Posted on 09/10/2011 6:51:05 AM PDT by erkyl
Ron Clark is an award-winning teacher who started his own academy in Atlanta He wants parents to trust teachers and their advice about their students Clark says some teachers hand out A grades so parents won't bother them It's OK for kids to get in trouble sometimes; it teaches life lessons, Clark says
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Here in Wisconsin - our Gov. Walker has taken this to task. THAT is why the union thugs nation wide are fighting us in WI tooth and nail. We now have teachers that don’t have to join unions, the school system is NOT automatically deducting scummy union dues to hand over to the Dems / ahem / Unions. Unions are furious. Tough noogies, I say. Did you hear Obummer the other night screaming during his pre-football TOTUS reading that blah blah blah collective bargaining is a right. NOT so... obummer -NOT a right. Not here in Wisconsin and it should not be anywhere. So, the unions thank the public by what? Check out Washington where they took 5 hostages. oh yeah. That’s a real good thing, right Trumka, Hoffa and Obummer? Union thuggery should be met with imprisonment, like any horrid crime.
You missed one point and then you ignored another. As I said, she’s not in it for career. It’s what she enjoys doing. And regarding the parents running the schools, I don’t mean in the sense of good education. I mean that in the sense of them wanting free access to the teachers all hours of the day ... Sitting in the classroom, unscheduled meetings, calls in the evening hours. What other professional in the world has to deal with that? Would you like it if one of your employee’s parents wanted to come and watch you work? Or call you in the evening to ask you if little Johnny is being a good employee? Or bypassing security to come into your office for an unscheduled meeting? That’s what I mean by running the schools.
Obviously you have not been on the same threads I have....but don’t worry I’m pretty sure they will show up.
should be teaching reading, writing and arithmetic instead of social justice
You don’t really think teachers are doing this because they want to ,do you?
they work for the parents not the other way around
You don’t really think teachers are doing this because they want to ,do you?
I realize it is not the teachers doings but they should take a stand for God and our constitution which recognizes our declaration of independence and its recognition of the divine power that brought about this free country.
The Bill of rights is to protect the minority from the majority, me being the minority in one case and maybe you being the minority in another case, but it does not give the minority the right to force the majority to do as the minority wants.
I would not work for any one who would forbid me to mention God and i would not work for any one who would want me to uphold socialism, and i resent government employees who will do that.
And please do not tell me that is not happening because i hear it on the news nearly every day, they are taking God out of the schools, they are being forced to teach adverse sex lifestyles and things that just a few years ago would have been unbelievable.
I will repeat that the bill of rights does not force the majority to bend to the dictations of the minority, it just means the majority can not force any one to do or say something they don,t believe in.
“responsibility—something that parents may be outsourcing to teachers.”
Agreed...
“American schools are the product of America’s turn away from God”
Agreed...and they helped play a roll in that turning away.
“Americans have let this happen. All Americans...”
Agreed...
“You want a working public educational system? Really? Then you’d better get back to what was working before Americans thought they could live apart from God.”
My answer...NO. I do not want a public education system. What I would like to see is parents taking full responsibility for the raising of their children...and that would include their education. I would much rather see a robust private education system were the parent decides for the child...be it home school or private school...religious or secular...let the parent decide. I could see a time when good teachers would then be able to group together to develop their own schools or private lesson companies. Let the market place help develop the new educational options...and good teachers will still be in demand and the ones that cannot teach will move onto new professions.
“Sorry to sound snippy”
I did not think you sounded “snippy”...you brought up some very good points.
It is clear that both the student and the teacher are able to see a situation from different points of view or to just lie about a situation. In the article the teacher was setting up the parent to never question the teacher and to assume the child is always wrong. This is wrong on so many levels. It sounds like the issue in your situation had more to do with an administration that did not want to get at the truth (per your description) so they would take the easier route. I would expect the parent to take the side of their child until somebody could show that the child was wrong. As a parent my responsibility is to my child not to the teachers career.
To me, your story just highlights another reason that public schools are a bad idea to start with. We need to remove the government from education and let parents have full responsibility over the education of their children.
I hope that your new career field works out better for you.
I would not work for any one who would forbid me to mention God and i would not work for any one who would want me to uphold socialism, and i resent government employees who will do that.
