The Teachers’ Union
Here is a simple illustration of what the Fullerton teachers’ union (FETA) is fighting for:
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Here is a simple illustration of what the Fullerton teachers’ union (FETA) is fighting for:
“that’s why we don’t spend much time teaching them economics!”
Here are the real economics of paying outrageous pensions:
5,259 retired teachers and school administrators receive pensions in excess of $100,000 per year!
Check out the detailed list:
http://www.californiapensionreform.com/database.asp?vttable=calstrs
Then check out how much they are underfunded. In other words, check out how much they will require the taxpayers to pay extra to make them whole. We’re talking over $500 BILLION dollars for Calstrs(teachers and administrators) and Calpers(other state workers) combined!
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2010/04/05/daily15.html
It’s not funny like the infamous “Hero and Deserve” video, but it gets the point across.
I liked…
“It’s unfair to evaluate the performance of a teacher. It makes them nervous.”
“But don’t they spend all day evaluating the performance of their students?”
“Children should be held to a higher standard.”
“Why?”
“They are not unionized.”
THAT is funny!
Why the emphasis on teacher’s unions? Throughout the video you can substitute any type of union, but this all seems quite arbitrary Republican propaganda designed to promote the idea that unions are to blame for everything. Just more of the same manipulation based on the right wing principle of eliminating taxes of any kind whether or not the poor suffer. Our country is actually built on providing quality education which certainly won’t be provided to poor children by any Republican anti-union-nazi. The point of this video is that teachers should let the rich decide who gets an education. No thanks.
anti,
The point of this post is that teachers unions do not have students as a priority. It is all about what they can get – the hell with the kids.
Yet another feeble attempt at humor by the residents of loserville.
None of whom have spent a day in a classroom.
Next thing I bet they’re going to try and convince us that teachers are getting rich because they are so well paid.
What’s the difference between 4SD Observer and a bucket of shit?
The bucket.
Wow!!! That one really got me.
I hope your little head didn’t hurt itself coming up with it.
You sure seem to spend a lot of time visiting loserville. I wonder why that is.
ZZZZZzzzzzzzz
Cuz making you wonder is something that is easy for me to do.
Hi Travis.
You (you are the auteur, right?) say schools outside the public system hold their teachers to a higher standard thus they perform better, but isn’t what you really mean to say – or more precisely, what would be correct – that the students perform better? I can answer for you if you like:
(a) it is not what you mean to say
(b) but yes it is correct
I have not seen you, nor Mr. Thompson, nor admin come forward with anything but platitudes and generalities about teacher performance or insanity or freedom yet it never gets beyond ‘we have to do something’ to the part about precisely the ‘something’ ‘we’ propose to ‘do’.
I have posted at some length on this topic, with some specific (and I hope, not contrived) examples of why things like value added are useless because they can easily be measuring something other than what you say you are measuring. I will not repeat all of them here because as you know, I am notoriously lazy.
Horse, meet water, and I’ll leave you to it since that’s all one can do.
Alright Nipsey, I’ll bite. Here is a really simple proposal for you:
Teachers’ salary shall be comprised of:
98% step and column
1% value added ratings
1% Principal’s discretion for top performers
The teachers’ union would strike if the board was serious about this offer.
Boring
Being stuck in compton’s pocket all day is pretty stiffling. But it’s worth it when I get out to see his latest stupidity.
I agree with compton. To cure the boredom I watched fire hero again. Now that is entertaining! Hero and deserve. Where do you guys come up with this stuff?
Here’s a few more Nipsey. Many that I’ve written and spoken about dozens of times.
Shorten the process of terminating a bad teacher to less than a month.
When layoffs are necessary, base it on laying of the bottom of a performance ranking of teachers which goes from #1 to #600 in Fullerton. Make time of service a non-consideration.
Fullerton should resolve the following to the state legislature:
– Bring an end to collective bargaining
– Pass a paycheck protection act ending the threatening and manipulative ‘opt out’ policy for union lobbying donations.
– Switch public education to a 100% voucher-based system.
– Allow teachers who do not wish to join the union to negotiate their own contracts.
– Give all school districts the same amount of money based upon student population.
– Mandate that there can be no limit to volunteerism of qualified teachers
– Allow certificated teachers to manage larger classes with qualified volunteers for lecture based curriculum.
Quit paying the California School Boards Association dues lobbying for higher taxes and more of the same in claiming that funding of education is our state’s biggest challenge.
I could do this for hours.
Just because it’s an idea that diminishes union power and is unlikely to pass the California legislature doesn’t not make it a non-idea.
“a performance ranking of teachers which goes from #1 to #600 in Fullerton. ”
Great, let’s start at the beginning. What is this performance ranking, i.e. what (whose?) performance is the metric.
Any time now.
