bear against corporations too - and that is the reason it's all but disappeared in the lexicon of civil law.

[MadHound]

30. Well, thank you

You have, in one post, answered all my questions, much more honestly, and in a more forthright manner than I could have ever dreamed of. You wish to desperately cling to your one statistic in order to justify your real wish, which is apparently the complete and total destruction of teachers, teacher unions and public education. This is evidenced by your wish to unleash the Sherman Anti-Trust Act on the unions in a bid to break them up. Sad, truly sad, how can you call yourself liberal, progressive, even Democratic, being as anti-labor as you are.

So let's get down to a few facts, shall we. You keep screaming that only 10 teachers were fired in California, .02% fired in New York. I'm sorry, but that's just simply wrong.

<http://technorati.com/politics/article/thousands-of-teachers-to-be-laid/>
<http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-03-16/politics-city-county-government/california-budget-politics-city-county-government/california-budget-crisis-diaries-pink-slippin-teachers>

So let's see, 22,000 were fired in California last year, 15,000 fired in New York, 17,000 in Illinois. So much for your claim of only 31 teachers being fired, or whatever obvious, blatant nonsense you were trying to push. You're wrong, give it up.

With those kind of numbers, it belies your propaganda that it takes a quarter million dollars to fire a teacher. If that were the case, it would be cheaper to keep teachers, d'uh. It seems you are much like Faux viewers in this regard, willing to accept any propaganda thrown at you, even if it is belied by facts, even if the propaganda is ridiculous on the face of it.

Oh, one other thing, it wasn't the Department of Education that fired those RI teachers, it was the local superintendent. As far as applying the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to those huge, monopolistic teacher unions, umm, hate to tell you this, but the NEA and AFT aren't giant monopolies. There are dozens of teacher's unions across the country, belying your quaint and ill-informed opinion that teaching is dominated by a giant, all powerful teacher's union. Oh, yes, about teacher's unions being so very, very, powerful. You do realize that in most states, teachers and teacher's unions are forbidden by law from going out on strike. Now how effective, how all powerful do you honestly think that a teacher's union can be if it can't even utilize the most effective and powerful tool in a labor union's toolbox, the strike. But somehow in your addled view, teacher's unions are all powerful, wielding amazing amounts of influence:eyes: Sadly, your gullibility for anti-teacher, anti-labor propaganda is being matched thousands of others like you, people are either unwilling or unable to discern truth from propaganda.

Now then, as far as teacher pay and teacher competence goes, you complain about an experienced teacher getting $113,000/yr. Why? A teacher making that sort of salary has to have a Master's degree, plus extra hours, or a Ph.D., and at least twenty years experience. Really now, you don't think that a well educated, highly experienced professional should be paid for their education and experience? Do you feel the same way about other professions, such as doctors, lawyers, etc.? Or just teachers.

Of course you do realize that even at $113,000/yr, you're not getting rich in Long Island. The cost of living is much higher than many other places, which is one reason that salary is that generous. You get out here in the Midwest, or frankly most anywhere else in the country, and a comparable teacher, with comparable experience, would be getting paid somewhere between seventy and ninety thousand dollar per year. But you probably think even that is too much.

Which brings me to an interesting point. You begrudge teachers their (mostly) meager pay. Why is that? For decades, teachers have been underpaid and undervalued. A large part of this is due to the fact that until about thirty years ago, teaching was considered to be, by and large, women's work, and like all professions dominated by women, few as they were, such professions were underpaid. That attitude, and the practice of underpaying teachers persists until this day. The trouble is, such low levels of pay are discouraging the best and brightest from entering teaching. What college student in their right mind is going to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in college debt, only to go into a profession whose starting pay averages around thirty thousand a year?

Another interesting fact, in the countries that rank highest in education, the teachers are not only granted the professional respect we reserve for doctors and lawyers, they are also paid like doctors and lawyers. While the US gives polite lip service to the idea that education is one of the top priorities in our country, these top ranked countries actually follow through, compensating their teachers as they would any other vital, respected profession.

