Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How like the teachers, and their union

Public education is an investment in Liberalism, not in society. It always supprises me when someone goes into teaching and then whines about the pay. It isn't a suprise. They don't hide the pay scale. I have 4 teachers in my family and they sure don't do it for the money. They all enjoy it and aren't shocked that they aren't wealthy. The biggest complaint they have is that it is near impossible to get rid of the dead weight. Why not make it competative? What has the government ever done efficiently?

What has the government ever done efficiently?
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Well, they've compelled Barak to create his own country!!

Geez, Barak - I hardly know where to start!

Especially since we are a lot closer together than we are far apart.

"It's government schools rife with ....etc????" Don't you read the news? Commie, liberal, subversive press that it is. That chit goes on EVERYWHERE, including private schools -it' s just better hidden in private schools, where the "Good Old Boy syndrome is alive and well, even more so than public schools, which at least have SOME outside oversite to them.

"The school's still in business, right?" Yes it is. So lets close the bastard down and leave that particular bush village, largely unemployed, without any educational system at all. Great move! That Super has since retired, and public education is well rid of him. I have to say, assassination was considered.....

"Another potential benefit of privatization" .... You are living in lalla-land , my friend. There are a helluva lot of communities out there whose residents simply could not afford to support a private school. Simplification of a problem to the point of stupidity is, well, stupid - and you are anything but that!

We agree EXACTLY on why vouchers for private/parochial schools are a bad idea. I think. Purse string meddling by the gov'mint. Private schools, public schools, parochial schools, charter schools, magnet schools, home-schooling.... we need them ALL, to provide choice to the broad spectrum of society - at least to the extent they can be accessed. it ain't a perfect world- we'll just have to muddle along best as we can in our individual situations. Some schools without direct government oversight on them is a Good Thing - and vouchers would change that.

"Investment" - Maybe not the precise word I want, but I cannot think of another which is better. One puts money into something expecting a return -hopefully a positive one, but there is no guarantee. (Schools, incidently, are not expected to make a "profit" in the monetary sense - and it's damned difficult to judge "profit in a societal sense 30 years or so in the future- again, we're just going to have to scrap about it and muddle along...) True, it's somewhat of an involuntary "investment" You can always quit your job and move out into the woods , living as a hermit by your wits and a sharp stick. With even ONE other person around, there must be an"investment" of some sort. The more people around, the higher number of involuntary investments. Ditto with "civilization". Unfortunately, I often think, but that's the way it is. I don't expect the serfs back in medevial times being conscripted by the local baron for roadwork thought much of the idea either, but everyone in that society or community benefited from it one way or another, from increased ease to market, more trade, better movement of troops for protection, etc. I'm speaking idealistically here - realism tends to suck big time sometimes. Maybe the roads were built primarily to extort more tithe from the poor bastards. Consider a current analogy- the US road system to the public education system. Would we be better off if the road system was privatized to each community, county, state, with varying standards and ability to fund it? I think not. Same pot of taxpayer money that public education comes out of also funds the interstate/national road system. Let's just do away with the damned government, OK? I don't like taxes either. We can all maintain, locally, if we agree, our own roads, police, schools, military, hang or banish criminals,and anyone we don't like, build our own airports, etc. All on what moneies we can talk our very own shouting distance neighbors out of. Yeah, FAT CHANCE!

"People who think it's a good investment....." Trouble is, the people who DON'T think its a worthwhile investment, or simply cannot afford it, will drag all the rest of us down with them, with their uneducated, unsocialized, criminally inclined children. They are certainly working hard enough at it as it is.

"The mandate..." Dead on. I was making an observation, not a judgement with this one. What is your alternative? 13 year old dropped-out, kicked-out hookers in the streets? Drooling spec ed kids with begging bowls in every McDonalds doorway? You think public education is expensive for the buck's return, when you volunteer work in prisons?

"...all well and good... I don't think so. " Bad choice of words on my part - I meant that as a "statistic", is was highly misleading - and not that it was necessarily acceptable - if it was even in the ballpark.. A couple beers does that to me.

"I seem to have lost track - which side are you on?" Hey, I was the one into the beer.... what do you suggest for this "student"? Euthanasia? Monetarily and socially, it would likely be far more beneficial that "educating" and/or institutionalizing him for the rest of his life. Of course, there is the "you breed him, you feed him" philosophy. His parents could just chain him in a closet for the rest of his life.....What is your solution, in Barakistan? Inquiring minds want to know.

"Good thing there's people like me around, then. The answer is privatization."

Well yes to the first- it keeps the discourse going. And no - we've been around this block above. Simplistic, simplistic, simplistic! "Privatization" is the knee jerk response to nearly everything these days, but it just isn't practical to apply to any and all situations. Hey, let's privatize the military. And the National Forests and Refuges. All "public" lands. The postal service is FUBAR, I'm afraid.