While I admire your high principles I also know it is easy to state such beliefs not many would risk their lively hood for a set of principles that most people of this country don't hold to as being that important . I witnessed to my students almost every day, my theory was I would do so until someone in authoriy told me to stop, no one ever did. But make no mistake if told to stop I would have. Who do you think replaces the teacher that falls on his/her sword!!!The schools are what they are because parents don't care enogh to end it!!!
In my husband’s job, he is constantly going to last minute meetings that he has to somehow manage to fit in. I love the ones that are called at 6:30pm, so that they can get the overseas employees involved in the meeting.
Then he is constantly up at 3 in the morning dealing with overseas clients and co-workers.
Then there are the last minute trips to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The customers routinely come into see what is going on in the office.
He works for a computer company.
I love when we go on vacation and we can’t get cell phone coverage. It’s the only time he really has off. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of places that lose cell phone coverage these days.
My husband once had to fly to Korea for an emergency meeting and back within 24 hours.
Even kindergarten children are in school for 6 or more hours, yet, my homeschoolers rarely spent more than 2 hours in formal study. In the early grades ( kindergarten to 4th) it was 30 **minutes** to an hour and sometimes less.
These schools are wasting a **LOT** of time. There is absolutely **no** reason why any child should need to do homework. NONE!
Let's call “homework” what it really is: AFTERschooling!
The **real** educators are the parents who make sure the AFTERschooling ( misnamed “homework”) is complete, understood by the child, and neatly worked! The real educator is the child, himself, in the HOME, who reads the text, answers the questions at the back of the chapter, makes outlines of the material, works all the examples and problems, does the reasearch project, and then thoroughly reviews the material for an exam.
By the way... There is absolutely no evidence that institutional schools teach anything. Really! NO studies have ever been done to separate out what knowledge is acquired in the classroom as compared to that accomplished in the **home**. If you like I can send you a e-mail from a Stanford education professor that plainly states that these studies have **never** been done!
It is my anecdotal observation from working with several thousand families over 30 years in my clinic that there is **no** difference between the home habits of successful institutionalized children and successful homeschoolers. And....BOTH successful homeschoolers and institutionalized children are spending the **SAME** amount of time at the kitchen table ( or desk) in the **HOME**!
I go so far as to state:
I you know an academically successful child, that child has been AFTERschooled or homeschooled.
Yeah! I am shouting. Please forgive me. I am exasperated. Our county just spent 70 MILLION dollars on a new high school and no one can prove that this 70 million is really helping the children learn.
And you also don’t see my point. I did not say that other professionals do not go through the things you listed in your post ... I deal with that too. But, does you husband have parents of employees watching his every move ... bypassing security measures to interrupt his day .... calling him on his personal time to ask how an employee is doing or discuss bullying in the workplace? Probably not.
My point is ... for anyone else that chooses to ignore it ... they are interfering with the job that (most) teachers are trying to do ... educate their kids. Give them some respect ... they know what they’re doing.
I hear you, FRiend. Imho, our public school system should be dismantled.
That’s a particularly dumb response. On the other hand, that mechanic isn’t going to retire at a relatively young age with anywhere near the benes public school teachers do unless he stashes away a good portion of his current hourly rate.
And, assuming we’re talking about the mechanic who owns his own shop, he has to pay for all his costs of being in business, from rent to equipment, licenses, insurance, yada yada yada. If it’s not the owner, the actual mechanic gets half; the owner gets the other half for his costs of doing business. I.e., risk.
By the end of their careers, the teachers are far better off than most mechanics.
Parents are the equivalent of a customer.
My husband has customers that watch his companies every move, and then they threaten to take away the work if it is not done to their expectations even when those customers don’t know the specifics of the hardware.
The customers call him 24 hours a day. He has no personal time except when his cell phone is out of range.
Even on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, he has customers calling him.
Then if the customers are not happy, the boss can fire him at any time. No recourse, no notice, and no pension.
Also, he’s a manager and he gets the wonderful job of firing people, dealing with co-workers who are doing drugs, etc, etc.
Our kids are in private school now, and it is much better in private school. The private schools know that we will take our money and go some place else if we don’t like what is going on. When parents are unhappy, the private school makes changes.
When my kids were in public school, so many of the staff were so disrespectful to me and my husband.
I used to work in a program where my company volunteered me to work in the classroom in a poor neighborhood in San Jose. I spent 20 hours a week in the classroom. I also used to substitute teach.
I respect good teachers, and I know quite a few of them.
However,part of their job is pleasing me: the customer,the texpayer and the parent.