Furthermore, you claim, baselessly, that teachers are ill-educated, that Education is a fluff degree. I've recently graduated from an education program. In order to complete that degree I had a course load averaging twenty hours a semester. A teacher going into secondary education not only has to get a degree in education, but also what amounts to a second degree in their area of specialization. Most secondary education students go ahead and get that second degree in their area of specialization, since the coursework just to get the secondary education degree includes enough coursework in their area of specialization that students find themselves only a few hours short of a degree(the one or two capstone classes needed) in their area of specialization. In fact most Education students have to take five years to complete their degree because of the number of class hours required to get an Education degree, more hours than are required for virtually any other undergraduate degree. Furthermore, even after they graduate, teachers are required by law to continue to pursue post graduate degrees and continuing education for the rest of their careers.

Your position on teachers and Education smacks of one who is ignorant of what is really going on in Education. You parrot the corporate talking points put out by the corporate media as well as a Teabagger parroting the talking points of Faux news. You make wild claims that aren't demonstrably true, you cherry pick your information, and you show your ignorance about Education with each and every one of these claims. Your position is not just anti-union, but anti-teacher and anti-education. You are, like far too many people, blaming teachers as a whole for problems that have been created by administrators, school boards, the voting public, policy wonks, and politicians, the vast majority of which have absolutely no experience in the field. Would you attack doctors in this same fashion, blaming them for the problems caused by the health insurance industry? Then why are you putting all the blame on teachers?

You are part of the problem, not part of the solution. You display, with every sentence you write, your ignorance and just how much you have succumbed to the corporate propaganda. You parrot talking points without thinking critically or questioning the source of those talking points. In short, you are like others of your ilk, ignorant, bamboozled, and horribly, horribly steeped in right wing corporate propaganda. You are anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-education. Well, sadly, it seems like the unwashed masses of people like you are going to eventually triumph. And in ten, twenty, thirty years, after the teacher unions have been busted, well educated, highly experienced teachers replaced by TFA graduates, and our public education system replaced by private and charter schools, after all of this comes about and the quality of our education continues to sink at an ever quicker rate, perhaps then you, and the rest of our country will finally realize our mistake. But by then it will be too late, far too late for the generations who will have been ill-educated and ill served by the corporate education system that is replacing our current one. It will only be poetic justice when your life or welfare hangs on the slender thread of a doctor, lawyer or other such professional who received their education in this system. You will suffer, but remember, you and your delusional kind will have brought about this state of affairs.

[wtmusic]

36. I'll address some of the points of your post

again, without resorting to the ad hominems and insinuations about my critical thinking skills which somehow you feel bolster your position.

You keep screaming that only 10 teachers were fired in California

I never even implied that. Over the last three years in LA (specifically, LAUSD) ten teachers have been fired per year. That's a fact.

22,000 were fired in California last year...

Please tell me you know the difference between being fired and laid off? That pretty much takes care of the only facts you've provided in your rant, now on a limited basis I'll address your unsubstantiated claims.

it takes a quarter million dollars to fire a teacher. If that were the case, it would be cheaper to keep teachers, d'uh...

That is the case, and that is what is happening. At least we agree on something.

There are dozens of teacher's unions across the country...

Of course there are. Do you propose asking teachers to commute from Utah to Los Angeles to teach every day? Because otherwise UTLA enjoys a completely unfettered monopoly in the city of Los Angeles.

You do realize that in most states, teachers and teacher's unions are forbidden by law from going out on strike...

Please provide a link. Here's mine: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=6598825

you complain about an experienced teacher getting $113,000/yr. Why?...

Because that is 2/3 of what a US Congressman or Senator makes? Because they work 190 days a year? Because teachers' benefits are second to none? Because teachers unions refuse to accept a pay cut during recessions, even when states are going broke? :eyes:

you claim, baselessly, that teachers are ill-educated, that Education is a fluff degree...
You are, like far too many people, blaming teachers as a whole...
You cherry pick your information...

Please show me where.

teachers are required by law to continue to pursue post graduate degrees...

Link please.

...

You've shifted our attention from tenure to salary, and understandably so. I don't begrudge any qualified teachers an excellent salary - I do begrudge the piss poor ones that. There *is* no justification for having convicted child molesters on the payroll or teachers who have encouraged students to kill themselves, but these are exactly the people unions are standing behind simply because they pay union dues. That is nothing short of disgusting.

I'll thank you to not lecture me on "what is really going on in education". I have two kids in public schools. They've had union teachers who give their students a reading assignment then proceed to while away the class period playing on their computers without consequence. What happens when parents complain to administrators? Their kid's grade mysteriously gets dinged, and nothing - absolutely nothing - happens to the teacher. Yeah, I'm tired of that. I get fired in my job if I pull that kind of shit, and teachers should too.