“Shorten the process of terminating a bad teacher to less than a month.”, good start Chris.
In every profession (plumbers, lawyers, cleaning ladies, cops, financial advisors, teachers, etc.) +/- 20% are great and +/- 20% are bad. I’d like to see the time to terminate a bad teacher go down to a day, just like the rest of us.
1% based on principal ratings? You have clearly not worked as a teacher. Research shows that some of the most hated, oldest teachers can actually be the most effective when it comes to long term learning. So letting a principal pick his favorites is not a solution. Oh here’s one more piece of brilliant propaganda from the right wing: “schools are failing”. This is nothing but an assumption and it is meaningless! What the hell is “failing”? Do you mean that 21 year olds who are the only ones willing to teach in say South Central LA are failing? Were these schools successful before? Do you mean that in the 50’s say, the inner city schools were a success? You’re on crack! Back then black people had to use a different drinking fountain, so don’t tell me that bullshit that “schools (now) are failing”. Education has not been free in the US for very long and still is not. Property taxes provide most of the funding and this ends up screwing inner city residents. Then the teachers who choose to teach them get to hear all this crap about how they are failing when they’re having trouble finding food to eat, a place to live, and have gangmember moms and dads. If I hear “schools are failing” one more time I think I’ll scream. What a crock of Rush Limbaugh stupidity.
Example: Bill Gates poured lots of money into this merit pay crap and guess what the result was: nothing, no change at all. Students do better when they are interested and motivated. Testing is not a motivation and we all know that getting a principal on your good side for money is not something that we should be encouraging teachers to strategize about – overcoming the difficulties that families face and still getting students to do well is a challenge that should never be punished. Do that and you will not have any teachers stay in the profession. The 1% proposal above simply says, hey, trust us with a little bit of insanity, we promise we won’t go more insane. Yeah right.
Travis,
When were schools succeeding? In the 90’s when meth became the most common cause of imprisonment in the US? In the 80’s when we were in severe recession and coke was the drug of choice? In the 70’s when kids were being killed in Vietnam to protect the interests of the US rich? Or in the 1960’s when black students and Mexican students weren’t allowed in most of the country to go with white students to the same classroom? Hmm. I can’t for the life of me prove to myself that suddenly and recently, “US schools are failing”. Just political truth convolution based on a stupid assumption. Now I’m going to go squirt someone’s pie hole.
See, I told you the union would have a conniption. Somehow teaching in the state of California is the only profession on earth where a boss has no input on the compensation of his employees. In the rest of the world, this is considered normal and exceedingly appropriate.
Travis again exhibits his ignorance. Collective bargaining is where that input takes place. You are not arguing for “a boss” to “have input”, you are arguing for the boss to have the only input. Good luck getting anyone to believe that allowing “bosses” to be the only input is going to result in reasonable working decisions. You need to go work for a school district for at least two years and come back and tell us what you really believe afterwards, Mr. Limbaugh.
Some of the posts I’m seeing on FFFF are just too intellectually naive. You are the perfect example. Repeating what you hear on talk radio such as 640 KFI isn’t very interesting or detailed enough to be taken seriously. You are sounding like a right wing dumbness machine
You know not what you speak of. “You are sounding like a right wing dumbness machine”? If you ever read this blog you will notice the “right wing” gets as much boot in the groin on this site as any
I have two questions for all you union members:
1. What excites you most: [a] an after school meeting on how to get students to read, or [b] a union meeting?
2. What would you rather spend time on: [a] making a new lesson plan, or [b] teaching the same class the same way you have for twenty five years so that you will have time to go to the union meeting?
Lois,
Your impression that union workers go to union meetings on a regular basis shows that you definitely do not know what you are talking about. I have never been to a union meeting in 20 years, and I only know a few of us that have ever been to one. It’s really funny when talk radio listeners come on and sputter ingorant statemets like that, showing no concern for accuracy. I thought this site was about Fullerton, but apparently some come on here to discuss arbitrary ideas about whether employees should unionize or not. Ok I’ll bite, how did unions come about in the first place? They came about because employees got fed up with being mistreated. Give up the idea of persuading workers not to unionize – no one believes that line at all. But hey, where is FULLERTON in all of this? I think Mr. Yogurt Cannon is pointed in the right direction.
Our schools are failing. Compare our rankings with other countries. We’re declining. Social promotion is a catastrophe. You cannot promote failing students to the next grade and expect good results. There is no real performance incentive for teachers and administrative personnel and they get massive pensions too. 5,259 retired teachers and administrators in California receive pensions in excess of $100,000 per year!
Check out the detailed list:
http://www.californiapensionreform.com/database.asp?vttable=calstrs
The database also lists over 9,000 Calpers retirees making more than $100,000 per year in retirement pay too!
Enough is enough. Time for vouchers.