[Gopher Broke]

From an email alert to members...this is unbelievable! This union STRONGLY OPPOSED tax cuts for families..because it might hurt their wallet and prevent their automatic, annual raises.

But then they SUPPORT higher tax cuts via special deductions for teachers...and urge their members to lobby for it!!

[lowbridge]

bump

[ctlpdad]

I dislike taxes, but I HATE TEACHERS UNIONS.
every time i hear the words teachers unions, i hear my fat bitch sister in law (a local teachers union president) nasty mean screeching voice and it feels like a rusty fork splitting a dozen or so of my vertabra with no anesthetic while having teeth yanked out with a tractor trailer.

[T Lady]

The NEA and other Socialist-infested entities oppose ANY type of COMPETITION, whether from voucher initiatives or home schooling. It's the idea of competing with others that scares the Left in America. Talk about modern-day Nazism!

...Thankfully there are a few teachers out there who are not members or are independent enough not to toe the (Democratic) party line.

-Regards, T.

[leadpencil1]

You mean the teachers in this city?

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the educational performance of the New York City public schools over the past five years. It finds that educational performance has not improved during thatperiod. Among its specific findings are:*

Only 70 percent of students complete high school, either by obtaining a diploma (60%) or aGED (10%) within seven years of initial enrollment.

Only 50 percent complete high school,either with a diploma (46%) or GED (4%) within four years of initial enrollment.

Thesefigures are unchanged from the beginning of the 1990s.*

Only 44 percent of black students, and only 39 percent of Hispanic students, complete highschool within four years.*

While passage rates on the State's Regents exams have increased since 1995, fewer than 50 percent of City students pass even one of these challenging exams. Only a maximum of 19 percent of City students could have passed five exams last year, based on low passage ratesfor Biology (16%) and Earth Science (19%). Since students will have to pass five of these exams to graduate from high school by 2005, City high school graduation rates may dropprecipitously in the near future.*

City elementary and middle school students are also not learning what they need to. Only 41 percent of these students scored at an acceptable level on the citywide reading tests in 2000, while only 34 percent scored at an acceptable level on the citywide math tests.*

One in five City elementary and middle school students scored at the lowest level on thereading tests, and nearly one third of these students scored at the lowest level on the citywidemath tests.

Many areas of the City are virtual educational dead zones. Seven entire districts (23, 19, 12, 7, 5, 9 & 85)have fewer than 30 percent of students passing the city's English exam, and fourteen (the seven above plus17, 13, 8, 4, 6, 10 & 16) have fewer than 30 percent of student passing the city's Math exam.

Read more

[PetroniDE]

If they don't want tax cuts, have them send their tax cut to me... I'll take it.

[Mister Baredog]

From an email alert to members...this is unbelievable!

It would be unbelievable if they were for ANYTHING BUSH is for, they are DEMONCRAT shills, just like AFSCME. Public Employee Unions shouldn't even be legal, unlike real businesses, governments have no way to resist Unions, and why should they, it's not their money, IMHO.

[JoeSixPack1]

The bottom line in all this crap is that schools have lost track of what the heck to teach.

Politicians want politics, unions want favors, teachers want supplies, kids want holidays, and parents want day care.

What the heck ever happened to the three R's? They became Rx. And the taxman signs the script.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

Teachers don't need a union,they're not oppressed!

[RobbyS]

Well, if you expect to find enough math majors for the public secondary schools, you won't find them. Even in a time of relative high unemployment, they prefer something else, even food service.

[grania]

On June 11, the Massachusetts Teachers Association is sponsoring a "virtual eday march" asking its legislators to raise revenues to avoid education cuts.

In the next few days, I'll post the information so we can organize a counter-protest by email on June 9 and 10 so that their emails don't even get through.

Does anyone know if there is a way to forward a posting about this to all Massachusetts freepers? I'd really like to get this going so we get as many emails (at least) as they do.

[Coleus]

NEA: Teachers' Union Dues Can go to Charities, Sample Letter

[Michael.SF.]

Paying to Teach -- Out-of-Pocket Costs State fiscal woes and education funding shortfalls mean more frozen supply budgets and school employees digging deeper into their pockets for classroom materials.

Bogus, BOGUS, BOGUS!!

Case in Point:

Contra Costa County, Calif. Department of Education

My wife works for them as a Therapist for Special needs kids. Budget last year had surplus money in it and they were instructed to "spend it or lose it."

Puchases included:

3 vans to transport the kids. (not needed, ordered w/o proper restraints. Now used by teachers and others as transportation w/o kids).

Printer - sized for poster size printouts. Used by teachers and others for celebrations (showers, Welcome Homes etc.) Individuals must pay for the Ink)

10 Digital Cameras - Most cameras were taken home, by those lucky enough to be 'in the know'.

Seminar on how to use the cameras. Conducted on school time aas an "inservice".

Yes, my wife is Union, she has to be to work there. But she is not happy about it.

[Mr. Silverback]

WEAC, the Wisconsin teacher's union, recently posted an article on their website detailing how easy it is to retire outside Wisconsin. Why would someone want to spend their golden years outside the Dairy State, you ask? Because it is a tax hell, and even WEAC admits it, encouraging their membership to retire elsewhere so their pensions won't be drained away into the state treasury. This despite WEAC never meeting a tax hike or social program they didn't LOVE.

[buffyt]

My sister is a teacher in Calif. She likes Gray Davis because he passed some kind of bill so that she will make a couple thousand more a year. Some kind of tax break. She likes that. But she wouldn't want YOU to get a tax cut!

[EdReform]

HOPE FOR AMERICA: Growing Non-Union Teacher Associations Provide Alternatives to NEA and AFT

The Union That Killed Education ( see reply 29 )

[redbaiter]

The House bill imported from the "No Child Left Behind Act' the definition that requires all teachers to have a degree or pass a subject matter test in each academic subject they teach.

Nice-sounding idea but beside the point and in the end a waste of effort. It shouldn't be the government that decides who is qualified to teach. It should be the parents, via school choice. That's what we should hammer away every day: choice, choice, choice. There's no place for the NEA to hide when the issue is choice.

[Sparta]

I think the only way to break the Communist teachers unions is to separate school and state. We need to privatize education in America. Make education a priviledge, not a right.

[lilylangtree]

NEA is a liberal leftist POS.