It just so happens I'm very pro-union - in fact, I'm a union member (AFM, Local 47). I'm anti-monopoly, however, and the irony is that given a monopoly, unions become exactly like the corporations they were formed to fight against. You're very optimistic in your assessment that it will take up to 30 years to bust unions - it's happening right now, to the detriment of all conscientious and dedicated teachers, mostly because of their unions' intransigence on the tenure issue alone.

[MadHound]

37. Well, it is apparent that you need a lecture in "what is really going on in education'

Because your viewpoint is limited to your experience as a parent, your experience as a student, and whatever propaganda that you read. You don't have experience as a teacher, educator, or inside a classroom. You make baseless claims about the quality of teacher education without having gone through a single education course. Sorry, but this is a rather biased, and non-factual point of view, one subject to influence, as you so aptly demonstrate, to propaganda.

But let me address your points.

Yes, in post after post in this thread, you state time and again that only ten teachers in California were fired. The basis for this "fact" of yours resides in an unsourced corporate media hit piece. I've shown you the actual numbers of firings, but you still cling to your propaganda.

As far as the claim that it takes $250,000 dollars to fire a tenured teacher. Again, please show me the actual government figures, not some biased hit piece from the corporate media. This is something I've requested from you before, but all you continue to do is bleat about the figure, never minding the fact.

At least you acknowledge that there are dozens of teacher's unions across the country, perhaps we're making progress. But now you're complaining that there is only one union operating in the LAUSD. The trouble is, there are teachers who are members of not just the UTLA, but also the NEA and AFT. *GASP*, that's three unions with members in the LAUSD, so much for your monopoly theory. But even if you're correct, let me ask you this. Do you believe that other professions should have multiple unions in their field, in their locale? Because if you notice, especially in small towns and cities, there is only one union in town per profession. For instance, a pipefitter's local, or electrician's local, etc. But you want multiple teacher's unions in one town, why? So that their influence and power is diluted? Because that is what would happen.

As far as teachers being allowed to strike, only thirteen states across the nation permit teachers to strike (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin). This is a labor condition that is applied to few other unions, namely those who work in emergency services. Don't believe me, do what I did, check that state statutes and prove me wrong.

The reason that I bring up salary is because in your post above you complain about an experienced, well educated teacher getting paid $113,000 like this is some sort of atrocity. Do you also begrudge doctors, lawyers, and such getting such a salary? No, I didn't think so. But somehow you find it justifiable to pay a teacher on a payscale that undervalues their experience, education and value to society. Like I said before, in the countries such as Japan and Finland, which are the top of the list when it comes to education, teachers are respected, and compensated, on the same scale as we do for doctors and lawyers in this country. What, don't you think that education of future generations isn't a top priority for a society? So why shouldn't we pay teachers like we mean it? Such pay and respect would insure that the best and brightest would enter the teaching field, what is wrong with that?

As far as getting an education degree, and the work that it entails, I have shown you. Like I said, I just recently graduated with an education degree, and showed the amount of work it took me. This is work that is mandated by law in our states, and these standards vary little from state to state. If you don't believe me, then I suggest that you go and look up the requirements for getting an Education degree in each state.

You are basing your arguments on anecdotal evidence that you then try and apply to all teachers, everywhere. You cherry pick a piece, like that of "having convicted child molesters on the payroll" and try to apply it across the entirety of the Education profession. That's a piss poor way to debate somebody, and unless you can prove that this is a widespread phenomenon, then all you are doing is trying to smear teachers by innuendo and slander. Yes, there are bad teachers such as those you describe, but they are a very tiny minority. You don't take the tiny minority of bad players in other professions and try to tar the whole profession with them, so why are you pulling this tactic with teachers?

And you're right, the busting of teacher's unions is happening now, and it is happening in part because of people like you. People who have a limited POV, who read the corporate propaganda and believe it. If you truly want to get the facts, do your own research, hands on research. Go volunteer in your local school. Talk with teachers, go explore the curriculum requirements to obtain an Education degree. Stop getting your information from corporate Pravda and get into the field and do your own research. Otherwise, you are simply another ignorant citizen buying into corporate media portrayals. Get off your ass and do your own research, then get back to me. I'm willing to bet your opinion will change radically if you do. You are one of those people who see the moderate benefits of a unionized teacher, and rather than fighting to raise up your own position and benefits through collective action, prefer to take the easy route out and try and tear down teachers so that they are in your own abysmal situation. You are, in short, part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Go educate yourself, dig behind the corporate media propaganda to find the truth. Then get back to me. Because until you do that you are nothing more than another ignorant citizen, talking out their ass and thinking that they, with no knowledge and no experience, are perfectly qualified to make major educational decisions. We don't apply that sort of method to other professions, why in the hell do you think it makes sense to apply it to Education?