"Damn - I feel good." Venting does that for me. The public school bashing on the conservative side is one of their few philosophies that I totally disagree with. Not that it can't be done better - there is vast room for improvement. And those Liberal bastids don't have it right either....

And by the way - my job with that dastardly taxpayer-supported public education system is not protected by tenure. Paid for, yes. If I'm not doing my job well, I'm gone. Ditto if our local elected school board, local, state, and federal governments don't allocate adequate funds in that area...................note I did NOT say "provide".

Exactly right. I happen to be in the position right now of trying to get my daughter out of our regional school system and into a private school. In our observation, the school system here is definitely geared to the lowest common denominator, seldom shows consistency in enforcing their own rules, and does little to promote education above the minimum required. And for this we pay better than 70 percent of our town taxes for the "education" budget.

We live VERY close to the bone, and will apply for all the financial aid help we can, but I will be taking a second mortage of sorts to pay for what we hope will be an education that will better prepare her for what lies ahead. The local regional system may be "teaching" her, but it sure doesn't seem to be "educating" her well.

Well, one suggestion, especially if you're going to continue to respond to pieces of my post the way I respond to pieces of yours, is to figure out how to use the quote tag to make my stuff appear in little isolated boxes, so that you can put in the whole sentence or paragraph you're talking about rather than just a fragment of it. It'll make your comments easier to understand.

There's not much to it. Click the Reply link on the post you want to reply to, and then look at the bar across the top of the text area you'll be typing into. You'll see a list of square boxes with little pictures in them. One of those pictures is a pair of double quotes. In my case, it's the ninth from the left.

Click that box. It'll generate some text for you. Looking at that text should make it clearer how to use the quote tag. If it doesn't, then play around with it while using the Preview Post button to see the effects of what you're doing.


Government schools have only government oversight, which is motivated and fashioned by politics--politics that in many cases comes from small special interest groups and may have nothing at all to do with the desires of parents. Competitive private schools have far more effective oversight, which is simply, "If you don't teach our kids the way we want them taught, we're going to take our money to a competitor who will." That's the kind of oversight that governs everything from churches to landscaping services to grocery stores, and it seems to work well enough.

And no, I haven't heard a great deal about corruption in private schools. I tend to believe it would be a lot easier to hide corruption in a government school where people have no real stake in where the money goes than it would be to hide in a private school, where every dime that goes for a kid's tuition means a dime that doesn't go for food or rent or fuel or whatever.

There will always be as much corruption as the folks determining the budget will tolerate; but that amount will always be smaller in the private sector than in the government sector because corruption is a competitive disadvantage, even if no one finds out about it. A corrupt organization cannot do business as well or as cheaply as an honest one; therefore an honest competitor will draw business away from a corrupt organization. Government, by definition, has no competitors; therefore corruption in government has to actually be exposed before there's a chance that anything might be done about it. Even when exposed, though, government corruption frequently remains solidly in place (the famous Daley Dynasty in Chicago, for example) because it can't be defunded the way private corruption can be.


Is education important, do you think? Do you think people in general want to have their children educated? Yes? Then the free market will provide a way to make that happen, without government involvement. It happened quite handily before government schools came into existence (heck, kids back then learned Greek and Latin in one-room schoolhouses, for crying out loud), and it'll happen just as handily once they're gone.


I expect you mean they could not afford to support a government school if they didn't get subsidies from outside their communities. There's no reason to believe that private schools would need to be as big and expensive and wasteful as government schools. For example, they wouldn't need metal detectors or cops or multiculturalism administrators or guidance counselors or sports campuses: you could put a perfectly serviceable small 5th-through-8th-grade school in an old two-story house.


Yes and no. Vouchers give control of private schools to the government, yes, which I object to: but no, I don't think anybody needs public schools or charter schools or magnet schools.


One puts one's own money into something expecting a return. One does not put other people's money, taken from them involuntarily and by force, into something expecting a return and call it an investment: that is simply theft, nothing more.


This is your definition of voluntary? Something is voluntary if your choice is between doing it and becoming a hermit? Sounds like we need to do a little work on the concept of private property.


Turns out not to be the case. Spin me a scenario and I'll show you.


Not a good enough argument for me. I expect you'd benefit one way or another if you stole everything I owned from me and murdered me to cover it up; doesn't mean I think it's a good thing or that I'm about to let it happen.


Absolutely. Last summer, Penny and I had the opportunity to make a 4000-mile road trip across the country. Even with all the government regulations in existence, I still noticed that compared to government interstates, the toll roads and turnpikes were in much better shape, had higher speed limits, handled their road construction in such a way as to maintain traffic flow, and so on. Heck, in west Texas we ran into a forty- or fifty-mile stretch of road construction where the speed limit was 35mph (down from 70 or 75mph), and the traffic congestion brought us several times to a standstill. I'm a big fan of private roads. Free-market competition always beats government oversight hands down.