I would be negligent in my job as parent is I took a hands off approach to education, and I know for a fact that my special needs kid would not be where she is today if I had taken a hands off approach.
Nice. Great to engage in mature exchange of views and civil discourse with an adult.
I’m paying $5000 each year in property taxes, virtually all of which goes to the schools - who beg for more.
$5000 in prop. taxes means little unless you also provide the value you are paying taxes on. And "virtually all of which goes to the schools" is really not true in any community.
Teachers are well paid for what they do.
In some areas, I'd agree. In most areas, teachers who have any decent standard of living are not the primary income for their family. If it's so lucrative and so easy -- why aren't you doing it?
What some teachers did in Wisconsin is, in my eyes, reprehensible and a disservice to their profession. So when you take exception to all teachers because of what those few are doing, you really aren't being very fair.
Yes, some teachers will intentionally stretch the truth to 'get at' a student. But by and large, the ones I know don't. What I find curious is the number of parents who take the child's word that of not one, but five teachers. Do parents really think teachers have so little else to do but conspire about their child?
I wish I had the answers. I know a good friend who left teaching because of three P's -- Parents, Peckerheads, and Policies. Something needs to change, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our nation.
Don’t know where you live, but there aren’t any wealthy teachers running around here, except the ones who left a good career to teach. In fact, I see mechs here better off than teachers, unless the teacher has a spouse with a good job.
I don’t recall referring to teachers or mechanics as wealthy, so I don’t know what precipitated the tenor of your response.
Nonetheless, I live in Virginia. Last I knew, teachers here can retire when they make some magical combination of age and years of experience equaling 50 or 55. I’ve not been involved with our public schools in ten years, so don’t remember the exact details.
So, if a newly minted, teaching certified, college grad starts working as a teacher here right out of college, when s/he hits the Big 5-O (or thereabouts), s/he can retire at roughly 94% of his/her salary for the last three years of his/her teaching career.
Starting salary in my county, 194 workdays contract, BA only, is $44,4K; a teacher today with 22 years experience is making (base) $79.2.
http://www.fcps.edu/DHR/salary/scalepdfs/fy12/FY%202012%20194-day%20teacher.pdf
IMO, a 55 year old retiring at @ $75K/year is doing OK. No Bill Gates, but certainly OK.
I don’t know, or have any way of knowing, what the retirement packages are for mechanics hereabouts. However, I suspect they are not quite so generous.
As a teacher in VA, and a participant in the Virgina Retirement System, I happen to know the exact answer to your question.
Teachers are allowed to retire when they have 30 years of teaching and are at least 55. However, and this is the BIG however, their retirement pay is drastically, dramatically reduced. If I were to take advantage of retiring at 55 years in, my monthly benefit would be $347 (I know this because I just got my annual statement today). If I wait until I have reached 65, the benefit goes up to $1667. (That includes no extras such as insurance, etc). And that age will be gradually increasing to 67. I'm in the band that can retire with full benefits at 66 - considering I've been in enough years, which I will.
So, yes, technically a teacher could retire as early as 55 (considering they came in at 22), but I'm thinking very few make that choice.
I'd say it is safe to assume that many will think this to be an exorbitant pension, virtually raping the local economy and that I should only rightfully walk away with the clothes on my back.......
...oh, and I forgot to mention.... I fund 50% of my VRS. Some counties require their employees to fund either more or less, some match what the employee puts in, some ask the employee to put in nothing, there is no standard as each county decides what is best for their system.
Uhm....no. You've sort have got part of it right, but a lot wrong.
The amount of the pension is roughly 50% of their top three years of earning, however, because VA doesn't have a standard set up across the Commonwealth, there are some individual differences in counties, if the county itself contributes to the pension, but 94%, nope, that's laughable.
Now I will tell you what some teachers do to boost their pension is to commute to a higher paid county, such as Loudoun or Fairfax in NoVa, for three years, then retire at 65, then go back to their home county and try to get on as an ERIP (sorry, don't know what the acronym stands for). An ERIP employee can draw retirement while working limited hours, something like no more than 300 a year, and draw like 35% of their highest salary. ERIP employees are useful during SOL testing for the prep work and monitoring since only county employees can be used for testing - no subs - and the county can ensure they are meeting the SOL requirements.
So yes, under that scenario, a teacher could draw close to 90% of their salary in retirement. But since counties are limited in how many ERIP's they can have at any one time, there just aren't many out there. And even then, it is a combination of retirement and working for their current salary.
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