[Hissyspit]

17. The wine story is true.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x362891

[wtmusic]

27. This situation is not particular to teachers

and it sounds like she may win her case. I hope she does.

[Hissyspit]

20. "The spark that ignited the charter school movement."

Are you trying to SUPPORT your argument?

[cheapdate]

23. In the interest of accuracy

it often costs $250,000 to fire a tenured teacher in New York City and 0.002% of public teachers in California have lost their jobs over the past five years (31 teachers out of about 310,000 over five years.)

I don't know about the public school systems in California or New York, but I think that one of the biggest problems with our public schools in my state (TN) is the weakness of the public university system that trains teachers. It is laughably easy to get a degree from our state teacher colleges. I've known a number of teachers who are frankly not bright or knowledgeable about their subjects or the world in general.

[Hissyspit]

15. Sure you do.

Right after you've been voted INTO office and wreaked havoc with no accountability. And IF the idiot populace wakes up and doesn't like what you're doing. If they don't, you get to continue to wreak havoc.

Teachers are getting accountabilitied to death, with personal information being made public, but little accountability for the people who actually create the state that our schools find themselves in.

It's scapegoat "blame the worker" crap.

[patrice]

16. Schoolboard members have de facto tenure. Just ask Kansas City. Boards play a BIG

part in what fucks up Public Education.

[wtmusic]

21. I hear "de facto" thrown around a lot

and it usually amounts to whatever you feel supports your position.

Links, please.

[patrice]

25. Google Kansas City public schools. Yeah, de facto can mean whatever someone wants it to mean, but

it doesn't necessarily mean what someone wants it to mean.

It's just as absurd to claim that school boards don't have anything to do with what's wrong in public ed as it is to claim that all schools boards have de facto tenure, or that all tenured teaching is the source of all of the problems.

[Telly Savalas]

28. While I'm not going to put together a research paper for you

I want to call your attention to an incident at a KCMO school from Friday:

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/11/2649600/fires-fight-mar-school-day-at.html

When discipline problems are this far out of control, that falls at the feet of the administrators who aren't willing to deal with the chronic disruptors. The best teachers in the country can't succeed in an environment like the one at Southwest.

It's well documented that for years, the KCMOSD was plagued by incompetence and cronyism. Until recently school board seats would go uncontested because nobody want to volunteer to have to deal with the stinking pile of shit. When your goes uncontested, that's de facto tenure. If you're really curious about the situation, I'd direct you to www.google.com.

There are signs that some of this is starting to be turned around, but as the ongoing problems at Southwest HS indicate it's not happening fast enough.

[Doremus]

35. Uh huh. Because the public is so attuned to which public servants are incompetent.

I mean, we were able to be rid of ineffective past leaders so easily, right? People like GWB and his entire administration for example. Snap! and he was gone!

Your obsession with teacher tenure compels you to make stupid arguments. You may want to study the subject so that you are better able to present a more credible case, if such is possible.

[Journeyman]

14. "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board." - Mark Twain

[Kolesar]

24. Mark Twain on civics

I had no idea.

[patrice]

18. EXCELLENT question. There are bad teachers, but teachers are also EVERYONE's scapegoats.

[RedCloud]

29. Or bastard professors being paid by Bush to undermine public education?

[ensho]

33. people don't realize the POWER school boards have

if you want to become political - get yourself onto a School Board.

I've been saying this here at DU for years.

[BlueIris]

34. I wouldn't mind seeing more discussion about the corruption in educational administration, either.

Educational Admin is one of the biggest rackets in this society.

[felix_numinous]

38. Excellent point

-follow the money. It is amazing how effective the pre emptive strike against teachers was. It was never about the teachers, and everyone knew that. The problem in the schools is just a microcosm of what is happening systemically in all the service professions, corruption at the top from dirty money.

Blaming people for not thriving in a corrupt system seems to be their game.