You'd make me one happy little monkey.


What if they're right? Maybe it is a bad investment. Look, it's their money, isn't it? Who are you to decide how they should spend it?


My alternative is the free market. If the market thinks it's important to educate people like that, then they will be educated. If the free market doesn't mind 13-year-old crack whores on the street, then there'll be 13-year-old crack whores on the street. If (as I suspect) it turns out the free market believes kids like that should be kept off the street and prevented from hurting themselves or others, but sees no profit in trying to educate them, then that's what would happen.


Yes.

Don't worry, I think the government has completely screwed up the "justice" and penal systems as well.


Around here, it's closer to $10K/kid/year.


No, but least it's always more practical than government.


Absolutely.


Better and better.


Take away its monopoly and force it to be competitive, and it'll shape right up.


I'm sure that's what they tell you. But how do you, or they, or anyone, know whether you're doing your job well? It's not as simple a question as it may at first appear.

Me, I know I'm not doing my job well if nobody chooses to pay me any money for the result of it, or if the amount of money they choose to pay me isn't commensurate with what I have come to expect for it. If that happens, then I need to figure out how to provide a better service, or learn to be content with less money.

But you don't have that barometer. Nobody chooses to pay you anything: the money you're paid is extorted by force from the people who earn it. If they had the opportunity to choose to pay you or not, and to choose how much to pay you in return for your services, do you think they would pay you as much as you make now? More? Less? You don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows. That's what I mean. Since you don't--and can't--have any idea how much your work is worth, you also can't have any idea whether you're earning your keep.

Very simple really. If the over payment is not returned, then the receipients are thieves. Anyplace I've worked, employee theft is grounds for termination on the spot.

I teach low-end urban, because I'm cool like that.

Now I teach high-performing kids in the morning, low-performing kids in the afternoon. According to my State ratings, I am a wonderful teacher in the morning, I am a horrible teacher after lunch. I also have to work three times as hard to get anything achieved in the afternoon.

The BEST predictor of how kids will do, private school, charter school, magnet school or private, is the income level of their parents. We have schools in our area falling into all four categories. Most often kids merely reflect the norms of where they grew up and most often well-to-do parents value education.

Some poor parents value education too, including a disproportionate number of immigrants, their kids tend to do well too. Private, magnet and charter school kids are often predispoosed to do better because of the simple fact that they have parents who are involved in their education at all, that and the fact these schools sometimes have competitive entrance standards.

Although I teach where I do out of idealism, I would NOT recommend such for new teachers starting out today. At present we are stuck in the fallacy of rating "schools", and of rating teachers mostly by test scores (politically much more expedient than rating parents and communities). "Schools" as entities do not exist, individual students do. Recently we had the daughter of Korean immigrants, who attended "low performing" schools here her whole career, get outstanding AP and SAT scores and get accepted to Harvard, West Point and Yale: Same schools, same teachers, different parents.

I'm thinking those mistakenly-rewarded teachers cannot immediately pay back the money because it is already spent, disappeared into bills due, the teachers themselves too busy to take notice.

Merit pay? I don't want a nickel of it because a) schools and districts at present do a poor job of evaluating teachers and their impact and b) the best teachers ain't motivated by monetary concerns anyhow.

Barakistan? Maybe this was addressed, but what to do about parents who wouldn't send their kids to school AT ALL if it weren't already free (for them) and the fact they got hauled into court and fined? A lot of parents fall into this category.

Do we want an illiterate underclass? Yeah? I know... "They're illiterate already"... Um, no they ain't, you want to see what REAL illiteracy looks like? Go to a country where school attendance ain't mandatory.

Birdwatcher

So Birdwatcher, should the Houston teachers give back the money or not? That was pretty much the gist of this to start with. My point was that these teachers have zero personal ethics, and the teachers union, as usual, scores even lower on the ethics test.
Whine and moan about money being needed for education the kids, and then steal it. Just makes me even more convinced that the teachers and their blood sucking union are THE problem in American education today.

Whine and moan about money being needed for education the kids, and then steal it. Just makes me even more convinced that the teachers and their blood sucking union are THE problem in American education today.
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With American education or America period? The more you explain how the union numbers are down, the more influence on America they seem to have. Teachers are so overpaid because they have a big bad union? Last time I looked, teachers weren't making all that much, but no matter, they have a union so they must be over paid and lazy.

For the record, i don't blame the teachers or the union, I blame society. Teachers as well as parents have the deck stacked against them with outside influences that all but teach kids how to fail and rebel.

You want to compare teachers of today with those of yesterday? Start with the students of today compared to those of yesterday and you will find the problem, not a union.

Yes, they should give the money back.

Well. at least you're picking on teachers now direct, last time you weaselled out and said "no, just the union".

An interesting quandry here. If it were me, give me a payment plan and I'll pay it back, prob'ly I'd scarcely realise I had it in the first place, or the payment plan neither.

In the meantime, are the teachers responsible for the contractual failure of the district? Having received that money in good faith.

For example, if a charter pilot receives a bonus from a client at the client's initiative and accepts it in good faith, being assured he deserves the money by terms of contract, can the client then ask the charter pilot for the bonus back later?

Would you?

Birdwatcher

Where in the constitution does it state that education is a legitimate function of government? "Public" education, "public" housing. Who wants to live in "public" housing? The public education system is hurting. I say this as a parent, grandparent, former (retired) educator (teacher and administrator) and current school board member. It's a mess. Who else wants to do something besides complain? Believe me folks, I'm trying to do my part.

Give the teachers the choice of a couple of repayment plans, then withhold from their pay checks.

Schools are just the Miner's canary. If all the teachers had to worry themselves about was the curriculum, there would not be a problem, however look how much time is spent on problem kids, kids who don't speak English, kids who don't give a damn.

In one way, society is dumping the whole problem on the teachers. Kids show up to school with attitude and then the parents want the teachers to fix their problem? Dropout rates soar and we blame teachers, it doesn't have anything to to do with the teachers.

As far as the wayward bonuses, well how about we put that towards all the personal money a teacher spends on their class...anyone who has been a teacher, or married to one knows what I'm talking about. Probably number one argument between a teacher and their spouse is the amount of the household budget the teacher spends on their classroom. Oh well, they are overpaid anyway.

Absolutely they do. But why do they fall into that category? I'd say it's because government subsidies like welfare and guaranteed schooling enable them to. Stop subsidizing failure and apathy, and I think you'll get a lot less of it.

But parents who still don't want their kids to go to school, or who don't mind if their kids don't want to go to school? They have every right to make that decision. It's their life. It's unjust to forcibly take that choice away from them, even if it's a stupid choice.


Look: we do have an illiterate underclass. I've been to prison, and I've seen some of it. It's not very big, but it's there. Still, a person has the right to decide for himself whether he wants to be illiterate, and you don't have any right to say otherwise unless he's your kid. It is, after all--say it with me--his life.

In this case birdwatcher, you are partially right. However, it is important to note that I am not 'picking' on teachers in general, but I AM pointing out that some of the Houston teachers are unethical, and their Union is worse.

So far as receiving the money 'in good faith', try that line if your bank over credits your account by mistake. This is the same thing.

If, in your somewhat specious final point, if the bonus money was not due me, of course I would return it.

If I were the Houston school district, I would go to court to recover the money, and then disband the entire bonus program. That way the teachers and their union would not be faced with ethics problems like this in the future. They have already proved they are not up to the task.

I agree Cra, that the Government really has no Constitutional authority to be in the education biz, but then, most everything the Government does has no direct origin in the Constitution.
However, the Constitution DOES authorize the legislature to pass laws, and those laws authorize various Government functions that are not directly authorized by the COTUS.
The Supremes are the check on this power. If a someone has a gripe, then they should go to court.

More folks should read the document. It can be informative.

Then how do you explain even more widespread failure and apathy in those nations where education ISN'T mandatory?

Interestng you would cede the right to parents to cripple their kids' lives (granted, many are doing a pretty good job of that already). In Barakistan then, are we to have NO child welfare laws? Can folks make like a bunch of them notorious Iranians and marry their daughters off at age nine? Bind their feet like old-time Chinese? Have 'em go work six days a week at the Nike factory? Sell 'em into the sex trade?

Birdwatcher

I doubt it, I'll bet the wording of the bonus policy is so obtuse NO ONE can tell who is exactly due what, hence the error in the first place and now the Union's legal case.

Cases I am aware of the "school" is awarded the money for being "high performing" and the Administration at the school dispenses it as they see fit.

The whole case is surprising really, in Texas the teacher's unions are ordinariliy pretty toothless.

Birdwatcher

Good point, and it does show the ultimate failure of a totally libertarian political view. Anarchy is the goal of libertarians, and anarchy is not a sustainable system. Thats so simple a concept, that even the cave men understood it. Amusingly, that fact eludes American libertarians.

Give me some specific examples.


In Barakistan, laws would be private phenomena, not government decrees. The answer to the question of what's against the law would depend heavily on context.


Probably not near the sorts of places you or I would live, no.

But you'd have a tough time, I think, convincing a private judge that you had the right to forcibly confine somebody else's kid for several hours a day against his or the kid's will for a period of twelve years or so.